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I was undecided between justice and chees4mees, but now that I think about it, Dad makes sense, with justice's RB Night 1 and chees4mees coming back town on Cory's inspection (though they could've been the godfather, theoretically).
To lowkey frame chees4mees and also because I failed to remember that Tina actually said that factional kills could be roleblocked in a day one post (it was a long game okay), so convincing people that Cariad's role was potentially useless was my downfall because I failed to remember that and justice snatched it. Even though I was actually right about Cariad not being able to block my kill.
I also thought me 'doubting' justice was mafia because I noticed and brought up the early game roleblock would help keep me coming off as unsure but helpful town when it's probably something I shouldn't have reminded town of. A lot of weird decisions on my part, yeah. Took more than one too many risks.
The floor is alive and thumping, as if the building has a heart beat.
The vibrations shake you from your nap and you’re at once aware that something just doesn’t feel right. You’ve cotton mouth. You can’t see straight. Everything feels muted and you have this incessant urge to pop your ears.
Your corpse of a pillow has started to smell rotten, and you’re almost certain his bladder has emptied itself over the floor. Was it that way before you fell asleep? You can’t remember.
Getting up off the floor, you dust yourself off, not sure of when you became covered with glitter and glass. Then a weight hits your shoulder. You stare at the bleary whitish mess, confused for a moment. Then it hits you.
“Bird crap? What the—”
You look up and once you’re blinded. Pain surges through your skull and coloured dots appear in front of your eyes. The sky above is orange and clouded, with spots of sunlight bleeding in through the broken glass is ceiling.
You stagger back and someone grabs your arm. You look to your left and you spy a hazy glimpse of leopard print.
“C-Carmen. What happened?”
“What do you mean what happened? Did you hit your head?”
She passes you a glass. Anyone would think by now that you would hesitate before accepting a drink from a stranger, but you don’t think. You instantly reach for the glass and down the ice cool water. Your throat aches something awful and your stomach turns as the cold liquid attacks your insides.
Your ears finally pop and all at once you’re more aware of your surroundings.
You hand the glass back to Carmen and rub your eyes, looking around for the source of the vibrations. Despite all that has happened, there is a mid-morning rave taking place before your eyes. Mannequins sway, dance music blares, and behind the turntable stands an overweight man in his fifties in a white top hat.
“Do you want to dance?” Carmen asks.
“Are you crazy?”
She shrugs. “Well there’s nothing else to do, so why not?”
You check your watch. It’s 9am. ****.
“I need to get to work,” you say.
“I don’t think there will be any work left,” she says.
“What?”
“Seriously, did you hit head or are you just an idiot?” Her mood seems to have done a one-eighty. “The bombs fell outside. There’s nothing left, Caleb. This is it.”
You look around, and everything feels surreal enough that you conclude you might just have to believe her. Who would’ve thought that, at the end of the world, they would attend a dance party full of nobodies desperately trying to be somebodies?
“Yuck, look at that.”
Carmen points at the bird excrement on your shoulder. Grimacing, you peel your damp and dirty blazer off and toss it over the deceased bouncer’s face.
You grasp at the handle of the gun, still tucked into your pants, knowing that it is in no way inconspicuous now. You’re about to walk into the crowd when you spy something - something familiar. You turn, catching a man lurking in the shadows.
It’s Drew.
A bang and Carmen’s stumbling back against the wall, blood beginning to stain her dress. No time to save her, you fire a bullet straight into his jugular. His blood sprays far more violently that Carmen, soaking his shirt in an instant.
The gunshots didn’t even earn the slightest of whimpers from the crowd. It takes a moment for you to realise, but they’re not really listening. In fact, they haven’t been at all this evening. You look to the DJ and meet his eyes.
It’s him. The one playing this incessant hypnotic music.
You attempt to fire. Crap. No ammo. You toss the gun aside and charge through the crowd, that seem to cluster together like ants the second you try to barge through. The DJ is waving his arms, and they follow his every instruction.
“Kill him,” the DJ commands.
At once they seem to take notice of you. Blank eyes on turn on you, bodies closing in all around you. You’re alone in a crowd and they want to take you out.
You somehow managed to wade to the front, avoiding sustaining any injuries more severe than a sharp scratch of a woman’s nails on your forearm.
