The text Yog sent me was different than what he posted here. At least the relevant section said:

"You stash your pack inside (and pray for its continued health and existence) and make your way stealthily to where you know Bookwyrm is similarly engaged in making his own camp. Luckily for you, he’s left his pack totally unguarded, and you quickly dump it out… Let’s see… stethoscope, bandages, pill bottles, helmet with a big red cross on it…

Bookwyrm is a SERIAL KILLER GODFATHER VENGEFUL VIGILANTE PARANOID GUN OWNER

No, no, no wait. That doesn’t quite add up. Sorry. Calm down. Find your chakra. Try again.

Bookwyrm is a DOCTOR"

I see why then. I was confused because the way yog's posted it you would have known something was up, but by what you posted it's a lot more confusing on how to take it.

I think that's simply that Strongman (which as I recall was used N2 and N4) trumps Roleblock.

Ah, so Strongman wasn't used Night 1 with the boulder? I was just surprised to see the death on Night 2 was knives. Although I guess that might also make sense if the tranq dart just slowed him down...

I felt a bit bad for D5, until I read the scum chat and realized they would have extorted Leonard into voting for JMich even if I'd gone for Hijack. I would have had to know they were doing and bluff Leonard into voting for Hijack while implying I was still going to vote for JMich. Though on the whole town was on the ropes after N2 anyway.

Mostly I felt bad voting for you, but I felt like I'd pushed as hard against your lynch as I could, and if you flipped scum I would likely have been in line to lynch on D3.

That said, after 2 games I think I'm against the practice of the Day 1 townie getting lynched making their 'grand list' - I was actually going to investigate you N1, but Adalia marking you "most scummy" made me a bit concerned about being watched. Not sure who we would have lynched instead, but could have swung the game quite a bit if I'd stuck with that move.
I will say I found the flavor of the killings interesting from a story perspective, but as a data perspective they were quite confusing.

The dart didn't do much, if anything. The knives were because the goblins killed flub. I only held him still. And then I think I killed the goblins.

I haven't read anything but the final flavour post (because it's late and I'm tired), but I would like to thank you for a tremendously enjoyable game (both in terms of actual play and flavour), yogsloth.

@yogsloth - I really enjoyed the flavour and the concept of this game. Thank you!

@everyone else - That was incredibly amusing watching from the dead thread. Good game!

Interesting reward, btw.

Just finished reading the night flavors. Very entertaining. :-)

Balance:

First, there were two basic twists in play: Certain normal roles flipped alignments (Cop, Doctor, Roleblocker, Role Cop), and of course, players were notified when an action was performed on them. The only exception was the Seraph Knight, whose action would only have been detected by his target had it gone into play, i.e, if he had to sacrifice his life to save someone, that someone would have known it. It's just hellish happenstance that the tracker tracked the Seraph... to himself... the first bloody night!

How Town Could Win:

Town had a multitude of investigative roles. While none of them were particularly powerful on their own, as a collective with pooled information, it could have been used to pull a pretty tight net around the Scum - certainly by the later game. With two role cops, a tracker, and a stats cop, it was very likely somebody would nail the Strongman (who for practical reasons, pretty much had to perform the kills until caught) at some point. Town would need some luck, but as long as they could suss out at least one other Scum based on play, they could have combined efforts to take down all the bad guys. Town's weakness, however, was that if they worked separately and didn't coordinate, they would suffer - and I think we saw some of that.

How Scum Could Win:

Having a Cop and Doctor would have meant an easy sail in an early mass-role claim. It also provided tons of opportunities to role breadcrumb a role claim by investigating or protecting a Townie early and then revealing oneself later. The Strongman actually wasn't particularly useful, and in fact, led to Scum's main weakness - they had no idea what the setup was and had to take seriously the threat of another Scum team or something else. They had the ability to role-claim early and skate by, but were burdened by fear of doing so, not knowing who was out there to take shots at them.

How Survivor Could Win:

Keep his head down and be too Townie to lynch, and too Scummy to NK, just like any other survivor! He had one weapon hidden even to him at the start, however, and that was flavor text. The further the game went, the more the flavor would support a true claim. That wouldn't prove his alignment, but would at least give weight to a "Survivor" claim, assuming he wasn't role copped. Leonard pretty much played it right the whole way, I think, lol.

How Zarthax Could Win:

The one truly tough role, but the Vigilante had a couple of things going for him. First, he had two potential kills to make on his own. He also had a role of "Vigilante", not "Serial Killer", even though essentially what he was was a limited-shot SK. Lift almost survived long enough to make it truly interesting!

Next part will be Q&A, with some fun things to find.

Q: Why did Town lose?

In this case, I think Town had a couple of critical flaws. The first problem was that there were simply too many passengers - players who couldn't or wouldn't for whatever reason play to the fullest extend of their abilities. Real life and chance certainly played a part here. Since one of the keys was working together, if a player was killed without much contribution, a key piece of the puzzle went down with him.

The other major flaw as I saw it was that Town went for too many gambits of their own. There were too many Townies trying to hold onto their own cards while trying to bluff other players to lay down theirs. It created mistrust, and players who should have been seen as Town came off Scummy instead.

Town actually did nail the Strongman night one... and CSPVG even (correctly) postulated immediately that a STR 10 was likely a strongman, but the argument wasn't discussed. And why was that? Who cast a bucket of cold water on it by suggesting the kill could have been done with telekinesis? Why, look at that - it was HijacK.

