Zack
99% hot gas
Yeah. Vengeance was anti-LOTR regardless of faction.
None Shall Pass 2 [Game Thread - Concluded]
- Thread starter Zack
- Start date
Buddhafish
Abbey Road
OH YEAH!!!!
GG to all, great game Zack. I had a lot of fun!
GG to all, great game Zack. I had a lot of fun!
Internet Flea
Warlord
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2015
- Messages
- 188
WOO, TECHNICAL VICTORY!!
And it looks like I was right about either Snerk or Buddhafish being scum, even though the whole premise of me thinking that was wrong. That's always fun.
And it looks like I was right about either Snerk or Buddhafish being scum, even though the whole premise of me thinking that was wrong. That's always fun.
Zack
99% hot gas
Morgoth:
The big bads. They were the main LOTR non-town faction, although I included one Star Wars character to throw people off. They were designed to be able to operate through the shadows, survive, and integrate naturally into the town network.
Backwards Logic (Morgoth):
A very powerful godfather role. BL had the most useful scan in the game, and its use was the primary source of the Empire's early demise. He could survive one nightkill, which he did, and was immune to most scans (i.e. wouldn't penetrate his cover role). He was doing quite well, but unfortunately Vengeance discovered he was Elrond Night 1 and kept attacking him until he died.
Count Dingdong (Balrog):
The primary killer. He couldn't be tracked, watched, roleblocked, and his kill bypassed protection. He had the powers of a serial killer other than nightkill resistance, basically. There has been a tidal wave of criticism of his cover role, so here is my rationale for it:
a) Since he couldn't be tracked/watched and all he could do was kill, he needed a cover that wouldn't expose this. The cover ability I provided was unverifiable while CD was still alive. It also doesn't seem like a cover ability, which is a problem I've experienced with cover roles in the past. Plus Backwards Logic had this ability in Darths & Droids and almost survived to the game's end, and I caught a lot of flak when I suggested killing him (since there wouldn't be much of a loss), so I didn't think people would be so quick to kill someone with this claimed ability. I suppose something like claiming bulletproof would have worked, but that could have the same problem of someone testing his ability by trying to kill him.
b) If CD's evil alignment was discovered, the King of the Dead is a role that could plausibly be evil. For what it's worth, I'm 90% sure Verarde killed Count because of his alignment and not because of his claimed ability, and a different cover role wouldn't have changed this.
azzaman333 (Boromir):
I wanted to mess with people's preconceived notions about the universes and who's "good" and "bad" in them, and this was part of that. I worried that azzaman's ability was overpowered, and it was indeed very powerful - it doubled as an ability scan and used the ability. For example, if Takhisis had the Ring and azzaman targeted him, then azza would kill Tak and steal the Ring (this is how azza stole the Ring from christos). Using this ability scan can gain him townie cred and get him involved in networks (although there didn't seem to be much of a town network in this game).
Funnily enough, azzaman played Boromir in both NSP games.
remake20 (Jar Jar Binks):
This ability is all about networking, but no one targeted remake the whole game except his killer. There was some talk that Jar Jar would get lynched/killed because people don't like Jar Jar, but I think that's silly and untrue. Maybe it would happen on Day 1 if that somehow came up, but otherwise people are always going to prioritize going after an actual case than disliking a character (which is exactly how remake's demise played out, it had nothing to do with him being Jar Jar). If anything, I figured people would find Jar Jar an unlikely scum or cover role for that very reason.
The kill started with Count Dingdong, then went to Jar Jar (because he had no active ability), then azza and finally BL. The last remaining member could both kill and use their personal active ability. (EDIT: The Berserker was the Morgoth team's kill after the Balrog died.)
All in all, I disagree with the common opinion that the Morgoth team was dealt an unfair hand. Rather, they had extraordinarily bad luck. I was actually worried pre-game that they might be a little too powerful (the town was not nearly as strong as people seem to think, a lot of the scans and abilities were misleading or prone to failure). Consider how incredibly unusual it is for vigilantes to be so accurate with their kills. People are assuming that because they were eliminated early, they must have been underpowered, which isn't necessarily true. They could have easily run away with the game if their luck wasn't so terrible.
