What OAOW said. The role names may or may not indicate alignment and may or may not indicate powers. (Like, hypothetically Gandalf could be a vanilla townie and Merry the doctor/investigator/roleblocker uber-role – it all depends how the game’s developer wants to handle it.) There’s no role-play – roles and powers are typically kept secret until there’s a good reason to change that.
Hmm, I could go for vengeful bodyguard – like a single-shot attacker dies sort of thing. Definitely not the sacrificial variety of bodyguard.
Are you signing up?
I played in a Discworld game once. Not my best game.
The Luggage was the SK. The player tried to claim Day 1, alleging that if he found Rincewind, he’d convert to a Town-aligned bodyguard.
We established that there was no Rincewind, so we hung it up from the rafters of the Mended Drum. The Luggage, of course, just hung there for a while, the got bored, bit through the rope and wandered off across the river.
The basics of Mafia are that a small grooup is out to take over and the others are trying to stop them. This involves lots of virtual violence on both sides. Lynch mobs and stealthy assassinations abound. The small group have the advantage of coordination, the large group don’t know much (at the start).
Where the game involves a well-known story such as this, the mod will typically resort to several stratagems. Mahaloth could could employ an alternate-universe method where some players have roles you’d associate with one side but are in fact on the other. Or, he could give the people who draw the badguy roles another name to claim. We’ve used both strategies in games from time to time. (For example, see the Evil Dead we played here last year, run by Storyteller0910. The bad guys were demons, but we had cover roles. In a Firefly-based game elsewhere, things got so mixed that the first mate was an Alliance killer, while I was a Town-aligned Reaver (the cannibal madmen.)
The games are fun, but can last a month or two, and you’d need to contribute each game Day (a Day lasts anything from three to seven real-life days.) We don’t mind holidays, but advance warning of such is considered polite.
Dip a toe in, the water’s cool.
Also, we have a convention. If a word referring to a day or night is capitalised (eg Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow Night) it’s referring to a period of game time rather than real time. Makes it easy to know which is being referred to.
I think there are 3 or 4 spots so count me in :).
what mhaye said. but it is really hard to describe until you actually participate. some folks get hooked (moi, for example) and some find it is not their cup of tea.
the only other thing i would add is that sometimes things can get a little “heated”. if you have a thin skin this might not be the best endeavor to engage in. people will lie, call each other names and backstab if needed.
but i can honestly say, that other than ed, they seem to be a fairly respectable lot.
plus, you can trust whatever i say. i don’t think i ever engaged in any of the previously mentioned activities. i just kind of play it straight up.
so, i’d jump in, if i were you.
<snipped>
i forgot all about that. where is it this year? and will weapons be provided or do we bring our own?
Tell me about it! If y’all promise to kill me by Day Two, then I can play 
[Total hijack] I am the producing artistic director of a small fringe theatre company, so I choose, produce and direct the shows. It’s kind of a one-man operation, and it takes a LOT of time, on top of my day job.[/total hijack]
If no powers can be used, there’s no reason players should not be able to discussion strategy. For Night Zero only, I strongly recommend you allow strategy talk. Otherwise, you’ll start off the game dull–Town can do nothing and know nothing will happen.
…continuing the hijack:
Is it professional, or non-?
(I am also the artistic director of a small theatre company. Are you me? Because I read The Dark Half, and it was horrible.)
Well, in any event, the person who gets the Sauron role certainly isn’t going to say that’s who he is. There are several other possibilities, though:
Sometimes it’s only the power roles (generally a minority of the players) even have a name at all. In this game, for instance, one might have one guy who’s “Gandalf”, one guy who’s “Elrond”, and a bunch of folks who are just “A hobbit”. In such a case, a villain might claim to be one of these "Vanilla Town"s, and not have to claim a name at all.
Sometimes everyone has a name, and the Scum (general term for the villains and their team) don’t get cover roles handed to them, and just have to decide on their own what to claim. This can sometimes lead to them accidentally claiming a name that a real Townie actually has, which eventually leads to the Scum getting killed. How viable this is depends on the size of the cast of characters of the original story: Discworld, for instance, has enough characters that in a Discworld-themed game, a Scum could probably come up with a character who’s plausible but who probably isn’t really in the game without too much difficulty.
Thanks guys, I’ll just spectate. What usually happens in games like this (Diplomacy especially) is that I’ll spend 2-3 hours each night going over various scenarios and strategies in my head, which doesn’t help my chronic insomnia (which for the last month or so I’ve had pretty good control over).
well then, just read one of meeko’s posts and that insomnia will resolve.
Yeah, I guess that’s fine. I guess people can speculate and strategize during Night Zero.
We’ll have a non-spoiled discussion thread once this game is up and running.
If you want to be spoiled and know the full dead, let me know. We’ll have a spoiled discussion going as well somewhere else.
Signup List
- SpecialEd
- Red Skeezix
- Drain Bead
- Meeko
- Astral Rejection - need to hear from(pre-signed up)
- OneandOnly
- Telcontar - need to hear from(pre-signed up)
- Chronos
- Guiri
- LittlePlasticNinja
- Chipacabra
- Pleonast
- Normal Phase
- Oredigger
- NanooktheNorthShore
- MHaye
17 HoopyFrood - Cucuy
- Suburban Plankton
- Peeker
- Natlaw
Work looks like it’ll be slowish the next couple of weeks. I’m in. Rusty, but in.
2 more to go!