The DJ doesn’t see you, he couldn’t have predicted it - that you would lift a guitar from the stage and smack it straight into the back of his skull. He falls at the impact. You straddle his chest and drive your fist repeatedly into his face, watching as the vibrant, red blood pours from his nose.
You don’t know how long you sit there, but after a while you realise he’s not fighting back. And the music has stopped.
You stand up, wiping the DJ’s blood on your pants and looking out into a sea of vaguely familiar, but ultimately nameless faces. They look just as baffled as you are. Then a girl waves to you, trying to get your attention.
“Hey, who are you?”
“Get off the stage!” a man yells.
You dodge a flying bottle, it narrowly missing your head. It looks like your fifteen minutes of fame are over.
So, this was an interesting experiment - but not one I have much intention of repeating as it required an insane amount of work to figure out how to do it and then implement it. I experimented with this one before The Siren's Call and it hit some bumps, so I took what I learned from that when trying to put these games together. Looks like it wasn't something that wasn't popular with you guys, but oh well, I felt it was worth a shot.
With a final score of 35 to 6, it should be no surprise that town won every mini game:
The Kissing Game
Players: Luciano, Jellybean, Dixon
In a club where only the rich and famous can find entry, a clash of egos was only inevitable. Tonight, you will be engaging in the kissing game: a contest in which the goal is to kiss the most people before the end of the game. Each night phase, submit the name of your target. I’d also advise you keep a list, as a player will only count to your tally once.
Unfortunately, a role block can prevent you from getting your paws on someone. Your targets aren’t going to be willing to kiss more than one person in a single night phase. If you and someone else go after the same target, you will be assigned a number between 1-6 and a dice will be rolled until one of those numbers is landed on. The winner of the dice role gets the point(s).
You earn X* points per night.
The Kissing Game
Player
Alignment
Score
Tom
Mafia
0
Cariad
Town
8
LaBelleFleur
Town
1
* Green - 1 point. | Blue - 2 points. | Red - 3 points.
Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?
Players: DJ McQueen, Maria
DJ McQueen Version: Your ex-fianc? is lurking somewhere in the club and you don’t want her to get involved in the fighting. If you can guess which user is playing your ex before either of you die then you will earn 10 points for your team. You may guess once per night.
Maria Version: Your ex-fianc? is lurking somewhere in this club and you do not want him to catch you. Do your best to remain undetectable. You will earn 2 points if he is unable to guess your identity before either of you die.
Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?
Player
Alignment
Score
Dad
Mafia
0
Trundle
Town
2
King of Everything
Players: Bull, Baby King, Shane
This chaos serves as an incredible distraction: everyone is too terrified or drunk to realise when a little pickpocket comes along. Everyone is carrying a special trinket - a piece of jewellery, a photograph, etc. Once per night phase you can pick a player to steal from. The participant who amasses the largest collection of items wins. Each item you find also counts toward your teams total.
Unfortunately, a role block can prevent you obtaining an item. Also, if someone else has stolen their item first then you won’t find anything. If you and someone else go after the same target on the same night, you will be assigned a number between 1-6 and a dice will be rolled until one of those numbers is landed on. The winner of the dice role gets the point(s).
You earn X* point(s) for each item you acquire.
Note, if you still have your own item at the end of the game then you gain an extra 2 points! But if it gets stolen then you won’t. You will be told if your own item is stolen.
King of Everything
Player
Alignment
Initial Score
Final Score
Ashtot
Mafia
0
2
Cory
Town
6
8
Blu Rose
Town
0
2
* Green - 1 point. | Blue - 2 points. | Red - 3 points.
What's My Name?
Players: Rayner, Rose, Takeshi, Vlinder, Tommy
The name of the protagonist in this story is a mystery… or is it? It’ll be revealed later in the story. But you can find out early if you participate in this exclusive game of hangman! You can make an attempt to guess a letter of his name every day and night cycle - or, if you’re feeling lucky, you can take a guess at his whole name (must be spelled correctly)! I’d suggest getting your guess in toward the start of each day/night cycle to make sure you don’t forget.
Q: What’s my name?
A: _ _ _ _ _ (Answer was Caleb)
Guess a letter before the end of the current phase!
You earn X* points per letter you guess correctly; a further 3 points if you get the whole name right; and finally an additional 5 points if you’re the first person to correctly guess his name (must be spelled correctly too).
What's My Name?
