Dying Pan*
I mean yeah
your defense of nappy, slight demotivation, and blatant desire to kill anyone who opposed nappy made me think it was unlikely you were just putting on an act
iām a very careful killer if you didnāt notice
i make sure to plan out every detail so that i absolutely do not get caught
also i had to wait like two and a half days to be able to kill people and then it just became absolutely obvious if i did kill anyone
katzerant
This game happened
Iām happy with a lot of it but somewhat unhappy with some of it, so Iām going to explain in way too many words what Iām unhappy with in a way that makes it sound like I hated this entire game despite me being somewhat proud of it.
I think a lot of the issues I had with this game were my fault, because pregame I was lazy since we were scheduled to be after Tower, and then when that ended Alices Dangan game was coming up and we werenāt fully finished with the game at that point. At this point all I was really doing was bouncing her ideas off of me and giving my take on them ā and I think I avoided a few bad ideas while helping build good ones, but I didnāt really have any of my own at this phase which is a bit of a problem. I didnāt really have the motivation at that point to come up with ideas I thought were good, since Iām a bit of a perfectionist in that regard.
But Aliceās game was perfect for us because everybody wanted it to happen, including both of us, but it also gave us more time to finish the game. Since she died early in that game, we theoretically had a ton of extra time to finish this game. And then it ended early, and we werenāt finished. In fairness, we were basically done. And again, this isā¦ mostly on me. To be clear, I donāt blame anyone for Aliceās game ending early. It was simply unexpected given it ended at least a week before I believe it would have naturally. At this stage I was trying to have some ideas, but I wasnāt happy with many of them and instead of giving sulit incomplete ideas which she could bounce off of, I was pretty quiet about it. Which I apologize to sulit for, because I think her bouncing ideas off of me is why we even had a game in the first place.
Anyway, when we realized our game was up on the queue, we talked a bit about delaying the start of the game. For slightly egotistical and mostly stubborn reasons, I didnāt want to delay it very long, and IIRC sulit couldnāt delay it too long for school reasons. If I could go back, Iād probably call myself a looser and delay the game longer, but we ended up opening signups and setting a startdate 3-4 days after the signups were opened, because we knew the game would fill fast.
In those 3-4 days, we reworked a class multiple times (Telepath, this class went through like a dozen designs), made at least one but I believe 2, and put the finishing touches on the map. Which is a product of my laziness. I think the game suffered in quality a fair bit because of my laziness and I apologize to sulit, and the players/spectators for that.
Lack of time management skills aside, there were some glaring holes that became apparent.
The one that I think was most easily solvable that I pushed aside really hard, while also having a huge impact on the game, is that we had two players who barely played at all.
I talked to both Gorta and Nicky multiple times throughout the game for their activity. I absolutely should have replaced them out. It would have impacted the game positively. I was aware of that. Butā¦ I didnāt.
This game required a higher-than-average level of activity and we had two players who probably wouldnāt have met the minimum requirements for a FM game. This is unacceptable for them, but moreso on me for actively acknowledging it and being too lenient and giving them chances.
One of my bigger problems with how this game panned out is justā¦ the massclaiming. I get it, Apprentice was somewhat trustworthy, but fucks sake ā the literal Serial Killer-esque class trueclaimed!!! Why?! 
Dat trueclaiming is 
as hell too but at least he could win with people!
The obvious solution to this problem would have just been to give Evils fakeclaims ā and this was going to happen. Surprisingly, this one wasnāt us being lazy. Me and sulit talked it over and my standpoint wasnāt very strong while they believed in not giving them fakeclaims. I donāt fully remember how the conversation went, so thatās for soolit to explain. IIRC, part of it was that itād be more interesting for people to come up with their own fakeclaims. But the only evil to even try to fakeclaim ended up claiming a nearly identical wincondition to Marshal, soā¦ yeah. Maybe I could have asserted my stance here harder but it wasnāt a strong one. Hindsight 20/20 and all.
