The Syndicate

Good guys all played awesome. I never felt for a second like I had anyone convinced that I was anything but bad upon my return.

I'd like to thank everyone for taking part in this game; it was so much fun to read. The roleplay was fantastic from pretty much everyone, including the folks who hadn't even seen the show before the game started -- I was so impressed with y'all especially. I hope you enjoyed it at least for its simplicity and laid-back atmosphere.

MVP VOTING:

Please PM me the name of one player you felt stood above the rest and performed at the highest standard. Once the votes are tallied I will announce the top three, and the #1 nominated MVP will be eligible for the eventual Heist All-Star Game.

ROLEPLAY VOTING:

I'd also like a vote from everyone for the person they thought was the most entertaining roleplayer. That was the whole attraction of this game after all, or it was supposed to be, and I'd love to recognize those who you all vote for. I'll also vote in this category.

Neither of these awards will feature banners for signatures, but bragging rights and personal pride live on anyway. Thanks again everyone for playing Arrested Development Mafia.

Official winners for the sake of Hall of Fame statistics:

a2thezebra, G-Man, lovedelic, Metalmarsh89, MovingPictures07, Sloonei (1.0), Sorsha, Spacedaisy, thellama73, Turnip Head

Phew! Glad the baddies conceded because I would have run out of material for a Day 5. Turnip Head is right. I treated each day like a season of the show for George Michael Bluth. There was no eason 5 to this show, so I dreading coming up with original content. It probably would have been like bad fan ficton.

In other news, holy crap I won a game! That hasn't happened since Big Lebowski Mafia on The Piano.

Haha good game everyone. Thanks for conceding baddies, it wouldn't have been much fun to drag it out. Thanks for hosting Jay!

MVP voting will be tough, I thought Daisy and MP both played amazing. It was a great team effort.

I should have said before: please do not vote for yourselves in either category. Nobody did that, this just a preventive measure. :P

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:I should have said before: please do not vote for yourselves in either category. Nobody did that, this just a preventive measure. :P

I thought Mrs Featherbottom was an exceptional mafia talent. I wonder where she ran off to.

I'm also glad there was a way to incorporate that video JJJ. It's fitting- even in victory, George Michael is such an awkward dweeb that wouldn't be able to relish it.

G-Man wrote:I'm also glad there was a way to incorporate that video JJJ. It's fitting- even in victory, George Michael is such an awkward dweeb that wouldn't be able to relish it.

It was physically painful to sit on that video for so long with no way to share it to the thread organically.

The highlight of the game for me was when Jay asked me to post that video. You are my hero, awkward adolescence and all, G.

I wanted to lynch my wife so bad. Too bad I wasn't playing.

Epignosis wrote:I wanted to lynch my wife so bad. Too bad I wasn't playing.

I didn't play that horibly :P You just knew I was bad.

Elohcin wrote:

Epignosis wrote:I wanted to lynch my wife so bad. Too bad I wasn't playing.

I didn't play that horibly :P You just knew I was bad.

It wasn't that- you were playing a style of game you had never played before (open setup, 1 cop, vanilla mafia).

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:

G-Man wrote:I'm also glad there was a way to incorporate that video JJJ. It's fitting- even in victory, George Michael is such an awkward dweeb that wouldn't be able to relish it.

It was physically painful to sit on that video for so long with no way to share it to the thread organically.

Having never watched the show before, I turned to the Arrested Development wiki to help me understand the role. I also turned to YouTube for help. This was one of the first videos of George Michael that I saw. It had to be recreated.

From the baddie chat:

Elohcin:
I would be down with killing sorsha. She goes after me every game we are in together.


Um... What? And when was this?

This was a fun game to watch & mod~ the role playing was hilarious

Daisy was the cop? I thought it was TH

Sorsha wrote:From the baddie chat:

Elohcin:
I would be down with killing sorsha. She goes after me every game we are in together.


Um... What? And when was this?

This was after I I suggested killing SD. Wilgy anted to kill you instead. And yes, from my recollection, you go after me every game we're in together.

That's news to me

I started thinking Daisy was the cop after this post and then I knew for sure after this one. Right after that, MP came out with his third or fourth cop claim so I assumed he saw the same thing I did. I figured he was trying to bait the kill so I tried to help him out :P Everyone played that perfectly.

The mafia probably would have still been screwed even if they killed Daisy that night, because I think MP and I would have kept working together and Daisy had it narrowed down to just the two of us and the baddies.

Not if we killed her Night 2!!! I should have fought for what I thought we should do instead of folding so easily.

Elohcin wrote:Not if we killed her Night 2!!! I should have fought for what I thought we should do instead of folding so easily.

Funny how you and I are so different in real life compared to Mafia.

Yay, we won!

I think Daisy, TH, and I made a pretty good trio.

