Steadfast chat was a nice place to plan with bluedoom and dak, just 3 people chillin trying to figure out the best actions to disrupt scum and protect town. I'm glad bluedoom was able to be involved with the leading process and the action-deciding (bless the game-winning drive on NH), even though in Sam's ideal world he would've been perpetually on the outside of town lol. I did have fun planning with them even if we were all constantly paranoid someone wasn't town early (bluedoom literally copped Cartel n0 and dak "lol my jailkeeper on the final steadfast mysteriously failed the night she died!" high quality sheeting choices).
My inability to really enjoy the game stemmed more from how much time I knew it was going to take away from other interests and the workload of talking to everyone, getting results, giving actions... the list just kept going on. Perhaps I internalize the responsibility too much but it felt like it would be 'my fault' if town got moled, or I sheeted a mole, or I came up with subpar actions, so I just didn't really have fun playing under all that pressure. And maybe it was self-inflicted because in 2024 people wouldn't roast a leader for getting duped like we did a decade ago, idk. But the environment of "one of these cops is def a mole" and "these inspect results are dubiously-clearing, they may not be Cartel but they could still be psycho" and "oh yeah at least one villager will be ripped away from you so careful who you sheet!" just isn't really enjoyable for me and the social elements of mafia that I enjoy. I feel bad keeping people in the dark who would otherwise want to be involved. I knew I couldn't keep the town info all to myself (or not have people who would shut down LN if he tried to step up after my death) but I definitely cried once or twice out of frustration of not being sure if I was doing the right thing and sheeting the right people or if I'd screwed over town by trusting in the steadfast text cleaning method.
Mekkah messaged me on N0 and asked if I thought the police had any connection to the mayor and I said "I can think of one thing" (the steadfast text) and was somewhat surprised when the mayor never responded to my post seeking people with the steadfast text... only to learn he and Amy both became illiterate for about 24 hours and missed it lmao. In the end I feel vindicated I was correct the steadfast text was the commissioner-mayor connection. I know Sam says he would've put the text into the OP so it couldn't be used to clean people and form a mole-proof sheetholder circle but I really don't know how town would've ever overcome that trust deficit. As we saw this game almost every vig/unlocked vig was just hooked until they died lategame, zorbees got 2 shots off before Bass drove him to let him get 1 in an attempt to negotiate for his own life, and TAS used his JOAT kill, and that was it? Two judge kills worked because it was impossible to know who was carrying the kill via inspect (and the scum did hook one of the kill carriers, just on the wrong night) and one goon was executed, but otherwise I am not really sure how town would've successfully gotten their lategame kp to work due to the unlimited hooks of the Cartel. If you presume that Cartel moling town ensures the Boss/Capo will live long enough to recruit over 50% of the goons and unlock goon multitargeting then you have to assume the Cartel will always have the ability to hook every village kp and that the lone town SG (I know Martin/Blazade/backups could situationally SG but lbr those would probably die before lategame too) is almost certain to never sniff endgame in a moled town situation. One of the mimics taking SG is an option but not one I think town ever commits to before it's too late (or the mole gets them to absorb something bad). This is one of those aspects that I think Sam came close to presenting an interesting dynamic on, but he rushed the game out a little too quickly and he could've used more time to refine it and really chart out endgame scenarios and the full consequences of giving the Cartel essentially unlimited hook power that both doesn't scale linearly to the village's power loss and never loses access like lynching the mafia hooker would accomplish.
I think Summoning Circle was an extremely unorthodox turn of events for a big village but was definitely the most enjoyable part of the game. ~50% of the living village was in one server together with the sheet open, and everyone in the server was town. It's even more rare that the village can essentially submit communal actions and everyone can go "yeah I'm ok with someone picking for me" and fully trust it, since all the scum were known and uncontested. It's probably more fun than your average villager would have in any other big, especially for how early the Circle began and brought everyone in, but it took a lot of 4am cold sweat wakeups from the steadfast squad to get there lol. I was definitely pleased that the living villagers could all get in and be involved, and communicate with the deads for as long as Pidge lived.
