Hello, and welcome to Innocent Town.

This is a line that was once uttered to each of you when we first reopened about two years ago. A line that meant more to me than you will ever know.

For the uninitiated who have only appeared relatively lately, let me inform you as to what exactly the Innocent Town Miracle is...

The story begins in February of 2013. I was tired of Vizzed, and in my foolishness, thought that Innocent Town would stand, even if I left.

This is where things went downhill.

I don't know why, exactly, nor does it really matter... but that thread was effectively a goodbye. I left Innocent Town. I would independently permaban myself next month, but not until after the events of the Innocent Town Miracle.

In the meantime, with me gone, and the_casualty (only other mod at the time) gone as well, people wondered what was next for Innocent Town. pacman1755 and silverthundr were around, and trusted members of the forum's staff, even if they weren't mods.

Then, geeogree asked the fatal question. What do they do with this "dead" (but not really) forum?

Lazlo Falconi betrayed everyone and summoned David to have him sell it off.

And because of that, Innocent Town was put up for auction.

Internally, I was mad. Externally, I played it off as not caring. I had hope that pacman1755 would win the forum, as he was the person I had intended to inherit the forum, now that I was gone, and contemplating leaving Vizzed entirely.

Instead, something I saw as the worst of possible fates came to pass...

The auction got messy, convoluted, and despite the fact he had geeo willing to pay a ridiculous amount of Viz to help him win, pacman1755 lost.

And two people I never wanted to have anything to do with IT's power, were victorious.

What followed next... was both heartwarming and disturbing.

People were outraged. Not even people that were my friends. People that loved IT for what it was, and feared that IT would change under the two new owners (mrfe and Singelli). They in essence, were pressured into selling the forum to pacman1755 by the masses of the old IT crowd.

Two factors forced their hand: First, that pacman1755 was seen as the successor to legacyme3. Everywhere legacyme3 went on site, pacman1755 followed. It was a partnership that grew once the forum was back in the rightful hands of legacyme3 a year later. The second factor, was the shady circumstances under which the forum was won. Back then, auctions didn't end after being the leading bid for a day. It ended at an exact time. Which meant the sniping Singelli and mrfe were able to run away with Innocent Town.

They claimed to want to keep things the same way, but they were total opposites of legacyme3. So people's outrage was expected. How could two people who were the literal opposites of their former leader keep things the same? Pacman1755's supporters rallied as said above, and were able to force the sale of the forum to him.

Here is the thread where things changed forever.

"We will rise again."

Truer words have never been spoken. Within a day of those words, the revolution had been won. Innocent Town had its independence back.

The details were relayed to legacyme3, still in self imposed exile, and preparing to have geeogree ban him from Vizzed forever, (once IT was in proper hands, I felt like I could finally leave) all legacyme3 had to say was this... (via facebook)

"March 8th, 2013 will be forever known as the Innocent Town Miracle.

Today is a glorious day"

Innocent Town was saved. And is why we are here today.

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So to celebrate this event, we've started our own annual awards show, similar to the one that is held every December 6th for the entirety of Vizzed. The difference is, we will be doing only INNOCENT TOWN BASED AWARDS. And to make sure this gets out in timely fashion (at least for now), we will be doing voting through the moderators of the forum, myself, mlb789, and pacman1755. This year, we only had three awards we voted on, maybe next year we'll add more, and let others vote.

So, without further ado, here are the awards your IT moderators voted on! (vote tally in parenthesis)

AWARD #1 - Best IT Game (2 votes each)
1st - Mafia (3)
2nd - Vizzed Survivor (2)
3rd - Not Dungeons and Dragons (1)

Mafia was voted as the top game, unsurprisingly, getting votes from all three mods. I think it's safe to say why, too... Mafia is synonymous with Innocent Town. Mafia is the reason the current Innocent Town exists. This place lives, breathes, and dies by the game, and it will continue for eons to come (Yes, Mafia 19 is coming soon!)

In second was Vizzed Survivor. It was a game created just in the past year. And boy, was it ever popular! It gained more support in a day than Vizzed Camp did in a week, and Survivor was seen as the spiritual successor to Camp. With a plan to cycle it and Camp every other year, this is another game that many hold dear in their hearts.

In third was Not Dungeons and Dragons, an overly ambitious project that I need to get off my ass and update sometime in the next month (it's been stalled because of me). While this game has tons of promise, and is fun for the players, as a host, it can be draining to do somedays, as once players start to separate, it's very hard to keep track of everything and keep things somewhat fluid.

AWARD #2 - Best IT Non-Game Thread (2 votes each)
1st (tie) - Stop Whining, Wild legacyme3 Sightings (2)
3rd (tie) - Stop Taking Your Moderators for Granted, A Formal Apology (1)

This was a very divisive award. Innocent Town has a lot of threads, many good, some bad. Some rise to the top, and some never get recognition. Two threads stand above all, though, the Stop Whining thread, and the Wild Legacyme3 Sightings thread. One is a parody thread of a certain someone whining to the locals whenever anyone did something they slightly disagreed with. One is a thread where people spot the mystical wild legacyme3, who is rumored to appear with black and white zebra stripes from time to time.

Outside of those two though, earning mention are Stop Taking Your Moderators for Granted and A Formal Apology. These two are polar opposites. One is a somewhat serious piece (one of the few in Innocent Town) that I say is a must read (though I wrote it, so of course I'd say that), and the other is a completely fantastical joke thread, where the user is bait and switched. One of the ultimate troll posts of our time.

AWARD #3 - Best IT User (3 votes each)
1st (tie) - legacyme3, sonicmcmuffin (3)
3rd (tie) - megamanmaniac, pacman1755 (2)

There were other people who got one vote each, such as mlb789, and the_casualty, but in the voters minds, there is little debate as to who did the best job being an overall member of Innocent Town.

