Setup Discussion Thread

[DekuNut]

As discussed in the discussion thread, here's a thread to talk about the setups of previous games. Break down what worked and what didn't, explain the reasoning you had behind the roles you did, etc.
@Mellow Ezlo @Pendio @Minish_Link all showed interest in this
I'll post about my games later.

 

[Storm]

CHAOS MAFIA
actually pretty good basis wise. a bastard game with bastard roles for all my favorite...bastards. there were 9 of you, and so instead of using RNG, I went down the list of roles I had and listened to Dark Side of the Moon on shuffle. things went well from a general standpoint, except My Cousin was Godfather, and she had no gumption to play, but no matter, because the Drunk goon has an increasing percent chance to die by the hand of the Drunk Goon. and the Role Switcher we know as.. well. let him introduce himself

The Buck. I had the idea back when I smoked weed about playing a game within a game, kind of like Calvinball, except it was Pass the Buck in a Mafia Game. I suppose it is like a Hot Potato, except that the person to last touch it cant get it for another night. so

A to B
B to C
C to A

and whoever has buck at the end of the game loses. and boy did we have some fun roles in Chaos I..

the DJ
the Drillsmith-a cop who sees if someone is buckable or unbuckable
and of course drunk modifiers. cant forget the drunk modifiers

Chaos Mafia 2

The Buck Died Night 1. I lost faith in humanity. and half the players died that night as well. and then the vengeful

 

[DekuNut]

So... my first game was TF2. I initially designed it after my second game, but it took two years to reach due to the section's popularity at the time. For a short period I had GDL around to comod, but he left before we finally got to the game.
For those who dont know, the idea was that town was split into two groups: Team RED and Team BLU. Characters who were the same but of different colors had the same role. RED players moved on even nights only while BLU only moved on odd nights. There were also 4 mafia.
The duality concept that was obviously the basis for the game was always in there, but not as strongly at first. I had various ideas that didn't make the final cut, including multiple non-dual roles (The Yeti, a lyncher and Saxton Hale, a Dreaming god) and roles that didn't quite fit the theme (Soldier and Demoman being masons, making for two such pairs). The former idea was cut due to numbers and to center on the theme, while the latter was cut when I decided on the odd/even night gimmick.
I had to cut a few characters from the game when we finally did play. The engineers were once gunsmiths, with the point that everyone had a gun. I decided to take that out because it was kinda silly, and as such the engineers became VTs.
I had plans to use three more characters: another goon (idr what the character was) and the Pyros, who would be millers. Originally I had them labeled as arsonists, but that was before I knew what an arsonist was.
The roles themselves werent much to write home about. Doctor/Cop/Vig/RB for town (Commuter is a little less common), and GF/Strongman/RB/Goon for scum.
As a whole, the game had a good setup. But anyone whos read the game knows the problem we had with it: roleclaims. I tried to stop this by saying no claiming, but I was much too light on softclaiming, and as such finding scum was just a matter of elimination. This couldve been solved two ways: by coming down hard on softclaims and providing the mafia with a fakeclaim (Pyro). But I did neither of these things sadly.

Spoiler: Role List

Town:
Character (Role): Red player, Blue player
Scout (Commuter): Kokirion, Night Owl
Soldier (Vanilla Townie): Dan/Jamie/Kristopher Cain, Ver-go-a-go-go
Demoman (Vanilla Townie): Sadia, Frozen Chosen
Heavy (Roleblocker): Storm, Pendio
Engineer (Vanilla Townie): Zelda16/RemnantRasillion II, Johnny Sooshi I
Medic (Doctor): RemnantRasillion I, HeroOfTime/Johnny Sooshi II/Heroine of Time
Sniper (Vigilante): Mido, Soul/Cthulhu
Spy (Cop): Mellow Ezlo, SpiritualMaskSalesman/EMIYA shirou

Mafia:
Gray Mann (Godfather): Doc
Deflector Heavy (Roleblocker): Viral Maze
Demoknight (1-Shot Strongman): A Link in Time
Minor-league Scout (Goon): Toxic_Snowman

One other funny note thats true for every game I mod: if two roleblockers roadblock each other the same night, the universe implodes and they both die. Nearly happened in this game.

Game Link: https://zeldadungeon.net/forum/threads/team-fortress-2-mann-vs-machine.56191/

 

[Mellow Ezlo]

Sloth Mafia went through several iterations before it finally ended up as the final product. Some of these I don't remember, but one of the earlier drafts was laughable.

