I'll just confirm that the insanity game I posted before is very much not in the cards; I could only run it while "free" between jobs. It actually was an enormous blessing it didn't quite make it to enough people as I got surprise expelled from my apartment and got to spend that time moving and assembling furniture instead, so I wouldn't have had the free time after all.
As for now, I just started a new job, it would be unwise for me to commit my time at the moment so I'll also probably bow out of Mafia as a player.
On the Pokemon mafia ideas note, some rambles I held off at the time. In case someone is thinking of running that, a few thoughts... I don't think who's what type can be credibly hidden. Townies by all rights should all immediately fess up to their true type, and this is furthermore easily testable if someone lies about their type - see the contradictions on the vote board. If the mod chooses to "hide" the true votes and only show apparent votes, this actually doesn't help much - Town can still experiment given sufficient time to "check" to see if claimed types are true, except at the cost of mass annoyance and a logic puzzle. i.e. decide one day early who to lynch for day 1, then proceed to set up many possible votes that, if all claims are true, will almost-but-not-quite hammer the lynchee. And demand type claims first thing Day 1 so that the mafia doesn't know which type will be the Day 1 Lynch. Since he's the D1 lynch anyway the Mafia doesn't gain much if their lies result in a surprise early hammer, and then everyone knows that somebody in that set of votes lied about their type, etc. More generally, socially it's awkward to have surprise hammers and I'm not a fan of an idea where this is a constant threat. Votes should be a "safe" social signal as well, if town is very concerned about surprise hammers then another thing that can happen is that town resorts to using all FoS counts and never voting until the last day, which has its own problems (like someone being out of town and unable to switch their FoS to a real vote once the matter is decided, or Mafia lying and claiming the same). Or, to put it another way, almost all powers that mess with voting in general are kind of meh and have a bunch of risks. The type idea is cool enough to maybe carry it anyway, I'll grant, but in general I for one prefer voting be kept simple.
I'd tentatively recommend that all types be openly declared from the start (and pick specific Pokemon to play rather than the nebulous idea of the type itself - so "Chansey" not "Normal"), and then declare that during LYLO or potential LYLO all vote powers return to 1 trainer - 1 vote. That'd make some of the metagaming based on type-hunting less crazy. Also sculpt the power setup to not cause LYLO too early (no vigs?), since that'd take away one of the fun perks of the game. For an example of what happens without this LYLO rule... well, see DL mafia Day 3. Excal did the right thing and warned Town very clearly that misplacing a vote would be deadly, but it'd be very easy to very quickly hit a worst case scenario where scum can run away with the game given a misplaced vote even when it seems it shouldn't be LYLO - a townie weak to a Scum type and neutral to the other scum types pushes LYLO one day farther forward, and god forbid if there's a townie weak to two Scum members as well, that would push LYLO forward TWO days (assuming the GM calls the game in event of scum quickhammers rather than letting the game run, which would let whoever's entire side was online at the time of the next day post win by quickhammering first). Basically given worst case scenarios nearly every day after Day 2 will have to be "Potential LYLO, vote for the wrong person and risk consecutive scum quickhammers." You can also end up with stalemate endings easily where too many type strengths means that certain people are unlynchable, and said people might be scum. So yeah, I'd definitely be in favor of switching to a normal voting scheme come LYLO.