I think the game suffered from their early demise and became a lot less interesting, but those are the breaks in a game as highly variable as this one.
The big bads. They were the main LOTR non-town faction, although I included one Star Wars character to throw people off. They were designed to be able to operate through the shadows, survive, and integrate naturally into the town network.
Backwards Logic (Morgoth):
Spoiler :
A very powerful godfather role. BL had the most useful scan in the game, and its use was the primary source of the Empire's early demise. He could survive one nightkill, which he did, and was immune to most scans (i.e. wouldn't penetrate his cover role). He was doing quite well, but unfortunately Vengeance discovered he was Elrond Night 1 and kept attacking him until he died.
Count Dingdong (Balrog):
Spoiler :
The primary killer. He couldn't be tracked, watched, roleblocked, and his kill bypassed protection. He had the powers of a serial killer other than nightkill resistance, basically. There has been a tidal wave of criticism of his cover role, so here is my rationale for it:
a) Since he couldn't be tracked/watched and all he could do was kill, he needed a cover that wouldn't expose this. The cover ability I provided was unverifiable while CD was still alive. It also doesn't seem like a cover ability, which is a problem I've experienced with cover roles in the past. Plus Backwards Logic had this ability in Darths & Droids and almost survived to the game's end, and I caught a lot of flak when I suggested killing him (since there wouldn't be much of a loss), so I didn't think people would be so quick to kill someone with this claimed ability. I suppose something like claiming bulletproof would have worked, but that could have the same problem of someone testing his ability by trying to kill him.
b) If CD's evil alignment was discovered, the King of the Dead is a role that could plausibly be evil. For what it's worth, I'm 90% sure Verarde killed Count because of his alignment and not because of his claimed ability, and a different cover role wouldn't have changed this.
azzaman333 (Boromir):
Spoiler :
I wanted to mess with people's preconceived notions about the universes and who's "good" and "bad" in them, and this was part of that. I worried that azzaman's ability was overpowered, and it was indeed very powerful - it doubled as an ability scan and used the ability. For example, if Takhisis had the Ring and azzaman targeted him, then azza would kill Tak and steal the Ring (this is how azza stole the Ring from christos). Using this ability scan can gain him townie cred and get him involved in networks (although there didn't seem to be much of a town network in this game).
Funnily enough, azzaman played Boromir in both NSP games.
remake20 (Jar Jar Binks):
Spoiler :
This ability is all about networking, but no one targeted remake the whole game except his killer. There was some talk that Jar Jar would get lynched/killed because people don't like Jar Jar, but I think that's silly and untrue. Maybe it would happen on Day 1 if that somehow came up, but otherwise people are always going to prioritize going after an actual case than disliking a character (which is exactly how remake's demise played out, it had nothing to do with him being Jar Jar). If anything, I figured people would find Jar Jar an unlikely scum or cover role for that very reason.
The kill started with Count Dingdong, then went to Jar Jar (because he had no active ability), then azza and finally BL. The last remaining member could both kill and use their personal active ability. (EDIT: The Berserker was the Morgoth team's kill after the Balrog died.)
All in all, I disagree with the common opinion that the Morgoth team was dealt an unfair hand. Rather, they had extraordinarily bad luck. I was actually worried pre-game that they might be a little too powerful (the town was not nearly as strong as people seem to think, a lot of the scans and abilities were misleading or prone to failure). Consider how incredibly unusual it is for vigilantes to be so accurate with their kills. People are assuming that because they were eliminated early, they must have been underpowered, which isn't necessarily true. They could have easily run away with the game if their luck wasn't so terrible.
I think the game suffered from their early demise and became a lot less interesting, but those are the breaks in a game as highly variable as this one.
Snerk
Smeghead
This game was pretty epic, and I had a lot of fun playing this. Good game everybody.
Big thanks to Zack for hosting such a great game!
Now to go browse those QTs. I'll be very disappointed if I don't find a decent amount of Snerk-bashing. I really couldn't figure out why I was being left alive in the end-game. But with Buddha not having a cover then it makes more sense. Only thing I'm miffed about it not getting my PG. Sprig suggested I scan Backwards way back in the early game, should have listened to that one. But all in all, I'm a very happy camper.
