2 penny bottle imp fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Dec 30, 2019

• Variant Lightning Rod* - In designing the game, we anticipated that this role/power would be used a lot more... prudently. Lightning Rods typically cause more issues for the town than the scum team since they often draw in a bunch of town powers and the scum team can plan around it knowing their intended target didn't die... Or, at least, that was the plan. Instead, the Lightning Rod was used to effectively turn the game into a night action puzzle. A limitation on number of targets might have made this more tactical and less of a blanket puzzle-solving tool. More on this later.
  
• Variant Tracker* - When considering the role madness nature of the game where everyone had a power, and over a dozen players had night actions, we did not anticipate that the variant power of Walk the Beat (getting a list of targeted players) to be stronger than the basic tracker. Ultimately, though, it provided a lot of extra information to the town team, who typically don't have quite so much info on their hands.
  
• Recruit - In consideration of balance, we wanted to make sure that the scum team wasn't entirely disadvantaged, and thought that 3.5 players was what we wanted to aim for - so this seemed the best option. However, we did not make the scum team aware of the recruit's existence, which left them feeling pretty disadvantaged at the start. Even with the bi-directional recruitment option, knowing about the recruit might have made the scum team a bit more hopeful.
  
• Brutal Roleblocker - This role was intended to add a bit of extra death into this game since the scum team did not start with/know their recruit existed. Unfortunately, the roleblocker withheld their action Nights 2/3 so there was no way to inject extra trouble into the game. In hind-sight, making the roleblock mandatory may have been better.
  
• 3rd Parties - Since this was a cop-themed game, the cat and mouse mini-game seemed like it would be fun to include, at least in theory. It's hard to really know how it might have actually played out, given the unfortunate circumstances of day 1.
  

• Dancer - having the lyncher's target die day 1 was rather anti-climactic! Even though this meant Hal achieved his primary win condition instead of the fall-back, it must've been something to leave on kinda nonplussed. In hindsight, the Undercover Operative was rather under-powered compared to the rest of the cast in that they were a miller with a one-shot escape tool and no way to determine their lyncher. Providing a one-shot death-proof or similar protective option might've been more ideal.
  
• Literally All of the Scum Team - Whether due to some collective unconscious or what, every subsequent day saw some members of the remaining scum team stand out and ultimately find themselves under the scrutiny of some of the most active posters in the thread. Sometimes the loudest players just get poo poo done.
  

• Night 1 - This played out pretty predictably, with the scum team killing off one of the masons. What was surprising here - and a few players comment on it in their journals after AA's flip - is that the scum team chose not to janitor the kill. This left everyone Day 2 giving 2 Penny a free pass, rather than allowing for the room of turning them into a "better safe than sorry" target. The Lightning Rod also only had one person being drawn in, since Paul was prudent with his Day 1 vote (as we'd anticipated in design) and only one other player had voted them.
  
• Night 2 - This is where things started to become more puzzle than social game, I feel. The blanket lightning rod usage, accompanied by both the Watcher and Tracker Variant gave the town a ton of information to work off of. That being said, I felt this was a weird turning point in the game because the scum team chose not to kill anyone to prevent revealing Squiggly (via his hider drawback).
  
• Night 3 - Once again, the Lightning Rod was there to give the town a lot of information. However, the scum team withholding the kill again prevented them from stopping either Nep's watch or Podima's target tracking, which might have given them day 4 breathing room.