Yu-Gi-Oh! ETC Store
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Before I begin with this analysis, I would like to say a few things.
First, I would like to thank everyone who participated in this game. In particular, Sean, wit-, Achilles, and Steve for giving me the encouragement to continue with hosting in this game. Without it, I might have not bothered to put all of the effort into it I did. I want to apologize to you all in particular since you have waited a week for this write up, well here it is.
And, before I go on, I am going to say that I have decided NOT to include individual player reviews like I did last time. This game was much more elaborate than Mafia Reborn, and it would be largely unnecessary to write a report on each of the players anyway when only a few stood out. So, at the end of my analysis, I will include a brief Best/Worst of section for you all to enjoy. Now, let's get started!
The Game
Now, considering that several of you have become interested in hosting your own mafia games as a result of this game, I think describing the process of creating, setting up, and running this game to the public. So I will do just that.
The first thing I did was figure out what kind of game I was going to want. Would I make it simple like Mafia Reborn or add several things that are common in other mafia games I have played elsewhere to make things more interesting? Considering that the results of Reborn were overwhelmingly in favor of the townies, I wanted to design a game that would require everyone to think a bit more. So, by going the complex route, I decided to implement three features new to etc mafia games:
-Having the game take place on an outside forum featuring anonymous usernames that are given to the players as their aliases
-Splitting the mafia into two factions instead of one
-Adding items to the mix
The latter are both fairly common things in other mafia games, and they tend to work against the townies, so I surely wanted to include them. The anonymous forum isn't a commonly used tool in mafia, especially in games with only 21 people, but I thought that it could work (For the record, most of my experiences with this type of mafia had as many as 50 people).
With that set, I needed a theme. I chose Paper Mario because it is one of my favorite video game series of all time, and it had a wealth of characters to choose from for different roles. In particular, since there were two prominent evil organizations, Bowser and the X-Nauts, setting things up from there would be relatively simple.
Finally, I got down to designing the game. I immediately decided to break the game down as follows:
12 Townies (Mushroom Kingdom)
8 Mafia (4 X-Nauts, 4 Bowser)
1 Neutral
3 NPC's*
Total: 21
*NPC's are another addition that results from the usage of anonymous forums. They are extra usernames that are not used by any player but may be under certain circumstances (Like Dragonzealot's power). Once that was done, I wrote up all of the role pms and assigned them to mega man based aliases. I then created an invisionfree forum to host the game, and everything was set. This took roughly 5-6 hours of my time, for those who were wondering.
Hosting the game was kind of a challenge. I had AP exams and last minute projects to finish up at the same time, but I still did my absolute best to keep the game running at a smooth pace. The first night was 2 days long to allow everyone enough time to be accustomed to the game, then from there, the game was updated daily. I won't go into too much detail about how difficult it was, but there were moments where I got concerned that a few people were beginning to lose interest. Regardless, things were still flowing pretty smoothly and everyone was enjoying the game. I could comment more, but I think it would be best to just read the forums if you want a better perspective.
Things that I wished were utilized more:
Items: I realized that the only time items came into play was through the black shards, which were only important to Vaati. Otherwise, they were pretty underutilized (nobody even bothered to transfer them at all), though I guess part of it resulted from the fact that I included them in the last minute.
The main thread on ETC: Seriously, why was it inactive? Because this game was anonymous, people could have used it as a way to announce their intentions. For example, Sean could have posted in the thread on etc who should be lynched that day, which would have avoided some of the mistakes the townies made earlier in the game.
The Teams
I honestly thought the teams in this game were far more balanced than in Reborn. This was reflected by the fact that the townies almost won the game, but unfortunately were outpredicted by the lone remaining mafia member, JiB.
The Mushroom Kingdom (Townies)
Steve - Toadsworth
Sean - Mario
Blitz - Bobbery
Master - Goombella
Chido - Flurrie
dru - Luigi
trumpcardace - Vivian
Mystical_Dragon_Lord Ms. Mowz
Sage - Koops
DragonZealot - Merlon
Einstein Princess Peach
Savior Yoshi
Overall, I thought that the Mushroom Kingdom played fairly well. They had pretty much all of the standard roles to help them (Inspector, Distractor, Bodyguard) as well as a few more interesting ones. Sean's power was well known, being that he was able to kill other uses, but only after surviving long enough or finding the right number. The key here was for him to contact the right person (Einstein) so he could gain access to the item he needed to make use of his powers. Just in case, I gave MDL the power to steal items from dead people in case Einstein died, but unfortunately it do Sean much good. Sage also had an interesting power that automatically protected him from kills whenever he used his item, the Koopa Shell, though like any koopa, he becomes vulnerable before he can use it again. Still, Steve and Sean were essentially the ones who were running the show, but ultimately, it wasn't enough to pull their team to victory.
