2nd Pieguyn for Rising Star
In order to support this second, look at Marketplace Mafia where pieguyn replaced into a lurker slot and turned it into 1 of 4 townie slots in the BIG SIX (the other three were: PeregrineV, who was extraordinarily town due to mechanics, Tammy/Syryana town, and Ffery/Cabd town).
Nominate Cabd for Best Replacement
I didn't really think there were any players this year that really stepped it up as far as replacing in to a sheer number of games, but as for what replacement you really really want to come in when your game is in trouble, it's Cabd. There's something about him reading every game on site that makes him a nice person to go to when deadline's coming soon and you don't really have to extend deadline anymore.
Nominate Mind Reader Mafia for Best Setup
This setup was centered around the role of the mind reader, who got access to everyone's personal QT and was known to be in the game and thus confirmed town. The setup allowed for a mostly mountainous game which ended up being pretty certifiably awesome; every townie had a mason/hydra partner to vent to, and every scum had one confirmed town who they had to find eventually but could also singularly choose to manipulate. Mastin was scum in this game and his QT was a fucking masterpiece.
Nominate Scumteam of Scummies Invitational for Best Scumteam
I'm not sure why this hasn't been nominated yet, considering two of this scumteam's members were nominated for Don Corelone based on this game alone? I thought this scumteam did pretty amazing in keeping the mist spreading and had a very strong core that each filled important roles (LLD for manipulating everyone ever, Matias for looking extremely genuine and playing beyond what most people expected from him, singer for pulling off genuine notes pretty excellently and playing to keep power players who were expected to read her placated).
Most Enjoyable Game:
I just want to reemphasize how fucking fun Xenoblade was. I've played a lot of other games this year that game close to being as fun as Xenoblade, but nothing quite reached Xenoblade's excellence because that game fucking rocked.
Nominate Babysitter (N's Notably Narcissistic Nonsensical Namesake) for Best Role
Babysitter is a role that acts as a doctor unless the babysitter is killed during the night, in which case it acts as a vig. Not only is the flavor name for it pretty brilliant (babysitter watches the baby, but if the babysitter ditches the baby the baby dies
), but it's an extremely flexible role (play obvtown and get a vengekill, or play support and back up obvious town), and is an interesting way to tackle follow-the-PR/innocent strategies (and I plan on submitting an open setup based around this role after I type this up!).
Nominate Fire Emblem: Awakening for Best Mechanic
All roles in the game are designated as either 'male' or 'female'. Most male roles have the ability to propose to another player once per day. If the proposee is female, they can accept, and if either has a particular role modifier ('childbearer'), their child (the parent will know the child's rolename but not their role) enters the game the following day, and the family becomes a neighborhood. These families have their flips delayed until the entire family is dead, at which point all of them flip. The only closed aspect is how the child's alignment is determined.
I thought it was a pretty graceful way to integrate janitored flips, which is something that is cool but fucked up pretty easily, and this mechanic ended up creating really strange family dynamics (some families were loyal to each other to the point of being completely irrational, while others got very paranoid of each other very early) and effected game play in a really interesting way that I don't think anyone saw coming.
"Playing with Nacho is like playing with a religious conservative." ~UncertainKitten
-- Fate, Vanilla Townie, was brutally stabbed by a throwing sword in endgame.