LoM2 - Dev Journal and Character Abilities

[John Doe]

I made the choice to target Mal the moment Ashe PM'd me. That was before anyone had posted in the Day 1 thread except for Ashe. I never took into account what abilities you had, what alignment you might have, or anything relevant. It boiled down to "If I was supposed to die, who would I want to die the MOST instead of me?" I'll be honest, it was a coin toss between Mal and Waff, but I went with Mal in the end. It was worth it.

[Mal Nova]

Costing the Town is always worth it eh?

[John Doe]

HAHAHAHAHAHA

[Kaden]

Mal... even if you had lived, I think you overestimate everyone else's willingness to listen to you.

[Ashe]

Fizz was easily my favorite character of the game.

User Name: Kaden
Character Name: Caitlyn
Faction: Mafia
Ability: Yordle Snap Trap - Place a trap on target player. If they attempt to use a Night Ability that will target a player, their ability will not resolve and their character name will be revealed to all. Night Ability.
Posting Rule: None

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User Name: John Doe
Character Name: LeBlanc
Faction: Town
Ability: Mirror Image - At the beginning of the game, choose one player. If an action or lynch would happen to you, it would happen to that player instead. Lynch votes against you will be totalled seperately from your target, not adding together, and thus can not make a majority vote if one would otherwise not happen. One Time Use. Triggered Ability.
Posting Rule: None

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User Name: Tyr
Character Name: Soraka
Faction: Mafia
Ability: Wish - Saves all players from a kill attempt that would be made on them that Night or Day Phase, to include Lynch, Execute, or similar. Day Ability or Night Ability. One Time Use.
Posting Rule: None

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User Name: Vad
Character Name: Viktor
Faction: Town
Ability: Death Ray - You fire a beam across the town, causing all players performing a Night Action to have +1 added to any vote totals made against them the next Day Phase unless that total is 0 before modifiers. If you wish, you may Augment: Death this Ability, killing target player but losing the Death Ray Ability. Night Ability.
Posting Rule: None

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User Name: Rafael
Character Name: Shaco
Faction: Town
Ability: Deceive - If a player targets you with an Ability this Night Phase, their target will instead be themself. Only useable on Night 2, Night 4, and Night 6. Night Ability.
Posting Rule: None

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User Name: Mal Nova
Character Name: Zilean
Faction: Town
Ability: Time Warp - Target players Ability, if one is used, will not take effect until the following Day Phase (if it is currently a Day Phase) or Night Phase (if it is currently a Night Phase). Two Time Use. Day Ability or Night Ability.
Posting Rule: You need to have some speed related comment in each post. Using a measurement, such as what day it is or having a week left, won't work. I want to see things like "don't be so hasty" or "hurry up" or "let's slow down a bit" or "That was quick", etc.

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User Name: Rose
Character Name: Warwick
Faction: Town
Ability: Bloodscent - If no player is Lynched, then the character, faction, and abilities of the player with the most votes will become known to you. This is not a targetted ability. Triggered Ability.
Posting Rule: Mention something about a smell, sinus problem, your nose acting up, etc. Just some smell or nose related comment.

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User Name: Kole T. Merr
Character Name: Nidalee
Faction: Town
Ability: Bushwhack - Place a trap on target player. If another player uses a Night Ability targetting that player, you will become aware and may activate Pounce during the following Night Phase. This does not affect the outcome of that Ability. Night Ability. *Pounce - You follow this character, revealing their character sheet to you. Using this Ability will make you unable to use Bushwhack that Night Phase.
Posting Rule: None

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User Name: Waffuru
Character Name: Fizz
Faction: Town
Ability: Playful/Trickster - You may make yourself untargettable during this Night Phase. If you do, you may then choose to name two characters. Those characters do not actually have to be in this game. Each of those two characters will receive a message that the other character attempted to use an Ability on them but it was prevented. This is not a targetted ability. You will not have any information revealed to you. Night Ability
Posting Rule: Throw everyone for a loop, talk like Brolaf or Gangplank, your choice.

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User Name: Keiko Brykein
Character Name: Swain
Faction: Mafia
Ability: Nevermove - Prevent a target from using their Ability this Night Phase. Night Ability. Two Time Use.
Posting Rule: None

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You are the Mafia! Please read over the rules listed in the Information post about the use and timing of the Execute Ability and any other information. Your victory condition is that any time the Mafia outnumbers the remaining Town members, you win!

There are currently three members of the Mafia. Those are Kaden, Tyr, and Keiko Brykein. You may, and are encouraged to, all communicate with each other through use of the PM system and organize how you wish to procede as well as who you wish to kill.

Remember, the person who sends me the most recent Execution target is considered to be the character using the Ability. This can backfire if someone's Ability allows it to, but if no one sends in the kill order, the Mafia will be considered to have chosen not to kill anyone that night. If an Execution fails, I will inform the player that used the Ability but I may not include more information beyond confirmation that it failed.

