This game was not broken. The Village was. In the words of Dublish, it was infuriatingly stupid. Personally I prefer mind boggling bad.
Like Slinky said, in the late game the strongest pack was severely disadvantaged by the No Cannibalism rule. They couldn't hunt their opponents, they had to get them lynched. This is hard to do while staying still and surely the Village would see the stupidity in eliminating the weakest pack and giving all baddie power to the strongest? I was wrong. In fact I was very wrong. The village went after the weakest pack hard and fast. On the 5th day after EURO had died, the Seer/Priest railroaded the discussion into J. Pass, LS and Racz. Also a bad move given that they had virtually no excess information and thus stymied discussion for no purpose. In fact there was no discussion. It was just, here are these 3 targets vote on one of them. And people did. What I assume brough LS into these names was that he brought up eternaly_lost thus trying to save Lemeard and Rex from the lynch. Both Gangrel Wolfes. This was at least what made Marty consider him evil. But saving Gangrel wolfes would make him a likely Gangrel Wolf and thus not someone you would kill first.
That ended day 5th. So did anyone go back and look for any suspicious voting? Perhaps anyone who seemed very eager to kill a wolf from the weakest pack? Nope. And in fact there was some good material. Quickly the voting was
Looking back, don't you think this deserved a little comment? The old, he who votes 3th or 4th is a wolf theorem is not perfect. But its a good start for discussions. Especially when the target is a wolf from the weakest pack and it would seem obvious from the rules that the strong pack would be very eager to lynch the weakest pack. Wasn't obvious to the village apperently. As icing on the cake, 5th and final vote on LS was made by Jerard.
Next day. Dublish make a bad comment about breaking the tie, and people quickly get together to kill him. There isn't a lot of analysis or talking, but what there is makes it clear that whoever is voting him think he is a Gangrel and has no problem killing another Gangrel.
Marty99,
Jonti-h and
Jerard. Anyhoo, he gets lynched. Is a nice boy and doesn't take down Marty99 with him.
We are now on the 8th day, with 2 days of voting just passed one would suppose that some sort of analysis would come. It does! Randakar points out (finally) that the baddies might have known that Dublish might be evil and thus voted him up there. Good theory. Strange that he doesn't mention LS as well, but good theory still. Lord_D picks up on it and votes Jerard, becuase Jerard voted on both LS and Dublish. Good theory, gets totally ignored. Ends up with Jerard silently unvoting. A better candidate than Jerard was Jonti-h, who had cast the 3rd vote. The bandwagoning vote, on both Dublish and Lord Strange. That ought to be suspicious. He ought to have at least been mentioned. But no he wasn't. Totally ignored. Instead people vote on several goodies, not because there is anything that would really indicate their baddieness, but because there isn't any. Surely the total absence of proof is a damming proof? In the end, 5 people are brought up to be viable lynch candidates. All of them brought up by Villagers, except PM who was brought up by a drunk Ciryandor.
ALL five candidates are goodies. The chance of randomly picking out 5 goodies out of the 11 available was 10.5%. In other words, random chance would have done a far better job than the village. No a very flattering sign. And if we assume that Random is bright enough not to pick either the Seer or the Priest, then the chance of randomly picking 5 goodies drop to an astonishing 6.3%. Astonishing bad, because thats what the village managed to do. Another point of baddnes was that the top three candidates were so silent and had been voted on so little, that even had the tie been carried out and had one of them turned out to be vil. Then very little voting analysis would have been gained, certainly not enough to warrant the loss of another parity day.
Luckily for the village Slinky steps in and saves the day! Breaking the tie and only killing Rysz. Wow I though. Surely going against the will of the village, even if the village has made a bad decision is going to land Slinky in a world of hurt? Perhaps I thought, the village is waking up now? I was wrong. Slinky gets 2 angry votes that are quickly retracted and no comments on why he might do that. Nobody says that perhaps he was trying to save a packmate, either syber or PM. Perhaps he was a baddie trying to make the village spend 2 days lynching goodies rather than one? Perhaps Walrus/Lord_D should have have remembered that Slinky had told them he was a witness and that the Gangrels had had an Vampire Witness. Perhaps he was the Malkavian equivalent? Nope, he got ignored. Primary candidates become silent people against there is little evidence except that they are silent. Funnyly enough, the bandwagoning 3rd votes are cast by Slinky and Sekenr both baddies. Still noone picking up on that or even mentioning bandwagoning or bandwagoning vote. Heck the word analysis is pretty much gone. von Loch Ness is killed and the final real day is reached.
Here as we know. J. Pass outed his packmates and the game ended. As this was the final real day, it is worth looking at the situation. Normally when baddies win a big victory, the final village is filled with Zombies and people blindly obeying the baddies. The Village is, in other words, completely in the hands of the baddies who control the lynch. This game was different, the lynch was completely in the hands of the Goodies. Those that decided who should be killed in the lynch were all goodies, just like they had been the previous days. And even at this late stage, where everything had fallen out nicely for the Malkavian pack the Village still had a chance of pulling out a win. They dominated the lynch, had people who (usually) think very well and baddies who had made several mistakes. But the analysis was sorely sorely lacking. Note
this post by Walrus who summaries his views on people. Very little actual analysis. Off course, this wasn't his fault. There was a general lack of quality analysis, and when it did appear it seemed to get utterly ignored.
The people who think this game was broken, because this village got owned by the Malkaviens need to go back and read the last few days again. The world of hurt the village entered was mainly of their own doing. First by killing of the weakest pack, thus giving all evil powers to the strongest pack. Then failing to make quality analysis / commenting on quality analysis and instead mindlessly going after silent people. This game was designed to be without a functional JL, but instead with an active village who was given plenty of material to fight the baddies. Instead of using the material the goodies decided both to reduce the material available by killing of the weak pack quickly, then by ignoring whatever material pop up.