And last, but not least. Class balance. Everybody and their cat is probably thinking: āwhat the fuck is marshals ability who the FUCK designed it and WHYā andā¦ meh. Itās complicated. Iāll go down the list of classes and jot how I recall thinking about them.
Classlist and notes
Peacekeeper (Marshal): I didnāt like this ability and it was changed a bit from itās initial design to the game. IIRC this was actually the first class we made. I told sulit weād come back to it later, and by then we had designed the Evils ā which I thought were all strong enough to compensate for this classesā power. I think this class is probably less unbalanced in the grand scheme of things that it looks, but when two of the three evils are dead earlyā¦ yeah. We also didnāt really consider it being used the way it was used to strongarm an early ending. Never again. Bad Marshal.
Paramedic (TBE): Eh, not much to say. I thought this class was on the strong end but had no problems with it. It was changed a few times but overall was simple.
Mentor (Alice): This was one of the last classes we made, and it was one I ended up making as a backup class initially. I think this class would have been removed if I was less lazy/we had more time, but yeah. The Mentee was randed, by the way, although it was initially going to be guaranteed to be the Detective.
Telepath (Conroy): This class was literally remade like 6 times. It was originally going to have a permanent neighborhood and they had to escape with said people, which felt VERY limiting. Then it was a neighborizer, a few variants of that, and in the last few days we agreed on this. If we had more time, I think I would have ended up reworking this into an evil class (probably in place of Pyro) because it felt kind of pointless. Or removing it. And I kind of think it was pointless. The way it was used this game was basically a ToL Mystic using Telepathy to confirm themselves, getting converted into an Apostle/Illusionist, and then using it to meme.
Detective (Nicky): idk they didnt play, or use their ability once. ungamer. TBH I thought this class was a bit too strong on paper, and it would have solved āwho stole gunā instantly. Funny story about this class, it was kind of an accident that it was even made. Originally, one of the Butlerās abilities was going to reveal every private item to everybody, but it was considered ungamer but sulit liked it and turned it into this.
Crab (gorta): This class was supposed to be a juggernaut, and while the flavor was a meme, this shit was supposed to cause CHAOS. KILL. MURDER. And then they did none of that, openclaimed, and died. . Iāve gone over that. I think this class might have been too hard, maybe a wincon of āensure less than X people escapeā would have been better. Hard to tell. If it wasnāt obvious, this class was mostly my idea.
Leech (Solic): To be honest, I think this class was too strong. I lowered its stats a bit before the game started, but it still got a TON of mileage in a game that was much shorter than anticipated. Solic leeched 7 stats in this game, and thatās after deliberately skipping one. And it also significantly crippled gorta early, since his first leech brought gorta to 0INT. Definitely overtuned, but the goal was to make the evils strong.
Pyro (Dat/PKR): Part of what I liked about this class was that I thought it could somewhat discourage grouping together if played right. I think it ended up having the opposite effect, though. This was definitely the weakest evil and didnāt have a very easy wincondition, either. I think PKR going and burning the entire bottom floor essentially was pretty fucking gamer, though. The map didnāt have many escape routes so I imagined it being used to burn specific rooms, butā¦ gamer. Bit bummed they trueclaimed, but I donāt think App had any intents on outting them, since when they did it was obvious anyway.
Witness (Italy): Italy randing this was the funniest part of this game after VLDR1 Italy being unable to kill. I thought thjs role was kinda iffy at first, but I liked it a lot when we realized it was essentially able to be played like an evil neutral, as it can be an accomplice but not the murderer. I think this class is fine though. We did forget to notify Italy about a few things, though.
Agent (Nappy): I made this! I like it! (although the katana was sulits idea) Not much to say here other than that my original idea was to not tell the Agent about the precise item immediately, but to give them hints over time. Which I think might have been better with how this game went, although my hints were supposed to last until Roaming 4 ā whichā¦ yeah.
Vengeful (Apprentice): I think this class is fine, although the alternate wincon and Marshals ability were a bit of a stupid combo. The first VLDR was plagued with ally spam and this was supposed to fix it. Itā¦ didnāt.