I was originally going to create a rule that would prevent anybody from posting until every other player has posted since their last post, but I realized that was absolutely ludicrous and that eventually turned into the no double posting rule that I included.

All kills (including lynches) were originally to be delayed by one day, to reflect the slowness of sloths. Ultimately, I decided that was a terrible idea, though I'm still curious about how it would've worked.

The personalities actually only came about in the final draft of the setup. I was trying to think of ways to make the game unique, and I thought about sloth pictures and how they always have so many different expressions. I decided that was the way I'd do the roles in this game, since I could easily find enough personalities to fill a game with unique individual roles. The idea to have personalities change once certain conditions were met was one of the very last ideas I had for the game, along with the posting restrictions.

Initially, I wanted to assign two personalities to be the scum, but I thought it'd be more unique if I randomized the mafia team so literally anybody could be them. I also wanted to make it really different from traditional mafia, since despite the gimmicks, it was still feeling really traditional, so I made it so the mafia team didn't know who each other were at the start and would have to figure it out for themselves as the game went on. I thought it was a nice way to change it up and make it a bit harder for the mafia to win. Ultimately, Deku had the cop role and got randomized as one of the mafia, so he was able to figure Mido out, but he couldn't claim so it still worked the way I hoped. I was worried about balance, but I think overall the game ended up being surprisingly well balanced.

The main gimmick for the game was originally going to be the slowness. I wanted it to be a really slow mafia game, but then I thought about how much I hate slow games and decided against it.

A lot of thought was put into that game, and I was quite happy with the way it eventually turned out. I might talk more about this setup if I think about it, and I also want to talk about what went into creating Avengers Mafia, since that game had a lot of really unique and interesting roles and neat gimmicks.

 

[Mellow Ezlo]

The former idea was cut due to numbers and to center on the theme, while the latter was cut when I decided on the odd/even night gimmick.

This gimmick in your game, btw, was part of the inspiration that caused the mafia team in Sloth Mafia to alternate which nights they could attack in. Odd/Even night modifiers are something I've always been a big fan of and I wish more people would do it.

 

[Libk]

Oh man. Time for a post about Green Lantern mafia. It was my first game I ran here on the forums and for those who don't remember it, here's the setup

Sinestro Corps
Sinestro(yellow)- GodFather
Dex-Starr(red)-Yakuza(sacrifices himself to convert a player to mafia side)
Nekron(black)- Poisoner
Lex Luthor(orange)-Theif(Steal an item from a player. can use that item once but does not know what the item does)**

Lantern Corps Alliance
Hal Jordan(green)-Vanilla
Item: Duct tape. (If used, silences target player. they can't vote next day. vote doesn't show up on count)
Kilowog(green)-Vanilla
Item: Map(does absolutely nothing)
Alia(green)-Vanilla
Item: Ring of Will(Turns targeted player into a green lantern. they keep their old corp as well making them green and X. If a green lantern has died and a blue loses his power, power is brought back. If multiple green have died, one blue's power is brought back at random. Does not change the player's alignment)
Vath Sarn(green)-Vanilla
Item: Moon rock(Targeted player receives a message saying "A moon rock hits your head, causing a massive headache. It appears to have been thrown at you. You may post about this rock if you want to" essentially the rock is useless as well)
Saint Walker(blue)- Super Cop(Learns alignment and power. loses when a green dies)*
Item: Mask(absolutely no effect)
Brother Warth(blue)-Super Vig(can't be blocked. loses when a green dies)*
Item: Knife(Wounds targeted player. doctor must protect targeted player regardless of who the doc chooses.)
Sister Sercy(blue)-Super Negative Voter(A vote counts as 2 off of the vote count. Loses when a Green lantern dies)*
Item: Spear(appears in the night post as being thrown at targeted player, but does nothing besides that)
Blue Lantern Flash-Triple voter(loses when green lantern dies)*
Item: Lightning bolt badge(targeted player's vote counts as one extra during next day period)
White Lantern Green Arrow- Doctor
Item: Kryptonite(If used, superman becomes lynchable and night killable)
White Lantern Batman- role blocker
Item: Kryptonite(If used, Superman becomes lynchable and night killable)
White Lantern Wonder Woman- Protector(Can target one player each night. If that player is targeted that night by someone else, you are hit instead)
Item: Kryptonite(If used, Superman becomes lynchable and night killable)
White Lantern Superman- Can only be killed if kryptonite is present in the game
Item: Kryptonite(If used, Superman becomes lynchable and night killable)
Miri Riam(violet)-lover with purple 2
Item: Ring(absolutely nothing)
Queen Aga'po(violet)- lover with purple 1
Item: Ring of Fear(Turns someone into a yellow lantern. Keeps old lantern ring as well making them Yellow and X. Does not change alignment.)
Yrra Cynril(violet)- Bomb(If lynched, last player to vote for him/her dies with them)
Item: Scroll of telepathy(Creates a telepathic link with targeted player. Can talk to target player in a quick topic thread)
Carol Ferris(violet)- Neighborizer(Can only have 1 neighbor at a time, can choose a new neighbor should the current die.)
Item: Mask(absolutely nothing)
*The blue lantern who loses his power is decided randomly upon death of a green lantern.

