My thoughts on the game:
I had outlined the buffs and nerfs each faction received in my head while I was making the set-up. These included:
Town's benefit:
-Number of town versus mafia purely numbers-wise was arguably slanted in the town's favour, depending on whether one considers a higher number of townspeople always better for the town or whether they think smaller numbers of scum abet the scum to hide better. I could have made a template where there were 5 mafia instead of 4, is what I'm saying.
-Number of specials was on the high-end. This, compounding with the next point, theoretically should have helped the specials form alliances quickly.
-PMs were allowed, and presumably when the real Sheriff was established and had sent a few investigations off, they would have been made in touch with the Vigilante + Lovers and had a strong feel off who the possible scum were.
-The Paranoid Sheriff may well have been taken seriously and would have been strongly believed TP depending on how things went, arguably cleared, strengthening the alliance on the fringe of it.
Mafia's benefit:
-The strength and overall individual quality of the roles they had was much better than that of the TP. The town did not have a Doctor or any power role beside a Sheriff and Vigilante, and the scum had two roles that could identify the Vig.
-Closed set-up made people less willing to believe genuine TP role claims, easier for mafia to claim something.
-Paranoid Sheriff and Lovers both working against the town somewhat.
When Snake Doctor didn't show up, there was really no hope of a strong alliance ever forming, especially when BW went after BJ on reasonable grounds and got him lynched. The only real hope of him being saved were if Snake Doctor investigated a TP, contacted them and had them claim in the thread. BJ neglected to claim because he thought the mafia would immediately target him, which was justified. And he had a bit of an oversight regarding whether there was any possibility of faction changes that ultimately sealed his fate close to nightfall. I possibly should have reminded players to read the OP when I started the game. I don't know what his thoughts are on this one.
DT was the town's best player this game and saved them from absolute disaster. Ultimately, the town got 2/6 of their faction kills right, and both of those were owned by Doughty. When a God Kill hit them on top of those mislynches, as well as the Lovers being taken out together with one lynch, they just didn't have the numbers to survive any longer.
I think inactivity did a large part to plague the town this game.
GG guys, haven't read the last 8 posts yet, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on how the game was balanced. Thanks for playing.