The X-Nauts (Mafia)
Achilles Grodus
Coin X-Naut Scientist (aka X-Naut Ph.D)
S l o x The Shadow Sirens
midnightfox Lord Crump
At first, I thought that this group of players was going to win. Achilles' inspection powers were really unparalleled and midnightfox was very quick to get things started. However, things took a turn for the worst when mf made a pathetic attempt to fake claim to the mushroom kingdom and ended up pulling the rest of his team with him. That isn't to say that he didn't fit the role of his character, Lord Crump, pretty well.
Bowser's Squad (Mafia)
wit- - Bowser
JiB Duplighost
Paradigm Jr. Troopa
BlitzPlayer Kammy Koopa
I honestly didn't have much confidence with them at the beginning. BlitzPlayer clearly had no idea of what he was doing while he was alive (AND DEAD), and wit- ended up getting himself lynched through poor communication with the prominent Mushroom Kingdom members. Unlike the X-Nauts, this mafia had far fewer powers to work with, so I made their kills higher priority and gave them a moling role (Duplighost) to help level the playing field a bit. Still, JiB was clearly the one pulling the strings from day 1, despite the name of his role. Even though he was heavily outnumbered, he managed to pull the team to victory.
Neutral
Vaati The Cursed Chest
Neutrals are always fun roles to design. In particular, I tried to get really creative with this role and made it fairly item oriented, but I was hoping that Vaati would use his neutrality to coerce each faction to give him blacks shards. Instead, he used his signal power to determine which players had them and made the first vote to lynch them the next day, which in the end, proved to be just as viable of a strategy as he fulfilled his win condition midway through the game.
And finally, what you have all been waiting for:
Post Game Awards
These awards will be split into categories.
Roles:
Best Distractor: (Coin, BlitzPlayer, Einstein)
Really, in all honestly, all three of the above players didn't play all too well. However, Coin was the only one of the three that consistently targeted the right people (Mushroom Kingdom), Master in particular who would have otherwise found out that Mystical_Dragon_Lord was a townie, who was under suspicion for most of the game.
Best Bodyguard: (Savior, midnightfox)
Despite the fact that he was a sub, he managed to keep low for quite a while and kept Sean safe long enough for him to use his killing power on Achilles, who was then the last remaining X-Naut.
Best Information Gatherer: (Master, JiB, Achilles)
Even though he didn't have a role that could yield direct information on other users, he still managed to take advantage of his power to gather enough information from everyone to successfully deduce everyone's roles, leading to a victory for his team. Master and Achilles did well also, but unfortunately for them, they were both distracted and killed early in the game.
Best Killer: (wit-, Sean, Achilles)
Despite the fact that he had only one shot during the entire game, he couldn't have picked a better target at the time. He ensured that Savior kept him protected, and when he was ready, he successfully killed Achilles, eliminating the X-Nauts once and for all.
Factions:
Best Mushroom Kingdom Member: (Steve, Sean, Sage)
While Steve didn't have great powers, he proved to be a fairly strong leader up until his death, despite his inexperience with mafia games. Unlike Sean, Steve was able to clearly see through midnightfox's lies and made way for the deaths of each of the X-Nauts.
Best X-Naut Member: Achilles
I wouldn't go so far to say that his playing was flawless, but unlike midnightfox, he knew what he was doing and did his best to keep his team together. Even though fox pretty much gave away the fact that e was Grodus, Achilles at least tried to distance himself from him, though it was still too late. Effort counts though, right?
Best Bowser's Squad Member: JiB
There is just no doubt that JiB kind of had it a little easy. Not even the powers of Master or Achilles would be able to prove that JiB was a minion of Bowser, but nonetheless, the Mushroom Kingdom should have realized that something was fishy about JiB's claim from the very beginning, since Rawk Hawk didn't fit in with the rest of the Mushroom Kingdom roles (Who were Mario's party members). That, and his role name, the Duplighost, was made public after wit-'s death. However, despite the astronomical odds, JiB made a strong performance through the entire game, and because of it, his team was victorious.
Best Player Overall: (Vaati, JiB)
Worst Player: midnightfox
At first, I thought midnightfox was heading in the right direction. He used his protection power well enough, but this was offset by his awful fake role pm. Even when I pointed out to him that it was full of grammatical errors, he still made a worse mistake by stating the identities of his teammates IN HIS ROLE PM, and then sending it to EVERYONE. Once several of the people that he listed began to die at the hands of Bowser's squad, his entire team was done for because of this grave error.
Edited by Bass, 31 May 2009 - 03:42 PM.