So to start off in the design for this game, I knew that I wanted every single lantern corp to be represented in some way. I searched for a while for characters for each Corp, some of them being easy choices and some of them not so much. The white lanterns were tough because Pretty much every single Hero in the DC universe has been a white lantern. Hal Jordan has been in every lantern corp, and all sorts of other crazy things involving the War of Light. it was while I was searching for characters for each that I decided each corp would have 4 members on the town side, Oa aligned characters being from the corps that reflect the good side of the lantern spectrum, and the 4 mafia members would be 1 from each corp. This made this quite a bit easier.

From there, I decided to work on my personal favorite lantern Corp, the Blue Lanterns. The Blue lanterns are Canonically the most powerful lanterns in the lore, but with a catch. They can only be at their most powerful in the presence of a Green lantern. Blue lanterns draw power from hope, and after all what good is hope with out the Will(Green lantern power source) to drive it? I knew from the beginning that green lanterns would give blue lanterns extra power. To simulate this, all the blue lanterns had beefed up versions of normal roles. One was a mix between role cop and cop, One was a strongman Vig, one was a double voter with an extra vote, and the other was a negative voter with an extra negative. These are definitely powerful, especially in the hands of town. To balance it though, Green lanterns would have to be vanilla, with a hidden interaction that caused them to take a power of a blue away when one died. It had to be hidden, or they wouldn't really be vanilla. I know a lot of people at the time didn't like playing vanilla, and some even didn't want to play if they got it, but if the greens ever realized their true power, i felt it could be kind of inspiring in a way. Maybe drive their will to keep playing.

White lanterns were tough to figure out. Choosing 4 heroes from the DC universe was tough. Do I go obscure? Do I go Iconic? My decision for 1 of them was made easy. Lex Luthor had to be in the game. there was no other orange lantern. If Luthor was in, Superman had to be in too. I chose batman because seeing him in white instead of black would be cool, Wonder Woman was iconic, and Green arrow was just personal liking. They would all be protective roles, as White Lanterns were powered by Life.

The Violet lantern Corps were all powered by Love, so i tried to choose roles that represented Passion. Lovers made sense for their group. A bomb was an interesting choice, looking back at it, but I know my thought process was that love can make someone do Crazy things to protect others they care for, even if it costs their life. Bomb made sense for lovers for me. The neighborizer role was more communication and gave town a chance to talk to a potential mafia and find them out.

Choices for sinestro Corps.
The obvious yellow lantern to me was Sinestro. Wielder of the yellow lantern ring, powered by fear. sinestro, being the first yellow lantern, was too good a choice for the corp. He had previously been a green lantern, so making him Godfather and assembling a group to try and take Oa made sense to me. That said, godfather in my games is always a bit different from how others on ZD do it. Pendio even thought it odd when I gave him his role. In my games, Godfather is only investigation proof. In this game, it meant he showed up green upon investigation. I know a lot of people on ZD give bulletproof as well, but where I came from, Paranoia Paradise, we don't typically do that.

Dex-Starr is a choice I made because I thought the idea of a cat obtaining a ring of power was hilarious. Dex-Starr's story is actually extremely sad though and it makes sense that he got the red power ring, powered by anger. His owner was killed, he was kicked out of his own by the cops investigating her death, some punks then bag him and throw him into a river off of a bridge, laughing and wondering if he would die hitting the water or if he would drown. So a red ring comes to Dex-starr while he's falling, goes around his tail, and he kills the punks who threw him off the bridge. Then he swears he'll find the person who killed his owner. why did I make him a yakuza? It was an interesting I had not yet seen in action.