My conclusion on the 'amorphous blob' mafia archetype that Sam used here is that hosts looking to use a mana pool format or similar for their mafia should consider the frustration level the village can encounter when trying to defeat it. No matter how many you lynch/vig, they never lost access to anything except the 1x recruit and goon promotion, and even at that point, killing inner circle led to less strength loss than killing a promoted goon did. The reward for the village to finally getting a kill to work was very low, and the knowledge that "my roles are bleeding out and the wolf is stealing them while the stupid mafia never loses their 10x hook" is going to erode town WIM. I know that Sam foresaw this to some degree and gave us the last stand mechanics like the MAYORIZZLER but every single other perk was countered by a 3 point hook (last commissioner gaining access to the others' roles including the vig, street justice, commissioner's team-wide rogue, the unlocking vigs) except the mayor perk. I think he misjudged how unsatisfying it might feel to have these perks unlock and know that you'll never successfully use them because the Cartel was already mass-hooking you. The only reason bus driver was even a game-winning play is because it interacted with hook in an unorthodox way that spawned an Office thread about the role's power level. I have a feeling that the blob structure would work better in multifaction than village vs mafia, where the power scaling could feel less imbalanced as the village bleeds out. In this game, it didn't feel like there was enough reward for town for killing any single Cartel, and the Cartel were not remotely punished for open gooning by being depleted of strength. 14/17 did not claim, 1 claimed a modified recruitable Goon, 1 was a built-in mole, so 12 of those didn't even try to. The 3 who did got got by Sam messing up his own PM format lol. They hovered within 5 strength of their starting pool of 29 for most of the game until we burned through all the wolf's LPVs and could refocus on them. I know the Cartel feels like they didn't know what to claim or how to fake anything on N0 so ease of "the blob" having claimable, provable roles should also be considered by hosts looking to use the blob system.
Overall I think Sam presented a lot of interesting design choices in this game, some of which were positive expansions on old dynamics like having several related villagers like the loader/vig, DNA analyst/jailer to semi-clean each other, town-friendly neutral being able to message the commissioner - if anything I might recommend the other connected roles be able to send anonymous messages to each other so they can find someone they can essentially know is town, in the game design where the steadfast text is public and avoiding moles is more difficult. There are other places where I think he fell short and into some of his old habits (his towns have not won prior to this game and his postgames often featured similar complaints of out-of-balance wolves and a difficulty to involve town and have fun) that make him a stronger multifaction designer than village vs mafia designer. While this game probably played out as he 'hoped' in that it became a 1v1v1 multifaction negotiating gambit, I think this ultimately feels unrewarding for villagers, especially the leaders, who preserved their information and efficiently found scum aliases. I think it SHOULD have been more of a stomp than it was based on the Cartel's failure to fakeclaim or mole into the village successfully. This is a host design philosophy difference between Sam and several others in the community - is a better game one where the stronger-played side wins easily/the team that messes up simply loses, or is a better game one where each team can claw its way back into it and the power shifts multiple times a game? I would also recommend future hosts slow down their game development and PM writing process. It shouldn't be SO obvious which roles are "the host's babies" from the quality of the role PM, as it was here. I disagree that "these roles were psychomillers so they were supposed to be suspicious" is a justification for the obvious effort discrepancy between even other psychomiller roles (Backup guy vs Banker for example). Just something for hosts to pay attention to and slow down on. Some of the roles being wolf expansion packs is also a feelsbad for the villager. Like Hydro was better off teamkilled than being recruited by one of the other teams and sunny would've been better off using the redirect pointlessly on D1 or D2 so it couldn't be used against town (or with the redirect being on the mayor, like Sam suggested).
tl;dr thanks to Sam for hosting and everyone for playing. It was a dynamic game for sure.