Alright first things first, HERE'S THE DEAL FRIENDS.

I could have allowed this game to continue to its logical point of conclusion. It would've been the "balanced" option. It would've also been the most boring option, held up the game queue and created an unnecessary amount of work for me to keep rehashing day and night flavour. I know you were all having fun and I'm glad you enjoyed it, but at the point you reached there was very little left that could pose a threat to the town.

You surmised it correctly in that a third party was the only role left. That role was Justin's which was the virus. Here's the role description:

Quote

Role Title: Virus Alignment: Third Party Win Condition: Be the last surviving player, or be one of only two players left in the game. Flavour: You are neither bot nor human. You trawl cyberspace looking to corrupt and destroy both of our units. We would almost respect this, if you were not intent on killing us too. Have mercy on our forces as you strike out. Letting the humans win is unforgivable. Ability: Once per night you must select a player to prime. That player will become "infected". During the course of any day phase other than the first, you may submit an action to activate the virus. All the players you have infected will be killed once you do. In addition to this, you are immune to all attacks at night and any investigative roles will scan you as vanilla town.

This role wasn't entirely invented for this game. It was a flavour variation of the arsonist role which is fairly common. An arsonist primes players and can choose a night in which to detonate the primed players, thus killing them. They have to win the game like any other serial killer does. I thought this variation would make for a poor balance, mostly because I also included the anti-virus role, which was my game's answer to the Firefighter. LSFIssue aka Alex had this role, and this was that description:

Quote

Role Title: Anti-virus Alignment: Town Flavour: You may have the ability to destroy viruses, fleshbag. But you do not have the ability to destroy us. Resistance is, and always will be futile. Ability: Once per night you may select a player. If that player has a virus, their virus will be removed.

The point is that Alex could effectively remove the threat of the detonation by hitting the right people. As target numbers decrease, the probability of both parties hitting the same target increase and so it seemed that even though the virus had the BP and the vanilla scan, common aspects of the serial killer role it was actually underpowered because unlike a serial killer, it could only kill possible targets when it wasn't priming them.

I thought it would be much more fun and interesting if the primed targets could be daykilled since this would add a twist to what was a fairly simple setup, without making things too ridiculous and on a par with my usual scale of far out twists.

The problem was that both the virus and anti-virus roles went to the two least active players! So when the mafia killed themselves off, and the town were hugely successful, we reached a point where the virus was left in the game inactive and bulletproof as well as unscannable.

In theory Justin could've remembered he was playing, come onto the game and executed his primed kill list. He had accrued a couple of names on there. Up until Night 4 he was proactive. After that I stopped getting night actions and it meant every night ran for the full 24 hours.

My concern was that he wouldn't show up and this is the most likely course of action. I don't think he quite got the setup of the game since it's a little different from epic mafia and he's also busy hosting his own game so I figure he just drifted out of interest playing this. Either way it seemed viable that what was going to unfold was a shot in the dark game where town basically just kept guessing the lynches day after day for long 24 hour days, with very little to go off until they eventually struck gold and found him.

So because of his excessive inactivity, it seems the fair and balanced action to just call time on the game. I was hoping to have one last day at it to see if town would just lynch him (and poking Alex to actually play so he would maybe reveal his role, helping them to see a third party was the culprit). You came close but went with testing Drr's role instead which was fine. I just didn't want to drag things out.

Kudos town, you played a very very good game. Commiserations mafia and serial killer, you played an absolutely awful one.

drr

Role Title: Mayor Alignment: Town Flavour: You are the leader of the puny humans but I suspect they will not respect you anyway. At least it gives you a chance for one fleeeting moment of authority prior to your inevitable doom. Ability: Once during the course of the game, you can call off a lynch vote. This must be done before the voting reaches majority. The day will end in a no-lynch instead.

Curtis

Role Title: Doctor Alignment: Town Flavour: It seems you can prevent our attacks somehow. How annoying. Still, the worthless meatbags need all the protection they can get. Ability: Once per night you may select a player. That player will be protected from attacks during that night. You cannot select the same player on consecutive nights.