Nekron and being a poisoner just felt right for a black lantern, powered by death. I admittedly did not look into the black lantern corp too much.

Lastly come my baby for the mafia group. Lex Luthor, Orange lantern, powered by greed. I decided to make a role just for him. It's a role I've wanted to use again but I've never found the right setting for it. Maybe MTG 2? We'll see. The thief was designed to gain power by stealing items from other players. He could steal an item one night, and then use it the next. Every player had an item, but it was secret from them. The goal was for Luthor to eventually find kryptonite and be able to kill superman. While that didn't happen that way, I think the role could definitely be cool in other games and If i make every item matter instead of make half of them useless, it could be really interesting.

 

[DekuNut]

Time to talk Death Note, eh?

I originally built the game around the idea of Ryuk (played magnificently by Bok). In the anime, despite being "on Light's team", he doesnt care about the outcome. Everything's just a game to him, and when it's all said and done, he returns to the status quo. Therefore, I wanted to make him a traitorous role.
Between myself and Mido, we had a few ideas for him. The idea we went with made him mafia - the godfather. However, we gave him a secret wincon: if he was the last voter on Light Yagami's wagon, he could win the game as third party. Misa could still win on her own - Ryuk's win wouldn't end the game - but it would weaken the mafia.
To make things easier for that to come to be, and since hes a god, we decided to allow Ryuk to survive any attempts on his life, though he would be out of play. No votes he made at that point would matter (except on Light), and he wouldn't be counted towards majority or the mafia wincon.
I'm both happy and disappointed he ended up playing the game normally. Disappointed that all that work went into nothing, and happy because we didn't come up with a good way to keep him from flat out giving up Light outside simply honor. Bok would've played that honorably I think, but who knows about other people who may have gotten the role.

The rest of the mafia were pretty simple. Light was a goon. We told him he was a Ninja, but that didn't matter without a tracker or watcher in the game. It did its job of making him do all the kills though.
Misa was pretty normal too. Since in the anime she made the Shinigami eyes trade, we decided to shorten her life a little by giving her the hated modifier, meaning she'd get lynched at L-1. We really messed with this mafia... it's amazing they won to be honest. Potato chips to all three of them.

The town was pretty generic too. Mostly vanilla townies. There were a couple of power roles, mostly investigative (makes sense, since most of the characters are detectives).
I'll make a second post on them in a bit, but now I have to go to work.

 

[DekuNut]

Now to discuss the town roles in Death Note:

Since most of the characters in the show are detectives, we used multiple investigative roles. Due to this, we elected to make the roles a little more than usual. We ended up with two: a flavor cop, and a new role called the "Detective". The Flavor Cop was the character of Soichiro Yagami. He was able to tell whether or not someone was a member of the Kira Taskforce. For the most part, this lined up with alignment with a couple of exceptions: Light Yagami was mafia, but a member of the taskforce, while the characters of Raye Penber and Naomi Misora were town, but not members of the taskforce.
The Detective role was partway between cop and rolecop. They had two night actions they could choose between: a normal cop shot and what we called a "Gambit", where we would give their target a choice in PM and their target's decision would decide whether the cop would learn both their role and alignment or nothing at all. This was used once in the entire game, on Ryuk, to no effect. Despite returning with no information based on the gambit, the Detective used this to reason (correctly) that he was mafia, despite the flawed logic.
We only had two other power roles in the game. I didn't really want to have a doctor, since that wouldn't make sense for the flavor, but did want a protective role. I decided to use a bodyguard, who, just to make them a little more powerful (and because of their close relationship in the anime), knew the identity and alignment of L. The point of this was to let the Detective last longer. However, the bodyguard never actually used their role.
The final was a one-shot vigilante. This was given to the character of Matsuda, because

Spoiler: Death Note Spoilers

He was the one who broke down and shot Light in the anime

This shot could be used at any time, but ended up going unused, mostly because he was lynched Day One.

There were a couple of ideas we ended up scrapping. There was a point where Ryuk was self-aligned and could deliver a one-shot Death Note to players at night. I also considered giving Ryuk a permadeath if he ever made the nightkill, but that didn't make it in either. Also, I considered giving Matsuda a special bonus if he shot Light, but decided against it. That bonus probably would have been a second shot, I don't know.
One thing worth mentioning is that the flavor of the kills was chosen by the players (with the exception of the vigilante shot). The last voter on the Lynch wagon could PM me during twilight with their choice for how the lynchee would die (within reason), and the killer in the Mafia could do the same. There was the idea that this person could also choose the time of death (up to one full day/night cycle out from when their name was written in the note), kind of like a poisoner, but I ended up not using that at Mido's suggestion.

