How bout a game that days end at an undisclosed time. If people don’t know when the day ends, they can’t wait for it.
There have certainly been games which end when one player gets X votes.
The player placing the last vote is generally said to have “hammered”.
Other players sometimes get mad at that person, because they lose their chance to vote–or really, they get mad because they lose their chance to see what other people would have said after that time, which they now don’t say because the Day is over.
Or are you envisioning a game where the Moderator says “This Day will last no fewer than 48 hours. At some time after that, when it is convenient for me, I will swoop by and whoever has the most votes will be lynched. Night will last until all night actions are in, but no longer than 48 hours”
'cause I think never knowing for sure when the Day will end would make for some interesting, but potentially game unbalancing results.
The latter. However, the time would have to be pre-set to prevent bias. Could even make knowing when the day ends a power role.
Remind me never to sign for any game you mod. :eek:
Blaster Master, that does sound interesting. (Also sounds like it may get you labelled as Bastard Mod of the year. :D)
Assuming the players aren’t stupid, I’m sure they’d figure out the end of the Day soon enough. 
Particularly if it follows a pattern (which it would have to, to avoid mod bias).
It would be interesting if there were some kind of hidden dynamic that triggered an instant lynch. You’d think that in a RL situation, a quickly formed mob would be easily persuaded to lynch someone far before actual sunset. Perhaps there could be the role of the Rabble Rouser - if they vote for someone, and that someone garners a certain number of votes within a certain timeframe, they are lynched on the spot. I suppose it could be either a town or a mafia role.
Unfortunately, that kind of role would be a huge burden on the mod.
Well it wouldn’t be at the same time every day.
Something like this:
Each day will be no shorter than 3 days and no longer than 7. At some randomly selected minute during that time the day will end. Whoever has the most votes at that point will be lynched. The end time for previous days will have no bearing on the end time of the current day.
There 5,760 possible minutes that the day can end on. So you just run a random number generator to pick the end point of each day.
Hehe. I’m not willing to give away the change I’d make yet, since I think it would be a lot more fun for it to be a surprise, but I will say it would be a closed set-up because part of the fun would be trying to figure out what kinds of new power roles it would allow and how they would be balanced. And yes, that title is quite coveted; it’s nice to know I could already be in the running for it. 
Ahhh.
Interesting. So would the mod announce it right on the dot, or a bit before? What about votes that are posted as simulposts?
Reminds me a bit of YSI, and the headaches that NAF and Mtgman had to deal with regarding similar issues. The thing about ending the Day according to a principle that basically requires you to trust the mod not to be biased is that it leaves a lot of room for accusations (again, which is what happened in YSI).
I suppose you could have a system where the mod asks someone outside the game to run the random number, give it to the mod, and confirm the randomness of it after the Day ended.
I think you can avoid many of the issues of YSI by making sure everyone knows what the rules are in advance. If Naf/Mtgman decided in advance what would constitute an extention, and informed the players pre-game of it, there wouldn’t of been as much controversy. The mod could do all the random number picks before even roles are assigned.
I had assumed she was refering to the dossier mechanism (there were acusations from some that it was being used by the mods to keep the game balanced till the bitter end.)
Well, I was thinking of that and the whole faithfool kerfluffle.
For the record, I am always eternally grateful to the mods of the mafia games. While I enjoy playing, I could never mod one - I’d probably end up shooting myself.
Regardless, doing all random rolls before the roles are assigned, should get rid of any appearance of bias.
Oh, that’d be fun! Each side tries to eliminate the other, while trying to convince the mod not to shoot herself. Or encouraging, if you’re otherwise losing. 
Moderating is only as hard as you make it. A simple 12 Town versus 3 Scum, no power roles, would be very simple to moderate. Simply count votes and announce results.
I think this is a pretty cool idea, and in fact would add a lot of paranoia to the game, but would it change behavior (i.e. make people participate more and sooner)? I think in some cases yes, and most cases no. The fact is that some players are low-participation types, and many of them would probably use the surprise endings as excuses: “Oh, I was all set to type up this huuuuuuge post will all my reasons and quotes and links, but the day ended before I could get to it. Oh well, pass me a drink!” It’s a great hiding place for lurking scum, too. (And let’s face it, people who post “I’m busy and will get back to the game in x time” always get a pass, whether it’s truth or tactic).
And that would be really frustrating to those players who were trying hard and making time…
Yeah, but then you have stuff like board outages and non-participating players and players wanting to sub out and players accidentally reading the forbidden thread. I can’t remember which game it was that had a ridiculous number of subs, but I do remember people being pretty pissed about it.
So yeah, I’ll leave the modding up to others. 
Hawkeyeop:
So in a game where Days ended randomly, would Nights end randomly as well?
FWIW, modding is and enormous undertaking, and probably more than one might expect even going into it knowing that. A lot of that has to do with the fact that it’s very difficult to ensure a balance. I know when I modded, I was very worried that I through off that balance, and often found myself kind of hoping certain things would happen when it looked like something occurred that threw the balance out. Whenever I made a ruling, I really carefully had to consider how it would effect both sides. Fortunately, both sides seemed to feel like I was always favoring the other slightly so, while it did aggravate some people, I took it as a sign that the game was generally fairly balanced.
As for the aggravation, it’s disheartening to know that I’m responsible for a number of people being frustrated, but at the same time, it’s nice to know I’m bring a fun and intellectually challenging activity to several others. Further, and I’m sure other former mods can speak to this, you learn a lot playing a mod; watching with perfect information really gives a lot of insight, particularly to things like recognizing motivations and such.
Besides, Hazel, you don’t shoot yourself in Mafia… you hang yourself. Geesh. :rolleyes:
That would be awesome. Messed up, but awesome.
Plus you could publish the end times in the spoiler thread at the very beginning. It’s hard to bias the endtimes a priori.
I might have implied as such during the game, but I never meant it.
Perhaps I should moderate a game as penance? And NAF can abuse me all he wants.
True dat. Also, being a mod can be a stupidly fun time. I spent a lot of M2 and Firefly giggling like a little kid watching things play out. It’s wildly entertaining to watch senarios you only pictured in your head play out.
YSI was more frustrating, but for different reasons than you might expect. Mostly becasue for a large portion of the game the players seemed to not be having any fun, and at the end of the day as a mod, I want the players to be having fun.
You put together a game and I will be the first one in line to play it sach.