I actually started suspecting Daisy was the cop when I was feeling her out on Day 2, but then pretty much knew for sure in the post you highlighted, TH, so I went into overdrive mode thereon forward trying to keep her alive. Glad it worked.

This game was an absolute blast that has reminded me why I love playing mafia with you all so much. Props to Elo, Wilgy, and Sloonei 2.0 for a well-attempted bad guy effort, and to my other fellow good guys as well.

And... holy shit, G-Man, your roleplay considering you've never seen the show... and that video! That's the greatest thing I've ever seen. So awesome. A clap to Sloonei as well for his hilarious Tobias roleplay. I'm with JJJ that the roleplaying was excellent all around.

This has to go down as one of the just most all-around fun games I've ever played.

Elohcin wrote:Not if we killed her Night 2!!! I should have fought for what I thought we should do instead of folding so easily.

That would have drastically changed things indeed. Somehow everyone of my peeks was still alive. If I had peeked the wrong people it would have changed things too, but you guys kept choosing the unexpected kills. So why not do some seer hunting? I was confused by that early on.

I really thought you guys would kill me last night, but even if you had I was sure that TH and MP at least had followed what I laid out and it was all there for the civs. MP did a great job of baiting the kill last night though.

For the record, I never peeked MP because I was that certain he was civ. he has only fooled me a couple times in games and I just was not seeing any baddie signs in him at all, but put that together with the choice of kills and I just knew there was no way it was him. The choice of kills was also a lot of why I believe TH was civ.

I was trying to wait for the perfect time to say "Marry me!" But I got too caught up in the game and never did find it.

I was extra pleased to adopt the strategy of fake peeking to success here, even though I initially blew it by peeking Elo as my n0 peek multiple times. Lol.

More civilians should have peeked though... when only 5 of us did (and 2 of them were mafia!), I was really scared that the mafia were going to narrow down the cop quickly. It makes no sense for the cop to leave no breadcrumbs behind, so I was shocked when zebra and Sorsha were killed.

MovingPictures07 wrote:I was extra pleased to adopt the strategy of fake peeking to success here, even though I initially blew it by peeking Elo as my n0 peek multiple times. Lol.

More civilians should have peeked though... when only 5 of us did (and 2 of them were mafia!), I was really scared that the mafia were going to narrow down the cop quickly. It makes no sense for the cop to leave no breadcrumbs behind, so I was shocked when zebra and Sorsha were killed.

Wow yeah, I just realized that you and I were the only non-cop civilians to do that I think it really works in this setup, though it's odd that the mafia didn't try to take us out based on this. I think the kill targets was the mafia's major misstep. So I guess it worked out this time.

MovingPictures07 wrote:I was extra pleased to adopt the strategy of fake peeking to success here, even though I initially blew it by peeking Elo as my n0 peek multiple times. Lol.

More civilians should have peeked though... when only 5 of us did (and 2 of them were mafia!), I was really scared that the mafia were going to narrow down the cop quickly. It makes no sense for the cop to leave no breadcrumbs behind, so I was shocked when zebra and Sorsha were killed.

Yeah, so there is the weakness of fake cop. They basically had two choices, TH or daisy... or that neither of them were.

I think the best approach to such a fake claim gambit is to get lots of people on board before you do it. I'm on board for trying it out sometime.

Indeed, I actually asked everyone if they wanted to throw out peeks in MM's Tree Mafia, but no one took me up on it and DrWilgy found me suspicious for it, so it died immediately. It'd be nice to get it more widespread in a subsequent game, since it's riskier the less people that do it.

The cop cover in this game was fantastic. Let's not forget Sorsha, who not only called Doc as a baddie but also suggested he was distancing from Elohcin. That's cover by virtue of being spot on a read -- so much so that they assumed she had information.

For Daisy to make it to Day 4 with ALL of her peeks still alive is perfect execution of the cop role. That's a very rare achievement in this setup.

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:The cop cover in this game was fantastic. Let's not forget Sorsha, who not only called Doc as a baddie but also suggested he was distancing from Elohcin. That's cover by virtue of being spot on a read -- so much so that they assumed she had information.

And yeah, that's true! Accidental cop cover by virtue of being correct in reads like that is pretty awesome.

And I agree on Daisy having her peeks all alive; I've never seen or ever heard of that happening. Crazy!

MovingPictures07 wrote:Indeed, I actually asked everyone if they wanted to throw out peeks in MM's Tree Mafia, but no one took me up on it and DrWilgy found me suspicious for it, so it died immediately. It'd be nice to get it more widespread in a subsequent game, since it's riskier the less people that do it.

It worked so well in this game I think people will have a hard time not using the strategy in the future.

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:Official winners for the sake of Hall of Fame statistics:

a2thezebra, G-Man, lovedelic, Metalmarsh89, MovingPictures07, Sloonei (1.0), Sorsha, Spacedaisy, thellama73, Turnip Head

Go figure. I win a heist while being mafia's best friend. :P

I won as town while being mafia.

