Metacognition

"Hey guys! I'm Mistborn!" Barry exclaimed. Mehir facepalmed so hard that the resounding "SMACK!" it made caused more than a few people to glance at him cautiously to see if he was alright. Hadn't he just said the other night that these kind of claims weren't a good thing? Granted, he hadn't exactly said as much and made some of his thoughts had gotten lost in the translation, but he thought that he had made it pretty clear. He could see why people were so distrustful of Barry's claim and thought he could be a Venture Spy. First and foremost, he claimed well before he had any actual need to. Sure, he had been detained by a Captain, but that alone wasn't enough of a reason. There was no real indication one way or the other that the act of him being detained was a malicious act or an innocent one. But no, Barry, hyped up on his own self-importance, had claimed so quickly and attributed maliciousness to the Captain in the process to vehemently, that it looked to Mehir as if he was trying to get out in front of a sticky situation rather than try to find out the truth. Barry had turned it into a witch hunt, all because he was unhappy he had been detained, rather than look at the situation clearly; something that looked a lot like a Venture plan rather than careful strategy. Then there was Barry's assured-ness that claiming Mistborn somehow absolutely cleared himself of being a Spy. Considering everything that had already happened, Mehir didn't find it outside the realm of reasoning for the Venture to have held back with their Mistborn early on and to then need to try desperately to prove themselves once they'd been detained. Besides, the only way for any role to be cleared just because of their role, would be if there were anyone that Lord Conrad had said was without suspicion (*Basically a village-only role. Just wanted to make sure that was clear*) and Mehir hadn't heard anything like that come from the top. Barry's attempt to convince people of his innocence based on only that alone was not helping convince people that he was actually innocent. The fact that he wasn't being consistent with his views didn't help either. He attacked Locke at the beginning of the day as a possible Spy, partially because Locke had revealed himself earlier in the week. But, then later on, Barry used the fact that he, himself, had revealed himself as proof that he was innocent. To Mehir, it seemed like Barry was just throwing accusations around and trying to use whatever reasoning he could to try to get someone lynched rather than maintaining any logical consistency. Speaking of how Barry had attacked Locke, Mehir had noticed a pattern to the people that Barry seemed to think were Spies. They had all, at some point, had pointed out the possibility of Barry being a Spy. This was the equivalent of, "Nuh-uh, you are!" This type of throwing the accusation back at those that accused him did very little to make Barry look innocent. It had no depth to it and was thus an easy accusation to make; something real Spies were likely to use. So yes, Mehir could see why many were hesitant, even after Locke stepped forward to verify Barry's claim (*which still isn't alignment indicative. If Flash is a Venture Mistborn, then after being caught, this exact situation that we're in here is the only real way he could save himself, IMO*). That said, he thought as he scratched at his chin, it couldn't hurt to keep Barry around and keep an eye on him. If they gave him some Pewter and kept him away from some Steel, then they'd be able to see how the Venture would react and if Barry turned out to actually be a Venture Spy, they wouldn't have given them the power to kill multiple people before the rest of the Guards found out the truth of it. Mehir also didn't think that Locke was guilty of anything except doing his job. Locke hadn't needed to step forward to verify Barry's claim after all. He could have stayed silent and claimed to have been busy with other duties, as he had before. So this meant that either Locke and Barry were in it together (an incredibly complicated plan that had them both be put on the chopping block early and then get removed from it later, while also losing all the vials for their Mistborn...) or, more likely, Locke was still as innocent as Mehir suspected he was. This actually made Mehir much more suspicious of those who were so quick to jump on Barry's witch hunt. It looked a lot like they were trying to capitalize on a situation that would let them get rid of a Captain they had no control over. Both Stick and Cluny (*Their actual character names too! lol.*) really stuck out to him. Stick especially seemed like they were likely a Spy. There was the odd logic with the first day votes and who should be suspicious from that. Mehir had pointed that out last night. Then there was Courier claim, like Mila had brought up, but no one was able to verify that claim as far as he knew. Add to that situations like the one above, and Mehir was definitely eyeing her with a weary look throughout the rest of the day.

