The game wasn’t too complicated to effectively moderate. I know many people who could have moderated it effectively.
Quick question for Choie or Pizza:
If Choie had been lynched Day 1, would the game have ended in town victory?
The biggest single thing that pointed to choie was Weedy’s death, IMO. I think maybe if a few more people had been willing to believe that the reveal (even accepted as written) was not necessarily of a scum player but rather a PFK, then maybe some momentum may have gotten started on exactly why she died. With Weedy-as-scum there wasn’t really any incentive to ask the question. And choie was right that she didn’t have fully acceptable answers to my questions, but I’ll give the lack of follow-through on that to myself – I was just too fully blindspotted by her and too confused by what the setup might be to go anywhere with it. When I died my big idea was still choie plus the people she’d resurrected, not choie alone, and so the more I trusted Astral the less inclined I was to look more closely at choie.
I do with the third parties and such had been more forthcoming, earlier. I think it would have helped with a couple of the mislynches if they had.
But choie’s good, no question. I’d still like to see her on a scum team sometime – it really is a whole different kettle of fish than PFK I think.
No
I believe storyteller was “born” evil.
ATPG, I think your biggest mistake was to go it alone.
Next time you get the urge to do something like this, get someone to co-mod. I’d have volunteered if I’d known just how complex it was; I have (I like to think) a couple of complicated games under my belt where I provided a bit of systemisation to help the mod and players keep track of what was happening.
Also, I play D&D. A lot.
I do feel that the game was not quite as advertised - the issue about having to change classes in order to get Mafia powers should have been out in the open. That being said, I liked the incentive to vote the leveling mechanism gave.
Overall I enjoyed it, but could have enjoyed it more.
Thanks for the compliments guys. I wish the game had seemed more fair to you so I could feel I’d earned them.
I’ve had my clashes with Gadarene, but I do have to back him up on some of his complaints, pizza – I wouldn’t want you to dismiss them just because they came from a guy who was very vocal about disliking your mod style in the Little Mermaid game over at Giraffeboards.
The length of time between the EOD / EON was crippling to game momentum. I know you’ve apologized for that and explained how difficult the score-toting was, but you acknowledge that a bit too briefly IMHO. There was really no need for you to go solo; there were others willing to help you out (perhaps MHaye, perhaps Hoopy Frood, or Normal once she was obliterated with no chance of return). And beforehand… well, you’ve known all along what your work schedule is, so why plan the EOD/EONs for daytime when you’re not around? This is even more true for the very last EOD. I know you were on a trip, I know you wanted the 6/6/6 symmetry, but if you were able to tell anyone about this trip in advance (Visor says you told “a bunch of people”) why on earth couldn’t you include us?
To touch on the unfairness of this game not being random, I’d say there were likely two players not chosen at random. I understand why the Big Bad had to be “vetted” to make sure s/he wasn’t going to flake out, which I don’t have a habit of doing in the games we’ve played, and to be someone who was enthusiastic and a likely active participant, which – well, you can see by the number of posts here, I was sure as hell active.
The second role that I’m assuming wasn’t random was Normal’s. She and pizza are obviously comrades and the fact that he gave her massive power and one of the longest and badassed death scenes isn’t likely to be coincidence.
But okay, so there were two of us who were not random. The rest probably were, I’d imagine. So is it very bad not to be randomly chosen, at least important roles?
To answer the question about what would’ve happened if I’d been lynched on Day 1, I can’t imagine pizza wouldn’t have arranged for the Shard to magically be transported to another player in such a game-breaking incident. I asked him something similar at one point – what happens when I’m lynched? I was actually trying to hint at this in-game when I tried to steer people away from attacking the Demon, because I was aware that he was the mechanism for performing the lynches, not the actual baddie. So I was actually being pro-town there; if you’d broken the demon (and with 6666 hp that would’ve taken a lot of doing – septimus and his 600hp would’ve still taken five Days/Nights to kill him, and only if he’d done so every single round).
