The Setup
Having an interest in politics, I often play armchair politician and I keep up on the issues of the day. No real desire to get into the system though, but I'll keep that option open for down the line. I suspect this game's original concept came about when I was thinking about electoral politics one day. The original ruleset was a bit different from what I ran, though:
Quote from American Political System Mafia »
Mechanics: Each Day, in addition to the regular lynch vote, players vote for who among them they wish to elect President. Players may unlock additional abilities when they are elected. Additionally, every player has a political party, and they will benefit if they elect a member of their own party.
Presidential Election Rules:
1. At the end of the Day, the person with the most electoral votes will be elected. In the event of a tie, nobody will be elected.
2. The Day will not end until the lynch majority is reached, regardless of the status of the election.
3. The President will take power effective immediately, and likewise the old president (if any) will immediately lose power.
tl;dr, the game would involve voting for both a president and a lynch.
It remained this way until reviewing, when Iso suggested making it a kingmaker variant. This cleared up a lot of the awkwardness I was anticipating regarding taking double vote counts, and made the setup a lot more elegant.
In terms of balance, the game was designed to have two different "states" depending on which party was in power. Each state would have a substate depending on who was president. The game was very full of power roles; the town was very strong, but it was balanced by the presidency. At any point in time the setup would be low power (and low complexity! There were a grand total of three Night actions submitted to me on N1). However, by managing the elections, the town would have access to a wide range of power roles. This also had the effect of opening up false claim opportunities and giving the scum room to mislynch, since testing PRs in a lot of cases was only possible under certain election circumstances, and nobody wants to elect potential scum just to see if they were telling the truth about their role.
Another key point to the balance was that I didn't want the scum's best play to be to just shoot the president each Night. There are several roles that punish them for taking the easy route. The General, the VEEP, the NRA member, and the Investigative Reporter all served this role. We saw the General used to good effect this game by protecting confirmed town Stephen Colbert. The other roles were not used, sadly (the IR being shot by pinky N1 and the VEEP being lynched), but they all were part of this balancing.
Overall I think I am happy with how the game played out. I'm a little amused that the town elected Republicans the whole time and re-elected somebody twice, locking out a lot of the roles. That contributed, no doubt, to the feeling of low power in the game. It's just as well though.
There were a lot of other balancing nuggets. For example, I did not want the scum redirector to be able to affect the vigilante. It was incredibly easy to control for interactions like these, though, since all that needed to be done was to switch parties. I did end up with one mistake, though, which was that the VEEP should have been the same party as the Investigative Reporter. That role's whole purpose is basically "get the cop result if the cop gets shot." I think I'd switch him with the NRA member if I were running the game again.
The last real comment I have is that the scum have, as AI said, really scummy abilities. The only role that isn't totally crap to claim is the jailer, and there's a doc in the setup. There was plenty of room to improvise false claims, and enough weird roles in the game that they could have false claimed something esoteric and gotten away with it, but the setup does put the scum in an awkward spot from the beginning. Future setups I have in the works address this issue in different ways, but this one was only "meh" on this front.
On the flavor front, I definitely had fun with these guys. Every role started top-down from a character concept, and the abilities were molded to fit. I wasn't originally going to name them, but my girlfriend suggested that I give them names. I agreed, provided that she give me 12 names. She did. I feel like there's a lesson here, but I'm not sure what it is.
Overall, I think the game was pretty reasonable, though I'm certainly aware there could have been improvements.
Modding
This is my second game modded on MTGS, the first non-Basic, and I ran into a few issues. I'll list them all here, for full disclosure.
The biggest issue was that I had imposed the "no self-voting" rule on the game. This was to account for the game being kingmaker. However, I realized on Day 3 that in a LyLo situation the town loses on the spot. 4v3, 3v2, 2v1, in any of these situations, the town can't properly elect another townie without help from the scum, which is in effect the scum controlling the vote. This was not intended, so I allowed self voting starting Day 4 (I would have allowed it even if the players had lynched correctly Day 3).
This opened up another issue. TMCT's role had an ability that made him easier to elect. In most game situations, this is fine. However, in exactly the situation the game ended up in, a 3v2 LyLo, combined with the rules change, it would allow the scum to quick-elect one of their own and win. This was not intended. I had to make an on-the-fly decision to disable the ability if TMCT voted for himself. An awkward bandaid fix, but one that was absolutely necessary to keep the game from falling apart.
Another less crucial issue that this opened up was Wheat_Grinder's double voting ability. I made the completely arbitrary decision to allow him to only use one of his votes on himself. Why? Who knows! That's what happens when you screw up. As it played out, it didn't matter, since double voters no longer carry the confirmed town status they used to, it seems.
There were some smaller issues. Two of the role PMs were poorly written. Cythare's role, the bodyguard/doc, was not intended to be able to self protect. However, the role PM did not specify this. Both Cythare and RPHOT began their time in the game thinking that they could self protect, which influenced their play. I caught it with RPHOT early, but didn't realize I had made the mistake with Cythare until he started alluding to it in-thread. Fortunately this error did not come back to bite me.
pinkys_brain's role PM was simply confusing, and she did not understand what the ability did exactly. I wrote it out flavorfully rather than mechanically, which was not good. Minor mistake, but noteworthy.
Finally, ImTehFairy's ability was intended to be submitted to me upon election and delivered to the president at the time of the lynch. I forgot about the delay and transferred the message immediately upon receipt. This almost got ITF into trouble on Day 4, but fortunately my error did not damage the game state.
Sorry to all of those who were affected by my mistakes.
Aside from these issues, I think the game went well from a modding standpoint.
The Game
The game went fairly well! The inactivity was disappointing, but I think that's a feature of the kingmaker mechanic rather than of the players this game. The spec chat has my thoughts of the game as it progressed.
Thanks to everybody who stuck it out, to the replacements, and to the reviewers!
Town MVP: Stephen Colbert. He replaced into a bad spot and took control of the town, paving the way to a town victory.
Scum MVP: PopeRonPaul. Bussing his buddy out of nowhere on D1 let him coast nearly through the entire game. If he had been a bit stronger with the followup, and had a stronger claim, I think this would have been a lot tougher, maybe even gone the other way.
I stripped everybody's flavor from their role PMs when I posted them on death, so there's actually some new stuff to read.
Hello, [NAME], welcome to American Political System Mafia!
You are Preston Grey, The Freshman Congressman
You are a Democrat
You were sure your "legalize weed and **** the police" campaign was just going to end up being a funny joke for you and your friends, but when the results came in you found yourself with a new job in Washington. You soon got swept up into the political sphere, and found yourself taken under the wing of The Big Cheese, who revealed to you his ambitions of power. You might have been a bit stoned at the time. You really can't remember, man, but as long as you've got friends, you're happy to go with the flow.
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. You may perform the mafia night kill.
3. You may communicate with your buddies at Night in this quicktopic: http://quicktopic.com/50/H/CfxB62YXy5SN
4. Your offbeat charisma and radically stupid revolutionary platform have given you a bit of a leg up on the competition. You require one fewer vote to be elected, to a minimum of 2.
5. You're fresh off the political boat, so to speak, and as such nobody has been able to dig deep enough into your past to find any dirt on you. To anybody snooping around, you appear as a member of the town.
If you are President:
6. Any time you are elected president, if you have not yet used this ability, you may choose to block all abilities performed by other players until the next Day. This includes your buddies. Players who attempt to perform an action will be notified.
Hello, [NAME], welcome to American Political System Mafia!
You are Cecilia Leblanc, The Corrupt Senator
You are a Republican
Power corrupts. You're living proof of that. Many moons ago you were like any other new senator—idealistic, motivated, and naïve. Now, older and wiser, you know that money talks and the lobbyists shout the loudest. By this point you couldn't even begin to count the number of exotic vacations you've taken in exchange for votes. The money you've got stashed away could fund a small army. And you're always happy to take more. When the Big Cheese approached you with his plan to "revolutionize Washington," you were suckered in immediately. He said he could have sworn there were dollar signs in your eyes. He was probably right.
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. You may perform the mafia night kill.
3. You may communicate with your buddies at Night in this quicktopic: http://quicktopic.com/50/H/CfxB62YXy5SN
4. You've been on the take for so long that you know every trick there is to keeping it secret. Your natural secrecy means that your mafia kill cannot be blocked or detected by any means.
If you are President:
5. You may target a player to attempt to block any ability they perform Tonight. Additionally, you will protect them from the first killing ability that targets them Tonight.
Hello, [NAME], welcome to American Political System Mafia!
You are Charlie MacDuff, The Big Cheese
You are a Democrat
When people talk about the "smoke-filled room" where the real dealings of the government go down, they're talking about your living room. You've got your fingers in nearly everything in this town. Nothing happens without your influence. Even so, you aren't satisfied. Your power is in secret. Your toils remain unknown to the world at large. The next step? Overthrow the whole damn political system! You have recruited two others to help you with your goals, though you haven't revealed the entirety of the plans to them. Of course, by this point not even you know everything that you're up to.
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. You may perform the mafia night kill.
3. You may communicate with your buddies at Night in this quicktopic: http://quicktopic.com/50/H/CfxB62YXy5SN
4. You are the leader of the mafia. If there are any disagreements, you have the final word.
If your party is in power:
5. You may choose a player. If the President takes an action Tonight, you will redirect that action to the player you chose. You won't learn anything (you won't even know if your ability was successful). Actions with no targets are unaffected.
If your Party is not in Power:
6. Your fingers reach far and wide, but you yourself are untouchable. When the opposition takes control, you can tighten the strings and make yourself immune to all nonlethal Night actions Tonight.
Hello, [NAME], welcome to American Political System Mafia!
You are Vincenza Zeffirelli, The Political Assassin
You are a Republican
You're an assassin. Not a real one, mind you, but in Washington a scandal will end a career just as quickly as a bullet, so you might as well be. You pride yourself in being directly responsible for bringing down one of the most popular politicians of the last decade with a masterfully-engineered reveal of a prostitution ring on his bankroll. Not a lick of it was true, but by the time anybody figured that out, the damage was done. You suspect this skill may be applicable here.
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. Each Night, you may start a rumor about target player. Due to reduced credibility, that player will require an additional vote to elect the next Day (to a maximum of the number of players minus one).
If you are President:
3. Using somewhat unscrupulous means, you will manufacture a sex scandal starring the player of your choice. If successful, you will force them to drop from the race in shame. Be careful! Engineering a career-ending scandal takes a lot of resources, and no matter what you can only use this ability once.
Hello, [NAME], welcome to American Political System Mafia!
You are Minako Tomoda, The Single Issue Candidate
You are a Republican
Ever since you can remember, you've been a passionate advocate for [TOPIC]. Your father worked on the [TOPIC] fields, toiling away to provide for your family. Your older brothers all went into the [TOPIC] business, following in his footsteps. You were slated to join them, but decided that your life would be better spent advocating for [TOPIC] in the political arena. Unfortunately you aren't very good at getting people to vote your way, so you've started resorting to cruder tactics to advance your [TOPIC] platform. Not that anybody is listening.
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. When the president is elected, if you have voted for exactly one person Today, you gain 1 point.
3. If the person you voted for is elected, you gain 1 point. This checks independently of the previous ability, thus you can get two points if your single vote was for the person who got elected.
If you are President:
4. When you are elected President, if you have accrued 4 or more points, your alignment will be mod-confirmed in-thread.
Hello, [NAME], welcome to American Political System Mafia!
You are Caleb Newcomb, The General of the War Room
You are a Republican
In the political battlefield, there is always a general. When people plot to take down a politician, you're there running damage control. Your bible is Hardball: How Politics Is Played, Told by One Who Knows the Game, by Chris Matthews. You have a tattoo of the author on your left buttcheek. Which is appropriate, really. Your skills will take on a new meaning in this literally life-or-death situation.
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. Each Night, you may choose to have yourself die in place of the president if the president would be killed that Night. (If the president wouldn't die, you don't either).
If you are President:
3. You may target a player to protect them from all killing actions that would target them that Night.
Hello, [NAME], welcome to American Political System Mafia!
You are Wesley Davidson, The VEEP
You are a Republican
Ah, the vice presidency. With some exceptions, you're signing on for four years of chillaxing. Coke and strippers on Air Force Two. Secret Service panty raids. Life's good. Sure, if the president dies you'll have some real work to do, but you have it on good authority that the DoD implants some advanced cybernetics into each new president after they are sworn in to make them impervious to damage. Hail to the chief, indeed.
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. As the vice president, you are just one heartbeat away from the presidency. While this may come in handy, it also means that others regard you with suspicion. To any other player, you will appear to be mafia.
If your Party is in Power:
3. If the President is killed at Night, you will immediately become President. This can only happen one time. There will be no election the following Day. When you become president through your succession ability, you will receive the targets, nature, and results of any actions the President performed the night he or she died.
Hello, [NAME], welcome to American Political System Mafia!
You are Leanne White, The Political Activist
You are a Republican
"Washington is broken!" Or, so you like to say. The system is clearly biased against you and people who think like you. You've put your life into trying to effect some sort of change in the system. Unfortunately for you, nobody cares. Even if they did, nothing would change. Let's be real, Washington is broken. And it's going to stay that way.
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
If your Party is in Power:
2. When a Republican is elected, you may choose to submit a small letter (100 characters or fewer) to me. I will anonymously relay this letter to that player at the end of the Day.
Hello, [NAME], welcome to American Political System Mafia!
You are Elaine Lee, The Filibusterer
You are a Democrat
In 2007, the top 1 percent of all income earners made 23.5 percent of all income. Let me repeat that: The top 1 percent earned over 23 percent of all income; that is, more than the bottom 50 percent. One percent here; fifty percent here. But for the very wealthy, that is apparently not enough. The percentage of income going to the top 1 percent nearly tripled since the 1970s. All over this country people are angry, frustrated. It is true in Vermont. I am sure it is true in Virginia. It is true all over America. But one of the reasons people are angry and frustrated is they are working incredibly hard. In Vermont, I can tell my colleagues, there are people who don’t work one job, two jobs; there are people working three jobs and four jobs, trying to cobble together an income in order to support their families. I suspect that goes on all across the country. While people are working harder and harder, in many cases their income is going down. The fact is, 80 percent of all new income earned from 1980 to 2005 has gone to the top 1 percent. Let me repeat that because that is an important fact. It explains why the American people are feeling as angry as they are. They are working hard, but they are not going anyplace. In some cases, in many cases, their standard of living is actually going down. Eighty percent of all income in recent years has gone to the top 1 percent. The richer people become much richer, the middle class shrinks. Millions of Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty.
That is not apparently enough for our friends at the top who have a religious ferocity in terms of greed. They need more, more. It is similar to an addiction. Fifty million is not enough. They need $100 million. One hundred million is not enough; they need 1 billion. One billion is not enough. I am not quite sure how much they need. When will it stop?
Today, in terms of wealth as opposed to income, the top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. When we went to school, we used to read in the textbooks about Latin America, and they used to refer to some of the countries there as “banana republics,” countries in which a handful of families controlled the economic and political life of the nation. I don’t wish to upset the American people, but we are not all that far away from that reality today. The top 1 percent has seen a tripling of the percentage of income they earn. Since the 1970s, the top 1 percent owning 23 percent of all income, more than the bottom 50 percent. The top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. That is not the foundation of a democratic society. That is the foundation for an oligarchic society. The rich get richer. The middle class shrinks. Poverty increases. Apparently, God is not good enough yet for some of the richest people.
I say “some of the richest” because there are a lot of folks with a lot of money who do love this country, they are not into greed, but there are some who are. More, more more, that is what they need.
For example–this galls me and galls many of the people in this country–the horrendous recession we are in right now, where millions and millions of people have lost their jobs, their savings, their homes, this recession was caused by the greed and recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street. These guys, through their greed, created the most severe economic recession since the Great Depression. The American people bailed them out. Now, 2 years after the bailout, they are giving themselves more compensation than they ever have. They are saying to the American people: Sorry we caused this recession because of our greed. Sorry you are unemployed. Sorry you lost your house. But that is not all that important. What is important is that I, on Wall Street, continue to get millions of dollars in compensation and in bonuses, that I have big parties. How can I get by on one house? I need 5 houses, 10 houses. I need three jet planes to take me all over the world. Sorry. We have the money. We have the power. We have the lobbyists here on Wall Street. Tough luck. That is the world, get used to it.
The rich get richer. The middle class shrinks. Not enough, not enough. The very rich seem to want more and more and more, and they are prepared to dismantle the existing political and social order in order to get it. So we have the economics and distribution of income and wealth as one thing, but then we must discuss politics.
What happened last year, as I think most Americans know, is the Supreme Court made a very strange decision. The Supreme Court decided that corporations are people and they have the right of free speech and the right without disclosure–all of this is through the Citizens United Supreme Court decision–to put as much money as they want into campaigns all over the country. In this last campaign, that is what we saw: Billionaires, in secret, pouring money into campaigns all over the country. Does that sound like democracy to anybody in America; that we have a handful of billionaires probably dividing up the country? I will put this amount in Virginia, California, wherever.
That is what they were able to do. The rich get richer, and they don’t sit on this money. What they then do is use it to elect people who support them and to unelect people who oppose their agenda and they use their political power to get legislation passed which makes the wealthy even wealthier.
One of the manifestations of that is, in fact, the agreement reached between the President and the Republican leadership. The wealthy contribute huge sums of money into campaigns. The wealthy have all kinds of lobbyists around here through corporate America. What they are going to get out of this agreement are huge tax breaks that benefit themselves. That is not what we should be supporting.
We should understand this agreement is just the beginning of an assault on legislation and programs that have benefited the American people for 70 or 80 years. Mark my words, there will be an intensive effort to privatize Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. Furthermore, it is part of the Republican agenda. They want to expand–and it is not only Republicans here, some Democrats as well–our disastrous trade policies so large companies can continue their efforts to outsource American jobs to China and other low-wage countries. Any objective analysis of our trade policies has shown it has been a grotesque failure for ordinary Americans. It is hard to calculate exactly, but I think it is fair to say we have lost millions of decent-paying jobs. During the Bush years alone, some 48,000 factories shut down. We went from 19 million manufacturing jobs to 12 million manufacturing jobs. Historically, in this country, manufacturing jobs were the backbone of the working class. That is how people made it into the middle class. That is how they had decent health care benefits and pensions. Every day we are seeing those jobs disappear because corporate America would prefer to do business in China or other low-wage countries.
I returned from a trip to Vietnam last year, a beautiful country. People there work for 25, 30 cents an hour. Sometimes when you go to a store, you may see a shirt made in Bangladesh. That shirt, in all likelihood, is made by a young girl who came in from the countryside to one of the factories there. The good news is that in Bangladesh, the minimum wage was doubled. It went from 11 cents an hour to 23 cents an hour.
Are American workers going to be able to compete against desperate people who make 23 cents an hour?
So my view–and I think it reflects the views of the American people–is that of course we want to see the people of Bangladesh and the people of China do well. But they do not have to do well at the expense of the American middle class. We do not have to engage in a race to the bottom. Our goal is to bring them up, not us down. But one of the results of our disastrous trade policies is that in many instances wages in the United States have gone down.
I believe in the coming months you are going to see an intensification of efforts to expand unfettered free trade. I think that will be a continuation of a disastrous policy for American workers.
Let me personalize this a little bit. This gentleman, shown in this picture I have in the Chamber–I have no personal animus toward him at all; I think I met him once in a large room. His name is James Dimon. He is the CEO of JPMorgan Chase. Over the past 5 years, Mr. Dimon, who is the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, received $89 million in total compensation–a bank that we now know received hundreds of billions in low-interest loans and other financial assistance from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department.
So Mr. Dimon received $89 million in total compensation. His bank was bailed out big time by the taxpayers. But under the legislation the President negotiated with the Republicans, Mr. Dimon–I use him just as one example for thousands; nothing personal to Mr. Dimon–will receive $1.1 million in tax breaks. So $1.1 million in tax breaks for a major CEO on Wall Street, who over the last 5 years received $89 million in total compensation.
Meanwhile–just to contrast what is going on here–2 days ago, I brought before the Senate legislation which would provide a $250 one-time check to over 50 million seniors and disabled veterans, who for the last 2 years have not received a COLA on their Social Security. Many of those seniors and disabled vets are trying to get by on $14,000, $15,000, $18,000 a year. The total package for that bill was approximately $14 billion that would go out to over 50 million seniors and disabled vets. We won that vote on the floor of the Senate 53 to 45. But just because you get 53 votes in the Senate does not mean you win. Because the Republicans filibustered, I needed 60 votes. I could not get 60 votes. I could not get one Republican vote to provide a $250 check to a disabled veteran trying to get by on $15,000 or $16,000 a year.
But Mr. Dimon, who made $89 million in the last 5 years, will get a $1 million tax deduction if this agreement is passed. Now, that may make sense to some people. It does not make a lot of sense to me.
Again, I have no particular knowledge, animus–I do not know if I ever met John Mack in my life. He is the CEO of Morgan Stanley. In 2006, he received a $40 million bonus, which at the time was the largest bonus ever given to a Wall Street executive.
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
If you are President:
2. When you become president the first time, you gain a veto. On any future Day, when the president (aside from yourself) makes the lynch choice, you may cash in your veto to cause the day to end in No Lynch instead. You may not get a second veto, even if you're elected more than once.
Hello, [NAME], welcome to American Political System Mafia!
You are Richard Edwards, The Ballot Stuffer
You are a Democrat
One man, one vote. A founding principle of the democratic system since the beginning. One you've never been very interested in. You spent the last five years of your life learning how to manipulate the voting machines so you could cast a second vote. You were quite proud of this, and utilized your talent many times in the local elections. You never realized, though, that casting just one extra vote doesn't make much difference when the winner is thousands of votes ahead of the loser. Willful ignorance will carry you through the day, as usual.
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. You have no term limit.
As long as the other party is in power:
3. You may cast an additional vote.
Hello, [NAME], welcome to American Political System Mafia!
You are Janine Wallace, The Investigative Reporter
You are a Democrat
There's a story brewing in this town, and you want to be the first to break it. You're a trained journalist and you're ready to put your skills to work. Woodward and Bernstein would be proud. Just remember: A magician never reveals her secrets. Or, wait how did that go again? Anyway, the world is watching, so get to work!
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. At Night, you may target a player to learn who that player targets Tonight.
If your Party is in Power:
3. At Night, you may target a player. You may choose to learn either who that player targets Tonight or who targets that player Tonight.
If you are President:
4. At Night, you may target a player and have that player's alignment revealed to you.
Hello, [NAME], welcome to American Political System Mafia!
You are Jonathan Golding, The NRA Member
You are a Democrat
Wait, a Democrat is an NRA member? Yes, it's true. Back on the farm your momma taught you how to shoot a gun when you were no higher'n the fencepost out back. You've got a steady hand and a sawed-off shotgun ready to go. Anybody who comes knockin' on your office door'll get a face full of buckshot. And you do mean anybody.
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
If you are President:
2. If you are targeted at Night by any ability, you will automatically kill the player that targeted you. You will still be affected by the ability that targeted you.
One quick comment: There may be some minor discrepancies between what is here and what was actually sent in the role PMs. I did minor flavor tweaks as I was sending them out, but these were what I had in the setup archive.
ImTehFairy and Generic grabbed PopeRonPaul. "He's the terrorist! He's the last one!"
They threw him to the ground and started to attack him viciously. Director Cage stepped in and broke it up.
"Gentlemen, there's a better way to do this."
Then he shot PopeRonPaul in the head.
---
PopeRonPaul has been lynched.
You are Cecilia Leblanc, The Corrupt Senator
You are a Republican
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. You may perform the mafia night kill.
3. You may communicate with your buddies at Night in this quicktopic: [Redacted]
4. You've been on the take for so long that you know every trick there is to keeping it secret. Your natural secrecy means that your mafia kill cannot be blocked or detected by any means.
If you are President:
5. You may target a player to attempt to block any ability they perform Tonight. Additionally, you will protect them from the first killing ability that targets them Tonight.
Congratulations to Generic, ImTehFairy, and the rest of the town for winning Presidential Mafia!
Setup, QT links, and postgame thoughts coming momentarily.
The president and Director Cage, taking matters into their own hands, arrive at the Capitol building.
The charred corpse of Stephen Colbert greeted them.
ImTehFairy, PopeRonPaul, and Generic stood, silent, around it.
Cage spoke first, "how'd it get burned?"
Nobody answered.
"Answer me! How'd it get burned!"
After a few more histrionic outbursts, the party decided collectively that they had better end this sooner rather than later.
---
Stephen Colbert has been burnt to a crisp (but how???).
You are Minako Tomoda, The Single Issue Candidate
You are a Republican
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. When the president is elected, if you have voted for exactly one person Today, you gain 1 point.
3. If the person you voted for is elected, you gain 1 point. This checks independently of the previous ability, thus you can get two points if your single vote was for the person who got elected.
If you are President:
4. When you are elected President, if you have accrued 4 or more points, your alignment will be mod-confirmed in-thread.
Nobody is president, and neither party is in power.
With 3 alive, it's 2 to elect.
I think we can wrap this game up within a week, even with the holiday, so let's set the deadline for 11:59 PM EST on July 10th.
You are Preston Grey, The Freshman Congressman
You are a Democrat
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. You may perform the mafia night kill.
3. You may communicate with your buddies at Night in this quicktopic: [REDACTED]
4. Your offbeat charisma and radically stupid revolutionary platform have given you a bit of a leg up on the competition. You require one fewer vote to be elected, to a minimum of 2.
5. You're fresh off the political boat, so to speak, and as such nobody has been able to dig deep enough into your past to find any dirt on you. To anybody snooping around, you appear as a member of the town.
If you are President:
6. Any time you are elected president, if you have not yet used this ability, you may choose to block all abilities performed by other players until the next Day. This includes your buddies. Players who attempt to perform an action will be notified.
The Republican Party is still in power.
You have 72 hours to submit Night actions to me. If you have an optional action you wish not to take, please let me know.
Night will end as soon as all actions are in, so it may be shorter than 72 hours.
President John Travolta kept his gun trained on Director Cage, anger seething through his veins.
"Ever since this started you've been digging us into a deeper hole. I don't know if I can trust you."
The two men paced around each other, in a Mexican standoff. Neither wanted to fire, but neither could lower their weapons.
"I haven't done anything you haven't authorized—"
"Save it! You're the one who's got the playbook. Nothing that's happened here happened without your influence! I'm of half a mind to just shoot you right now."
"Please, Mr. President, we think we've finally nailed the terrorists. We just need a little more time to take them out."
Travolta eyed Cage, warily.
"This is your last chance, Cage. If another innocent person dies, you'll be next."
"Understood, sir."
---
Cythare has been killed.
You are Caleb Newcomb, The General of the War Room
You are a Republican
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. Each Night, you may choose to have yourself die in place of the president if the president would be killed that Night. (If the president wouldn't die, you don't either).
If you are President:
3. You may target a player to protect them from all killing actions that would target them that Night.
Stephen Colbert is still president, and the Republican Party is still in power.
With 5 alive, it's 3 to elect.
Your deadline to elect a president is 11:59 PM on July 7, Eastern time.
Upon election, you will have until 11:59 PM on July 14 to decide on a lynch.
Reminder: You may vote for yourself beginning Today
The president of the United States of America paced urgently, the silence grating at his psyche. After a pause, he shot out, curtly, "Out with it!"
"I've learned that the Capital has been fully evacuated, with one exception—the Capitol."
"What?"
"The only place left that has anybody we haven't cleared is the Capitol building. The terrorists can only be in there," said Cage
"So we should be able to run a thorough background investigation on each of them and figure out who has connections to terrorist activity! This is perfect, Cage."
Director Cage shook his head. "We don't have time. They have already begun trying to identify the traitors in their midst... people are dying."
The president of the United States of America looked shocked. "They're... they're killing each other?"
"Mr. President, I think our best course of action might just be to help them along."
---
Wheat_Grinder has been sniped.
You are Richard Edwards, The Ballot Stuffer
You are a Democrat
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. You have no term limit.
As long as the other party is in power:
3. You may cast an additional vote
The Republican Party is still in power.
You have 72 hours to submit Night actions to me. If you have an optional action you wish not to take, please let me know.
Incidentally, all of the scum were lynched.
Vermin Supreme, Lord_McDonalds, Ron Paul the Hero of Time, Stormblind, and rogueofoz were replaced.
:Patriot::Patriot::Patriot::Patriot:
The Setup
Having an interest in politics, I often play armchair politician and I keep up on the issues of the day. No real desire to get into the system though, but I'll keep that option open for down the line. I suspect this game's original concept came about when I was thinking about electoral politics one day. The original ruleset was a bit different from what I ran, though:
tl;dr, the game would involve voting for both a president and a lynch.
It remained this way until reviewing, when Iso suggested making it a kingmaker variant. This cleared up a lot of the awkwardness I was anticipating regarding taking double vote counts, and made the setup a lot more elegant.
In terms of balance, the game was designed to have two different "states" depending on which party was in power. Each state would have a substate depending on who was president. The game was very full of power roles; the town was very strong, but it was balanced by the presidency. At any point in time the setup would be low power (and low complexity! There were a grand total of three Night actions submitted to me on N1). However, by managing the elections, the town would have access to a wide range of power roles. This also had the effect of opening up false claim opportunities and giving the scum room to mislynch, since testing PRs in a lot of cases was only possible under certain election circumstances, and nobody wants to elect potential scum just to see if they were telling the truth about their role.