[Ashe]

As to how you assigned the roles, I guess you did say that they were an experiment. When I read that part of your recap post, I cringed. It made me angry that roles could even be divvied that way. I won't say that it was skewed or any bullshit like that, but I do not think that you can throw any role onto any faction and call it a day. As I've said time and time again in previous games, the "Grandma with Shotgun" should NOT be a Mafia sided role, based on risk assessment and game balance. The reason being that it gives Mafia an unneeded advantage they already have. When GwS is on the town side, ANYONE can fall victim to her, be it Town or Mafia or Other. When it is aligned with the Mafia, only Town and Other can be affected. It is true that Mafia is supposed to have the upper hand by default, but when they hold all the cards, that's when it comes down to blind luck for any other faction to win. I know that the GwS role wasn't included in this game, but my point was that roles with abilities need to be planned in this type of game and can't randomly be plucked out of a hat.

Why are you ranting about a role that was not even in this game?

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Regardless, I divide my roles randomly because of reasons LIKE what you stated above - I don't want (and this happened last game due to random choices that happened to fit a criteria that you guys insisted on following despite me warning you not to) people to be able to say "Oh, Shaco, Mordekaiser, and Singed are the most evil characters in this game. Looks like we know who the mafia are - I mean, they are most likely to have *Standard_Role_Trope1*, *Standard_Role_Trope2*, and *Standard_Role_Trope3*, which are typically mafia roles for balance so they HAVE to be mafia."

That's not how I want the game to go.

Regarding information for this game, re-look at just how much information could be gathered as a side effect of some abilities. I explicitly avoided a Twisted Fate guaranteed Sheriff role and instead went with multiple, small fragments of information that had different chances to gain information. I wanted people to communicate more in what they'd learned and piece together these fragments instead of waiting for "that one guy who can learn everything". After Rose died, who had the strongest Investigation power, everyone immediately said "We have no leads, no info, our Sheriff is dead" and that was it.

Nidalee could gather info as to what a character's name was, and if she successfully caught someone that was moving on another player, could Pounce for a full character sheet, although the likelihood was low.

Warwick gathered info but at the cost of a lynch. He also could not sense info on a tie, but he got their character sheet.

Caitlyn would publicly reveal a player's name, leaving the significance of that up to the players involved. She couldn't avoid revealing this information and it would happen even if she was killed while that trap was out.

Fizz could troll players and cause them to reveal their roles to him without him directly controlling it. He couldn't target a player (thus why he never tripped Nidalee's effect, for example) but he could name roles. Now if a player said "Hey, Shaco tried to hurt me last night!" and he named Shaco/Morgana, he would know the person talking is Morgana. If the other person said "Weird, Morgana tried to do something to me too! Thanks for whoever saved us!" then he'd know they were Shaco. It wasn't strong info gathering, but it was awesome to see in action, as well as actually throwing misinformation to the mix ("There's a Miss Fortune out there somewhere!" all while posting looking like Gangplank). My favorite part is how he was immune to Execute so the mafia were at risk of wasting multiple attempts on him, as long as he kept trolling.

I really wanted a mafia to target Shaco for Execute on Night Four, but they just didn't and went on Night Five instead. If they had, a mafia would have died.

And Kaden still would have won.

[Ashe]

Vad's Death Ray was intended to help figure out who was using Abilities during the Night Phase, but I realized late that it would cause perfect information as to who the mafia themselves were due to using Execute each night. It wouldn't be hard to figure that out, so I made the "only if their votes don't equal zero" rule. This pretty much nerfed his ability further than intended.

Zilean would be able to "lag" an Ability, even causing it to go off after the player had died for whatever reason. This would lead to people posting in chat "Hey, my ability didn't go off last night. It said it was delayed for some reason" and Zilean would know, especially on the following night when that ability resolved.

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These are very minor, but there was a lot out there. I think I might have played too much on the safe side for abilities but maybe not. There were only ten people in the game so I could only do so much with them. I also intentionally reduced the number of protection roles and kill roles this game.

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I'm already know of a lot of ways I'm going to change quite a few of those abilities and its very unfortunate that some of them had zero actual effect, but I kind of expect that to be the case due to the nature of other abilities.

I also apologize for Caitlyn's ability. Of everyone's, her's is easily the one I would say is overpowered and absolutely needs changes. I think simply stating that "You can not use this on a player you have previously targeted this game" or similar would be fine.

[Vad]

You nerfed me into the next dimension you scrub.

D:<

[John Doe]

Why are you ranting about a role that was not even in this game?

I tried to type more things here, but they either came out mean or people would ignore my arguments.

[Ashe]

Ok, then. Good feedback.