A few final thoughts and tid-bits for you to wrap things up on my end:
1) The debate over the timing of replacements was impossible for me to answer while the game was going on. I didn't want to sway you guys one way or the other because that could have either implicated Quin or provided a shield from some of the scrutiny he faced. Let me explain how I replaced and when- Quin was the first vote for 'maybe/replacement' in the sign-up thread. Indiglo was the second. Glorfindel was given time to make up his mind as to whether he needed to tap out or not. He had at least arrived, read his role PM and posted in the thread. Sanmateo never read the role PM, so they were the first to be replaced once the mandatory replacement prerequisites were met. It actually had nothing to do with the fact that sanmateo was a baddie. Birdwithteeth11 and Glorfindel read their role PMs and showed up, so they got slack for that. Within an hour of putting Quin into the game, BWT requested to be replaced. BWT would have gotten an extra day had he not contacted me to tap out.
2) Except for the Beginning of the End posts, all of the day and night post titles were song titles. Back in the days of The Piano, I wrote my posts to match the mood or tone of a song and post that song as the soundtrack for the post. This time around, I got partial inspiration from the songs the posts are named after but I mostly picked song titles that sounded like they would fit a violent, pre-apocalyptic tale or the direction the post was going. They didn't always line up well.
Posts named after The Stooges songs:
DAY 0: Down on the Street
DAY 1: Not Right
DAY 2: No Fun
DAY 3: Dirt
DAY 4: Loose
DAY 5: I Wanna Be Your Dog
DAY 6: Death Trip
DAY 7: Gimme Danger
DAY 8: Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell
DAY 9: Beat That Guy
DAY 10: Shake Appeal
DAY 11: Little Doll
DAY 12: Search and Destroy
Posts named after AC/DC songs:
DAY 0: Riff Raff
NIGHT 1: Kicked in the Teeth
NIGHT 2: If You Want Blood (You've Got It)
NIGHT 3: Thunderstruck
NIGHT 4: High Voltage
NIGHT 5: Gimme a Bullet
NIGHT 6: Highway to Hell
NIGHT 7: Baptism by Fire
NIGHT 8: She's Got Balls
NIGHT 9: R.I.P. (Rock In Peace)
NIGHT 10: Night Prowler
NIGHT 11: Evil Walks
ENDGAME: Ride On
3) Had the baddies won, their victory post would have been titled "Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be" after the AC/DC song. Bubba wrote 'HELL' on the town sign (a reference to
High Plains Drifter), and the town would have become something of a hell to those townsfolk unable to escape from the gang.
4) At the beginning of the Mad Max movie (the video clip I played to start the game), you can hear one of the officers mention that the Nightrider killed a rookie cop while escaping from Sun City. In the 'old days,' hosts would write themselves as the baddies' first victim. That's why I wrote the pre-game posts in the sign-up thread about me as a rookie working alongside the Sun City MFP.
5) I didn't start the game with the MFP rookies in mind as characters in the narrative posts. At first, I just kept it vague about which MFP officers were wasting people in the lynch posts. As we started to run light on MFP characters, I just made the rookies a part of the story. Lazy storytelling but it worked out okay this time. I hope no one was insulted by me having them repeat some of the faulty logic or incorrect reasons for lynching some of the civvies.
6) Secrets and clues hidden in the narrative host posts include:
Night 1- Fifi Macafee was alive and failed to locate an MFP that night.
Night 2- Fifi started the night alive and struck out again.
Day 3- Max was still alive (I used a clip of the movie where Max kills Toecutter).
Night 3- May Swaisey and Commissioner Labatouche were still alive. Labatouche was successful that night.
Day 4- Silvertongue was still alive to do the pardoning.
Day 5- Jim Goose was still alive.
Night 5- Vague hint that Max was still alive. The post title and later posts confirm that MacDougall chose the bullet as his means of death.
Day 6- Jim Goose is still alive.
