Here's the list of roles, along with which PEBA player the character name was an anagram of:
Role Assignements
Charlie Dresheny (Dan) - Vanilla Townie - Your weapon is your vote, you have no night actions.
-> Harley Schneider
Denise Luco (John) - 1-shot Town Doctor - Once at night, you may protect one player in the game from one nightkill.
-> Luis Cedeno
Drew McKofa (Drew) - Mafia Godfather - You have Investigation Immunity, which means that you appear innocent to Cop investigations, unless investigated while performing a kill. Once during the game, you may choose a player and attempt to kill them at night.
-> Fred Womack
Chet Ologral (Mike) - Town Inventor - Each day, you may give one player in the game an item from your box of inventions. Each item can be used just once, and the recipient will be able to use that invention at any time later in the game. Prior to the end of the day phase, you must inform the host who you wish to give your item to, and which item to give. You have the following items: a magnifying glass (investigate alignment), a knife (kill), a medical kit (protect), and a vial of poison (block).
-> Hector Gallo
Kent O'Parry (Kevin) - Vanilla Townie - Your weapon is your vote, you have no night actions.
-> Tony Parker
Ellie Ticor (Dylan) - Mafia Traitor - You know that Drew McKofa is The Godfather, but Drew does not know that there is a traitor. You may not communicate with Drew directly outside of the day threads.
-> Eric Elliot
Non-Player Characters were also anagrams of PEBA stars:
Shem Nirvanna -> Marvin Hansen
Norm Creed -> Don Mercer
Allie Pluscar -> Paul Carlisle
Rolo Traboma -> Bartolo Mora
Night Actions/Results
Night 1
Mike (inventor) -> no action
John (doctor) -> no action
Drew (Mafia) -> Kill Ellie Ticor -> Successful, Ellie dies
Night 2
Mike (inventor) -> Give Denise the magnifying glass
John (doctor) -> no action
John (investigate) -> Investigate Chet -> Successful, Chet is Town.
Drew (Mafia) -> no action remaining
Night 3
Mike (inventor) -> Give Denise the knife
John (doctor) -> Protect Chet -> Successful, Chet is cannot be killed
John (kill) -> Kill Charlie -> Successful, Charlie dies
Drew (Mafia) -> Kill Chet -> Unsuccessful, no action remaining (would've been protected anyway)
Drew didn't pick up on the fact that he only had 1 night kill
Night 4
Mike (inventor) -> Give Denise the vial of poison
John (doctor) -> no action remaining
John (block) -> Block Chet -> Does nothing as the game is over (would have prevented Chet from handing out an invention on Day 5)
Host Notes
You all did a great job with the characters you were assigned. In previous games I've given a short bio, maybe as simple as an occupation, but I thought I'd leave it totally open this time and I was not disappointed!
Drew hitting Dylan on night 1 was just bad luck. If he had taken out Mike or one of the other townies, the game would've played out quite differently. In retrospect, I should've made it more obvious that he just had one kill. I've been debating about whether or not I should've told him about the traitor's existence and I now lean towards the side of sharing that information. I suspect that if Drew realized he could kill just once, he may have waited for a clue as to which townie was dangerous and which other player may have been his teammate, but not knowing there was another mafia out there meant it was reasonable to start whittling away as quickly as possible. Can't blame him for the quick trigger here.
It's really hard to balance a game this small, and I didn't want to have a random lynch end the game on day 1. The Traitor would have become the Godfather if Drew had been killed prior to Day 3, but I didn't want to have two full mafia in a game when it would quickly take just three votes to lynch.
I really thought John was quite scummy. He played the inventions exactly how I would've expected him to if he was mafia, and I know at least one of the dead players thought John was the godfather. I was fully planning on having the Day 4 conclusion/game conclusion making him seem like the mafia until Drew admitted it publicly.
One of the problems with playing on the Mafia team is that it's hard for you to see just how scummy another player can be. Probably a slim chance, but Drew's best bet to win at the end was to try to convince Mike that John was scum.
The purpose of the inventor was to give town choices and to, hopefully, give a vanilla a chance of getting a random night action. That didn't work out so well. If I were to run this exact same game again, I'd make the inventor give their item to a different player each night.
Did you like the comic book style?
For those who played the previous games... did you prefer the longer text form of those?
Here's a behind the scenes look: