I wanted to vote out Insanolord on day 1. No, Khush said. I'll vouch for him. It took three or four days to find out it was just Khush saying that to put things together, and that he hadn't been investigated.
I'm also kind of wondering how balanced this game was. It seemed like the Mafia had a lot of power. I guess it's just a matter of figuring out the roles quickly.
It all comes down to luck. The mafia blocking my action on day 2 was was a slim chance--less than 10% if you just look at the numbers. But they got lucky, figured out who I was and nullified me from that point on. If I was allowed to kill throughout the duration of the game would have been pretty different.
Certain roles can unbalnce the game a bit more than others--namely the killer and the bomb (which wasn't in this game). The game is designed with the assumption that these players will most likely kill X number of players (3, 4, whatever that number might be). If they kill more or less than that number the game's balance gets thrown out of whack pretty severely.
Is that why the mafia never contacted me back after I messaged jrlibrarian? Did you all know I had messaged him? I put all my eggs into "Pretend I'm the killer and hope the mafia decides to make a deal."
And, vudu, I definitely would have spared your life, since I knew by the numbers, the townies would need the killer to stay alive. I really thought you were in the mafia. I wasn't looking for the killer so early, given the tight numbers we had.
I'd say numbers affected balance more than anything. In five days, the townies got 2/5, getting the killer and a mafia member. Had the game started with one less mafia member, by the same 2/5 ratio, it would've been a townie victory.
The reason, for those who noticed, like the mafia, I consistently named prominent townie names, lied in my failed strategy: I tried to say I was the killer. While I didn't know Toruresu was the doctor, I thought he had been investigated by Maxi, since he voted for jrlibrarian first. In the day before he was hit, the only townie player I called attention to was, like I said Toruresu. The same was the case with stevey. I said stevey in the open, by the way, because #1, the mafia knew who the townies were, and #2, had I not, he would've been voted out easily enough.
Any way, my strategy bombed, but I do wonder if it would've worked had vudu not been stopped by the vampire. Did jrlibrarian let anyone know I claimed to be the killer?
Really, though, it was a balanced game. A little bit of luck with the order and selection of hits went a long way. In my book, though, if the townies can figure out the mafia and have a greater number of players voting than the mafia, it might show some imbalance. The only role with too much power was the bone thief, solely because we lost our counter to his role, Khush, so early, and there were too few people in the game. Had Khush stayed in a little longer or had there been more players, it would've been a non-factor.
Also, I said we got 2/5, but if you were to factor out the bone thief, we would have had successfully gotten 5/8, should everyone vote, since we had figured out the mafia. That isn't bad at all, for the townie side. Slow starts are typical, especially in games where roles get killed off early.