Player
Alignment
Initial Score
Final Score
pillow bunny
Mafia
1
1
Runeraider
Town
2
2
justice
Town
3
11
Hika
Town
1
1
Forek
Town
0
0
* Green/Black - 1 point. | Red - 4 points.
Find Me
Players: Jackson, Daisy, Bunny, Leo,
Jackson Version - Find Me - 5.A. - Are You The Rabbit?
You will gain 2 points for your team if you can discover which player is the “rabbit” before they die. You can guess once per day/night phase. (Answer was Chipped-Teacup)
Leo Version - Find Me - 5.B. - Paparats
You will gain 2 points for your team if you can discover which player is the “rat” before they die. You can guess once per day/night phase. (Answer was Karen)
Bunny Version - Find Me - 5.C. - Flowers of Evil
You will gain 2 points for your team if you can discover which player is the “flower” before they die. You can guess once per day/night phase. (Answer was Endless)
Daisy Version - Find Me - 5.D. - The Future Holds a Lion’s Heart
You will gain 2 points for your team if you can discover which player is the “lion” before they die. You can guess once per day/night phase. (Answer was chees4mees)
Find Me
Player
Alignment
Score
Karen
Town
0
Endless
Town
0
Chipped-Teacup
Town
0
chees4mees
Town
0
Questions I couldn't answer.
Could mafia kills be blocked?
Yes, all kills could be blocked - including the one Dad seemed to believe went through on Cory. Superpenguin killed Cory; not the mafia. I did send a role block PM and, as justice pointed out, the fact that all kills could potentially be blocked was stated at the start of the game. "Potentially" referred to the fact that of course a kill could be prevented through various means: role blocking, doctor protect, bodyguard protect, and the serial killer's additional life.
The answer was there publicly on the Day 1 post. I was sat there waiting for you to find it yourselves - I wasn't going to be the one to kick Dad into the grave. Town's obliviousness is mafia's advantage... except when they're oblivious too, hehe.
Did Cariad's action to role block Ashtot go through?
Yes. But Ashtot wasn't the one delivering the kill, so there was nothing to actually block. Of course I couldn't confirm that publicly without clearing Cariad as town. So would've been PM'ing her unprompted, as she could have just said "Tina PM'd me it went through" and that also would've confirmed her - especially as I had just been viewing the thread. Had she come to me privately I would have confirmed it.
As a side note: there were no host slip-ups this game, TYVM!
Why wasn't chees4mees modkilled?
The modkill request directly violated the rules in addition to potentially changing the outcome of the game.
Rules: Cheating said:
Cheating includes (but is not limited to):
6. Getting yourself modkilled to help your team. Your non-majority-decided death may not be used as a bargaining chip.
chees4mees was encouraged to get themselves modkilled for the sake of town. Of course I couldn't allow that: it would have disadvantaged the scum team by giving town what essentially would have been a 'free lynch'. In the opposite vain, had two town players been lynched, then town would've been disadvantaged by having their numbers drop too far. Allowing that modkill would've been a move that had the potential to change the outcome of the game.
Had I explained this at the time, or even just quoted that rule, I feel you would have read too much into it and factored it into your decision on whether or not to lynch chees4mees. e.g. it says "team", so you may have assumed it meant chees4mees was mafia. And if I clarified alongside quoting that "team" doesn't necessarily mean that, you may have cleared chees4mees as town based on that. I discussed it with Justin too, and at the time we couldn't think of any way we could respond to this beyond saying "we won't allow this" without impacting the game.
Was this set-up town-sided?
Had Tom and pillow bunny survived the first two days this game would have gone in a completely different direction. Not only were they the team's offence roles but due to the loss in numbers they only had their full KP for a single night of the game. Their own play put them in a position where they were seriously disadvantaged by the end of Day 2.
Honestly, we were worried that mafia would get an easy win - especially with how many strong players they had and the fact there was also an SK picking off players (and note Superpenguin never actually targeted any of the scum team). Had the mafia prioritised a team win rather than relying on one person to single-handedly carry them to victory then they would have stood a far better chance of winning. This game doesn't compliment a solo win strategy unless you're an SK.
Do you want to know a secret? I've used a very similar set-up to this in a game before and on the final day (Day 5) it came down to a town player (mason), a mafia player (godfather), and a serial killer. They lynched the godfather and the SK shot the mason Night 5 to win the game.
The theme: Kissing to be Clever
This isn't related to the gameplay, but just for anyone who has an interest in the origins of this game.