Overall, I think the game went well. The Town Power Roles (especially the bodyguard) could have maybe used their powers more often, but as a whole I think it was a fair game. The mafia ended up winning on Day 4 with no deaths.
You can find the game thread here.

Spoiler: Role List

Character (Role): Player/Replacement

Town:
L (Detective), NekoLily/All Might II
Watari (Bodyguard): Jamie
Chief Yagami (Flavor Cop): Minish_Link
Touta Matsuda (1-Shot Vigilante): Funnier6
Kanzo Mogi (Vanilla Townie): Deus
Hideki Ide (Vanilla Townie): TattooArtist
Shuichi Aizawa (Vanilla Townie): All Might I
Hirozaku Ukita (Vanilla Townie): Libk/Mellow Ezlo
Raye Penber (Vanilla Townie): Pendio
Naomi Misora (Vanilla Townie): Karu

Mafia:
Light Yagami (Ninja): Doc
Ryuk (Traitorous Godfather): Bok
Misa Amane (Rolecop): YIGAhim

Thank you to all the players and replacements, and special thanks to Mido for being my comod. He helped out a lot.

 

[funnier6]

So like, here comes the whole game life story so you might be reading a while.

I didn’t really want to mod games at first. Half because I wasn’t really sure if I could do it and half because I thought thinking of a really great setup and then not getting to play in it would be disappointing. So anyway around October I had decided to think of ideas for a game that I wanted to play and that I didn’t think anyone else would do. Suddenly I realized a ZD mafia mafia game would be amazing and blah blah blah.

The guessing mechanic was around pretty much since the beginning, because I thought if I was playing I would’ve really enjoyed that. Also because I realized I could make this game fun for me, as a mod. So I gave myself a ton to do and was vague about things so people would wonder and ask me about them lol. Also I didn’t want to start the game thinking I knew what would happen so I made it so the possibilities were literally endless on what roles would come into play, when they would come into play, and how they affect one another. We could do the whole thing again (with different characters and habits) and I guarantee you it would go completely different.

So I set about thinking of all the players I knew best and what role I could form around each of them. I think Tristan’s was the easiest, I barely changed it since I thought of it. The busser half of his role was meant to really help out the mafia since it could’ve allowed whoever had it to be role cop godfather role blocker all by themselves. Unfortunately it didn’t get used, astonishingly bad luck for the mafia in this game. I also realized early on that having a Serial Killer that didn’t know who they were made no sense, and I realized I could remedy that by giving them the Serial Killer to begin with and then a better option if they could solve their riddle. Plus how dumb would it be to say ZD Mafia Hijackers with no hijackers? lol

Actually there wasn’t one in the beginning. I rewrote the flavor two or three times and the first one involved everyone hijacking each other’s accounts. When I was writing the sign ups post a few months ago with me cooking up the game I changed all the flavor to match that, and it wasn’t until then I decided to add more chaos by those three secret items. They didn’t get to cause much though but the potential was huge.

I couldn’t put myself in without making myself obvious scum so I also made Bok obvious town and gave Tristan incentives to kill me, me incentives to kill Bok and or Tristan, and Libk incentives to kill either bok or funnier. So basically I balanced chaos with chaos with balance. Hijacking funnier in the middle of the game and causing a mafia member to die under the impression they were the SK I also thought would really help out the mafia. (Unless town somehow connected the dots on Libk as easily as they did this time) Funnier also had his hat which he could use to ruin someone’s day basically and cause any kills against them to go through, cop checks to return guilty, and role blocks them. Leaf of Bok did the opposite and protected their target from all attacks, caused cop checks to return innocent, and made sure any actions they sent went through. Claw of Sloth delays the action of a target by one night, so for example if it had been used on a cop they would’ve received their results on the following night.

Hardly got to write any flavor for that. :c

Originally Jamie wasn’t supposed to be the vig, for the longest time he was a gladiator which I thought fit his personality well but I started thinking I had too much that affected the day phase already and no vig or bus driver in the game so I gave him both. I gave him lots of reasons not to use his killing ability since the game already had the potential for five people to die in one night (JOAT 1x, mafia factional kill, Serial Killer, Bomb, 1x poison) it just occurred to me I don’t even know what happens if multiple people target a bomb so I’m glad that didn’t come up lol. So he could only kill a max of one town member and if that town member was Bok he’s stuck as vanilla. I was really looking forward to the bus driver chaos but ah well.

