So I've taken some time off rested up and I thought I'd come back to this do my little decompression.
Overall, first thought of the game, it was, for me, a success.
I went into this thinking I wanted to do multiple wolfpacks but give the wolves a more legitimate chance. After WW13 I felt he wolves were screwed by 2 things.
1) Everyone had some power role to claim and the wolves had mirrored packs so they stuck out.
2) There was only one night kill per night which was bad because the wolves could still hit each other making the night phase a complete win for the villagers.
So I went into this thinking I wanted to eliminate role-claiming by villagers and thereby allow the wolves to blend in better. The idea was that because the wolf packs KNEW they were mirrored, they knew that each pack had a seer and that any role claim would a) be scanned and b) immediately draw attention from both the wolfpacks and the village. In essence, role claiming was intended to be suicide. Now I'm not saying it might be possible to get away with it, but as we saw it was almost impossible and immediately led to wolf chain lynching. This was entirely acceptable because at that point the wolves were almost equal or actually equal to the number of villagers.
I also allowed every pack to kill because, hell, I said there would be blood. I really wanted us to have a true endgame where we got down to the final few people. And that actually happened which was good. In RB WW games we haven't had a lot of times where its gotten to that point. In general we have flawless wolf victories with 6 or 8 people left or we had landslide village wins. I remember one game where it came down to Uberfish myself and novice and novice and I lynched uber on the last day for the win. Also WW2 came pretty close down at the end though we still had more than 2 people left at the end.
Why did I decide on 3 packs? A few things.
1) I wanted there to be a feeling of dread in the town.
2) I DID want the game to be fast. I probably should have expedited the final few lynches more than I did, but I got really busy with work.
3) I wanted the wolves not to feel safe in the night.
Now I have had experience with a three wolf pack game. Over on the total war site I play in one in which I was a killer. I ended up winning that game, but all the other packs killed each other and got lynched during the first 3 days. I was alone 1 v 11 by the third day. Luckily there were 5 inactive villagers who got modkilled the next night so I ended up 1 v 6 and was able to lynch other villagers and night kill my way to the win. What I took away from that is that in a 3 pack setting there is a high chance that the packs will kill each other and/or get each other lynched. On the first night and second day of my aforementioned game we were able to kill off an entire pack so there was only 1 night in which we had 3 kills, and two of those kills were mafia!
My point is that these games become highly variable. If Injera had been lynched Day 1 and Waterbat hit Molach night 1 you would have only had 2 packs left by Day 2! Not only that but the village would have all the information they needed about how the packs worked, IE: Alphas have scans but can't kill unless the Beta is dead and they give up their powers. At that point the villagers would have had a LOT more info, they would have had a lot more of an idea how to active search AND they would have only had to deal with 2 night kills a night instead of 3. One of the biggest advantages that the wolves received in this game is that the village never managed to completely wipe one pack.
About Sleepers and silverbloods. I originally had only silverbloods in the game. But I realized that this could completely cripple the wolf packs if they all hit. Part of the reason I gave the Alphas a scan was in order to get the wolves to scan targets find they were safe and then next night hit that target. Look before you leap as they say. But none of the wolfpacks did that besides Injera who scanned Serdoa N1 and turned him N2.
I really liked the idea of Silverbloods because they added risk to the nightkills for the wolves. And again I thought it was fair because they had the ability to scan. Also some packs knew ahead of time that there were silverbloods. I thought this might make them a little more cautious, but in fact they ended up hitting one N1 anyway.
In the end that was for the best because they had fair warning and now the other wolf packs knew as well. Fair warning again.
Sleepers I now agree may have been one too many. I originally had, as I said, 2 silver bloods. Then I decided that if two packs hit silver night one it would be both awesome and catastrophic for the wolf pack chances. But if I added some way for the wolves to recover from said crippling strikes that might balance it out. So I added sleepers and I knew it would be powerful, but I didn't add a 3rd silver blood. That may have helped even things out though. If say jkaen had been a silverblood then night 4 would have wiped out a whole pack and the village would have been able to lynch the last wolf day 5 and win. That would have been a pretty cool turn as well.
Alphas and Betas. I thought this was a pretty cool setup idea. The wolfpacks know they are mirrored (well some had some confusion about that but it should have been clear) and that adds an element to the night kill choices. The wolves don't want to waste a kill on an immune alpha. The best part for me is the Alpha itself. If the Beta dies the Alpha has a huge choice to make. Stay an Alpha and keep your powers or go a killing. Injera immediately went a killing, but only because he scanned Serdoa and found a sleeper. Otherwise maybe Injera stays an Alpha and does not kill! Then the village only has to deal with 2 kills a night while Injera scans every night gathering information. I though this element was really good because it led to the player choosing between two abilities. And even then it wasn't a negative choice, it was an interesting choice that had positive elements on each side.
