It’s not. Most people who play on the dope are used to bigger games.
The flaw is that there is a possibility that Nanook is the unknown Scum and playing brilliantly. He does seem to have a good background in the SDMB games. It seems he’s been back reading them all at some point. Quite an undertaking there. Maybe Ryjae knows this and is encouraging your plan hoping to push this thing to Lynch or Lose
RoOsh is really positioning herself to be on the chopping block when bufftabby turns up town.
Hey all, dead Mason here. This was my first game playing anything other than vanilla town, so I’d love to hear some critiques. I thought I played average, and overall was more helpful than harmful. I was the first to pick up on MadTheSwine, I completely screwed up on fluiddruid, I nailed **MindWanderer **(that was my best Day), and blew it on RyJae, but to no ill effect thanks to my fellow townies. My “early” claim turned out good, thanks to **NAF1138 **- I think the claim set him up well, and he took full advantage. Not that I planned it that way 
I still think **RoOsh **is the last remaining scum, but we’ll see. Town can lynch him or **bufftabby ** first and still win, as I’m feeling 95% that **Nanook **is town. Hopefully **peekercpa **will get off his suspicion of Nanook.
I had fun time in this one - thanks, sach!
RyJae, if you’re around, I’ve got a question: did you come up with that Miller claim on the spot or was that something you and/or the other scum had prepped for?
Also, I really don’t like peeker’s “mod-kill Nanook” plan. Win it fair and square, guys!!
When I set up the rules I had anticipated scum possibly going for a mod-kill to avoid having their alignment revealed and I put some verbiage in the rule that addressed intentional mod-kill by scum. But the verbiage merely states that alignment will be revealed in this case… not that the mod-kill fails.
I didn’t anticipate Town wanting a mod-kill until about Day 3 when NAF was sitting on 2 investigations, there were 2 living Masons, and Town was really close to winning the game. It was on Day 3 that I realized that The detective claiming (even as early as Day 3) and then asking all non-confirmed Town to essentially commit suicide by not posting, Town could exploit the rules to win easily.
I didn’t say anything and just hoped that Town wouldn’t figure out the loophole. But now they have.
I’ll probably allow the intentional Mod-kill to happen, as that is consistent with the rules. But I think for future games, I need to think of a rule set that addresses this issue. We have competing problems: I implemented the lack of participation leads to replacement rule because it is necessary to replace people who disappear (zuma). I put a cap on how long replacement can happen because replacements late in the game generally suck. Which has now lead to the situation we have now.
I think for future games, there must be no modkilling of players for lack of participation either leaving it to the Town to decide whether or not to lynch a silent player (which kind of sucks in my opinion) or replacing players no matter how long the game has run or how many replacements already happened.
I’ve learned quite a bit about game mechanics from this simple game.
No it was discussed with the scum in advance we all had two choices, counter-claim or claim Miller if discovered. I went with the miller claim because fighting with NAF in mafia is probably an instant death sentence. 
Very interesting. Thanks!
And good call, too - I think counter-claiming would have been suicidal at that point in the game.
So the current game has me thinking about a new role for mafia games. As it turns out, being able to commit suicide can be, in the right circumstances, a pro-town action. So now I’m thinking that giving the power to commit suicide to some (not all!) Townies is a nice minor powerrole. This power really only comes into play during the endgame where removing ones self from the unconfirmed pool helps town focus on scum. If the suicide-enabled townie becomes confirmed town somehow, the utility of the power vanishes.
Looking at it this way, I see that essentially enabling ALL townies to commit suicide was not a good plan. Unintended, but not good.
New game design rule: Don’t enable players to commit suicide unless explicitly designed as such.
Yeah, it does appear that they are going to take advantage of that loophole. I wish they wouldn’t, because despite the fact that it is technically within the rules, I’d much rather Town win it with a knockout than a TKO
I think your idea of incorporating it into the rules is a good one, though - Townie Seppuku! I don’t know how often it would come into play, but when it did it would be pretty cool - I can definitely see some good color being written around the sacrifice.
Oh, and one more thing:
All the games I’ve played or read that had masons had 3 (IIRC), so I just made an assumption that it was standard. Just ignorance on my part
For lack of a better term, call the role Samurai. They may commit seppuku or aid a willing other player to commit seppuku on the Day following a Townie lynch. (The power is restricted this way for color, as the Samurai would only commit seppuku after the shame and dishonor of lynching an innocent person.)
I had a thought about this today: players who get mod-killed for non-participation lose, even if their side wins the game.
That’s a nice, simple, elegant solution to the problem.
I mostly agree, although I’m not entirely sure if it would solve the problem. If someone doesn’t care enough to play what they sign up for, will they care if they win or not? Nevertheless, I like it. As someone who gets really annoyed with non-participators, I think it should be a standard part of every ruleset going forward
And speaking of non-participators, this week is draaaaaaaaaaagging. Let’s go Town, do some frikkin work in there!
The problem was solved in the off board game of suicide by us townies to reduce the pool in which scum could hide by a nice clear mod decision.
Those who did it would lose the game for their team via cholera. Seemed to put us back in our places.
With 40 minutes to go, it looks like it’s RoOsh to hang, which I’m happy to see as I think he’s the last scum. Whether it’s him or bufftabby, though, they are doing a good job so far of playing it cool and favoring the “party line.” It’s a tough position to be in for the scum at this point, and they’re not tipping their hand (as RyJae did a bit as the end of yesterDay approached).
Yeah. I (as a player) dislike Metagaming or trying to “figure out” the Mods. But I also will totally do it if possible to try to win.
So that’s why when I created Batman, my first thought was: “if i was a player, how would I metagame this?” and then Dio and I just created LOTS of scenarios and ideas to cause fun and chaos if you started to try to sit there and think about “what would ROOSH do” in the game.
The Results quite amusing. But yeah, Batman was designed with this sorta thought in mind. Stick with the logical path! It works for a reason!
Well, having read the scum boards, I have to say that this game was kind of a disaster for the Assassins. I think they lost it more than we won it. I am pleased that I managed to get myself night-killed, although I must remind myself that it was not intentional–that strange and useless formula was an honest attempt to find scum.
I was also thinking about the modkill/suicide problem. There are three issues here: you want to prod people to participate, you want to get rid of players who have disappeared, and you want to dissuade the Town from relying too heavily on dropping out as a tactic.
The “cholera” idea that Darth Sensitive mentioned (intentionally dropping out causes your whole team to die) is a good one. I would also suggest that mods of future games consider not allowing players to join if they have been removed or replaced for non-participation in previous games.
Unrelated question: does anyone know the origin of the name of the Miller role? Is there some reason why people who grind grain into flour are seen as shifty?
*heh, the Cholera thing was a threat by me when this exact same issue came up in my game.
Basically Cholera wouldn’t mean your whole team dies. But that everyone on said team would get some ridiculous Post-Restriction, where if you failed it, you would die.
Basically it would be a pain in the ass for the entire town to get infected with Cholera, and was basically me shaking my Gastard ModStick at the players to play fair.
And I’ve always wondered about the Miller thing myself. I’ve always heard it call a Miller though, but I don’t know if its from Werewolves or from Mafia itself.