Kiwi

Role Title: Vigilante Alignment: Town Flavour: You have some kind of special power, fleshbag. You can strike out and destroy others. This would worry us if we were afraid of humanity. We cannot process fear, but even if we could we would not. Ability: Once per night you may select a player to attack. You cannot select a player on two consecutive nights.

korr

Role Title: Friendly Neighbour Alignment: Town Flavour: Worthless humanoid. We wish you didn't keep waltzing around and waving at everybody. You are ruining our plans. Not enough to matter or save you, but it's a minor inconvenience. Ability: Once per night you may select a player. That player will be told that you are town-aligned.

Rito

Role Title: Universal Backup Alignment: Town Flavour: Tiresome mortal. You have no powers at all and are worthless. But it seems that you plan to step in and replace one of your fallen allies. We will not let you. Ability: If any town with an investigative or protective role is killed, you will gain their role. This will only happen once.

Ari

Role Title: Vanilla Alignment: Town Flavour: Puny fleshbag, you have no powers at all. You are nothing but a weak sack of bones and sinew that will eventually expire, probably at our mighty hands. Ability: None

Leaffan

Role Title: One-shot Bulletproof Alignment: Town Flavour: Pathetic human. Your armour is incomplete and weak. It will only protect you once and then we are free to destroy you as we please. Ability: Once during the course of the game, you will be protected from any kill. If you are protected via another method on the same occasion, your bulletproof will still be kept.

Think that's all.

Natalie's inventions:

Item A: Select two players. The following day, lynch votes may only be cast against these two.
Item B: Select a player. They will be killed regardless of any protection they have.
Item C: Select a player. That player will gain a single night-kill.

Item C was used on Shawn but he never put it to any use. An extra night and he might've done.

Good chance we would of killed Justin the next day I think.

Was there a mafia board?

Good game town, and a very good game Curtis.

Out of all the mafia I think Shawn was probably our best player. If not for Curtis knowing him too well, he may have taken it to the wire.

Robert like...totally fucked up everything for us. I just don't see how he could have expected us to interpret his moves any differently. He was playing his own game without thinking about the consequences, which proved to be disastrous.

Grim was incredibly unlucky I thought. Shawn was suspected early on then attacked Natalie.

lol gg town

Scumboard: http://www.ndimforums.com/cyberspace/forummain.asp

Hall of Lame:

Most of the Mafia
The scum team in general was a little...off base this game but Wikey made some really bad calls and decisions. He never questioned the validity of his suspicions that Rob was the fifth man, even when his second cop claim never held up following Malion's death and some of his night action suggestions were a little bizarre. I do respect that he tried to kill a less active townie on night one to keep the game more interesting though instead of the usual run of the mill game.

One of the strangest things though was that Wikey apparently forgot how bus drivers worked this game. He would toss out a command for the kill against a player (say Curtis) and then suggest that Shawn target Curtis with his bus driver role to prevent doctors from hitting him too.

Uhh...wikey....bus drivers change ALL the actions. So the kill would switch to. On at least one occasion I can remember he nearly resulted in unwittingly killing one of his own team because of this.

Grim was mostly fine but took a day before she realised there was a scum board.

Greenday was mostly fine but threw out far too many defences on day one to rival obvious joke lynches. Sweating from your collar and frantically yelling "I'M NOT SCUM" on the first day doesn't bode well.

The others were fine.

Rito:
Either start paying attention or don't play. Stop claiming you're god's gift to scum hunting. I put a lot of time into setup and flavour writing. You haven't got to read it but don't dash on, refuse to read any of the posts, add an unhelpful lynch and dash off again. Thanks.

Alex:
Upon making his first in game post, Alex managed to break at least two of the rules. It's a new record. He never seemed to quite understand the concept of the game until the final day despite the fact he's played mafia a fair bit before. His final day actions were fine but too little, too late really.