Big thanks to Zack for hosting such a great game!
Now to go browse those QTs. I'll be very disappointed if I don't find a decent amount of Snerk-bashing. I really couldn't figure out why I was being left alive in the end-game. But with Buddha not having a cover then it makes more sense. Only thing I'm miffed about it not getting my PG. Sprig suggested I scan Backwards way back in the early game, should have listened to that one. But all in all, I'm a very happy camper.
Zack
99% hot gas
Vengeance:
The secondary scum faction, more of a serial killer team than anything. They were considered a "threat to the town" that needed to be eliminated as long as any LOTR characters were still alive.
choxorn (Luke Skywalker):
choxorn was motivated by revenge for LOTR's victory in the first game. Initially the other SW survivor (C-3PO) from None Shall Pass was his partner in the quest for vengeance, but I decided against it to avoid predictability.
I didn't anticipate choxorn attacking a LOTR character every single time, but that was probably naive of me after how quickly people separated into SW/LOTR camps in the first game. I probably shouldn't have made two of the characters choxorn wanted to kill for his PG members of Morgoth, but I figured it was unlikely that he would find and kill both of them (which, of course, is exactly what happened, and very early at that). Vengeance found all three of them by Night 4, naturally.
Before the game, I wasn't totally satisfied with my solution to choxorn being converted to the Jedi Order, so of course he was recruited Night 1. I think it ended up working quite well, though. choxorn mostly retained his own Vengeance goal when converted, but if he had survived the game he still would have counted as a member of the Jedi Order. In retrospect, it might have made more sense to simply make him not recruitable.
I used generic descriptors such as Warrior and Lightsaber Man to avoid identifying specific characters and also to create ambiguity about their motivations, whether they were vigilantes or something more sinister.
Buddhafish (Jango Fett):
My reasoning for including Jango in the quest for Vengeance was that he blamed the LOTR characters for his son's death (in the first game, Boba was a vanilla convert to the Star Wars Cult and killed himself when Vader was lynched, which was largely LOTR-driven).
Buddhafish gained the option to kill (as the Assassin) instead of scanning after choxorn died. He opted not to kill Night 8 in order to implicate Verarde and encourage the theory that the Warrior/Assassin was the same person.
The secondary scum faction, more of a serial killer team than anything. They were considered a "threat to the town" that needed to be eliminated as long as any LOTR characters were still alive.
choxorn (Luke Skywalker):
Spoiler :
choxorn was motivated by revenge for LOTR's victory in the first game. Initially the other SW survivor (C-3PO) from None Shall Pass was his partner in the quest for vengeance, but I decided against it to avoid predictability.
I didn't anticipate choxorn attacking a LOTR character every single time, but that was probably naive of me after how quickly people separated into SW/LOTR camps in the first game. I probably shouldn't have made two of the characters choxorn wanted to kill for his PG members of Morgoth, but I figured it was unlikely that he would find and kill both of them (which, of course, is exactly what happened, and very early at that). Vengeance found all three of them by Night 4, naturally.
Before the game, I wasn't totally satisfied with my solution to choxorn being converted to the Jedi Order, so of course he was recruited Night 1. I think it ended up working quite well, though. choxorn mostly retained his own Vengeance goal when converted, but if he had survived the game he still would have counted as a member of the Jedi Order. In retrospect, it might have made more sense to simply make him not recruitable.
I used generic descriptors such as Warrior and Lightsaber Man to avoid identifying specific characters and also to create ambiguity about their motivations, whether they were vigilantes or something more sinister.
Buddhafish (Jango Fett):
Spoiler :
My reasoning for including Jango in the quest for Vengeance was that he blamed the LOTR characters for his son's death (in the first game, Boba was a vanilla convert to the Star Wars Cult and killed himself when Vader was lynched, which was largely LOTR-driven).
Buddhafish gained the option to kill (as the Assassin) instead of scanning after choxorn died. He opted not to kill Night 8 in order to implicate Verarde and encourage the theory that the Warrior/Assassin was the same person.