*I'll get some RP in later* So I'm finally caught up, so I'm going to try to address some stuff that happened while I was out and I want to make sure I get it in before rollover, just in case. First off, can everyone PLEASE stop revealing themselves in thread?!? Now I'm not saying that all of you are who you claim to be, but if even half of you are, you're making the Venture's job a hundred times easier. One of the things the Village has going for it is that the Elims don't know who they need to hit to weaken the Village the most. By just revealing yourself, you're not just telling them your role. You're also telling them more about the role distribution and what other people's roles might be! You're endangering not only yourselves, but everyone else as well. So if you could just not, that'd be great. I still didn't get my PM, so Stick/other Couriers, if you could get around to that, I'd really appreciate it. Granted, since Orlok wasn't around for most of the last turn, it probably wouldn't have done much good, but we still need to start getting information flowing (preferably somewhere that isn't in thread... *cough*) and if we can set up a network of PMs, all the better. One thing that kept getting said a lot last turn that really stuck out to me, was the idea that the Venture would wait until after Orlok claimed to vote on him during Day 1. Now where I won't be surprised to find some among that number, this just seems like a false positive to me. If you consider the fact that they seem to have been playing to the idea of not killing on Night 0 in the first place, then why would they want to wait for an event that may or may not come? Unless they planned for Orlok to step forward (I find that unlikely, IMO. Just seems incredibly dangerous of a plan, which we can see by all the people that are still suspicious of Orlok after all.), if I were them, I wouldn't waste the opportunity to get their plan to work by waiting for something they likely had no control over. They wasted a Night 0 kill to try to get someone lynched. You don't start with such a plan and then get cold feet when it comes to enacting it. So this makes me doubly suspicious of Flash because he seemed to argue just enough to begin with so he'd had some level of plausible deniability, and makes me at least fairly suspicious of those that are following the logic of the Venture votes coming after. Those are the main things I saw that I wanted to point out asap. Now that I'm all caught up, I'll go back through again later and see what nuances stand out to me.

Sorry I haven't been around everyone! This weekend has been quite crazy for me. I promise to get caught up tomorrow and get back into it. Again, I'm really sorry.

Mehir just shook his head sadly. He would remember this. If it seemed too good to be true in the future, he'd exercise a bit more caution. He wouldn't allow himself to fall for the same trick twice. The news wasn't all bad though. He felt pretty confident that he could trust Locke after all this. After all, as he surmised during the day, Locke putting himself out there to receive all the blame given the possibility of this exact type of situation didn't seem like a smart move if he was a Venture Spy; not when he could've just as easily stayed in the shadows with the same effect. In fact, if he had been a Venture Spy, staying in the shadows could've yielded an even better effect, considering the rest of the guards would've been looking for a traitorous Captain and they might've killed yet another innocent Captain before getting around to him. So while Mehir was still saddened by the death of Booken, he squared his shoulders. He needed to look forward, not back. He set off to hopefully find a Courier. He'd need one to be able to communicate effectively with Locke in the future since it was much easier to get his thoughts across when writing them down than through pantomime. So that means that the only two scenarios left are that they didn't send in the kill last night on purpose or they didn't send it because of inactivity. As other people have already said, I highly doubt that their entire team is inactive, though if any Coinshots want to pick some off to be sure, I won't complain. Also, as stated up above, but I want to make it perfectly clear, if there are any Couriers out there, I would like a PM with Orlok, if you would be so kind. He's my best lead to having a confirmed villager at this point and if the Ventures are this tricky already, communication is going to be important. So the sooner we get people in contact with each other the better. This also works in your (the Courier's) favor, because if you're not in every PM you start, you'll be less likely to accidentally give yourself away to the Ventures.