In first, we have both legacyme3 and sonicmcmuffin. One of whom was practically a shoe in, much like how David was a shoe in to win Most Famous because he made himself eligible (grumble grumble), and one of which has played pretty much every game in Innocent Town, and played it well. Both users get high marks for this special occasion.

Following them, we had both megamanmaniac and pacman1755 gain enough votes to sit on the podium. One is a user, much like sonicmcmuffin, who plays most games, and plays them well, and has the same IT spirit the other three podium placers have. The other gets special mention for being one of the orchestrators of the Innocent Town Miracle we are here to celebrate.

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Below this, we have a couple special Leggy Awards to give out that weren't voted on by the moderators. These are my judgements alone.

NDND Player of the Year - Presently, the game is still in progress, and all the players are roughly even, but one player seems to have embraced the NDND mindset better than anyone. He was able to use his powers of nonsense to find a key by melding with the floor. The winner of this award is SONICMCMUFFIN

Whipping Boy of the Year - In Innocent Town, we give people who aren't 100% perfect a lot of flak. Being a forum that is mainly satire and parody, we find creative ways to insult people most of the time. However... there are times we go a bit too far, and genuinely hurt the feelings of people we joke about. One of those people, gets way more crap than he deserves, on both IT and the main forum of Vizzed. So it's with this award that I choose to honor BARATHEMOS, for not swearing undying vengeance on us, and staying the less threatening version of himself.

Mafia Player of the Year - This award is actually going to go to two people. We haven't had much Mafia in the past year, Se7enteen finished about a year ago, and then we had 18, Kanashi Shima. In essence, we only had two games of Mafia played this season, as it were, a sharp dropback from years past. Se7enteen was also an incredibly short game, so it makes it hard to single out good players from that one. However, I'm going to choose the two top MVPs from each round... POPEYE116 and EIDETICMEMORY are your winners. For reminders sake, Popeye116 was an assassin in a game with 29 people, and was THIS close to winning. That's paramount to the murderer making it to the end in Murder Mystery, especially since people were able to deduce there was an assassin in the game. Were it not for one move, he'd have won outright. As for EM, he was able to cleverly use the power of the governor at the perfect time to give the town a chance to win. Were it not for him, the game would have ended in Mafia victory very early.

Special Mention #1 - Old Innocent Town, now the Thumb Athletes forum. It took about 8 months (I think) for David to change Innocent Town mk 1 into The Thumb Athletes forum (which is cool and you should post in it). This sparked many jokes about the spirit of Innocent Town haunting the forum. And the thing is, they are right. It will forever haunt them.

Special Mention #2 - Geeo's Private Forum, dead, but not forgotten. Geeogree was kind enough to allow pacman1755 and myself to buy in, and turn this place from GPF into IT. As a result, the legacy of IT lives on, and under the new and capable ownership that won't stab each other in the back, hopefully. Thanks to both geeogree, and the loyal members of Geeo's Private Forum for allowing us our home.

Special Mention #3 - Thank you to all of you who consistently come to IT every day. IT is the entire reason I'm on Vizzed anymore, and you can never know just how much this rented forum means to me. I love you all, sincerely, and hope that this place never dies. We are Innocent Town, we are legion. And in the immortal words of pacman1755, even if we should falter, "We will rise again."

That's it for the 2015 show. Hopefully next year, we'll have something even more special for you all!

Oh, yay, I won an award. Thanks, leggy.

I never knew about these events. They must have happened while I was gone. It's great that Innocent Town is the same as it was before, though.

Happy Innocent Town Miracle day, everybody!

I read the entire post looking for mention of me giving up my forum. So glad it was basically at the very END of the post

Glad IT is around though. It is easily the most successful rented forum we've had.

geeogree :

Had to save that stuff for last, after all.

I'm glad I'm basically the savior of this forum. It's pretty touching that I got a lot of respect around this parts because of the downfall. But hey, we're here to see 2 years beyond the saving, and we're still as strong as ever! IT is awesome, and so are you for supporting the cause.

Here's to IT's success and to another year of the rebellion!

I remember that Mafia game. It was great to get so engaged.

I think that's what made me decide to participate in Kanashi Shima and the most recent Murder Mystery.
I'm also excited for the next Vizzed Camp.

Cheers to another year of IT!

I can't say that I expected to win an award, but it's good to see that this place is still standing strong and I look forward to its bright future (and future Mafia games).

legacyme3 : First congratulations on not quitting, Though i guess the credit has to go to other people as well. As someone that has been in the same position, the only reason i decided otherwise is because although low in numbers i really appreciate some of the members here and what they do. Even if they don't get praise for it. 

That being said, Firstly let me thank the moderators for voting for me. It's an honour to think that you feel i have "presence" in this forum especially as I'm not a moderator here.. In fact some may argue that  i probably have more of an impact here than i do in my over forum's lol. Regardless i feel that nearly everyone who takes part in these competitions in good spirit really deserves a pat on the back, mainly because without their contribution i doubt IT would have ever been reborn... or become active again!

So let's hope this trend continues, let's keep playing these games... LETS ENJOY OURSELVES MORE, EVEN IF WE DISAGREE WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING ELSEWHERE ON THE SITE... 

This forum has been somewhat my heroin, my addiction... it hides all the pain and leaves me with a stupid look on my face every time... I may get down afterwards and complain about some part of the site... But if not for IT, either I'd be making the games myself... or I'd probably be a lot less active...

That comparison is a bit over the top.. But then again.. When have i ever been known to pull any punches

LONG LIVE INNOCENT TOWN