Anyway Guiri, now you know why I went ballistic when you posted that “Well, good game, choie, you fooled almost all of us.” I was certain you’d been spoiled and was miserable that you’d be so mean as to ruin the game for the rest of us. I did object, also to pizza, about his having spoiled Visor and Weedy. I would have loved to bring back Visor, much for the same reason I brought back Gadarene: resurrecting known “enemies” would’ve thrown everyone off, both the resurectees and the unknowing Townees who didn’t yet know I was a reviver. And Weedy’s return, after bieng revealed as good, would’ve further cemented my role as an agent of Virtue.
But for all the disagreements we may have with pizza’s mod style, I think he’s right that Town lost the game due to an unfortunate number of dropouts and unusually inattentive players. The idea that there was no scum team was posited more than once but was ignored. Heck I even postulated it myself, but no one took up my theory (though it was leading you in the wrong direction). And people not submitting actions is baffling. There was one Night where there were, like, four attacks at all, and one of them was mine.
It may have been due to player ennui, which will be blamed on the inactive moderator. But I think both our sides failed on that score. So we do have to take ownership of our own (well, your own, mwah-ha-ha) bad decisions in the final result. LightFoot was the only one who really came close to asking me for a public claim, but I was able to deflect that – and I totally shouldn’t have been. That was Town’s fault, not pizza’s. I am good with words but I’m not that good; y’all should’ve never let me get away with the amount of deflection I did whenever asked about my healing/powers.
And just in case I haven’t made it clear enough: I fucking hated the PM idea, as well as the realization that there was another secret board somewhere. Scum is supposed to have more knowledge than Town, but I was in the dark about a lot of stuff that was going on. Heck, I was certain there was another PM group consisting of Normal and a bunch of others and that Silver and Astral were just playing me. I assumed even the Scums were working together – I suspect they could’ve figured out who they were and formed a real cabal.
Anyway I would’ve liked to play this role in a game where people felt it was fair, and without PMs.
And yes, septimus, we’re even now. I only wish Stanislaus were here so I could exact my revenge on him too. At least I got you and Weedy! 
So…
I just want to apologize for vanishing from the game. This was not fun for me. I think the design was really cool and really fun, actually - but it wasn’t Mafia, really, and I was terrible at it. Never once did it occur to me that my “evil” alignment was relevant. I had no idea who to vote for and no idea what was happening at any point, ever.
And, honestly, I feel like this was one of the nastiest games, on a person-to-person level, that I’ve ever played or witnessed. I’ve been in games where there have been dust-ups between players - even been part of dust-ups - but I’ve never played one where it seemed, as it did here, like most of the players just disliked one another in general.
So I wound up having a series of real-life circumstances that pulled me away from the game for a few days, again, and by the time I got back it was hopeless trying to catch up and I knew that if I were modkilled it wouldn’t affect anyone’s side, so… I just let it go.
So I’m sorry for that, to the other players and to the moderator. I am going to avoid playing in games for a while, until I am more able to commit time to it. It seems to cost much more time to play in a game than to moderate one.
Apology accepted, storyteller. 
I understand where you’re coming from. And I agree with many of your points. I think my biggest issue with this game, at the deepest level, is that it didn’t feel like mafia. Throw in the personal attacks, the long delays, and I can totally understand losing your drive to play.
I tried responding to personal attacks with jokes, but it’s incredibly disheartening to be subjected to them over and over. I don’t begrudge people deciding they don’t need to be attacked during their leisure games.
good game, choie.
thanks for the game, Pizza. it was a hell of a concept. very experimental so i can understand the difficulty.
initially i was going to tell town how silly they played but i got the result i wanted. if Scathach and i couldn’t win, i hoped scum would.
so i’ll just comment on how inflexible a number of players were. just because you guys aren’t used to PMs or neutrals doesn’t mean they are anti-town. a lot players couldn’t get past their concept of what mafia should be. i admit that town versus PFK might not be mafia. in retrospect i should have taken Normal’s invitation to dialogue for neutrals.
dropouts hurt the game as well. but to be fair, the game did say that it was okay to be too busy to play. of course i didn’t expect non-participation.
in the end, i’m glad i was right there was only one bad guy. i guess i’m not too lousy a player. i also think that i might have some insight into Pizza’s twisted mind.