Still I keep coming back to how optimal the night kills went one the first few nights. In this game there weren't any wasted attacks until night 3 when they doubled up. Even hitting the silverbloods can be considered a win for the wolves because imagine if you get down to the last few people and there are a couple silverbloods left and the wolves KNOW they are silver because they scanned them earlier. The wolves have to try and lynch them without letting the villagers know they are super villagers. I really wanted to see that happen see how the wolves would try to do that. In that scenario the wolves would have hunted each other at night to avoid hitting silverbloods thereby wacking each other and helping the village out.
Masons I added in last minute in order to give the village a boost. In the end MNG and Meiz barely spoke to each other and it didn't help much. But even if they had spoken to each other it may not have helped because the night kills were going so well. I was also hoping for a bit of connection between them.
In this game I think the village suffered from inactivity due to D3 and Memorial Day weekend. Also a huge hit was Bob. The village had a 9 in 21 shot (or 9 in 20 if you think from the perspective of a villager) on Day 1 to catch a wolf or sleeper. And seriously Day 1 I thought it would happen I thought a wolf would go down. You had 4 of 6 wolves under suspicion and heavily on the block. Injera, waterbat, thestick, novice (by uberfish and I thought it was super convincing argument too). Additionally Erick was catching a LOT of heat Day 1. But that all sort of went to waste when everyone jumped on the troll. Personally if I were a villager I would have pushed for us to lynch someone other than Bob on Day 1 because it gave the village no information at all. Granted the village did not know they were up against 3 packs then or for a long time.
I think one of the really interesting things in this game was the information I gave and withheld. The village didn't know anything and I think that worked fine. I really liked the idea of unique information for the wolves. I think in particular the Short wolves knowledge that there was no baner or seer in the village was a boost. They didn't know about silver or sleepers and in the end they hit on both by chance! I found that all to be very interesting for the game play.
I understand the criticisms of the Villagers being passive in this game. And to some extent I agree. I think 1 sleeper too many was part of the problem. The other part as I said was just the efficiency of the wolves kills. Not much to do about that. The thing is that even if I give the village a seer and a baner that doesn't give all the other vanilla villagers a night role either. So part of the issue the villagers have is that you are in fact just a vanilla villager. It doesn't matter if there is a baner or a seer because you personally have nothing you can do. I think in some ways people are spoiled by always having a role and as such feel less important. I don't blame people for that since I would feel the same way. For this game I really did want to make role claiming suicide though so that's why vanilla villagers became a necessity. Additionally I already had added so many new elements: Silverbloods, sleepers, 3 packs, the alpha and beta relationship, unique information. I simply couldn't add roles for everyone.
Another important thing was the story line. I wanted to give roles that could be explained and or portrayed in the story as I wrote it. In particular I thought the scenes with Silver-blood deaths were really fun and interesting to write and read. I attempted to build interest not only in the game but in the story as a way to carry over vanilla villagers and keep the game as interesting as possible for them and combat the uselessness they might feel as a vanilla villager.
I am not sure how having all of this setup known now would affect games that used a similar ruleset. I think everyone's ready for a more traditional 1 pack game after accelerating past 2 packs into 3 pack territory. I have no idea how other people might feel but I would run a 3 pack game again with a lot of new balance fixes and villager power-ups. Not sure how other people would feel about the 3 pack setup again.
I think I've covered most of everything I wanted to talk about. The theory and why I chose the setup as I did. I was really excited by the variance of what could happen. I ran through so many scenarios in my head before hand and I knew that it could be a landslide either way. My objective was instead to insert checks and balances between each faction. Novice and Bigger convert Zak night 1? Too bad they hit a silverblood night 2! I think one thing I would have liked to see a bit more of was wolf on wolf night action. There were so many times the wolves were about to hit another wolf and at the last moment changed their mind. It was pretty hard not to say anything.
In the end I really enjoyed this and I also think the majority of people enjoyed it even if they felt it was unbalanced. It was an experiment, it was my first time as a GM, and IMO it was a success.
If you read all of this, good for you!
“The wind went mute and the trees in the forest stood still. It was time for the last tale.”
Even if we had no seers, there would surely have been some seer claims in the end-game, when some of the wolves had nothing left to lose. In some cases, it doesn't matter if role-claiming is suicide, so long as you can take someone with you on the way out.