I have posted some of my thoughts. It's all in there. Of course, from the time that I posted that, I do have some additional thoughts based on new information. Mehir raised an eyebrow when Locke proclaimed that he was the one that detained Booken. That definitely put the idea of their Captain being a Venture Spy out of the way. There was no way that Locke would come forward and take the blame if Booken was innocent; not if he was a Venture Spy. They would've gotten away with their trick, so there was no need to put one of their own under scrutiny as well. This really only left two possibilities to Mehir. Either Booken was to blame (if Mehir thought about it, the reasoning that Booken wouldn't put in the kill order because he was the most boisterous the Night before could also make a compelling reason for him to put in the order just as well. No one would expect him to put in the order) or they were both innocent. Of the two, the one that made the most sense was the first, so when it came time to vote, Mehir nodded towards Booken with with a stern grimace.

Mehir's face flushed with embarrassment and he looked down and away as he nodded his head. Yes, that made a lot of sense. Perhaps he was just being paranoid. But then the next day came without any harassment from the Venture Spies and the air felt heavy and thick with suspicion. He was reminded that they all had good reason to be paranoid; especially when he heard that Booken had been detained last night- likely for his attempts to organize a sect within the guards ranks. If he thought about it, while Valbar and Barry seemed more than willing to cut Booken some slack, by Occam's Razor, the simplest solution was the most likely solution. It didn't help that Mehir had been somewhat suspicious of Booken the other night for seemingly trying to distract everyone from the Venture Spies. Mehir frowned in thought. The fact that Booken wasn't putting up much of a fight did seem strange to him. The only explanation that he could think of though was that, after being so solidly caught, his only hope was to try to appear as innocent as possible and hope that the tides changed. And then there was Valbar and Barry. If Booken was a Venture Spy, would he point the finger at them so readily when they seemed to be the most likely to have been supporting him? The Ventures were arrogant, but they also tended to be quite shrewd as well. Something didn't seem right here. In the end, he found himself nodding along with Lance, as he brought up the idea that perhaps the Captain was the actual spy. While that thought might seem a bit mutinous, it seemed to explain everything that he'd witnessed so far.

Mehir stood in the corner with a slight frown and tapping his foot. All this talk about spikes seemed like a distraction to him. Weren't the Ventures the real enemy? Isn't that what they had all signed up for? He knew that they were all restless and anxious, but a guards job was to remain focused in the face of hardship. Besides, that Barry kid had thought that he might be spiked! ...And Booken was egging him on. Mehir shook his head. Mehir held his hand out to his sides, as if to invite them to search him, if they liked. Mehir didn't have so much as a piece of jewelry on him at all, let alone a spike! He wasn't some nobleman after all. Most skaa couldn't afford such things. I'm giving you guys a hard time for the ASL and there is a part of me that thinks that this could be a clever way for PK to hide in plain site, but I'm also loving it. The parody songs were awesome, so if you are playing everyone, kudos PK.

Seriously? Is your character a time traveler from the future or not? Would they not be a bit more knowledgeable than those already in this time line or not? All I said was that you gave my character an evil glare. Nothing else. My character is new the barracks and wouldn't know who is and who isn't. A freakin' time traveler seems like they'd likely know more than the rest, yes? The rest was me building off of my own character being a new recruit. If you don't want me to play with your character, that's fine. I can do that. But me stating how my character reacts to yours is not me directing your character and if you want to react to the situation, then do so; don't just tell me how I should react. I suggest we take this to a PM with the GM rather than clutter up the thread if you have any other questions so we can clear up any inconsistencies. Not worry about anything? Mehir's eyebrow definitely raised to it's definite, highest height at that. "We're guards!," He thought. "Our entire job is to worry about things!" Now he had two people to keep an eye on and he couldn't direct one eye to one and another to the other. Strategically, he positioned himself into a corner on the other side of the room. A place where he could watch them both; as long as he didn't fall asleep.

