The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Well, my first foray into writing out and GMing a Mafia game has come to a close. It’s kind of a relief! It was a ton of work, though work I was glad to do. But now the game is over, chaos reigns over Equestria, and I’m left to think back on my experience. Here’s some of where my head is about it right now.

First off, I think my ruleset was pretty darn good, as I originally thought. But there were certainly some interesting power things to come out of actually seeing the game in action.
I was surprised at how much people were thrown off by Lies. We’ve played games with forgers before, although I suppose not without a coroner to counteract them, so I didn’t expect people to react so badly to that aspect. In general, I think people are overreacting to how he “ruins the game.” He only ruins the game if you let him. His is a power to help create more paranoia. That’s what being a bad guy is all about in Mafia. As town, you just have to not give in to it! Be logical! Don’t be silly! Don’t pointlessly start extremely clear bandwagons that the Mafia can predict! Still, there really is a lot of hatred for it. I have a feeling I’ll probably have to temper Lies slightly if we do this again, either by having a coroner role, or outlawing the super easy move of hitting yourself with the Lies power so the town never knows your dead, which is what happened this game.
I also feel like I accidentally missed the mark with Applejack, and I felt bad about it. For whatever reason, the fact that Rarity and Rainbow Dash were underpowered didn’t bother me TOO much. Not all powers could be winners, even though I would probably switch them out for better powers if I did this ruleset again. But the fact that I felt Applejack’s roleblocking power, once the game got started and I could see it in action, was actually pretty well a stupid power to ever use made me sad. Torgo put it to use confirming himself, which was good, but yeah. It certainly needs a tweak of some sort. There’s a difference between “tension on how to not fuck up this power use” and “My best move is not to use my power.”
Mutiny, as well, was more neutered than I thought it would be. Brick’s plan was very simple, and made it so Mutiny couldn’t use their power. However, Brick’s plan really fucked with the game overall, I feel. It made it feel like the whole game day was only viable in the last 24 hours, and that had an impact. A huge one, I think. Mutiny wasn’t completely useless in that regard. But still, what’s the fun of having a power you can’t use? I’d want to fix that next time around too.

All that said, I keep going back and forth about how much my ruleset favors the Mafia. Unlike Brick, I’m pretty sure it does, but unlike most of the other players, I am pretty sure it doesn’t in a huge way. It’s really close. Is simply powering up the weak Mane 6 going to be enough to fix this? Do they need something more, to help them not fuck over each other? Or an extra “Mane 6” in the coroner role to weaken that win condition for the Mafia without giving the town too much more power? I don’t know. I’m going to have to think long and hard on that one before I do another pitch based on these rules again. Decisions! Playtesting! Oh my!

One thing I didn’t realize before I GM’d a game is how talkative players in the game are with the GM. I have never thought about PMing the GM of any Mafia game I’ve played for anything other than rules clarifications, but I was pretty constantly getting PMs complaining about things, venting frustrations, saying “Tell the Champagne Room This” and so on. It was really interesting. It was an extension of that feeling I have to want to really over explain decisions I’m not sure of to people who understand. They couldn’t do that all out in the thread, so they tell me, who knows they’re innocent/guilty and thus understands what they’re frustrated about. It was cool. Maybe I’ll do that next game. I dunno.

As far as writing went, it was a fucking blast. I think I’ve converted one and a half people to watching Ponies, too, so that’s nice. Heh. But yeah, I’ve went on and on here about how I love to envision children’s characters taking on actual consequences and problems outside of their normal reach. I don’t know if I did that real well? It did get kind of silly dramatic at times. But it was fun to try, and for the most part, I am VERY happy with how I treated the characters. I panic so much when working with stuff that isn’t my own. I don’t want to change it. I felt like I did a damn good job of keeping Twilight acting like Twilight, Applejack like Applejack, and so on. I especially felt really good about the sequences I wrote with the Cutie Mark Crusaders. I often left those feeling I nailed it. Heh. If I had to do it over again, though, maybe I wouldn’t have little flavor interludes at vote counts? Fuck, that took up a lot of my free time. Then again, I got to tell the story I wanted to tell better, which is why I wanted them in the first place. I can’t be too mad about it.

The last thing I want to talk about is the bad blood in the game. Man, I don’t know, I felt like more people got hurt in the silly pony game than in games before. It was so frustrating to watch that from my position and be unable to do anything about it. You have to let people berate people. That’s just how the game works. You can’t do social manipulation unless you’re free to socially manipulate. But fuck, I would have hoped people could keep the game separate from how we all really feel about each other. We’re friends on Talking Time. Basically as close of friends as a bunch of people who haven’t met posting on a message board can be, at least in my opinion. I have screamed at people in games before, called people assholes, told them to sit down and let the adults play, and such things. But while I was frustrated then, as I said them, the moment the game ended, the feeling was gone. It was just a game. It was meaningless outside of gameplay. I don’t mind getting mad or pissy in a game of Mafia because I know, in the end, it doesn’t mean anything. I wish that was clearer to people. I don’t want to be excluding people or scaring people off, because Mafia is fucking awesome.

Anyway, I totally am calling this game a success. It had its hiccups, as any would, but overall there were no big explosions and everyone seemed to have a great time! Would I GM again? Absolutely. But I’m probably not even going to try to pitch a game for at least two more rounds. It’s an exhausting experience, doing all that stuff alone! I need to just chill and enjoy playing for awhile.