Anniversary Game 4/Anonymous Game 1: A Fresh Start

[Araris Valerian]

Awesome last writeup Orlok! Congratulations to all the winners as well! I look forward to killing (and being killed by) everyone for the rest of the year.

[Arrae]

30 minutes ago, randuir said:

Yeah, I think Heron was Wyrmhero?

Heh, nice try, but that wasn't quite what I meant. See, I RPed as so much more than just Kharsis this game

-

A man with a spear slung over his back stood in the pouring rain, watching. Far off in the distance, a line of men and women crept solemnly towards him, bearing a dark casket on their backs. The rain beat down their backs and spilled onto the street below, creating large puddles that reflected the grey sky above.

The man sighed and bowed his head. He had hoped...but no, it was not to be.

Those of their nature rarely ever, ever survived. He’d been lucky to make it through, that time in the warcamps, but there were many others who hadn’t. Valens, Kassien, Kaian... He closed his single eye in remembrance.

He thought back to a conversation he’d had, in a room with hot mugs of tea and biscuits fresh out of a tin.

“Why do we bury the dead?”

“Er, well, I guess…It’s our way of showing respect for, uh, our common humanity: us and theirs. We’re showing respect for who they used to be. And acknowledging that one day, we, too, will…uh, join them.”

Ah, Sonder. His flame had been snuffed out too soon, before he had barely even begun to live. Just like so many others.

The procession advanced closer. Slowly, gently, the villagers lowered the casket into the ground. A family stood near the hole where the casket had disappeared: a man, trying to stay stoic and miserably failing; a woman, tears carving pathways down her cheeks; a confused baby, uncharacteristically silent; a young girl, quietly sobbing as she rubbed the cast on her leg. Beside them stood two friends, a joking guardsman and a seasoned accomplice, blowing their noses into handkerchiefs.

They tossed flowers into the grave, brilliant flashes of colour in the downpour.

His single eye glistened in the light.

“I can’t save the dead,” he murmured, walking forwards, echoing what he had said so long ago in that room. “But I can pay my dues. I can bury the dead. And I can show respect to each one of them, including you.”

He tossed his bouquet of flowers and watched it fall into Kharsis’s grave, petals fluttering in splashes of pinks and blues and purples. A final goodbye.

“Did you know him?” someone asked. The guardsman.

“After a fashion,” Kaddar said with a sigh. His shoulders slumped, giving him a look of a much older man. “I’m sorry I couldn’t have gotten to know him better.”

He turned and left, disappearing into the hazy rains.

-

Dedicated to Kasimir. Thank you for letting me pretend to be you and play with your characters. I enjoyed it a lot

 

[Seonid]

Rae, I have to hand it to you.

That was not only excellent RP, but your mimicry of long-time SE players was spot-on. You had me convinced you were Wyrm in the dead doc...

[Fifth Scholar]

Wow. After all the talk of Wyrm/Kas connections, Houses, PM safety...it’s Arraenae. Well. Congrats on nearly rallying the village to a victory!

I’m very honored that the community chose me to receive a pass on my first game, and now that I have it I definitely can’t leave SE . But seriously, it was really great to have such a supportive community as I tried to learn the rules and get a feel for things, and I appreciated that more than anything else, I think. I will definitely be back for future games, and I hope to see each one of you as well. This game was a great intro to SE and I look forward to countless more.

Edited March 2, 2018 by Fifth Scholar
Spelling people’s names correctly is important

[Steeldancer]

Congrats to everyone, and Hael Hydra. May the memes born this game never die. 

[Arrae]

16 minutes ago, Fifth Scholar said:

Wow. After all the talk of Wyrm/Kas connections, Houses, PM safety...it’s Arranae. Well. Congrats on nearly rallying the village to a victory!

There's always another secret.  But I promise, this is the real me, or as real as you can get on the internet.

18 minutes ago, Seonid said:

Rae, I have to hand it to you.

That was not only excellent RP, but your mimicry of long-time SE players was spot-on. You had me convinced you were Wyrm in the dead doc...

Thanks Seonid

[Elenion]

Holy crap, Rae, I can't believe you faked that so well, plus called out Crocodile to boot. I'm going to be more scared of you from now on.

@Droughtbringer  Looks like you got me back for that IRL game of Werewolf.