Butler (TL): TL got wildcard twice! I think this class is fine overall, although the classcard is worded pretty poorly. The flowers were supposed to be dreaming god-esque abilities, but TL thought they were physical flowers. I donāt remember what Tulip did, since it was was the ability that turned into Detective, but Lotus turned off a bunch of lights in most/every room and Rose revealed everyones location publicly. We thought the Butler/Agent dynamic was pretty interesting, although it did kind of softconfirm Nappy as real.
There were a few concerns brought up during the game too.
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The syringes in the lab having no downsides was silly, and might have been fixed with time? But we had multiple days to do this, so weāre dumb. Definitely a thing that wonāt happen again.
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People were able to move too freely and too much. Almost definitely something that Iām strongarming a change for in the future if I host another one of these, and one that we talked to TL about in specchat. The puzzles were all solved on Roaming 1, except the ones downstairs because we timegated it.
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There was a way to angleshoot peoplesā locations since they were done via discord role. This is kind of my fault for not forcing sulit to do what I wanted to do here, but I donāt think anyone actually did it? Nobody pointed this out to us, at least. But if this is hosted on discord again, donāt use roles for locations. Itās easier, but exploitable. I do think hosting this on discord was better for both the players and hosts, though.
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There were some moderrors as well. I did inventory management mostly solo (sulit did it when I was away) and made some mistakes. We duplicated the poison in the Lab, for example. There were a few points during the game where I was hosting alone (although the game was still a vast majority sulit) and I definitely messed up a few times.
Done with negativity, I think this game was still a fairly sizable improvement over VLDR1, and Iām happy with the game overall!
Even if solo hosting while sulit was asleep or doing school was stressful~
Also this isnāt very organized so enjoy a big fucking wall of text pce nerds
8 Likes
i probably missed things but i just typed over 10000 characters and im hungry
there were some super funny moments that we put in the #memes channel in discord
i think the logging system is good conceptually but @players did you people like it?
oh, speaking of discord
This design was nice though, because it incentivized me to wait longer to strike, so you get some lategame murder as well, which we never ended up getting sadly. The world would have been so different if TBE had allied tbh. I was ready to strike.
This would have been better if one of them didnāt have a lover.
1 Like
I thought that the discord setup was really nice. I think āhidingā is something that could be improved there, since I considered some hiding spots for my nuclear plan as well and simply hiding under a bed or something would still make me present there? 
Donāt know how that would have been resolved.
Health and weapon stats are probably a thing that could also be public? I thought it was intentionally ambiguous, but now I see that others could just ask for it exactly.
setup design was nice
i think the game would have been much more close and tense had the crab bothered to play the game, as that was the designated evil slaughterer and did literally nothing
I liked design, I think my role probably could have been nerfed (potentially to what I actually claimed) but I also think I had a difficult wincon considering how VLDR is and so I donāt hate it
1 Like
we answered questions about stats/damage/health/inventory when asked
but being more clear about these things might have been better
I wouldnāt have betrayed either of you until PKR asked me to literally lock them all in the room for him and hold the door shut. And PKR still had to escape afterward so I thought he was trying to frame me for it.
1 Like
tbh in hindsight the only roles i think need massive changes are Telepath/Mentor and i kind of knew that pregame 
yāall trying to solve the game using that ToS page made me laugh though
and then i realized that Telepath was a role there
i dont know if that was intended since sulit named it but she said no so i assume it was just a coincidence
was p funny
I do think not force-replacing was an error
I very passive-agressively hinted at it like 4 times because I was unhappy at inactivity
but I think itās one thatās good to know for next time as far as laying out and enforcing activity standards.
3 Likes
agreed and i noticed
i was way too lenient with them both
esp cause i know we easily coulda gotten subs for both slots
3 Likes
But marshal how will I fulfill my murderous fantasies without killing inactives
seriously tho yeah that was kinda eh
i think map design should be more similar to like that with secret passageways and all
like if ure in a room like idk the top right one
you have to go through other rooms and all
it shouldt be one big corridor
6 Likes
Iām kind of sad there wasnāt a zero mastermind NPC, which was my initial guess for golden katana room.