Another key point to the balance was that I didn't want the scum's best play to be to just shoot the president each Night. There are several roles that punish them for taking the easy route. The General, the VEEP, the NRA member, and the Investigative Reporter all served this role. We saw the General used to good effect this game by protecting confirmed town Stephen Colbert. The other roles were not used, sadly (the IR being shot by pinky N1 and the VEEP being lynched), but they all were part of this balancing.
Overall I think I am happy with how the game played out. I'm a little amused that the town elected Republicans the whole time and re-elected somebody twice, locking out a lot of the roles. That contributed, no doubt, to the feeling of low power in the game. It's just as well though.
There were a lot of other balancing nuggets. For example, I did not want the scum redirector to be able to affect the vigilante. It was incredibly easy to control for interactions like these, though, since all that needed to be done was to switch parties. I did end up with one mistake, though, which was that the VEEP should have been the same party as the Investigative Reporter. That role's whole purpose is basically "get the cop result if the cop gets shot." I think I'd switch him with the NRA member if I were running the game again.
The last real comment I have is that the scum have, as AI said, really scummy abilities. The only role that isn't totally crap to claim is the jailer, and there's a doc in the setup. There was plenty of room to improvise false claims, and enough weird roles in the game that they could have false claimed something esoteric and gotten away with it, but the setup does put the scum in an awkward spot from the beginning. Future setups I have in the works address this issue in different ways, but this one was only "meh" on this front.
On the flavor front, I definitely had fun with these guys. Every role started top-down from a character concept, and the abilities were molded to fit. I wasn't originally going to name them, but my girlfriend suggested that I give them names. I agreed, provided that she give me 12 names. She did. I feel like there's a lesson here, but I'm not sure what it is.
Overall, I think the game was pretty reasonable, though I'm certainly aware there could have been improvements.
Modding
This is my second game modded on MTGS, the first non-Basic, and I ran into a few issues. I'll list them all here, for full disclosure.
The biggest issue was that I had imposed the "no self-voting" rule on the game. This was to account for the game being kingmaker. However, I realized on Day 3 that in a LyLo situation the town loses on the spot. 4v3, 3v2, 2v1, in any of these situations, the town can't properly elect another townie without help from the scum, which is in effect the scum controlling the vote. This was not intended, so I allowed self voting starting Day 4 (I would have allowed it even if the players had lynched correctly Day 3).
This opened up another issue. TMCT's role had an ability that made him easier to elect. In most game situations, this is fine. However, in exactly the situation the game ended up in, a 3v2 LyLo, combined with the rules change, it would allow the scum to quick-elect one of their own and win. This was not intended. I had to make an on-the-fly decision to disable the ability if TMCT voted for himself. An awkward bandaid fix, but one that was absolutely necessary to keep the game from falling apart.
Another less crucial issue that this opened up was Wheat_Grinder's double voting ability. I made the completely arbitrary decision to allow him to only use one of his votes on himself. Why? Who knows! That's what happens when you screw up. As it played out, it didn't matter, since double voters no longer carry the confirmed town status they used to, it seems.
There were some smaller issues. Two of the role PMs were poorly written. Cythare's role, the bodyguard/doc, was not intended to be able to self protect. However, the role PM did not specify this. Both Cythare and RPHOT began their time in the game thinking that they could self protect, which influenced their play. I caught it with RPHOT early, but didn't realize I had made the mistake with Cythare until he started alluding to it in-thread. Fortunately this error did not come back to bite me.
pinkys_brain's role PM was simply confusing, and she did not understand what the ability did exactly. I wrote it out flavorfully rather than mechanically, which was not good. Minor mistake, but noteworthy.
Finally, ImTehFairy's ability was intended to be submitted to me upon election and delivered to the president at the time of the lynch. I forgot about the delay and transferred the message immediately upon receipt. This almost got ITF into trouble on Day 4, but fortunately my error did not damage the game state.
Sorry to all of those who were affected by my mistakes.
Aside from these issues, I think the game went well from a modding standpoint.
The Game
The game went fairly well! The inactivity was disappointing, but I think that's a feature of the kingmaker mechanic rather than of the players this game. The spec chat has my thoughts of the game as it progressed.
Thanks to everybody who stuck it out, to the replacements, and to the reviewers!
Town MVP: Stephen Colbert. He replaced into a bad spot and took control of the town, paving the way to a town victory.
Scum MVP: PopeRonPaul. Bussing his buddy out of nowhere on D1 let him coast nearly through the entire game. If he had been a bit stronger with the followup, and had a stronger claim, I think this would have been a lot tougher, maybe even gone the other way.
Spectator Chat
Scum Chat
I stripped everybody's flavor from their role PMs when I posted them on death, so there's actually some new stuff to read.
One quick comment: There may be some minor discrepancies between what is here and what was actually sent in the role PMs. I did minor flavor tweaks as I was sending them out, but these were what I had in the setup archive.
ImTehFairy and Generic grabbed PopeRonPaul. "He's the terrorist! He's the last one!"
They threw him to the ground and started to attack him viciously. Director Cage stepped in and broke it up.
"Gentlemen, there's a better way to do this."