[Haelbarde]

10 minutes ago, Steeldancer said:

Hael Hydra

Pretty sure that's been a thing since before this game

Well done Rae. Though, interviewing the people in question doesn't seem quite fair

*goes and compares the player list to my random lists of notes

[DeTess]

@Arraenae... wow. That one I did not see coming. So in the end you where arraenae pretending to be wyrmhero pretending to be kasimir. 

I don't know their playstyles well enough to fully appreciate your work, but given how much you'd fooled those who do, I'm very impressed.

[TheMightyLopen]

Seriously Rae, amazing job! You had me completely fooled.

This was a really great Anniversary Game, IMO. Huge thanks to Orlok and all those who helped with write-ups and everything. I had a lot of fun while I was alive, and things got really interesting at the end.

Great game eliminators! I feel like the village is slowly getting closer each year, so maybe next year the curse will finally be broken.

I got a pass! Sweet! Congratulations to the other winners as well!

[Arrae]

Thanks everyone.

23 minutes ago, Haelbarde said:

Well done Rae. Though, interviewing the people in question doesn't seem quite fair

Heh, most of my research was actually reading Kas's old games and taking notes on his playstyle and writing quirks. I specifically asked to be a pinch-hitter to get more time to research him. Then he made a PM with me, so I got some impersonation tips from him. A few of my posts (mostly from the start of the game) are Kas's old posts with his content ripped out any my own plugged in, but as the game went on I didn't have as much time to do that anymore.

My Wyrm impersonation, on the other hand, was a huge rush job on research, and I don't think I could've pretended to be him for longer than a few days, so it's a good thing I died when I did.

[Haelbarde]

Anyway, stuff about the game.

Making Diagrams was fun! I have a 12 page document with various iterations of the diagrams, plotting the different possible outcomes of the game, at each stage, for the last few cycles.

Cycle 10

Spoiler

Cycle 11:

Spoiler

As demonstrated in the second one, for these diagrams, the best chance the village had, assuming everyone was active on both sides, was to lynch me without having a useful role, and then lynch croc (or visa versa). But even then, you would still have to double lynch Sage, and after the first Sage lynch, only Chameleon would be left. So you have a coin flip - if it lynches Sage, then the village would win, if it lynched Chameleon, well, Chameleon would lose their second life, but then the night kill would take them out. So a 50:50 of victory for either side. The only other situation would be ending with Chameleon and Sage both having their extra lives, but that would give you guys only a 25% chance of victory - Sage would have to have lost two tied votes in order for us to lose - you guys had a 50% chance of getting the first lynch on sage, and then you'd have to win the second 50% chance to actually win the game. All other paths were just straight out Sympathiser victories.

The reason for the premature outing of most of our team came because of an unclear ruling of how actions work in the game. We had initially wanted to try leave a few players alive, if possible, including Heron and Dragonfly. When it turned out Dragonfly was the village bondsmith, and it was time for the end game play, there was disagreement over whether to kill Dragonfly or not. In the end, literally at the last minute, I changed the kill order from Scorpion to Dragonfly (I was flashing back to the various games where I've lost games due to sentimentality, or having players not turn up). The issue then was that apparently you only get one action across the whole day-night cycle, rather than one per turn. Action economy wasn't spelt out in rules anywhere, because it didn't really need to be. For the most part, anyone with an action only had one possible action, and it had very specific timing for either the day or the night turn. The only people with access to 2 actions were us eliminators, but even then, we assumed that you could only put in one action during the night turn, so when I had night actions, I wouldn't put in the kill, and say Seonid would always be scanning, so wouldn't put in the kill. Sage had been putting in the kills just because that was convenient, so the question of whether someone who had used a day action could also put in a night action hadn't come up. It just so happened that I'd been a vote manipulator that cycle, and had put a day action and night action in. When the ruling was made that that wasn't allowed, the decision was made to give the village back their Bondsmith, giving it to Scorpion, who would otherwise have been our night kill that turn. The problem was that messed with our ability to end the game.

