Yoshiken: How much mafia experience do you have? I think everybody when introduced to mafia has their own crazy go nuts roles game they'd like to run (including me!), but as Yakumo notes those are very, very, very easy to get unbalanced. Even if balanced, lots of roles can make mafia even swingier than it already is. Plus, lots of potential crazy roles are, frankly, unfun and mess up the ability of the players to recognize correct strategies.
Hmm, it's true that I don't have much experience with mafia, but I did honestly consider whether I'd be able to make & run a game myself. I've been using
this to help me quite a bit, and I've got a few friends who've played mafia games before. And the idea is to make the game quite different to how it already is, although not so much that it becomes a new game completely. (And I'll note that all abilities would be the same as or similar to more familiar roles, just with different names to fit the theme.)
That said role-madness games are obviously potentially awesome, just that they tend to be fraught with landmines and people shrugging at the end saying "Well, that was random, I didn't feel like I had much control over what happened." I just looked back in the archives at the games Yakumo mentioned, and yikes! The Vampire game apparently had 3 vigilantes for the scum to deal with backed by other town roles. (2nd edit: Apologies of course if you knew this already. Also, found a good quote from LadyDoor on the risks of role madness games while trolling the archives: "It [the game] was almost entirely dependent on what happened during the night. And I was vanilla. I played no part in 90% of the game. What's worse, I didn't even know that enough to prevent myself from spending hours constructing posts that ultimately contributed ... I'm not even sure what it contributed." From Incompetent Mafia, which actually looks like an awesome idea... but could have used two more vanilla townies in the game.)
First section there - ahh, that's true.
Of course, I've tried to limit power roles where possible though, so that -should- be avoided... On the interest topic I started up, I did request anyone not wanting to play to check over the roles for me, though.
Unless everyone wanted to play, of course. ;)
Next point - there's no risk of role-less players not having much to do, because there'd be none.
That said, the non-power roles are designed to work particularly with the other roles involved, and the least useful would be the first ones dropped if there weren't enough players.
Doesn't seem too bad, right~? ^_^
Into the newer topic... I like the idea of in-character restrictions - I was looking over some of the older threads, and I couldn't help but laugh at Alex's haikus. Although... I'd say that the restrictions shouldn't be too major, or it will just cause an insane amount of suspicion.
There's always the possibility of subtle restrictions, though... Look at Xanth's topics in the Simpsons mafia for the perfect example of this. (Or, this post, where I added in a subtle message at the end, just for the fun of it.
) It's be something only the mod would understand (and any other players they're able to talk to, if applicable) but just a little more interesting.
? ;)