Zack
99% hot gas
People have wondered why there was a lack of LOTR factions. Here's my explanation:
- It's not as bad as it looks. Morgoth was mostly LOTR and the main antagonist, and the Empire was intended to be a hybrid SW-LOTR faction (their starting members were both Star Wars, but most of the people they could recruit were LOTR).
- I wanted to make it harder for Vengeance to pass themselves off as sympathetic to the town. To win, they would need to kill a lot of townies, which they did.
- I think Morgoth, Jedi Order, and the Empire are a decently balanced distribution of SW-LOTR non-town factions when taken collectively. The nature of Vengeance depended on the outcome of None Shall Pass. If SW Town won that game, Vengeance would have been comprised of LOTR characters.
- It's not as bad as it looks. Morgoth was mostly LOTR and the main antagonist, and the Empire was intended to be a hybrid SW-LOTR faction (their starting members were both Star Wars, but most of the people they could recruit were LOTR).
- I wanted to make it harder for Vengeance to pass themselves off as sympathetic to the town. To win, they would need to kill a lot of townies, which they did.
- I think Morgoth, Jedi Order, and the Empire are a decently balanced distribution of SW-LOTR non-town factions when taken collectively. The nature of Vengeance depended on the outcome of None Shall Pass. If SW Town won that game, Vengeance would have been comprised of LOTR characters.
Buddhafish
Abbey Road
Which worked to absolute perfection.
The strategy about Verarde that is.
The strategy about Verarde that is.
Buddhafish
Abbey Road
I just do well in Zack games.
Zack Mafia IV: Lived to the end as neutral
NSP: Lived to the (almost?) end as town
NSP2: Won as Vengence.
Zack, HOST MORE GAMES!!!
But in all seriousness, great game Zack, I really enjoyed it.
Zack Mafia IV: Lived to the end as neutral
NSP: Lived to the (almost?) end as town
NSP2: Won as Vengence.
Zack, HOST MORE GAMES!!!
But in all seriousness, great game Zack, I really enjoyed it.
Zack
99% hot gas
You were scum in Zack Mafia IV.
Visorslash
Deity
And we lynched you eventually in that game didn't we? Zack 4
Visorslash
Deity
Good game all, thanks for hosting zack. Well played Buddha.
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
I think I still dont understand Snerk.
To be perfectly honest, I strongly suspected you of being Vengeance, simply because several of your decisions actively made the Town's position worse.
Visorslash
Deity
Oh and well played by Verarde, you definitely kept town in it.
Snerk
Smeghead
Why I worked with the Jedi? They weren't going to kill me. And there was the possibility of being recruited.
Why I ignored Vengeance? I was SW and Vengeance was compatible with town victory. I knew little about them and had no idea Buddha was the last one though.
Why I turned on Verarde? I genuinely suspected him of being the assassin. Riedquat's role made me think ring corruption was a thing.
Well that's taking it a little too far I think. But I sure didn't want to ruin the order's reputation completely as long as there was a chance I was getting recruited. You're also forgetting that I was the one who revealed Edse and Legato as order. And after you died, I worked for getting edse lynched.
Zack
99% hot gas
It's also easy to judge the actions of the living when you have access to all the information in the dead qt. 
Sorry for killing you all, Morgoth. Like Zack said, Buddhafish and I had finding and killing two of you as our PG's, and we managed to get very lucky with our early scans.
And honestly, I have to thank Sprig for my always hitting LOTR characters- it was his networking that gave me an easy list of who almost everyone was. Thanks, Sprig.
The Jedi's goal was initially "kill the Empire and Morgoth" then switched to "kill the LOTR" after the Empire died. Would the Jedi's goals have switched in a different way if their enemies had died in a different order? Would the Empire's goals have switched?
And honestly, I have to thank Sprig for my always hitting LOTR characters- it was his networking that gave me an easy list of who almost everyone was. Thanks, Sprig.
The Jedi's goal was initially "kill the Empire and Morgoth" then switched to "kill the LOTR" after the Empire died. Would the Jedi's goals have switched in a different way if their enemies had died in a different order? Would the Empire's goals have switched?
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