Okay! I'm gonna try to write a little wrap up of the game for everyone. Some of my favorite moments, behind the scenes stuff, etc. :P Anything I can remember!
So to start off with some real background, this began as a new roleplay following the collapse of my zombie RP, Outbreak. I had been planning a "journey" RP based on key locations in the series and following the general trajectory of the show. The RP would take place after the Red Wedding and basically just let people explore Westeros and enjoy what their mind could create. Before I could get that ready, however, mafia started getting really popular on PC and the Underground was founded. I realized how much funner it would be to host a mafia based on aSoIaF and wound up coming up with the Houses idea as a way to change the meta-game of it all. The Letters idea came later when I realized I didn't want the Houses knowing each other directly so easily right from the start.
At the very beginning, I was pretty surprised at how many people signed up. It was really awesome and I ended up crafting about ten additional roles to fill thanks to the signups. I even re-added players back to the game to fill some of those roles. Jojen, Brienne, Sam, Bronn, Ygritte, and the Sellsword were all late-crafted roles. Jojen and Sam wound up winning the entire thing, Brienne and Ygritte making it fairly close. Also Nakuzami was two of my late-crafted roles and died first and almost last.
When the game started, the only person able to recruit and chat with people in his "House" was gio7sm, who recruited gimmepie and Charlie Brown early. Unfortunately for them, they were found out fast. Ullion and Candy were the only other recruits by the Walker and he was sussed out after some fine detective work by the humans, who actually misinterpreted my clue! The clue was in reference to the number of posts gio7sm had made in the game so far (at the time between 18-90). If you had looked at the "Who's Posted?" list at that time, gio had 18 posts, while around a quarter of the players still living were UNDER 18. The clues ended up working in the favor of the humans, regardless, despite their misinterpretation. :)
One of the funnest moments in the game came the night Lady Stoneheart could recruit and the Faceless Man could kill. LSH wanted arachnidsGrip, while the Faceless Man decided to wear her face. She was recruited, then immediately slain by the Faceless Man. That was LSH's only true recruit, as the following night, the White Walker killed her immediately after she recruited Christos (Davos). Her recruitment of him also rendered his NA of recruiting someone to the Baratheons disabled.
Many of the events of the game had to be disabled due to early deaths. If Joffrey had lived, we would've had a Purple Wedding event, though he may not have died. If Tywin had made it even further, there would've been a particularly funny scene with him and a crossbow. Besides that, I think we almost got all the events. The Red Wedding, the Battle at the Fist, and some other spur of the moment events made for a more wild story anyway.
For about 96% of the game, I had no clue who would win. The White Walker was a strong candidate for a time, then the Lannisters, then the Targaryens, before the Starks got a bunch of help, then it was obvious the Targaryens had it.
If either Lycanthropy or Netto had decided to take the throne for themselves, there would have been a three-way duel between all of them and, honestly, anyone could have taken it at that point. They made the smarter move and bent the knee to the last original loyal peasant, Strong Belwas, who joined the Targaryens much earlier.
The Letters system ended up working about 70% of the time. House Stark was the best at sending letters, figuring out who the rest of their Household was within a few phases. The worst was the Lannisters, who sent a single letter the entire game and wound up dying swiftly. In the World of Ice and Fire, expect the Letters to return, albeit much different and more interesting for the political backroom deals and betrayals.
Next season will have almost double the Houses of the current season, with less members of each House represented. This will give us a wider variety of teams, players, and unique roles. I tried to craft every role this season to base it on the characters of the show, but I also was overly cautious with very powerful NAs and powers as they were untested in mafia games and I didn't want to see a single House triumph too easily over the others.
All in all, I really enjoyed hosting the game. Everyone seemed to have fun, we broke the post count record, and we managed to swiftly finish the game with minimal delay. I really enjoyed writing the phase change posts and trying to inject parts of the series into our custom story.
Thanks again to all my players. :) <3