Mafia! Under Cover of Darkness: Conclusion

[Borealis]

From the pieces I was able to gather before being done in, as well from the Dead Board and the above info, this is what I have for the puzzle - and Frank stated (in the Dead Board, I believe) that the person who was able to answer this got some 'special' reward? perk?

mafia2.png

I assume it's a reference to Frank's love of anagrams in the PEBAverse...

[Evas]

Hrm. Could be a reference to the actor David Giuntoli who currently appears on Grim (which is a pretty good show, btw).

[Lions]

Player Notes/Feedback
Please note that any negative comments are intended as constructive criticism to help you become a better mafia player. You all do a fine job and the games have become better played as we've gone along!

Rich Glons (Rory) - It's too bad you weren't able to participate in the latter part of the day as you basically got lynched for not being around. In the short time you were, I felt like you were trying to figure out things. You shared your puzzle piece with John on the Werewolf writeboard and seemed to be trying to get things moving. I'd love to see you play an involved game next time, as I think you were on the right track with your actions.

Sarah Dysioni (Kevin) - So sad to see you go, but the Mafia must've known something! As the cop, it was a brilliantly lucky move to knock you off on night 1. It was nice to see you notice the focus on Ezra. Your delayed commitment to vote for Rich might've looked like you were a teammate later. You had pegged Dan as scum very early on the dead writeboard, which was fun to see.

Tim Hernbar (Mike) - You did the best you could with some folks who didn't really seem interested in hearing what you had to say. Yours was the one lynch where I felt like you provided something concrete for people to react to and it seemed like none of them actually addressed what you were saying.

Eli Solmirro (Mike) - You were the one exception on the vote for Tim, who actually listened to what he had to say. Good job on that! I think you were a bit too preoccupied with the puzzle potentially clearing people. You had no real reason to think it should significantly help one side or the other.

Brett Jonasco (John) - I really didn't like the choice to not kill on Night 1. It was passive and the single most likely night to not be watched or tracked simply by virtue of having the most players around. There wasn't a watcher in the game so the only chance you had of being identified was by investigation or a blocker guessing (which is easy enough to refute). I kind of felt like you let the groundball play you rather than you playing the groundball in this one.

Marty Canoon (Tim) - I thought you did a solid job of trying to piece things together and working with Dan. I think if you had been able to chime in during the latter half of the day that you got lynched then you would've had a good shot at avoiding it. Timing is important.

Julia Von Reisal (Dan) - You really played a strong game and I'm not sure what tipped James off to block you but I really felt that without that, you had a great shot at still winning. I think if you had been around a bit earlier to defend yourself, you might've been able to pull it off despite the block, since the voting logic was incorrect. The one choice I didn't like was implying you had limited bullets and were done with them after being blocked. Getting blocked could mean you were didn't lose your final bullet.

Harold Rannom (James) - You seemed scummy to a lot of people but ultimately I felt you led the town to victory with your smart block choice. That said, you also must've blabbed behind the scenes. The Mafia knew Eli was the town seer and Eli told me that the only person he had told was you. Be careful that you read things correctly. You took Julia to task for, among other things, voting for Marty. You said Marty was town, but he wasn't. I assume you blocked Julia because you had told her about Eli's role, which was the right course of action at that point.

Ezra Aferlaus (Kevin) - You did a good job of dealing with character I gave you early on. I couldn't resist giving the LRS acronym to someone, and it was fitting it landed on an LRS GM. I felt like you were trying hard for the town and that often gets percieved as scummy. Be open minded to listen to people like Tim Hernbar when they try to tell you things in the face of a lynch. The fact that Tim was coy with what information he had made him look more townie as scum will typically jump to sharing more information faster in order to get people off their back.



I'm going to separate out Mr. Scumbag's characters (he even had 2 in this game!) since they are now clearly tied together in a way that I thought was odd during the game but didn't quite put together. I do think that the feedback for them is useful for others to read in light of how it related to game situations.