Garshin gave him an evil glare, reminding him of his place as a new recruit to the barracks. Mehir raised his hands in self defense. After all, he hadn't actually spoken his suspicions out loud. He faded back into the barracks, where he could continue to watch. He knew something was going on. He just needed to figure out where! Didn't mean he'd give up on his suspicion of Valbar though. My bad. Most of our games start on a Day and I missed that. Honestly this is one of the first games to start on a night turn other than the games I tend to run! Just didn't expect it. No worries. Though, as Mehir sat in the corner after being chastised, it did seem like Garshin was pretty quick to enforce the rules of the barracks. Almost as if he was waiting and watching for anyone to speak up. Perhaps because he was speaking to his Venture informants in the mean time?

Mehir eyed the outspoken upstart with a slight grimace. It seemed to him that he was too involved with the knowledge of what the allomantic stores of what a Tineye or a Lurcher would have. Could it be that he already had contact with Allomancers within their ranks? "But, how?" He thought as a slight line of concern crested his forehead. A single eyebrow of his went up, which could only mean that he wondered whether Valbar already had information about what Allomancers were equipped with because he was placed here by the Ventures and knew the stores they were bringing in. His eyes narrowed as he knew Valbar would be a person worth watching....

LG 1 and the AGs are the closest thing we have to a fairly vanilla set up and even that isn't exactly vanilla. I suppose it also depends on your definition, since different places use different set ups as vanilla. For example, some sites consider no roles at all to be a vanilla game. Some, like Town of Salem, have a few go-to roles that are in all games. As Len said though, if you need help, if you post what you're working with here, I'm sure that everyone would be more than willing to help work out any problem areas.

Mehir leaned against the wall of the barracks, studying his fellow new recruits and the grizzled veterans alike. He was a tall man with a lanky frame; not exactly typical guardsman material. But what he lacked in strength, he more than made up for it by being observant. ...Or that was what everyone assumed, considering that seemed to be all that he did. So far, no one had heard him speak even a single word. This led some people to start to think that he might even be mute. Mehir frowned slightly and crossed his arms while scanning everyone. He might have said a word, but the move conveyed his meaning well enough. It seemed to say, "I don't trust this, or any of you, at all. The chances that Venture hasn't used the new recruitment to place spies and saboteurs among our ranks is slim to none. And if I find out that you're plotting against House Conrad, the results will not be pretty." I've been wanting to run a character that doesn't speak for awhile now. We'll see how this goes.

We only want you dead so often because we care about you, Lopen. We don't want you worrying yourself over trivial things like who should live and who should die. Who needs that kind of stress? ...Plus you can be scary when evil. I should know; we've been elims together.

About time to close this game. Congrats to the Nobles for winning and thanks to Elbereth and DA for GMing! It was a short game, but I think it highlights a lot of things that future GMs should try to take into account while balancing (as El put up above). Also, sometimes these things just happen. My first game as an Elim, our team was wiped out without killing a single villager. So even in a perfectly balanced game, sometimes luck is just on your side. If anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, please get a hold of Gamma, Wilson, Metacognition or myself. Not only will we get you added to the list, but we'd also be more than willing to help out in any way we can. You can also ask questions and get some hints and feedback from everyone over here in our Art of Game Creation thread as well. With all the games that we've run so far, we have plenty of experienced GMs that can help you refine any game you're thinking about!Thanks again to everyone that played and we look forward to killing seeing you in future games!

It's about time we closed this game. Unfortunately, I don't have much that I can say about this one, because I missed out on being able to follow along on this one. Since it was one of Joe's games though, I feel confident in saying it was a blast. If anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, please get a hold of Gamma, Wilson, Metacognition or myself. Not only will we get you added to the list, but we'd also be more than willing to help out in any way we can. You can also ask questions and get some hints and feedback from everyone over here in our Art of Game Creation thread as well. With all the games that we've run so far, we have plenty of experienced GMs that can help you refine any game you're thinking about!Thanks again to everyone that played and we look forward to killing seeing you in future games!