So, after killing Ivory, the numbers were at 6 villagers to 5 eliminators. Now, up to that point, we knew that there was definitely one village bondsmith, and while we hadn't quite finished scanning everyone, we were pretty sure there wasn't much left for us to find. And so for instance, the day before, the numbers were 8:5, but taking into account vote manipulation, it was 8(9):5(6). I was under pressure that cycle, but we were able to pull a hammer, and by taking out the bondsmith, that 6:5 would now be 6:5(6), rather than 7(8):4, had I been lynched, and Dragonfly left living. And at 6:5(6)? The worst case scenario is that the coin flip killed one of us. But there'd also be a 50% chance of a clean sweep victory. But even if we lost the coinflip, as long as Croc stayed alive, we would be able to tie every single lynch, forcing that coin flip every cycle, and giving us victory as soon as it went our favour. And as long as I survived, there'd be the chance I'd get a useful role to just overpower the lynch anyway. Or, if you decided to lynch Sage early, we'd immediately win too. And so because of all that, the play of pulling a hammer to save me from the lynch made sense, because it wouldn't matter if we were all revealed. We could tie very single cycle till the end of the game, and the worst case scenario was Sage being lynched last. But he would be untouched, versus Chameleon, giving the village only a 25% chance of victory, if and only if none of the other tied lynches had gone in our favour.

Obviously then, when Ivory died, but the village bondsmith lived on through Scorpion, plans had to change.

Rather than at the expected 6:5(6), we were at 6(7):5(6). We could no longer tie the lynch unless the village didn't all turn up, and only if the whole team was online to vote at last minute. And since we now knew that there was a village protect role, we weren't willing to risk going straight for Scorpion in case they claimed in thread, or were randomly protected anyway. So we had to wait two nights to take out the village protect and vote manipulation. That was why we were a little more subdued and not voting so brazenly.

Anyway, that's a bit of context to what we were doing for those last few cycles, after randomly revealing ourselves in thread by saving me.

Which reminds me - Sage shouldn't have been lynched when they were - After we soothed away one of the votes, there wasn't 2 votes on either Sage or whoever Sage was voting for. And the rule change about the 2 vote minimum was only changed for the instance where there were only 2 players left in the game, which wasn't yet the case. So you weren't as close to victory as you thought you may have been. The GMs were aware of the error, but didn't think it was worth fixing if the game was about to end in our favour anyway. If things had turned around though, he'd have got his extra life back.

18 minutes ago, Arraenae said:

Heh, most of my research was actually reading Kas's old games and taking notes on his playstyle and writing quirks. I specifically asked to be a pinch-hitter to get more time to research him. Then he made a PM with me, so I got some impersonation tips from him. A few of my posts (mostly from the start of the game) are Kas's old posts with his content ripped out any my own plugged in, but as the game went on I didn't have as much time to do that anymore.

See, I was in contact with Kas at the time, chatting about other stuff. So details like posting when Kas was online, or posts that seemed to reference Kas being unwell or at least busy, meant that you could include details, intentionally or not, that fit with what I knew of Kas' current state, beyond the scope of purely a past game research based imitation. And that's what sold me on it, I think.

---

Edit: The spoilers actually have pictures in them now.

Also, I remembered - keteks! I still have a Tyrian Falls ketek to finish, but I wanted to add that the other nice thing with the potential cleansweep if killing Ivory meant no more village bondmsith was that that Day 14: 14 days ketek that I posted midway through the game would have come through. The ketek was posted on the start of the 15th day of the game running, I believe, and that lynch would have been at the start of the 14th day since the ketek was posted.

Edited March 2, 2018 by Haelbarde
Made sure the images actually appeared. Also keteks.

[Herowannabe]

@Arraenae 

Seriously, you had me fooled! I was totally convinced you were Wyrm/Kas. Bravo!

You know, aside from Arranae, none of the other player reveals inspired that big of a reaction in me, other than “Huh. Okay.” 

In otherwords, I think the anonymous accounts were a resounding success! It didn’t matter who was who, I was able to just enjoy the game and take each player at face value and make judgements based on that. 

Thanks to @Orlok Tsubodai and @STINK and @Elbereth for running the game! 

[Jondesu]

Wow, that’s amazing. To all the pass winners, btw, I do have a Lord of the Rings LG planned, hint hint.

I can’t really say much more about this game. The anonymous accounts had me working my mind a totally different way than normal, where I just remember people’s play styles (sometimes incorrectly), and while I don’t think I did an amazing job, I’m a little proud of keeping myself from being lynched so many times.

[Magestar]

Rae wins at life.   Seriously though I'm more impressed with that acting job then I've been with any such stuff, like, ever.

