Mafia

Overall, I thought this was a pretty good game. I felt like the Mafia/Town was pretty well balanced. The Serial Killer was certainly underpowered--perhaps a Bulletproof Vest was in order--but they still managed to make it pretty far despite some pretty bad luck this time around (two high-profile targets and what turned out to be an inactive player--eXcavator even cast the final vote to put Redack into Executioner range on Day 1!). The Admirers I think are a fun role (they were Cas's idea), and while allowing OOG defeated some of the point, they were already on the weakest team so I do feel like allowing them to contact the SK was better in this situation. As for the Gunsmith, that role straight up scared me because I could envision it being very swingy, and probably more helpful to the Mafia/SK than the Town--the Mafia basically get an extra kill if the gun lands in their hands (with a chance of revealing, of course), while a Townie has a great chance of simply hitting another Town player. That didn't happen this game because the Gunsmith made wise choices and then died early, but the potential was there. It's a fun role but it could screw with the balance a lot.

The other role that might have screwed things up was the Paranoid Gun Owner, but that could pretty well screw things up in either direction. Of course, that one wound up with little impact as well. With both of the potential 'swingy' roles out of it, the more traditional game actually led to a pretty good one. There were a lot of detection roles, which could have led to an easy game, but since the Ninja survived so long the Mafia were able to stay in it right until the end. The simple threat of the roles kept Black Yoshi inside at night more often than not, though.

On to the points!


Town
Lightvayne - +4 (1 surviving, 2 victory, 1 good play)
Feral Wolf - +4 (1 surviving, 2 victory, 1 good play)
Roxas - +3 (1 surviving, 2 victory)
Jo Nathan - +3 (2 victory, 1 good play)
Speed Bike Pro - +2 (2 victory)
Kyon - +2 (2 victory)
Lady Flare - +2 (2 victory)
chiefsonny - +2 (2 victory)
Shadowwalked - +2 (2 victory)
Hindenburg - +2 (2 victory)
SDYoshi - +2 (2 victory)
Pirate_Ninja - +2 (2 victory)
Marvalo - +2 (2 victory)
RockyT - +1 (2 victory, -1 inactivity)

Mafia
The Bandit - +2 (2 good play)
MajorasMask9 - +2 (2 good play)
Black Yoshi - +1 (1 good play)
Count Dooku - +1 (1 good play)
EvilGuy0613 - 0
hezekiah - 0

Serial Killer
Apollo Justice - +2 (2 good play)
Moonray - 0
eXcavator - -1 (-1 inactivity)

Third-Party
Bubba - 3 (2 influencing lynches, 1 survival)

The points this time were a lot harder than they have been for any other game I hosted--there were a lot of people and it went on for quite a while, so some of the good play may have gotten lost in the shuffle. I started out by giving good playing points to about half a dozen more people, but I realized that I was largely awarding those points purely for activity and I generally want to be a little more demanding when I give out the good playing points--I will certainly listen to arguments about them, though! Shadowwalked deserves special mention here--I suspected at the time that he saved Apollo because he had already struck a deal with her, and if that's the case I think he certainly deserves a good playing point because that move saved the Town. If that wasn't his intent, though, it was a questionable play at best. :) Feral shares top points (with Lightvayne) mostly because he got an extra one for surviving; I don't think he was the best Town-sided player this game, but there was definitely a time during the game where his instincts were on point and were pretty much driving the Town forward, so I think he deserved a point for that even if he didn't finish as strongly as some others.

The Mafia/Serial Killer teams were easier to assign points. There's certainly an argument to be made for either Majora or Apollo getting the full 3 points for good play here, but for now I've stuck with 2 for each. Bandit seemed pretty key in the Mafia discussions and it looked like he was relatively under the radar until Apollo killed him, so I gave him 2 as well. Dooku and Yoshi are a little questionable but I think both were helpful enough in strategy and did a decent enough job at evading suspicion until the Journalist/Apollo outed them, so I settled for 1 point each. Also almost gave EvilGuy a point for lasting as long as he did, but I think that was largely due to him being low-profile, so for now I've stuck with 0.

Also meant to address Marvalo--he should lost a point for inactivity, but I believe there may have been account issues for him? I haven't gone with it so far, but this wasn't the first time he's been Host-Killed for inactivity...

The rule I've been going by re: inactive players is that they aren't eligible to host a game if they haven't played in either of the most recent two games. That way we reward the players who have actually been playing and hopefully make sure the host is active.