It's well past time we locked this game up. Thanks to Aman for running it and for basically writing a novel for the write ups! The amount of effort he put into making this game story driven is incredibly impressive. If anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, please get a hold of Gamma, Wilson, Metacognition or myself. Not only will we get you added to the list, but we'd also be more than willing to help out in any way we can. You can also ask questions and get some hints and feedback from everyone over here in our Art of Game Creation thread as well. With all the games that we've run so far, we have plenty of experienced GMs that can help you refine any game you're thinking about!Thanks again to everyone that played and we look forward to killing seeing you in future games!

Well, it's by far time we wrap this up. Honestly, I'm sorry it's taken so long! I could go on and on about reasons, but we all know it happens. Congrats to the Spiked, of course; not only because they deserve it, but because THE CURSE LIVES ON! Why won't anyone save Tyrian Falls from its fate? They did an amazing job; especially after losing two Mistborn early. As I said before, I really thought they'd lost it after that, but they pulled it off. Seriously though, I make sure to balance these games as much as any GM can. So the fact that the Spiked have won every time should put those that won on a watch list at the very least! They did an amazing job. On top of that, we have our winners of the first AG Contest to applause as well! These people went above and beyond with their storytelling and I, personally, think it really showed itself. I was captivated by their stories (and many more than just theirs. We had a literal cornucopia of great characters!) and they really made the story- tragic as is turned out. But beyond that, I just want to thank everyone for being a part of it. I look forward to many great games with everyone and from what I've seen, we're off to a great start. Now, as usual, If anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, please get a hold of Gamma, Wilson, Metacognition or myself. Not only will we get you added to the list, but we'd also be more than willing to help out in any way we can. You can also ask questions in our Q&A Thread and get some hints and feedback about future games from everyone over here in our Art of Game Creation thread as well. Thanks again to everyone that played and we look forward to killing seeing you in future games!

Wow. This came up quickly on me. I haven't even had time to think up a character yet! I'll do so tomorrow and start actually doing something then. In the mean time, I just wanted to check in and let everyone know that I'm still alive. One thing that I will say and this is partially due to the fact that I GMed the first iteration of this game, but we can't just sit back and bide our time. There's a good chance that the Inquisitor will be capable of fooling any Seekers so we can't rely on them to sniff him/her out. Also, I'm assuming that there is at least one Tineye, right Orlok? Are PMs available? And while I highly doubt that the Inquisitor has Uber-Tin (I greatly discouraged it before just because of how much of a pain it was!), that doesn't mean that we can be lax with them. I wouldn't be surprised if the Inquisitor has some ability related to PMs after all. So please, everyone, be careful with what you say! Last time, the Villagers basically gave themselves away in PMs and that let the Inquisitor know exactly who to hit. Let's not make that mistake again!

Once you've picked out a Non-Sanderson game that you'd like, just let that GM and us Mods know. That way, we can get it added to the list and then that game will be the one that is played when that GM is up.

I will be out of town next weekend, so I probably won't be around at that time, but as I told Orlok when he asked about rerunning LG2, I build games that I think I, myself, would enjoy and that I hope everyone else would as well. As such, there's no way I'm missing the opportunity to get a chance to actually play in a game based off of one of my own! I've yet to come up with a character, but I'll have one soon.