1 hour ago, Haelbarde said:

The reason for the premature outing of most of our team came because of an unclear ruling of how actions work in the game. We had initially wanted to try leave a few players alive, if possible, including Heron and Dragonfly. When it turned out Dragonfly was the village bondsmith, and it was time for the end game play, there was disagreement over whether to kill Dragonfly or not. In the end, literally at the last minute, I changed the kill order from Scorpion to Dragonfly (I was flashing back to the various games where I've lost games due to sentimentality, or having players not turn up). The issue then was that apparently you only get one action across the whole day-night cycle, rather than one per turn. Action economy wasn't spelt out in rules anywhere, because it didn't really need to be. For the most part, anyone with an action only had one possible action, and it had very specific timing for either the day or the night turn. The only people with access to 2 actions were us eliminators, but even then, we assumed that you could only put in one action during the night turn, so when I had night actions, I wouldn't put in the kill, and say Seonid would always be scanning, so wouldn't put in the kill. Sage had been putting in the kills just because that was convenient, so the question of whether someone who had used a day action could also put in a night action hadn't come up. It just so happened that I'd been a vote manipulator that cycle, and had put a day action and night action in. When the ruling was made that that wasn't allowed, the decision was made to give the village back their Bondsmith, giving it to Scorpion, who would otherwise have been our night kill that turn. The problem was that messed with our ability to end the game.

Yeah I apologize about that.  >.>  I wanted to keep Ivory alive for completely unjustified reasons.  To be fair, I did a pretty ok job after that, though.

And finally...  I've been waiting to post this since the aftermath went up.  Let's hope it still all makes sense and works in context because I'm just too tired to care about editing it.

"Kangaroo played his hand very well."

"And yes, Sage has played wonderfully."

Tears.

This brought tears to my eyes.  Tears of joy.   

For those of you who haven't guessed who I was by now, haven't read the docs, and for those of you who possibly don't even know who I am, because I haven't played in what might possibly be seen as a long while in SE-time, hello.  I'm not saying anything else.  

Except that this game marks my return, however temporary it may be.

Anyway, this was an excellent game.  I enjoyed it thoroughly, although I do wish I had been able to be a little more active, especially in the early rounds.  I always feel kinda bad about hiding among the inactive players.

On other notes, this game was really interesting to play as an Elim.  I'm usually a pretty bad Elim, unless I go inactive/quiet/useless, but I managed to keep a modicum of activity that I was happy with in this game, if not the ideal amount of activity.  To the players like Ivory, Beagle, and Heron, I've gotta say, the post count on you guys was insane.  I found myself posting just because I was jealous of the higher post counts.

The Dead Doc for this game was simply gorgeous to read.  Possibly the most fun I've had reading through a doc, like ever.   In the very least, in a long time.  

To continue my dead doc commentary, in response to the question how would the Elims feel about being rep-killed, someone said; "I can think of at least one of them that would not mind that in the least. In fact, I think they would enjoy it."  Out of curiosity, who were you talking about? 

I think if I were ever to play an Anonymous game again, I might go for complete anonymity.  It would be fun, although I don't know that I could really play entirely differently.  I'm sorta me, I think.    My tells are fairly obvious if you know what to look for, although I share enough tells with enough people that if I tried to stay hidden I probably could.  But part of the fun for me is getting people to try and guess who I am.

Also, what's really amusing is the repeated dead doc "Do you think we'll break 100 pages?"  "We're not gonna break 100 pages"  "Welp, the Elims have surely won now." etc.  You guys just kept saying it.    And the end count being like 170 makes it even funnier.  

Finally, thanks to everyone who helped out with this game, and were a part of making it play out so well.  A special thanks to Orlok, who kept on with the game despite poor health.  

Edited March 2, 2018 by Magestar
Seriously, Rae OP.

[Alvron]

Congratulations to all the winners.  I also nominate Steeldancer for the Oops award for being the first person to post on the wrong account.   

I found the anonymous accounts to be most interesting.  I'm fairly sure that if I had posted about having a secret voting system on this account, not many would've questioned it.   

Well done to the Elims for keeping the streak alive.  Hopefully we can break the curse next year.

[Arrae]

Accounting: what was real and what wasn't?

For this game, a lot of RL events that I've referenced were either completely made up or embroidered versions of the truth, since I don't have similar life experiences as Kas or Wyrm. For example, when I said that when my logic prof told me to leave the students alone and not interfere with their learning, that was based off of something I found in the LG15 dead doc, and couldn't be something that happened to me, as I've never even met a logic teacher before. Similarly, when I said in the AG4 dead doc that the group of players I DM for had asked why my narrating was so different, that was also not real. I don't DM, but Wyrm does. Anything I've said related to timezones is completely false because I don't live in a close timezone for either of them. Instead of setting my alarm for 4 AM every day, I actually stayed up later to try to mimic Kas's schedule.

