My idea behind this game was to make the initial setup exceedingly simple. The text was exceedingly short, contrary to my habit of including significant flavour text, and there were only two initial power roles - Isaac and Ranagrande, and their roles were minor or even hindrances. Isaac was a roleblocker, an ability that is not especially useful when the ninjas can send any among their numbers to perform the night kill, and when the last ninja is unblockable, but can harm the town considerably. Ranagrande was a special cop - he could send his parrot to spy on one person each night, and the parrot would repeat one randomly selected phrase their target had said. This is why I insisted that I be included in night conversations this game - anything said was liable to be repeated, which offered possible results of investigations ranging from

"Whatever that is."

to

"As for who to kill, my votes are for either Katie or the question mark guy."

Unfortunately, Ranagrande managed to never target any masons (the game was too short, really) and merely got some flavour text of people getting drunk.

The ninjas, on the other hand, started off as ordinary goons (if we had more players, they would have started with a fourth member but would have been no more than a mason group with differing objectives, which would surely have confused people a lot) but obeyed the Inverse Ninja Law so that as their numbers decreased, they became more powerful. With two members, they got a revenge kill and were immune to disease, and Napoleon would have had unblockable night kills, be immune to investigation or night kills, immune to the negative effects of most events, and would still have revenge killed the hammer vote against him. Of course, he ended up being modkilled instead.


My idea with this game was to make the setup less dependent on chance and more on the actions of the players through the events that happened each day. I chose to make the events random in order (except that the Ghost Ship wouldn't happen unless there was at least one dead pirate, of course) which may have been a mistake, but turned out fairly well, I think.

The real power roles, for example, were given out in the Treasure Island event. Participants would randomly get either: serial killer (nothing for a ninja), vigilante, combined tracker/watcher, a three-time doc, a pretty twisted thing I made up, and a ghost immunity that meant that votes from Ghost crewmembers didn't count against him and that if he was not only immune to the serial killer, but could heal him as well.

The twisted role was my continuation of that "male channeler" role from the Cairhien game which was a nuisance by its number of possibilities and the fact that you really didn't know anything. The person who got this role would be told three truths and three lies. He could have two posts investigated like a lie detector - one would work as normal and the other would generate a random result. Two players would get investigated for allegiance (pirate/ninja/serial killer) and one would get a true result, the other would be random. And two more players would be investigated for roles, with again the same principle.

Those who participated in the treasure hunt became a mason group and swore an Oath to not reveal the fact that they had pocketed extra treasure, and to kill anyone who revealed it. Their win objectives changed to match this - which explains why Darth_Katie and Yunalesca lost this game. It was obviously an excuse to force townies to lie (though BlackAdder did that first, and on his own )

The opposite event involved attacking a ship to loot it, players would have to vote on who leads the charge, and while that person would be immune from lynching and night kills for one Day and Night, he also risked getting maimed in some way - losing a leg and getting it replaced by a peg leg would mean that the entire crew would know if he ever used a Night Action. Losing an eye and getting an eyepatch meant that when performing a night action, you had chances of targeting the wrong person. Losing an arm and getting a hook meant you needed one less vote to get lynched.

The ship full of alcohol was obviously a gift to the pirates - a free extra day and chances of luring out the ninjas and roles to vote against the idea.

The opposite was a scurvy epidemic - in order to stop the epidemic, the crew would need to halt somewhere, and would lose the opportunity to lynch someone that Day. If instead they chose to keep on going, scurvy would start striking crewmembers - on the first day they took one less vote to lynch, on the second Day and every Day afterward, every vote against them was doubled.

Finally, there was the Ghost Ship which allowed one confirmed pirate (or the Serial Killer) to participate in the game again.


Where I screwed up was with the Treasure Hunters' Oath - their win condition was originally going to be that they had to kill anyone who broke the Oath, and that they would be given a night kill to do so if the opportunity arose, but I figured it would be harsh on them if someone else killed the person first, so I changed it to simply say that the oathbreakers (or, Ranagrande, if he learned about it via parrot) had to be dead by game's end. I screwed up because I didn't consider the Ghost Ship in this, Darth_Katie was technically allowed to reveal it because she was already dead, which upset game balance significantly.

I also had the idea, shortly after starting the game, that if someone revealed the truth about the Treasure event, those who had been betrayed could be offered to work for the ninjas - they were free to accept and have their win condition change to simply having the ninjas win, or they could pursue their present objectives. They would not become ninjas, wouldn't learn the identity of any of them nor participate in their night kill, but the ninjas would be able to send them one message each night with whatever information they chose to impart. This is what I considered implementing after Napoleon's disappearance.