Yeah, the fact that they haven't been posted yet is entirely my fault. I keep on forgetting when I have time and remembering when I'm too busy. So while I wanted to do a whole thing for them, this is way past due. Sorry. The Winners of the CR Contest

AG3 Cosmetic Role Winners! It is my pleasure and honor to present our first ever winners of the AG Cosmetic Role Contest! Let us engrave their names into the SEAcropolis for the rest of eternity, so that their vigilance and effort will inspire throughout the ages! First up is Madagascar in the guise of Matilda, the crazy cat lady with a drinking problem. Not only was she incredibly entertaining and added a touch of levity to the village, but she also took it upon herself to try to use every other CR in the game throughout her posts! Next is Wyrmhero, with his private detective, Wyl Sharpe. While his intentions towards the town turned out to be sinister, his constant Noir style was anything but. It's difficult enough to continue to stay within a single genre like that, let alone do so while manipulating the village into killing each other. Finally, we have Sart, who played a trickster of the same name with, what I believe, is one of the harder CRs to do well. It is difficult to write almost exclusively in High Imperial and make sure that everyone is still capable of understanding you, but Sart pulled this off with panache. It was incredibly difficult to just narrow it down to just three people. There were a lot of great characters and some amazing roleplay. Some Honorable Mentions had to be Herowannabe, for somehow keeping his Mysterious Master a secret for the entire game, only for it to be revealed at the end that it had been Ruin all along. Arraenae for creating such a well developed character, with a full backstory, that made it so easy to connect with her character that it felt more like I was revealing her story than writing it. Hemalurgic Headshot for creating such a fun character that you looked forward to seeing what he'd do next; and every time it was worth it. And finally, Assassin in Burgundy for taking an incredibly simple CR and turning it into a full character by the time it was done. There were plenty of others as well, but it would take forever to list them all! So give up for our champions for the first ever CR contest! Those three will be able to choose a Non-Sanderson game of their choice for us to be able to play sometime this year. So if you have an idea for what you think is a really fun Non-Sanderson game, these are the people you'll want to talk to. And while we're at it, things will be different in the future. This year, there are still a lot of games that people had already created and signed up to run that were Non-Sanderson games and it would be difficult to force those GMs to change their games at the last moment. This increases the number of Non-Sanderson games that we'll have this year quite a lot in proportion to future years. With that in mind, we have another, secret, challenge already going. This challenge will continue throughout the year and the winners will be announced next year, along with the winners of next year's CR contest. There will be three additional people next year who will be able to pick out a Non-Sanderson game of their choosing and while we won't tell you the exact conditions of the challenge, I can tell you this, it has something to do with activity. Best of luck!

Cats were definitely harmed during the razing of Tyrian Falls. We just put that in at the end so we don't get sued. ...And people were harmed. And puppies. And poor defenseless buildings. And won't someone think of the poor Koloss that got blisters or stubbed their toes getting there? Point is, there was a lot of harming going around. If no one else wants to add their votes or anything, the rest of the Mods and I will discuss and we'll announce the winners of the CR challenge soon!

I mentioned something about that early on, before the game even began. It's written as every post (and those that did work it into every post definitely deserve more credit), but there was some leeway there as well because I didn't want it to be so restrictive that people didn't post because they couldn't write anything connected to their CR every time. The problem is that, if we take away such a parameter, then there were just so many great characters that people were doing a great job at bringing to life! I don't necessarily want to count those people out though either. Actually, you were their final kill. So you didn't technically survive. I just didn't make it a highlight of the write up because, well, everyone was basically dying. Your death technically won them the game. That's got to count for something though, right?

