I'll also take part of the responsibility for any complaints that happened towards Laurentus. He had PMed me asking me questions before the process, and there were things that I should have said (such as keeping the host/player interactions to a minimum) but neglected to.
Also, Sign ups should be a full week, neither longer nor shorter. The only exception to this rule is if you have a list of, say, 4 players, and are pushing to garner interest so that the list can be larger. But if you've got enough players to start the basic game with no hitches, then they should close exactly 7 days from the time they were opened.
The minimum players should always be
10, because if you have to revert to the basic power roles, that'd be 2 defenders, 2 werewolves, 1 seer, and then 5 villagers to balance it out. If there's less players and ample time was given for the signups to gather more (with the absolute minimum in that case being 8 ), then you can go one less defender, but there should always be a balance between villagers and power roles, with the possibility of the number of villagers outnumbering the number of power roles. Likewise, it has to be balanced in a way so that the bad guys won't outnumber the good guys too quickly.
Outside of those comments, I really don't have much to say. I think the game played out just fine, and I enjoyed the theme of it quite a bit.
Also: Wintermoot: Don't get too discouraged by being voted out early like that. It just means that people see you as a potential threat, so they're trying to get you out of the game before you cause damage for the bad guys. So I'd actually consider that quite a compliment. Frustrating for sure, but a compliment nonetheless.