Mafia: Effulgent Edition

[Anya]

Are you having Observers? Observers pretty much get to know who everyone is and watch the fun without participating.

[Alicorn]

Kappa knows some rules and will therefore default to this unless she decides not to supervise at all. I guess there could be more.

[Tamien]

I am a yes whether IRC or PBP, with a slight PBP preference because I have limited evenings on which I could devote a long stretch of time, so I'd rather devote short chunks over a longer period.

[Alicorn]

OK, I think the balance is swinging in favor of PBP, since I don't remember anyone claiming to prefer IRC and we have enough PBP-only to make up for the possibility of dropouts. Are there any hidden pitfalls to people inheriting roles if somebody with a cool role evaporates without dying? I'll set this up tomorrow.

[DanielH]

I preferred IRC because I don’t trust PBP for the same reasons you talked about. If nobody comes up with hidden pitfalls to role inheritance, that shouldn’t be a problem, though. To clarify, though, what do you mean by role inheritance: keeping people in reserve to take over, which has the non-hidden pitfall of them not necessarily getting to play, or some random townsperson becoming the <whatever>, which has the pitfall of not necessarily having townsfolk left?

[Alicorn]

I mean (fake examples) "Hi, player formerly known as Val! You are now Inkeri, since the Inkeri player vanished, and you have the power to predict all the events of the next night." Val could have previously died - Inkeri is not, in this eventuality, dead, just stopped playing.

[DanielH]

Oh, yes, dead people probably make excellent reserve players.

I know that was a fake example, but I'm now trying to imagine how such a prediction power would be implemented.

[Alicorn]

It wouldn't, which is why I chose it as a fake example XD

[Thatwasademo]

Curse you, Alicorn, for making me have to finally stop lurking and register for your forum! and also for being a highly entertaining person in general

Which is to say, I would very much like to register for this game here if you'll have me, and if (but not necessarily only if?) it is going to be PBP.

[Nemo]

If dead people are the replacements, then they might have information their new role isn't supposed to. The obvious case is if Val was mafia and gets reincarnated as town, or a cop who died with some results unreported.

It can work out, like if Val was a vanilla townie and got killed night 1. But how likely that is depends on what roles there are, which is secret. If we conferred and decided whether we could rely on it, you'd all know whether we were confident the first person to die wouldn't know anything that gives their new role an advantage. That'd be pretty a big spoiler.

If you mean giving living players the role of someone who disappeared, that should work (if the person who disappeared was town). It'd leave town down a VT instead of down a power role, which is better, but we'd be wanting to call in a replacement for that anyway so I'm not sure it gains us anything.