---Celebrity Mafia: Endgame---

The theme for this game was Women (mafia) vs. Men (town). There was a further thematic element, in that men who I find attractive were given non-Vanilla roles, and men who I do not find attractive--but who others often did--were given Vanilla roles. It was for this reason that I found Warren's claim hard to believe, and it surprised me that no one called him out on it. I will also note, for the record, that I was being polite when I described O'Pry as cute. My taste in men runs towards the muscular-but-not-freakishly-so end of the spectrum, with some exceptions. When I do find men outside of that type attractive, they tend to have softer features--O'Pry's face is just way too angular. That might be a bit TMI but I mention it to explain why certain characters and justifications were included.

I felt that this game was extremely well-balanced. The Visitor roles were not fluff roles; their inclusion balanced for the dreamer. By upping the number of visiting roles, I increased the likelihood that the dreamer might not dream, without, I think, making it too unlikely that the dreamer would dream. The Ninja balanced for the Tracker. The Ninja was given a restrictive flavor in part because the dreamer was already a fairly weak investigative role (and Town had no doctor), and so I felt that the Tracker could not be balanced at parity with the Ninja, lest town's only power roles be overly counterbalanced. Mafia was given the Lookout to help them identify Town's active roles, but the Tracker might have been able to hide among all the visitors, and made it difficult for Mafia to pinpoint who had a power role and who did not. And, of course, Town had a BP.

I was enormously pleased with the amount of activity in this game, and want to thank everyone for participating as much as they did. It is that level of participation which makes the game fun and worthwhile. There were, I think, a few missteps on both sides. Supa should not, for instance, have hinted at being BP quite so early, as he effectively rendered his role useless. Mafia should have pushed for a Cogent lynch earlier, given that he stated his character has won a gold medal. Pita Taufatofua has never won an Olympic Medal of any level. The Speed-Warren gambit should have been more transparent, given how obvious it was that Warren was scum. Why would experienced scum so clumsily and poorly counterclaim another player in a non-MYLO or -LYLO situation if that other player were really town? Granted, I had the advantage of knowing what was going on, but it seemed tremendously transparent to me. Finally, if I were Mhar, I would not have claimed when I did--I would have waited to see if I could have gotten another dream before exposing myself to mafia. Overall, I think mafia took some unnecessary risks (like the gambit) and town lacked sufficient coordination early on. I will award Mafia and Game MVPs to Speed, for (a) not being lynched and (b) carrying mafia to the finish. While I don't think there was genuinely any town MVP, but I will award it as a tie between Wylted and Disc.