Oddly, it wasn’t so much the attacks at me that were bothering me. I only really got one of them - from choie, actually - and it made me angry but I’m not made of porcelain so it was fine. It was more that the generalized sniping made the thread: (1) unpleasant to read; (2) difficult to parse, because there were so many posts worth of angry noise; and worst of all (3) even harder to analyze, because it was hard to tell if so-and-so voted for such-and-such for potentially nefarious reasons (in game) or because so-and-so just plain disliked such-and-such.
Anyhow, I’m thinking a kindler, gentler game might be in order sometime soon. Anyone up for an open game?
Turns out, it didn’t matter why anyone voted for anyone at all! Woo!
That really was one of the funniest things, choie – I didn’t actually HAVE a ton of power. I had the double vote, true, and started kind of “ahead of” most players by a level or so, but that’s it. What happened was I was I had a shield that protected against 50 hp physical damage, and I got hit by exactly that much, twice. I was voted the blue pendant, which protected against all damage by water, on the same day that I got hit by THAT, then it happened again the next day. I also possessed the diamond pendant (protection against light, I think) from the beginning; and traded for the red pendant (protection against fire) from Astral; but IIRC neither of those were ever tested.
So I was never damaged, despite really being nothing out of the ordinary as a role. It was freaky and rather cool and I’m happy it spooked you a bit. I don’t know why I warranted such a good death write-up either – I was rather demoralized and floating along on the current by then and had been for a while.
I’m fine with the setup, but the sniping was very hard to take. Very hard. I’m not even sure I’m not to blame at all, as I seemed to piss people off at every turn and only one of those people was acting. Pretty much the only time I was actually trying to be nasty (in a way) was in calling Astral a bastard, and ultimately I think he’s the only one who didn’t hold it against me.
Pizza’s a good guy and a clever and usually-prompt (even if not this time) game creator. Some of the things said about him also were hard for me to take this game.
Normal, I said it in-game, and I’ll say it again: you’re a strong, smart player and I respect you immensely. We’re cool in my book. Just take some of what I said in the thread to heart.
Normal, one of my mistakes is that you contacted me really early on, I gave you my info and I trusted you. Then choie said" I think you are Town" and I did the same thing to her. Good grief, I knew how weak she was, I knew she was the Resurrectionist. She even asked me me who she should revive and I said Gadarene. And Gad was resurrected, I would like to say that I wouldn’t fall for that kind of play again but I would be lying. I have found out that I am kind and gullible and maybe not suited to Mafia.
I didn’t ever doubt LightFoot as I said in the game, she did doubt me and she was right to do that, I was in the vipers nest.
Jan, don’t beat yourself up - practically no one suspected choie. That’s why she survived til end game under basically no lynch pressure. There’s no question of gullibility here, unless everyone in the game was gullible.
Hey I was the unwittingly direct and indirect cause of Town losses in both my previous games, and both times it was because I was trusting the wrong person*. In Thrill it was Stanislaus who led me down a primrose path to my own (and Town’s) death, and I followed blindly, like a lamb follows a shepherd just before it turns into a dish covered with mint jelly. But despite those games, this time was able to (ahem) pull the wool many folks’ eyes, if you’ll pardon the extended sheep metaphor. So you never know.
- I don’t think kindness enters into it. I certainly consider myself kind IRL, and I’m sure many other Mafia players are too.
Correction: not “basically” no lynch pressure, but absolutely no lynch pressure, thankyouverymuch. 
God knows I made many mistakes in the game and often didn’t know what the hell I was doing, improvising most of the time (though there were reasons for the killing order and why I chose whom I chose). But, while many consider me a beneficiary of pizza’s overgenerous empowerment, I will accept nothing less but full marks for never once being in danger of a lynch. Never got within twenty feet of the gallows, except as an onlooker.
If I ever get past my mental exhaustion to play another Mafia game, I fully expect to swing!
Correction acknowledged 
I said it before in the QT, and I’ll say it again here. You guys seemed to be very “Choie is town, end of story”. I think in the future, unless the player is mod confirmed as being townie, always be willing to entertain the fact that they might be scum. A lot of you blindly trusted choie, which in turn led to your defeat. Just something to consider for next time.
Since my post doesn’t seem to be showing up.