A few bad choices on night actions didn't help, but that's just the breaks. It's impossible to really know what you should do. Flub did nail HijacK night 2, but of course, that was the night HijacK used his Strongman ability. Funny how the ball bounces, sometimes, eh?

Q: Why did Scum win?

Two of them lurked their way to victory. Evidence piece # 1341423523 on why I hate lurking! I was actually quite worried about Scum team the way the roles rolled... Two first-ever time Scum and a player that hadn't played a full game in over a year? I was deeply worried... but there were so many lurkers amongst the Townies that lurkers amongst the Scum simply were forgiven their trespasses and got a free ride. Add in some solid play from Bookwyrm and a few lucky bounces, and they had enough. I do think a more experience Town group might have seen Bookwyrm's vote on Quad for the bussing that it was, but overall, it was just a consistent, largely error-free game that pulled out the victory.

That goes for Leonard as well, who I thought was quite clever with his assurance (which was clearly directed straight at Scum team) that he would hammer anybody, period.

Q: What's up with the stats?

Stats served quite a few functions.

First, AGI was the order of operations. I'm quite shocked nobody at all picked up on that. Night action list attached to this message. Strongman had a STR of 10, and the only other 10 was evil scum wizard (not me, the other evil scum wizard) with his INT. The two Neutral players were true neutral - 5/5/5/5.

All stats served in the flavor writing. They're all over the place. HijacK can't pick up chicks because he has a CHR of 2. Bookwyrm has an abacus because of his INT. Weaker players couldn't wake me up, but the guy with STR 8 could manage it. Check it out. It's everywhere.

Most importantly, however, it was designed to give the players something to talk about on Day 1, in order to vacate RVS. When each player had his own stats and saw that Cristi flipped with stats as well, everyone immediately became curious as to what they could mean... and it gave players something to do.

Q: How much of this was planned?

Quite a lot. I knew what nights 1, 2, and 3 would entail (rest, goblin fight, spider fight), but of course, I had to adapt as I went. Picking Lift to lynch Day 3 meant I had to adjust that part of the story! I had a few choices for Night 4, not even knowing if there would be one. I knew it was going to end with Yog S'loth attempting to seize control of his Master's Ring, but of course, there were lots of things that could have happened.

Q: Like what?

Had Town won, they would have thrown the Wizard General (who of course, got more and more obviously evil as the story went, really hope everyone enjoyed that bit), Ring and all, into the crack of Dangit. Then conveniently found a working elevator to take them back to the surface.

Had Zarthax won, after all the other players were dead, there would have been a battle (that I would have lost) in front of the dias... And Zarthax would have risen again.

Some of that was my "fault" certainly, but there were a number of traps in the setup. Having two role cops, and the bad luck of RW flipping N1 made it really hard for me to claim solo. Several voices proclaimed that a 2nd role cop must be scum (in the same way I thought the role blocker was). On top of it, my first two investigations were the two other cops.

You noted in our PM chats that I was working my butt off to try and set up a way I could claim safely and it never really came together. My other major mistake was assuming that all the cops meant all the scum roles would be hidden - I was 2/3 right (3/4 if you count Lift) but wrong on the major piece.

The precise reason I pushed for mass claim on D2 was to get everything out there and piece things together while we still had roles in play, but there was no interest from the rest of the table, though Lift was the strongest opposition, actual town didn't exactly step up to the plate to agree that we should piece together our knowledge.

Considering I was already the "2nd" role cop, and I had copped the other two cops, it was just really dicey without the rest of the table for me to do anything too early without either getting myself lynched or NKed either.

It was a bit too easy for town to kill its own, and conversely the scum team was pretty much entirely reliant on Hijack staying hidden. So balanced in the sense that both sides had a major achilles heel.

I think the piece that makes the least sense to me is Trent's role - as you note it was bad luck he was tracked N1, but if he leaves a trace, or if Dedo's visit was more apparent in his flavor PM, that's survivable. And as scum chat notes, Hijack was in position to strongman the kill on dedo which may have lead to Trent's death the next day. At best it maybe buys town 1 day for a power role in endgame, but that's assuming he lives that long, saves it, and doesn't use it on the alignment cop or doctor. [Edit - and doesn't get strongmanned anyway]

But in a game where town start with 8 (and are pretty much guaranteed to kill one of their own D1) against 3 + 1 anti-town, a role that saves someone else at the cost of his own life isn't really that useful, imo. Especially if his action is "different" than everyone else's.

Despite that, I did quite enjoy playing and trying to sort out what in the flavor was relevant and what wasn't.

I did think you did quite a nice job of working around the "two Town role cops" pit with your "flavor cop" angle.

And yes, if both teams have a major Achilles heel, then that's doing something right I think. :)

For the Seraph Knight role - it's true it wasn't that strong, but that fit the theme for Town as a whole. (No strong roles, lots of weak ones.)

And by the way, can we all pump Trent's tires for successfully picking the tracker night 1? It was a "swingy" role. Had a few cookies crumbled differently, his choice to protect dedo could have been a major factor in the game. Such is life. But by design, there was no one major role that would serve up success on a platter for Town. If Town realizes STR 10 is the Strongman and lynches HijacK Day 2... other scum are forced to kill, and now the tracker gains a NK immunity.

I actually hate Town roles that are too strong. Town should win by sleuthing, not by having victory air-mailed to them. Where's the glory in that? :)