I pretty much always knew emiyas role was gonna be something I made up and I was really excited for it. Soft claiming an ability every day on the off chance it’s in the game and not attracting weird looks sounds challenging and creative and I really wanted it used so luckily it was. Also the irony that the first thing she tried was sensor when that was the fake claim that made emiya famous for soft claims lol. So many possibilities, she really wanted to soft godfather but since softing godfather is softing two different abilities she would’ve had to pick one, and if she wanted bulletproof why not soft bulletproof? So that’s kinda how that happened. Not being able to hard claim the actual role and all the soft claims were supposed to draw suspicion but somehow nobody ever questioned what LG was doing lol.

Also I had originally written up Storm as the Vengeful Townie Bomb but since he was banned for an undetermined amount of time I made it to suit Zachie instead. I also thought it would be fun to see someone make the day shorter and then immediately try to get everyone to extend it but that didn’t come up either. :c Doc sure did a great job attracting the night kill though lol.

I was a little disappointed I couldn’t get more of the characters to play but the people who did play more than made up for it so thank you all of youuuu.

 

[LittleGumball]

somehow nobody ever questioned what LG was doing lol

everyone ignores me

For real though, we've had flavor based of ZD members in the past and each time it's been executed well. They're always great games and fantastic flavor. I'm sure Zachie bomb would've been hilarious if I knew who Zachie was lmao, but I can definitely say that Thar's role killed me when I read it.

As I originally typed out for a planned softclaim in case I ever got in trouble, "Alas, I have garnered my role and I have been embedded into quite the hirsute predicament. My regular actions as a character are divided from my ways as a person."

imagine establishing yourself as anti-claiming and then getting a role that requires you to claim in order to use it lmfao

 

[LittleGumball]

what's up lads and chads i got one singular request for talking about the setup of THEBESTZDMAFIA so here u go deku buddy time to drag up some files from 2015



In case yall didn't know, THEBESTZDMAFIA was supposed to be the best and worst game ZD ever had. We wanted to host a bastard game so damn bad and by golly we were going to make it the best bastard game ZD ever saw. It didn't quite go as we planned, but that's kind of the beauty of it. We still had fun, the Polar Bear still had fun, writing the flavor was pretty fun, inventing new roles was fun, that's all that matters is that We Had Fun.


So I admit the whole "hi friend" in the role PMs was a little annoying lol but it was worth it for the memes. I relied on Johnny a lot for most of the amazing flavor, he did all of that really well. The scene where (i think we made up this role?) the Daredevil attracted every single kill and then proceeded to dodge ALL OF THEM, he wrote that one beautifully. Most of the posts are broken now the THEBESTEMOTES are gone but the idea of a ton of filthy memers chasing down a shifting form of the dankest memes, I had a good laugh. Shoutout to Johnny for carrying most of the flavor. also shoutout to dekunut for having an emote in his name lmfao

Addressing the asshole in the room, I wanted to have a Poisoner SK but I gave it a flavor name that was super problematic looking back on it, oops, that was really dark for a mafia game on a zelda forum LMFAO. The thing about it was that after getting attacked the person would get really quiet and then kill themselves at the end of the day after I believe, but most people were so inactive that the posting restriction wasn't really noticeable. Anyway it was kind of a ****ty flavor name that's my b

Basically this game was a cluster**** of bull**** roles we wanted to throw around. We had a lot more ideas but ultimately didn't end up putting them in, but here's most of the garbage that we did put in. We wanted to put in a Judas, like a traitor who becomes mafia, but either the player never died or we just forgot lmfao. Of course we had to have a flying pumpkin. We had a Jester, shoutout to Yiga lmao. We had two cops, one was Stupid and had a chance of screwing up his results, the second was the Smart Cop who had to lynch the Stupid Cop in order to win. We had lovers who had to solve a riddle to find their lover, they both got it pretty quickly gg guys. We had a quack vig and quack doc We had TWO SERIAL KILLERS. We had a 4 target Bus Driver, which I left to Johnny to figure out how it works lmao and also we gave him complicated win conditions such as redirecting a mafia kill onto a mafia member or the polar bear never getting targeted for a lynch or NK. We had a Lyncher whose target switched every day but he was on every single lynch so we just gave him a win anyway. By the end of it I don't think anyone really cared who won anyway, especially since we crashed a plane into the thread and killed everyone

The mafia godfather was bulletproof and odd day lynchproof. There was a mafia stripper who had to softclaim "sexy nurse" before a certain time. The roleblocker was OCD and could only post in an even number of words but I forgot to count lmfao. We made the strongman a posting addict hahaha so in order to make sure the kill went through no matter what she had to post (non-consecutively) 10 times, but if she posted too much she'd OD and have a chance of dying.