And I'd say that it's all a matter of getting used to it and figuring out how to do it. 'Scar managed to do the same and didn't seem to have nearly the difficulties you had. Granted, she didn't have the complication of also being Spiked, but I've seen her do that before too. Sure! I initially wanted to give the Spiked team a Coinshot. But that presented a lot of problems because, as I've said before, if you are reliant on certain roles to absolutely be in the game, then you've already broken your game a bit, IMO. And that's what it would've required for that to work. If the Spiked Coinshot was killed early or went inactive, then the entire balance of the teams would've shifted and I could not seem to find a way to make it work where the Coinshot was not pivotal to the Spiked success. We've seen stuff like this happen before, like in LG22 when we killed the Forsaken on the very first lynch and it made it so I just couldn't be killed the entire game. So I started looking at the Mistborn and they were perfect. They were less destructive than the Coinshot, but also gave the Spiked more versatility. They were also less predictable for the Spiked to be able to plan around, which made their job harder. This balanced nicely with the fact that they allowed for some explosive turns. And by giving the Spiked multiple Mistborn, I assured that they would be capable of having those turns while not making the entire team reliant on any singular role. As we saw in this game, when 2 (TWO!) of the Mistborn died early, it wasn't as crippling as it would've been had they lost their one and only Coinshot. So how do you balance the villagers against something like that? I had already decided at that point that one of the twists in the game was going to be the lack of Tineyes. With three Mistborn in the game, I figured that tin would still come up often enough, but would steadily decrease in frequency as the Mistborn died; thus making it a double edged sword for the Villagers. I also didn't want to balance out the Villagers by just adding in more Mistborn onto their side. It felt like a cheap way to go about balancing things. All that left was to give the Villagers enough Mistings of different sorts to make up for it. - The Smokers were there to help counter the possible turns where the multiple Mistborn drew Emotional Allomancy. If all three of the Mistborn drew either Brass or Zinc together, they could effectively control the votes even in the early game. Plus, I still feel like people just don't give Smokers the credit they deserve. 90% of the time this game, the Village Smokers had their Copperclouds off on just the possibility of a chance that there was a Seeker in the game when they could've been using their power to help protect the Village. - The large number of Thugs and multiple Lurchers were to, of course, dampen the strength of when the Mistborn would draw Steel multiple turns. - I gave them a single Seeker because, while they had Lurchers and Thugs that could be semi-confirmed if attacked, I felt like the Villagers needed some extra power since I was taking away easy access to PMs. Plus, I'll admit, I really wanted to see how someone would handle being a Seeker without PMs. Did they wait and hold onto all their information, waiting for a time when PMs become open and risk all their scans being lost if they were attacked? Or did they reveal in thread and draw attention (and ultimately death) from the Spiked? - Add in a peppering of Rioters and Soothers so that the Village could control the vote if they needed/wanted to and a Coinshot for good measure and voila! A fairly balance team to go against the Spiked. The Villagers had a large number of Mistings to help them in cause. Now, as far as why the Spiked had a Thug, a Smoker, and a Lurcher as well as the Mistborn when there was only one Coinshot in the game? That was twofold. - One, it gave the Spiked a place to hide. The Villagers had a larger number of those roles in the game than any others. So if they went around systematically trying to kill anyone and everyone that claimed Smoker or the like (basically, trying to use the role distribution to find the Spiked), then they would likely go through a lot of Villagers before they got there. This was one of the primary reasons that the Spiked had a Lurcher. In a way, Wyrm, it could be said that you were the least valuable person on the Spiked team! - Two, I didn't want to give them either a Rioter or Soother because with the Mistborn drawing those as well, it would be A: similar to the last AG and B: a little too much control of the votes. By giving them a Thug (and sort of the Lurcher), I assured that, even if the Mistborn were taken out early, the Spiked still had a strong presence in the game because they would be equally hard to kill if many of the Villager Thugs and Lurchers hadn't been taken out yet. The Spiked Thug was especially a counter to this idea. I could say more on the distribution, but I think that should give a fairly clear idea on how and why things were balanced as they were. I think, overall, it was more than fairly balanced. In fact, when I discussed it with Alv, he thought the Seeker was giving the Villagers more power than the Spiked. But there was no need to subtly encourage any type of strategy in the game. I know better than to do that. The second you try to do that as a GM, you can fully expect your players to throw any such plans out the window! Besides, I find that to be trying to steer the game in a certain direction and if you make it so that certain playstyles are more effective than others, then you do a disservice to how other people may play the game, IMO. Far better to just let your players decide how they want to do things and leave them the tools to do whatever they'd like!