Day 8- Glorfindel revealed to be missing a hand is a reference to the film. Cundalini lost a hand trying to stop Jessie from getting away in her car.
Night 8- May Swaisey is still alive.
Day 9- Vague hint that Goose is still alive because his bike is still around.
Night 11- Outs LoRab as Barry and confirms that Jim Goose is the final civvie left.
7) Motel Room's death scene Night 6 was originally written for JaggedJimmyJay. The request for a helmet was to be Neil Hartley's way of ensuring his fans could hold an open-casket funeral for him. I read into the persona of Neil Hartley that he is a tad vain and wouldn't want his pretty face mangled anyway. The baddies suspected Jimmy was May at that point and had waited him out to try and catch him on a night when he wouldn't self-protect. They waited him out perfectly but changed the kill to Motel Room late, thinking that he had BTSC with another player. I had to edit out all the Neil Hartley references in favor of a vague unknown victim until the very end of the post. Regardless of who it was for, that was one of my favorite night posts to write all game.
8) The baddies were going to kill LoRab Night 7 but changed their minds near the end of the night once again. They tried for LoRab on Night 8 instead but Jimmy protected her. They did manage to block her that night though. That made her an ineligible block or kill target on Night 9, when LoRab gave Sloonei the protection that won the game for the civvies. If anything, Nights 6 and 7 lost the game for the baddies because they changed their minds on their kill targets.
9) Epignosis tried to draw out the kill as the Station Master because the longer that role was in the game to greater the advantage to the baddies. Epi voted for sanmateo (later replaced by Quin) on Day 1, leaving the Station Master's only vote in the game as one that was cancelled out.
10) Glorfindel's second lynch post title, "Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell," was one I was saving in case Jessie got lynched. In the film, Toecutter teased her by telling her she had a pretty face, but what good would she be if she lost her looks. Scotty 2.0 was Jessie and NK'd Night 7, freeing that title up for anyone else.
11) After the Night 3 post, which effectively cleared Jimmy as a civvie, I made a conscious effort to be more vague in the night posts. The baddies weren't happy about it because there was no way Jimmy would get lynched after that, forcing them into timing a kill on him to beat any other possible protections from May. In the 'old days,' posts were dripping with the comings and goings of the different characters still alive. From a process of elimination standpoint, I can see how that makes it a tad harder on the baddies. Not everybody pays as close attention to those details but I definitely learned where I need to adapt my style to fit this audience better.
12) I was a little surprised there was no in-thread discussion of how the Max and the MFP guys could coordinate their searches. Scotty getting lynched Day 1 rendered MP07 as vanilla civvie the rest of the game, but the other three players (Wilgy, Motel Room, and Mac) managed 13 searches between the three of them, which covered 13 players but nobody gained BTSC. I was surprised that nobody struck gold on that front.
13) My original Mad Max game was run on The Piano six or so years ago. It only had 12 roles in it. Roop & Charlie were trying for BTSC just like this game, as were Sarse & Scuttle. Max. I don't think Max was trying for BTSC with his family but he would have turned serial killer had Jessie and Sprog died. I think Fifi had the same ability, as did Goose (who survived a Day 4 lynch only to be killed by the baddies Night 4 to clinch the game). Cundalini wasn't part of the original game, so only Toecutter, Johnny, and Bubba were the baddies. That game was a total blowout for the baddies. The civvies mislynched four straight days and never caught a baddie. That game was plagued by missing votes. Out of 26 total votes cast all game, only 4 votes were for baddies.
Of the players in the original game, familiar names around here include aapje, Black Rock, canucklehead, S~V~S, Tranq, and Typhoony. S~V~S was the only one to play both versions, which was pretty cool and special for me. There's a Gunslinger game of mine laying in suspended animation, waiting for a reboot. Hopefully she'll be up for revisiting that one too.
Get him to come back. Make Mafia Great Again!
