Posts: 60
Threads: 0
Joined: Apr 2004
My take is that what went wrong more due to how villagers have acted than anything else. I haven't played in games with PM's but I have played in both vanilla games and in more complicated games with several power roles and both worked reasonably well. Even if multiple power roles exist, they aren't completely reliable. There's no reason to abandon the general principle that villagers should try to foster open and clear communication and not intentionally act suspicious.
In this game there is a supposed trusted network of villagers, but their spokesperson seems to needlessly lie and generally behave irrationally. For example, in the uberfish case I think there were two logical options: vote uberfish immediately because he's likely a wolf, or wait and either get a 100% kill on uberfish or an extra seer action. I can respect either of those. Believing PM's from uberfish and claiming someone else to be a seer is just crazy. If I was a plain villager in this game I would give up trying to figure anything out in the short term because of all the strange things my allies were doing.
Fire & Ice made a mistake with the Devil and could have handled the mayor roll change cleaner but I don't think that's responsible for all the fallout. MJW's actions were worth a role block or mod kill, and since he's dead the rest of the villagers know all they need to know about what happened. I've played in a game with the owl power under a different name, and it was intended to be ambiguous. We figured it out and in this case I bet a simple PM to the moderator for clarification would have explained it. It doesn't seem to me like the rules were changed mid game.
moment.