Mal:
Worst cop on record. Didn't pay attention and openly admitted it. His one viable contribution was pushing the lynches away from Rito who he'd scanned as town. But that was about all he managed and his poor posts and early lynch might have been lethal to the town in other circumstances.



Hall of Fame:

Rob's Gambit:
I've been on the fence with this one a lot, but I think had the mafia realised what Rob was doing it would've helped a tremendous amount. He confirmed himself as town and put himself in a very nice spot. It could have gone down that he was untouched by mafia, untouched by town and by the time anybody finally realised, he'd detonate on a lynch train and do a tremendous amount of damage. I think the strategy was foiled slightly because I mis-typed his role description slightly so I'll give him credit for the effort.

Shawn:
Shawn started this game running around in the dark with no real direction. Of the bots he was probably the weakest. But as the game commenced, Shawn's level of input and gameplay ability escalated a lot. He adapted quickly and learned a tremendous amount in a very short space of time. He made wise and sensible decisions (including refusing to follow wikey's stupid orders when he asked him to bus drive kill targets) and ended up having to carry the mafia on his own.

If it wasn't for Vernon's secondary scan power, Shawn would've lasted much much longer. He had drawn some heat but it was mostly dissipated because he started posting helpful and constructive discussion. He did fall into a few key tells that mafia players often do (the late game "lynching you will be beneficial even if you're town argument never makes sense") and was ultimately too defensive on the last day. But I have to hand it to him. MA PAGE DIDN'T RAISE NO DUMMIES.

The Town:
It would be unfair to rob you of a well earned victory. You did extremely well and were active, invested and most of all made the game fun and enjoyable. You asked the right questions, plenty of the wrong questions and just enough questions to see this through to its perfect and sensible conclusion. We've come a long way since we first began playing mafia, and our town can no longer be dubbed failtown. There were far too many good things happening this game.

Credit where credit is due. You guys earned the win completely.

Stray observations:
Just because your role doesn't appear to do anything, doesn't mean it isn't doing anything.

Never assume too much from flavour. Mostly applying to Kiwi who flat out refused to believe in an anti-virus due to flavour logistics. I'm playing a colourful destructive robot who became a hippy and the flavour never made logical sense to begin with. I could've had feefiaggizady turn into a dolphin and it would've been valid. Flavour is secondary to gameplay. Question the hard logic of the game, but rarely question the colourful salting.

METAMETAMETAMETAMETA. Seriously town, I know you won but this game was an absolute metagaming hell. Maybe it helped you out slightly but in many cases your metagaming was off completely. You almost executed your replacement cop because of "past games". Sometimes people just play a little differently, and it's been ages since we did mafia! So calm down!

I'm glad that people really got into this game. It's been a while since we had a mafia this active. You guys really brought it to life. It was fun to read and observe. I hope this marks a welcome return of mafia. Even though the game ran into some player inactivity problems that made the ending feel a little empty to me, I got a lot of genuinely nice and positive feedback from hosting it. The journey always matters more than the conclusion and that you guys enjoyed the journey is great.

ya great game and I enjoyed it!

I didnt announce going to the summerhouse cause I was hoping the mafia/SK would kill me. I was sure they wouldnt if I said I was going away for 2-3 days!

King Bot Wikey

So...two cops? I doubt it. I am still trying to make sense of the aftermath of last night. Shawn bussed Ari with DR, and DR received a message from a friendly neighbor townie who was hoping to confide in Ari. But Rob also seems to have been bussed, yet he claims he ended up scanning Alex (not even sure who that is :|) Could Rob have fake claimed cop and ousted Greenday to reveal himself to us? That seems very unlikely. If he is a cop, we should probably get rid of him tonight.

:(

King Bot

Shawn busses Rob with anyone else to make sure he isn't protected, Grim blocks actions against Shawn, and I send Grim to kill Rob.

(:

I only just realized I did this...twice...Shawn must think I am completely retarded. It is justifiable.

Someone host another mafia quickly so I can redeem myself!

Yeah true but still think Technician or IT Expert would of been in line with the others.

Hopefully Rose's won't be too far away.