However, any RL event I mentioned that had an impact on the game was true, just put in terms that I thought Kas was more likely to use. Thus, I called my literature essay a paper, my homework coursework, and so on. I have no idea if Kas celebrates Chinese New Year, but I do, and thought it was plausible for him, so I gave myself a break around that time.

The views that I expressed in the dead doc are supposed to represent what Wyrm might think, not what I think. Generally, that meant that I spoke from the perspective of a GM, not a player, and ramped up any irritation I felt towards inactivity. There are some things that I answered as me, not as Heron!Wyrm though -- I said that if I ever felt up for GMing again I'd run a game similar to what Megasif suggested, with few roles, 13-15 players, 3 elims. I'm on the GMing list, and I don't have a game, so I'll try to come up with something like that, or maybe use a pre-made game that fits those parameters. Also, Hael, good luck with uni and life.

Onto other things! My RP this game was heavily, heavily inspired by something Kas wrote a long time ago, called "Nine Characters in Search of Answers". If you haven't read it, you should. If you have read it, you should go read it again. Give him upvotes, because he deserves it. Also, I borrowed one of Kas's poems, so go check that out too. @Kasimir, again, thank you for letting me borrow your work.

This game has taken a lot out of me, so I'm probably going to take a short break from SE, so my homework and sleep levels don't suffer any further  As you might be able to see, there's still a lot of traces of Kas in my system, so I'll be spending my time letting that fade. (Sorry Kas, you're a lovely person, but semicolons suit you much better than me ). 

@Orlok Tsubodai, @Elbereth, and @STINK, thank you for doing all the behind the scenes work it took to run this game. I had a lot of fun with it

[Elenion]

@Alvron I nominate myself for the "wait, what account was that?" award. Not only did I manage to post as myself in this thread, I accidentally posted as Ostrich in a non-anonymous thread.

[Arrae]

Just now, Elenion said:

@Alvron I nominate myself for the "wait, what account was that?" award. Not only did I manage to post as myself in this thread, I accidentally posted as Ostrich in a non-anonymous thread.

Hah, I posted three times with this account in the AG thread...I made good use of the edit button this game

[MonsterMetroid]

What! I won an award!? Thanks GUys man this game was a blast to play first game though I wish I knew now what I didnt know then to look for haha. Thanks Orlok for hosting this!

[little wilson]

1 hour ago, Magestar said:

 To continue my dead doc commentary, in response to the question how would the Elims feel about being rep-killed, someone said; "I can think of at least one of them that would not mind that in the least. In fact, I think they would enjoy it."  Out of curiosity, who were you talking about?

I believe I was referring to you. Can't be entirely certain since that was a while ago I'd said that, but I'm pretty sure it was you.

[Sart]

Yes, behold, I was Saffron Iguana the whole time!

...

Yeah, no one cares about that, considering I died Night 1. So much for my streak of winning the AG awards. Still, the game was fun while it lasted. I'm glad I was able to encourage RP in this game, and my list of RP names actually got included in the write-ups, which was a nice touch. I was also able to hang out with the dead doc, which was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I stopped following it once my Mid-Range game got underway. I volunteered for that and jumped everyone's spot in line because I was getting really bored not being in a game. Congrats to the Elims, even if it was nearly a sweep. I hate it when last minute vote switches don't work as intended.

Balance wise, I did have some issues with this game. The mechanics for this game are tried and true, so I didn't have an issue with them. I did have an issue with the role distribution though. The Eliminators were very powerful this game. Yes, I know there were only five of them. However, they had some really good roles. I especially don't like having Elims with extra lives. If the village is lucky enough to lynch an Eliminator, I want that to stick. The extra life plus the vote manipulation effectively gave the team an extra person, which might have balanced out. Add in the Scanner role, and you have a team that's extremely tough to beat, as they can easily find key players to kill. And then they had a random role and a protection role on top of that. Talk about powerful! Unfortunately, the village didn't have anything to counteract that. We had no scanners and only one protection role. Alongside some vote manipulation and extra lives, the village was 44% Vanilla. I'm of the opinion that the Elim makeup should somewhat resemble the composition of the village. In this case, that would mean having 2 Eliminators be vanilla. That's not a hard and fast rule, but it should be something we keep in mind for later games. And yes, I know AGs are traditionally hard for the village to win, but it never felt unfair until this game.

Regardless, this was a ton of fun to watch, and I'm glad we had so much good activity. I'm excited for the possibilities that Anonymous Games provide, and can't wait to see more.

