Well, where to start... definitely this isn't how Elu and I planned the game to happen
First of all, I've got to apologize to the Mafia team. Sure that I was in a rush and in bad conditions to keep up with details but I should have specified the names over the roles like in the Example PMs (Yes Gry, I do look at them)
tho I've also voiced my opinion that what ultimately happened wasn't for that lack of info in the PM but for James choice in that situation (kind of like what happened with Greg and Holt last game). I wont delve any deeper about it because I think James already laments this as much as I do so lets leave it at that: We were both careless in our own duties as player and host.
This resulted in a mass destruction of the "Mighty Pillar" that was the Purples. They were weak in numbers but I gave them the strongest possible roles for this kind of set-up + 2 recruitable players to massively increase their win ratio in the endgame. Nothing of that mattered after the Mafia imploded so Panda was practically alone from D2 onwards, too difficult for him as a Third Party which resulted in a crushing victory for the Townie side.
The
Colour System was an idea that Elu got from MU, that of hiding roles in a way that those aren't a relevant topic towards lynches anymore. I loved that concept and was quite eager to see the result of people theorizing and suspecting based in playstyle instead of Game Design like its happened a lot lately.
At first the System was supposed to be based on "usefulness" of the roles: So the strongest colours represent things like Detective, Janitor, Vigilante... but after discussing it with Elu we arrived at the conclusion it was highly subjective and we needed a more ordered approach.
Thats how we came to clasify the roles based on their
Type in the
Role List:
Red: Investigative roles
Yellow: Protection roles
Orange: Blocking roles
Grey: Voting-related roles
Brown: Killing roles
Blue: Cult - Recruitable roles
Purple: Mafia
Green: Third Party
The
Light or
Dark shade of each colour would be used to specify the nature of the role in question. As some of you correctly guessed during the game,
Light Red indicated "Investigation of the Dead" while
Dark Red that of the living.
Light Orange was for a specific kind of block on Bombs while
Dark orange was used for a full-fledged blocker.
Dark Green would be used for the TP in question while the
Light Version would be used on Illusions, and so so on...
Of course, that would still leave the players at an uncertainty regarding some cases so thats why we decided on including
Two Investigators that wouldn't lose their roles to Recruitment.
That way they would even have ways to communicate their findings on the system with their Mason buddies and coordinate some traps for the scum... but of course that also meant giving the Mafia a chance at stealing that precious information with a dangerous Mole:
The Sleeper (SuperMason), which would essentially know he was Sleeper thanks to that secondary role and play according to the possibility of being recruited by the Mafia. It was a potential "Mafia Mason" that would have been incredibly dangerous late game if Townies didn't get cooperative.
Then again, the
Mafia was compact but strong. They were given a
Escort to neutralize the TP-Spy-Docs ; a
Janitor that could hide the colours upon killing and learn the role of the victim, a
M.Doctor to protect the previous two teammates of the Shapeshifter's attacks and a
Bomb that could move stealthily while having a good reason to do so + explode the soul that dared to attack/lynch him.
They and the ShapeShifter were given a nice way around thanks to the lack of Detectives, so Town would have to target correctly and deduce the identity of the killers instead of waiting for some reveal in D4 or D5. In numbers "Town" looked stronger, but "Scum" had the Strategic positioning so, even if in the end the expected struggle between both forces ended up broken over such a silly situation, I was quite satisfied with the design.
The game was pretty straightforward and fast, but I've got to give props to
@gnut for being
Town's MVP and
@Copy Panda for doing his very best despite his low options (4 pages of questions and theories in the PM endorse it).
Finally, wanted to specially thank
@Elusia for the dedication and time spent behind the whole game. As always, Im looking forward to the next time I can host with you.
Thank you everyone for playing, see you in the next game!