Theme Test Market

[SpinWizard]

What would you think of a "Haunted House" mafia...


or a Plane Crash (On a pacific island) Mafia

please pm me any alternitive roles, Names for players or ideas you have for these themes

[The Fonz]

It'll be a while before i get close to modding, but what do people think of 'alternating mafia?' Mini, mafia and powerroles determined as normal, then the group is split into two (again, at random). Half can post and vote on odd days, half on evens (mafia and powerroles can act every night). A majority of those able to post on a given day causes a lynch, and the lynchee can be anyone, including those unable to post that day.

Perhaps even make it Antipodean mafia, when the night for half the players is the day for the other half?

[Kelly Chen]

Often you're lucky if half your players post anyway. With your idea half of those players are barred from posting, and when they do become able to post, they haven't needed to follow along for weeks.

I think impeding people from participating is way too risky to justify any benefit.

[Mr. Flay]

On the other hand, you might check out Dichotomafia, which ran a Mafia game and a Werewolf game in alternating cycles (when it was Day in one, it was Night in the other). Ran pretty well from what I can tell: http://mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1186

[Higsby]

Anyone ever done a Known Space / Ringworld theme game?

[Aimee]

I agree with Kelly... keeping about half of your players away from posting just doesn't keep interest. Personally, the idea of having to read up on a large number of pages (depending on the number of players, up to 30) would be a disincentive for participation.

Also, lots of replacements would be needed because no doubt some players would either forget they were in it, or lose interest.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I've got a couple of things I'm trying to decide for my first mini. The theme I'll keep to myself. The mechanic is what I've got to ask for help about. How do you think the town would react to each player having a numerical post restriction--say, all players can only make 15 posts per game day?

[JDodge]

You might want to look at No Pressure Mafia (I think), it had a similar mechanic.

I'd be interested.

[Thok]

TCS-feel free to bounce any thoughts you have about the post restriction with me. No Pressure was a bit weird, as it was a game that was designed to keep people from posting (it also had a max 2 posts per day restriction, which probably isn't what you want, and weird lynching rules that meant that people didn't need to agree to get as lynch).

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Well, I was trying to find an artificial way to end the day, other than a lynch. Perhaps a simple date-deadline would be more effective.

I'm working on a setup called "Warlords and Scumbags Mafia." It's based loosely on the card game you might call "Presidents," "Root Beer," "Capitalism," or "Asshole."

Basically the idea is that there are no lynches in the game, and no inherent power roles. It's sort of like a nightless mafia, but not really.

Each day the players talk over who is most and least scummy, and at the end of the day, they post (or PM me) a list of all the other players, ranked from 1-11 (or whatever), 1 being the most pro-town and 11 being the scummiest. The scores are then aggregated and the players ranked from first to last (ties decided either by a /roll or order PM's received, idk). Each player then receives a night/next day ability (for that night only) that corresponds to his ranking. Something like this. (This isn't the actual example, as it'd probably be horribly imbalanced, but is just so you grasp the idea)

1. Immune to Nightkills
2. Night Kill
3. Night Kill
4. Cop investigation
5. Doctor
6. Roleblocker
7. Vanilla
8. Vanilla
9. Post restriction next day
10. Cannot be doc protected
11. Alignment revealed to town following day

Etc. The idea is that the higher the ranking, the better the night/day power for the next cycle. The lower the ranking, the more negative the ability.

Anyway, if someone wants to help me with this setup, I'm more than willing to accept input.

[JDodge]

Seems like it might give people reasons to not contribute.

EDIT: Why don't you let the town "lynch" someone at the end of the day (said person stays alive and in the game), and they get their alignment revealed?

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I like that idea. And then they could PM me rankings of the other players from least to most scummy.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Then again, why not just have typical lynches?

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Sorry for the mass profusion of posting, but I've got a different idea that's a bit simpler to implement. Work is like sitting on the crapper for me; I have all sorts of ideas.

Speedlynch Mafia

This is a nightless vanilla mafia game consisting of 11 players: 9 vanilla townies and 2 scum. Each day the town votes on a player to lynch. Each and every day, only 3 votes are required to lynch a player. In the case that there are three players left, and the game has not ended, just 2 votes are necessary for a lynch.

[xyzzy]

I'm not sure how to go about balancing this, as it's kind of complex; does anyone have any suggestions?

Minesweeper Mafia (more of a mutation, but meh)

10 players are arranged in a 4x4 grid. The location where they begin is random.

Execution is the same as usual.
Every night, the players can move one space, in any direction. If they move past the grid's edge, they will show up on the other side.
Mines automatically explode after two nights.
Movement precedss all other action.

2 Mafia members. They may place a motion-sensitive mine on any of the spaces adjacent to either of them. If they step over the space where the mine is planted, they will defuse it; if anyone else steps over the space, it will explode, killing them.
1 Miner. He chooses a space next to him every night; if there is a mine there, he will defuse it.
1 Minesweeper. Every night, he checks the 8 spaces immediately surrounding him and gets the number of mines surrounding him.
6 Townies.

Edit: Changed spelling error.

[Thok]

I'm trying to decide if a 52 themed mafia (based off the DC comic book) is feasible, especially if I do something with like 4 threads and 52 players.

This probably won't be run for another year or so if I did it.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

You could have two 26-player games running concurrently.

I wonder what it would be like to merge 2 games midway through.

[Thok]

That was the idea behind the four threads; I'd have 4 mini sized games (13 each) with movement between them/merging them slowly together.

[ChannelDelibird]

Managing 50+ players at the same time is difficult enough when you're running more than one game (5 in my case), where some players can play in multiple games, but in what is essentially one game, keeping 50 different players posting would be an absolute bitch. I love the idea of merging games, though.

[Yosarian2]

I wonder what it would be like to merge 2 games midway through.

It's been done; see Tri-City mafia.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

So I'll shelve Scumbags for the time being. What do you guys think of the "Speedlynch Mafia" idea? Would this be balanced?

[Mr Stoofer]

I'd play speedlynch by way of experiment. I think it would be interesting.

[ChannelDelibird]

I'd play speedlynch by way of experiment. I think it would be interesting.

QFT

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I'll get on the mini/open lists when I've got the modding chops.

[Mr Stoofer]

It'll have to be a Mini Theme Game. Mods don't get a choice of set-up in the Open List...