The Russian was a great role and we had a wonderful time coming up with it and its ability. Sort of a either gladiator or desperado i can't remember which, but the way Rainy ended up using russian roulette was fantastic. of course the person who got shot was the polar bear hahahaha that was pure unbridled rng at its finest

Speaking of the Russian, the Drunk modifiers were hilarious, honestly probably my favorite part was how much Jamie complained about it whenever he had to be drunk. And speaking of Jamie, we invented his role as well, Damsel in Distress would call for help if (s)he was about to get lynched and a random player would be chosen to decide whether or not to save him. On top of that we made him a thing I called Schizophrenic, where he would have a random modifier each day called Drunk, Evil (another word for PGO, he'd just kill anything that targeted him), OCD, and [modified SK], if he ever changed to SK he just wouldn't be town anymore but he could lose his killing ability.

Ghost in the Machine was another role we made up, that person died super early on and then we secretly gave him the mafia QT link so he could just, see everything. He was allowed to make one post at night I think but it could only have 4 words in it due to a bad connection. It was not utilized the way we thought it would be but frankly using "hmm" as one of your 4 words is daring as **** so, still getting props

I posted these in the thread but the Godmodder (aka dreaming god) abilities were ****ing hilarious and I'm disappointed none of them really got used except the glitter one. There were abilities where the mods would lie to the players, some would do nothing at all or just do dumb **** like insist everyone refer to them by a certain name or make a player unable to post. missed opportunity, rip

So by this point you're probably going "gosh golly some of these roles seemed to have been hand picked for the perfect player!!!!" And by gosh you're right. We gave out most of the roles by hand to people we knew would play them well, and then all the arbitrary ones we let RNG sort out. The non alignment roles were easiest, JC and Tristan we thought would be perfect but unfortunately JC ended up being pretty inactive. Tristan did great though lmao mad props bud. Heroine of Time, a notoriously inactive player, had to be the posting addict. She never got to use her strongman. Jamie was the Damsel, we knew he could handle a complicated role like that and we wanted to see him become SK. I think Johnny skewed the RNG once and said he'd rolled Drunk again when he really didn't lol. Odd was the Ghost in the Machine because we knew people would kill him for the memes and so we gave him the broken role.

Surprisingly, most of the mafia survived iirc, at least for a while, and I don't think either of the SKs were killed until the ending plane crash, but I could be wrong. I think I remember we had to modkill some players for inactivity though cuz no one was a replacement since the game was so huge.


Finally, let's talk about the most important role, the Polar Bear. Tristan was so damned good as the Polar Bear. His role was designed just to **** with the game and he played it perfectly. He derailed so much **** and I loved every moment of it. Johnny and I were so excited about this role because it would confuse everything. Everyone was focused so hard on killing him lmao but he just couldn't ever die. It completely derailed the game. It was beautiful. But let's talk about the most important thing he ever did, and the badass fight scene I put in because of it. He dared to do the one thing no man has ever dared to do in the history of ZD mafia. He screenshotted his role PM. It was fantastic, it was hilarious, I lost my mind when I read it, it made everyone ignore him after that but it didn't matter. In his honor, I wrote the singular greatest piece of writing I have ever written. Shoutout to Tristan, thanks for the memes buddy



In hindsight we probably should have implemented less of these things, but we wanted everyone to have a ****ty role, not just some people! We did do tons of research about bastard roles for this and even invented our own, that was great. I loved every minute of this game, except for the inactivity. The thing that killed this game was the dwindling mafia interest that had already begun before THEBESTZDMAFIA was finished getting planned. It could've been way more chaotic, which probably would have been annoying to play but more fun for Johnny and I lmao. I do want to host another ****ty bastard game but not for a very long time and only if I have a co-mod that can stand up to Johnny's quality.
if i forgot anything in this post lmk and i'll edit the **** out of it


overall score 7.8/10 too much water

 

[Doc]

Doc sure did a great job attracting the night kill though lol.

I am a man of many talents.