Sloonei wrote:I won as town while being mafia.

I did consider telling Sloonei he'd only be eligible to win the game with his second faction, but I decided it wasn't really important. He was putting in a genuine anti-town effort and that's all that matters.

MovingPictures07 wrote:And... holy shit, G-Man, your roleplay considering you've never seen the show... and that video! That's the greatest thing I've ever seen. So awesome.

I honestly have no idea how well my posts sounded like George Michael. I just went for stereotypical awkward teen filler phrases. Here are the notes I took off of the Arrested Development wiki:
I just tried to work in references to as many of those things as I could without knowing the full-episode context. When Metalmarsh died, it sort of torpedoed a lot of my options for Day 3 and 4 tension with him. I actually wanted to trust him because his role was my role's father. HOST- was there a method to how you picked the baddies or was it random?

The roleplay element of the game was a big plus for me because I could throw myself deep into it instead of coming up with one of my usual cheeky antics. I'm terrible at reading people and I didn't have enough time to truly digest what everyone was saying. I only ever read back maybe one page if that. Full re-reads would have been too time consuming but not doing so really left me flat-footed. I was pretty lucky that three of the four people I was completely neutral on and came to trust were civvies (MP, SD, & TH). I think I listened to TH more than anyone else. His support of MP held me back from pursuing his lynch after Metalmarsh went down. You guys basically pulled me to victory, so thank you.

I knew going in to this game that my vote analysis wasn't going to be very helpful. These setups are too short for vote crunching to be effective. Only one of my top three was even bad (Ricochet/Sloonei 2.0). It was still neat to see how useful it could be but it definitely takes a backseat to tone reads in such a small setting. Maybe playing more of these smaller games will help me improve my people-reading skills.

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:For Daisy to make it to Day 4 with ALL of her peeks still alive is perfect execution of the cop role. That's a very rare achievement in this setup.

THIS! What are the odds that a cop would check all the civvies still living when it came to crunch time? Call it luck or call it skill, it was simply amazing.

It was luck mostly.

G-Man wrote:HOST- was there a method to how you picked the baddies or was it random?

It was entirely random. It must be for this kind of roleplay concept to work -- the only alternative is to allow character and alignment to be related, but give the bad team fake characters that they can pretend to be instead of their real evil characters. Both of these methods are quite common on RYM.

G-Man wrote:I knew going in to this game that my vote analysis wasn't going to be very helpful. These setups are too short for vote crunching to be effective. Only one of my top three was even bad (Ricochet/Sloonei 2.0). It was still neat to see how useful it could be but it definitely takes a backseat to tone reads in such a small setting.

It can still be effective; it's just less likely to be a top priority when the cop survives this long. It is definitely common for cops to be eliminated early in this setup, and without him/her voting and behavioral analysis are all that remain in a vanilla game.

Good going, civvies! Sorry I wasn't around in the final day. I had visitors this weekend and wasn't really able to check in.

I'll close the voting tonight.

One more hour and I'll call it final.

Voting is closed. Results coming up shortly...

I was going to announce the top three for each, but that'd mean a ton of ties so I'll just do the top two.

BEST ROLEPLAYER

A number of people received votes for this, and that's fitting because a lot of people did a great job with it. The flavor was intertwined beautifully with the Mafia, and I had a ton of fun watching it develop.

The runner up is:
And the winner for best roleplay is:
Awesome job to both of you, and thank you for a great roleplaying effort.

Aw farts, I forgot about the unreadable spoiler font. Scroll over to see. It's just more suspense. :P

MOST VALUABLE PLAYER

This was a close vote, with two players competing hard for a spot in the Heist All-Star Game.

The runner up is:
The MVP of Arrested Development Mafia is:
Well played to both of you. Daisy, we'll see you in the all-star game.

It was a pleasure hosting for you. Thanks one more time everyone for taking part, and thanks S~V~S for proving about 800 moderator assists with the thread permissions.

Congrats G-Man and SpaceDaisy! Well deserved by both of you

Yay! Congrats you guys. Also go civs!

Oh wow, thanks guys! I don't really feel all that deserving since I never saw the show before. My wife and I usually binge watch TV show seasons over the summer. I'll see if she'll watch this show with me. Once I've seen it, I might be tempted to read back through this game to see how much more of everyone's antics make sense in context.

I do want to apologize for being AWOL for most of Day 3. Work was insane and our daughter gave us just four hours of sleep the first night of the Day 3 phase. We also had a birthday party to go to over that weekend. Life happens.

Congrats, G-Man and Spacedaisy!!! You both deserve it for sure.

Though, Sloonei as Tobias... brilliant! Too bad we couldn't give two roleplaying awards.