Ivanna Prerosky (Dylan) - I thought you did fine, although I didn't really understand the choice of protecting Sam twice. Sam hadn't really done anything I could identify that should take suspicion off of him. You should've protected Harold night 4 after he claimed roleblocker unless you didn't believe him, and your vote for Julia indicated you did.

Sam Riethar (Charlie) - Earlier in the game I felt like you were really just following everyone else with a lot of things but I think a part of that was you not explaining things out loud. In the online game, you have to be more verbose to explain your actions, such as quickly unvoting Tim when he chimed in. You should've shared more detail about why you unvoted so quickly. Eventually, you started making stronger choices and by the end I thought you looked very townie. It's certainly a different game than in-person mafia, and I'm glad you gave it a shot!


Team Feedback

Town - While town won this game, I felt pretty much like this was the game town least deserved to win of all 4. Two of the scum were knocked off for lack of participation. The vote for Tim wasn't properly thought through. The only day where town played well was Day 4.

Mafia - I thought the Mafia team did quite well, highlighted by Dan targeting Kevin Night 1. I didn't understand why you didn't share your puzzle pieces earlier. You were a team and win as a team.

Werewolves - You didn't really have much time to work as a team, but it didn't go all that well while you did. John, you didn't pick up on the puzzle thing from Rory at all, as far as I could tell.


Overall Feedback
Once again, I had a great time watching people try to figure out the whole situation. I hope the two scum teams was a nice twist for everyone. The only group that knew it early on was the Mafia since Rory was the first lynch.

As a host, I still struggle with knowing how to host a game that gets more regular engagement from everyone involved in the game. More on that below, but I'm open to ideas. I hoped the 5-day day phase would help that but it didn't really seem to. I'm open to ideas and, since I've given all of you feedback, am open to hearing any feedback you have for me.


The Puzzle
One of the things I try to do with each game is provide something new and interesting for people to think about. This game had a few twists in the form of two scum teams and of course, the puzzle. I really enjoyed the speculation around the puzzle. One of the things I liked about such a mechanic is that it gave the vanilla townies something to hide or share with the other players. I know some of you will be disappointed to find out that it didn't really provide any hints as to anyone's alignment. The trigger for a public comment on it was intended to be the first time someone posted their piece publicly, but given that it didn't happen until Day 4, I decided not to as I no longer felt the reward was worth giving out.

That said, there was originally an incentive for solving the puzzle. The first to provide me with the solution would have recieved Larry Dowlon's personal protection from all night kills for that same night. That no one knew precisely the purpose of the puzzle, I think, added to the conversation surrounding it.

As for some of the specific speculation around the puzzle, the first thing I will point out is the idea that I would've given pieces only to townies was brought up along with the idea that the puzzle would only help scum. If it were true that only townies had puzzle pieces, then having everyone publicly post their puzzle piece would've been a simple way to break the game and find the scum right away. Since no one suggested this, it doesn't seem possible that anyone really believed this. As for the puzzle only helping the scum (or town for that matter), that could have been possible. However, all sides were likely to be involved in getting to the solution.

Here is the complete puzzle:


The solution is: Nick Burkhardt, lead character in Grimm. I felt it had a nice tie in to the werewolf theme of our game.

[Evas]

The Puzzle was a real mind bender.

Personally, I thought it might have been some sort of an alternate victory path for a scum sect. Because I didn't know what it was for, I was very leery of sharing too much.

[Borealis]

The Puzzle was a real mind bender.

Personally, I thought it might have been some sort of an alternate victory path for a scum sect. Because I didn't know what it was for, I was very leery of sharing too much.

Ditto!!

[John]

I love the meta-puzzle element. I think I would have explored it further had I survived another day. Unfortunately, my scumminess led to an early exit for me. Time and again, I see how terrible I am at Mafia strategy, yet I have a ball each time I play, anyway. I was gearing up to game Harold when the panda took me down. That was a terrible disappointment. I really, really wanted vengeance on Harold for last time.