Then he shot PopeRonPaul in the head.
---
PopeRonPaul has been lynched.
You are a Republican
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. You may perform the mafia night kill.
3. You may communicate with your buddies at Night in this quicktopic: [Redacted]
4. You've been on the take for so long that you know every trick there is to keeping it secret. Your natural secrecy means that your mafia kill cannot be blocked or detected by any means.
If you are President:
5. You may target a player to attempt to block any ability they perform Tonight. Additionally, you will protect them from the first killing ability that targets them Tonight.
Setup, QT links, and postgame thoughts coming momentarily.
Lynch Accepted.
It is now twilight. Final scene up in a bit. I can do that much before I get to bed.
The Democratic Party makes it on the board!
The president and Director Cage, taking matters into their own hands, arrive at the Capitol building.
The charred corpse of Stephen Colbert greeted them.
ImTehFairy, PopeRonPaul, and Generic stood, silent, around it.
Cage spoke first, "how'd it get burned?"
Nobody answered.
"Answer me! How'd it get burned!"
After a few more histrionic outbursts, the party decided collectively that they had better end this sooner rather than later.
---
Stephen Colbert has been burnt to a crisp (but how???).
You are a Republican
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. When the president is elected, if you have voted for exactly one person Today, you gain 1 point.
3. If the person you voted for is elected, you gain 1 point. This checks independently of the previous ability, thus you can get two points if your single vote was for the person who got elected.
If you are President:
4. When you are elected President, if you have accrued 4 or more points, your alignment will be mod-confirmed in-thread.
With 3 alive, it's 2 to elect.
I think we can wrap this game up within a week, even with the holiday, so let's set the deadline for 11:59 PM EST on July 10th.
"pew pew"
---
TMCT has been lynched.
You are a Democrat
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. You may perform the mafia night kill.
3. You may communicate with your buddies at Night in this quicktopic: [REDACTED]
4. Your offbeat charisma and radically
stupidrevolutionary platform have given you a bit of a leg up on the competition. You require one fewer vote to be elected, to a minimum of 2.5. You're fresh off the political boat, so to speak, and as such nobody has been able to dig deep enough into your past to find any dirt on you. To anybody snooping around, you appear as a member of the town.
If you are President:
6. Any time you are elected president, if you have not yet used this ability, you may choose to block all abilities performed by other players until the next Day. This includes your buddies. Players who attempt to perform an action will be notified.
You have 72 hours to submit Night actions to me. If you have an optional action you wish not to take, please let me know.
Night will end as soon as all actions are in, so it may be shorter than 72 hours.
It is now twilight.
Let's lop a week off of the deadline.
Deadline to lynch is 11:59PM EST on July 7
Stephen Colbert (3): TMCT, Generic, Stephen Colbert
FOS Count
PopeRonPaul (3): ImTehFairy, Generic, Stephen Colbert
---
Stephen Colbert has been re-elected!
The Republican Party remains in power.
You will have until 11:59 PM on July 14 to decide on a lynch.
"Mr. President, please calm down."
President John Travolta kept his gun trained on Director Cage, anger seething through his veins.
"Ever since this started you've been digging us into a deeper hole. I don't know if I can trust you."
The two men paced around each other, in a Mexican standoff. Neither wanted to fire, but neither could lower their weapons.
"I haven't done anything you haven't authorized—"
"Save it! You're the one who's got the playbook. Nothing that's happened here happened without your influence! I'm of half a mind to just shoot you right now."
"Please, Mr. President, we think we've finally nailed the terrorists. We just need a little more time to take them out."
Travolta eyed Cage, warily.
"This is your last chance, Cage. If another innocent person dies, you'll be next."
"Understood, sir."
---
Cythare has been killed.
You are a Republican
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. Each Night, you may choose to have yourself die in place of the president if the president would be killed that Night. (If the president wouldn't die, you don't either).
If you are President:
3. You may target a player to protect them from all killing actions that would target them that Night.
With 5 alive, it's 3 to elect.
Your deadline to elect a president is 11:59 PM on July 7, Eastern time.
Upon election, you will have until 11:59 PM on July 14 to decide on a lynch.
Reminder: You may vote for yourself beginning Today
"Sir, I have an idea."
The president of the United States of America paced urgently, the silence grating at his psyche. After a pause, he shot out, curtly, "Out with it!"
"I've learned that the Capital has been fully evacuated, with one exception—the Capitol."
"What?"
"The only place left that has anybody we haven't cleared is the Capitol building. The terrorists can only be in there," said Cage
"So we should be able to run a thorough background investigation on each of them and figure out who has connections to terrorist activity! This is perfect, Cage."
Director Cage shook his head. "We don't have time. They have already begun trying to identify the traitors in their midst... people are dying."
The president of the United States of America looked shocked. "They're... they're killing each other?"
"Mr. President, I think our best course of action might just be to help them along."
---
Wheat_Grinder has been sniped.
You are a Democrat
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. You have no term limit.
As long as the other party is in power:
3. You may cast an additional vote
You have 72 hours to submit Night actions to me. If you have an optional action you wish not to take, please let me know.