 

[Mido]

@LittleGumball The "hi friend" element of THEBESTZDMAFIA was my favorite part.

 

[DekuNut]

Spoiler: Setup

The Town:
Spiritual Mask Salesman: Alm, the Roleblocker
Hero of Time: Clive, the Innocent Child
Moe the Moblin: Zeke, the Amnesiac
Doc I: Kliff, the JOAT
Minish Link: Faye, the Town (?) Vigilante
LittleGumball: Celica, the Mila Priestess
Frozen Chosen: Mae, the Doctor
A Link in Time: Sonya, the Gladiator
funnier6: Conrad, the Cop

The Mafia:
Krow: Jedah, the Godfather
Ryuku/Doc II: Berkut, the Duma Chosen

First off: yes, there are two scum. We were struggling to find a role for Duma and I was just having a hard time getting him in there in-flavor for some reason, so I felt like the easiest choice was to drop him. Big mistake, especially since I replaced him with an IC (Hero). Originally, the mafia were much more powerful - too powerful, in fact. We were thinking of making Duma near-unkillable unless Alm and Celica were either dead or on his wagon, which seemed like a bit much to me. So, instead of reworking him, we just took him out and hoped the third party would balance it.

And that’s where we come to Faye (Minish). She was a vigilante, but I hinted in her Role PM that something would happen to her role if she outlived Alm (SMS). If that were to happen, she would’ve become a serial killer. Yes, it’s very bastard, I know. It’s a carryover from when I had ideas for an Archie Sonic game, except in that case it would’ve been if she outlived the godfather, which I feel like works better. Either way, it didn’t matter, because she died night one. Biggest disappointment of the game for both me and Storma.

The second new role I had was Mila Priestess (Gum). She had the ability to turn back a phase at any time. So, say, if she were to do it Day 2, the game would suddenly shift to the start of Night One, and anyone who died during the night would’ve been brought back (though mafia could just choose to kill them again). This was in itself more overpowered than I thought, which I realized after talking with Gummy about it, but could’ve been helped some if we made Duma a Rolecop, giving the mafia a little bit of a bonus for going through night phases again. That said, the point was mostly to stop a mislynch and go against an OP mafia.

I’m also happy about Berkut (Ryuku/Doc II)’s role - Duma Chosen. Something else a little OP for the mafia, but its users were kinda inactive and didn’t try to use it until it was too late. It would’ve given him a double vote in exchange for a hated modifier. I felt like it was balanced, and honestly it probably was, especially with the addition that it became null during LyLo/MyLo.

Uh, let’s see, what else should I mention... the JOAT (Doc I) I guess. He didn’t actually know his abilities. He could only choose a class to promote to each day phase, and at the start of the night I would tell him what ability he would have to use that night. Archer was vigilante, mage was roleblocker, cavlier was commuter, merc was instant double vote for the rest of the day phase, and soldier was bulletproof. Each could only be used once obviously, and none were until our amnesiac Moe ended up choosing Archer on the last day, and he never got a chance to use the role.

Finally, the Supports system.

There were zero supports all game.

The main reason for this was too few options. Echoes has fewer supports per character than most Fire Emblem games, and plenty of the characters chosen (Clive, Zeke, Kliff, and Sonya) had no possible support partners in this game. The idea was good, but between character choice and general availability, it didn’t work out. I PMed Storma with an updated possible setup that fixed all the above problems, but obviously that was too little, too late. Maybe on another site someday.

And that leads to the thing that makes this the most disappointing: this may be my last mafia game. I was planning on leaving the site after this game, and this is possibly the worst way for me to go out. Part of me wants a redemption, part of me wants to actually leave. I don’t know. I’ll need time to decide. But the fact that I planned on this being my last hurrah and it flopped spectacularly really bothers me. So thanks for playing everyone, and PM me if you have any questions. We’ll see what I think about staying around in the next week or so.

Til then, have fun with your game funnier.

 

[Mikey the Moblin]

in a meta as centralized/stale/reached equilibrium as ZD, making a game so town-sided all but guarantees town victory. I can easily say this was a super fun setup regardless of the balance, and with a few more players could end up being a memorable experience
I know the pull to make fun and exciting games but you have to weigh it against how balanced the game ends up being
despite my whining, my role was actually really cool.
I think you should definitely try making one more game and really go out with a bang, potentially the two of us could co-host something? Your creative whimsy and genius and my ability to have no life to make consistent phase updates. Consider it.