[Haelbarde]

2 hours ago, Arraenae said:

I have no idea if Kas celebrates Chinese New Year

Well, he made mention of it to me around the time you mentioned it in thread, not that he commented whether he celebrated it or not. So again, that was one of those details that gave me confidence to your Kasness.

[Stick.]

Quote

15. Mint Heron - Arraenae - Kharsis

wow what?!

Rae, you have inspired me. 

This was a great game to watch (also fun to guess player identities in the spec doc), and I'm sure it was a wonderful one to play. Luckily there were a lot of pinch hitters but the fact that all of them (and more) were needed is kind of sad:P

This also happens to be the only game I spectated till the end (I tend to abandon games I spec after a few cycles, sadly). The elims did very well, but the village almost caught up, which was interesting to watch.  Totally regret not coming here in time to sign up  I'm definitely a fan of anon games now.

And yay! I won a pass! Didn't see that coming XD Congratulations to Fifth, Rae, Monster, Rand and Lopen:D 

[little wilson]

1 hour ago, Sart said:

 I'm of the opinion that the Elim makeup should somewhat resemble the composition of the village.

While that's a fine opinion to hold, not everyone is going to hold to that, and just because the elim makeup doesn't reflect the village doesn't inherently mean the game is unbalanced. I mean, you mention past AG's. Last year's anniversary game had 3 Mistborn on the eliminator team, while the village had 0. However, it was also the AG most in favor of the village, despite the 3 Mistborn.

I think you're not looking close enough at the whole 5 eliminators thing. I know some people hold to the square root rule, but honestly, that rule is worthless when you get under 16 players or over 25. Think about it. 9 player game with 3 eliminators? Elims are going to win 75% of the time, if not more. No question. 36 player game with 6 elims? Elims are going to lose 75% of the time. That's not balanced. But it's square root. This is why looking at percentages is more accurate and balanced regardless of game size. Respect Meta all you want, but in my mind, he was dead wrong about the square root rule and had a habit of giving the elims an edge because of his belief in it. Not a huge edge, mind, but still an edge and it was enough to make a significant difference in the games he GMed.

So, percentages. In most other mafia forums, 30-35% is standard. I personally feel that 30% is too high and makes things far too easy for the elims, though you could do 30% if you nerfed the team considerably. You can likewise do 15% if you amp up the team a bit.

5 elims in a 30 player game is 16.7%. When the average is generally 20-25%, 16.7% is rather low (for comparison, LG1 was 25%, AG1 was about 18%, AG2 was 18.5% and AG3 was 17.6%). Now, the average number of elims in LG's is 5.3, or 20.98%. Care to guess what the win rate is for elims in LG's? 38.1%. If you're looking at that number and thinking "wow, that's kind of low," you're right. It is. But guess what's lower? 29.7%, which is the win rate for elims in LG's when we don't count Meta's games (shocker, right?).

So basically, if you have an average size team (20.98%), they have a 30% chance of winning an average game. Counting through every LG not GMed by Meta that has a team with less than 23% elims on it, only 6 teams won out of 26 games. That's a 23% win rate. That's terrible. Objectively so. You want to talk about problems with balance, let's start with that.

This team had a disadvantage due to their starting size, and things could've easily played out far differently this game than they did. Additionally, they couldn't even really count on inactivity to help them out much either, with villagers going inactive and becoming dead weight for the village. Because let's be honest here, many an elim team has won a game purely because there weren't enough active players left to stop them, even if there were only 2 elims left with 8 villagers alive. But the pinch-hitters could've easily turned this game around for the village, and actually Rae very nearly did. The first cycle in which multiple people voted on elims, every single voter on an elim out of the five doing so was a pinch hitter. There were a good 10-12+ villagers alive and active at the time.

So a smaller than normal team against a revolving, always active (theoretically) village. I'd say Orlok did a fine job with the balance here. Sure, the village didn't stand much of a chance until the very end, but that's not necessarily the fault of the distribution.

You're seeing the way the game played out and trying to blame the outcome on the distribution, but it's literally impossible to say that it was the distribution's fault when the village played such a huge role in their loss. I mean, I'm not about to say that Meta messed up AG1 just because I trusted Claincy. That's on my head. Not Meta's. The same applies here. It's not on Orlok's head just because a couple villagers trusted a few elims implicitly. It's amazing how much misplaced trust can change the course of a game and that's exactly what happened here.