Well, I decided to do something a bit different this game. Usually I use an existing concept (e.g. the Honnō-ji Incident was based on a real historical event; while Catch Scum or Catch Scurvy and it's sequel The Siren's Call were about pirates; Sunleth Waterscape was based on a video game, etc) but this one I came up with almost entirely from scratch. I created all of the characters myself (although with overhauls - from name/sex changes and alternate back-stories) and they all have their own stories floating around on my hard drive. Their histories actually had a bigger impact on the mini games than anything.
Dixon, Jellybean, Luciano(2/3 using alternate names) were created in mid-2010 and used to have a bit of a following in other communities when I was actively writing about them - especially Luciano. In this game they were portrayed as an escort, a musician, and a "VVIP". In fact, that's not far from the truth - except Luciano was a mechanic and his clubbing days were from another time in his life. In the story they originated from they were in a love triangle complicated by media intervention and conflicting sexualities and levels of self-acceptance/needs. I brought them into this game and created the mini game The Kissing Game as a reflection of their negative perspectives on sex, love, and romance.
Vlinder, Rose, Bunny, Takeshi, DJ McQueen, and Maria also have ties to the same story/world as the trio above. Minus Bunny, they were all drastically changed to fit better into this game. The mini game Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? was based on McQueen and Maria's abusive in-story relationship.
A lot of the other characters come from scattered projects created in 2009. The Baby King is the youngest character in the game, but was one first to be created back in the early half of 2009. He comes from a bitter Christmas story as a teen runaway roaming the streets of L.A. though, rather than the back story he was given in this game. Quark is the second oldest, created for a short story I wrote based on a prompt in a creative writing class I took back in September 2009. Shane, and Tommy were also created the same year, but needed some development as they were just background characters.
Leo and Rayner are modifications of characters from my currently on-going projects. They've been existence only since 2014 and 2013, respectively.
Bull, Jackson, Daisy, and the protagonist were the only brand new characters created for this game.
If not already obvious, Carmen was 'myself'. As in, she was intended to be your guide through the story (as the observers played the role of the protagonist in this story). Drew was actually based on oath2order who I promised a role in my next game's story - and, as a sort of personal joke, he seduced the Random Bartender (my co-host, Justin). He actually existed as a background antagonist for the mini game, hence establishing him as dangerous in the opening post: if mafia had gained more points than town in the mini games then he would have killed the reader.
The concept of "kissing to be clever" is archaic. It originated from the idea that women use attraction as a way of distracting or manipulating men. I decided to go for a bit of role reversal here with men being the main offenders - e.g. Luciano trying to seduce the protagonist in the Night 1 post.
Celebrity culture is a common theme I use in a lot of my writing, but I drew much of the setting and atmosphere for this game from a short story I wrote 6-7 years ago. It was also in second person. It's actually the story the characters Shane and Tommy were based on originated from.
I'm going to be honest about it: I used this game as a writing exercise because I've been in a bit of a rut creatively. I feel like this really helped, and it was interesting to try to create a game where people couldn't over-analyse the concept or have more knowledge over it than someone else might. e.g. in Sunleth Waterscape, Tom was able to make an excellent fake claim as he worked out the pattern I'd used for naming the power roles and used initiative to look up a name that matched well - and he got lucky in that I hadn't used that one.
I didn't provide any fake claims as they weren't necessary: revealing your role names only impacted mini games, not the main game.
Also, as I have a habit of providing a bit of music at the end of a game. Here's the two that inspired this game:
Finally, thank you.
Jeremy, thank you for showing your support for the game. Your initial advertisement is what filled up our playerlist. I hadn't even thought to ask you to do that.
Trundle, thank you for helping me that night Justin was asleep and I was completely incoherent. <3 If it weren't for you I might have had to delay the post or made some major mistake.
For the players, this has been fun to watch. I've never seen a game with so many active participants even in the late stages of the game. Of course the six replacements Day 1 had to do with that, but it was my mistake (I didn't realise how many people were no longer active on TBT, yikes) that led to that so it was obviously my responsibility to fix it. Thanks for staying active and giving Justin and I lots of LOL and WTF moments.
Finally, Justin: thank you for picking up the slack on the nights I wanted to sleep early. <3 And putting up with my constant humming of Culture Club songs.
PS: a word of advice.
Never host a game that requires so many actions - especially when so many of them require detailed feedback.