Well, since the current game is finished now and there was a little interest in my idea for nightless Mafia I thought I'd post a more fleshed out version of the idea.

Basically the idea is to prevent the whole 'Let's wait till five minutes before the deadline to secure a lynch' behaviour that seems to be the norm here by removing deadlines, and Night, altogether.
Instead 'Night' actions now have a cooldown (and in most cases a warm up) time before they can be used. Each power will get a different cooldown depending on it's usefulness (and the mod's discretion obviously). The cooldown might either take everyday into account or might allow players 'free' days which don't count towards the cool down (weekends being the most likely candidate).
The mod chooses a resolution time each day (let's say Noon for convenience) and players can submit their actions at any time up till that point if they wish them to be resolved that day (or maybe an hour before that point to make sure the mod has received them all?).
A player can submit their action at any time, even while it is still on cooldown, but it will obviously only fire when the cooldown is finished.

So let's take an example, say I'm part of the scum team and I'm going to perform the NK. In this game the NK happens every 5 days say (1 week of working days) and we're on day 2 of the game, so I can't kill anyone for 3 days. I can submit my action to the mod to NK trent (sorry trent!) on day 5 and change it any time up until the resolution time on my chosen day.
Alternatively I might decide to try and trick town into thinking they have more time between kills and put my kill in for the 7th day instead.

The way I see it working is to make the NK the base line for cooldowns and assign cooldowns to the other roles as fractions or multiples of the NK's.
For example:
Night Kill - 5 Day Cooldown
Alignment Cop - 7 Day Cooldown
Role Cop - 5 Day Cooldown
Flavour Cop - 3 Day Cooldown
Doctor - Requires a little more effort... I would say the Doctor would get a period (5 Days) during which he is protecting a target. The first time the target is hit during that period the Doctor stops it. This means the Doctor still can't protect the same person twice in a row but has a reasonably chance of actually protecting a target. Every 5 days he would have to choose a new target.
Tracker / Watcher - Probably the same as the Doctor, but maybe a shorter period and no limit on targeting the same person twice.
Role Blocker - Could either work the same as the Doctor or could have a 5 day cooldown and instead of blocking an action they could add X number of days to the target's cooldown (if they have one). Alternatively both roles could exist.
Godfather / Miller - No cooldown required, their role is active always as usual.
Vigilante - 5 Day Cooldown and 1 Shot (for typical use anyway) or a longer cooldown but no shot limit (say 10 - 15 days, but with a 5 day warm up maybe)
Strongman / Ninja - Are used in conjunction with the NK so don't need a separate cooldown.
Serial Killer - Either the same as a NK or maybe slightly less to give them more of a chance, depends on player numbers obviously.
Cult Recruiter - Depends whether recruiting is guaranteed or not, but probably a 7 or 10 day cooldown if guaranteed.
Roles that work once per day (say Governor) would still be allowed to be used once per lynch cycle.

Night Chats - These could either also occur on a cooldown (say open for 3 days, closed for 3 days) or just be open on set days (say scum chat is open Monday - Wednesday) or could be activated as a power by their users, stay open for a few days and then go on cool down. EDIT: Or the scum chat (and any mason chats etc.) could just be open all the time, which is definitely easier to manage but might be overpowered.

You could also use punishments (for not posting enough or double posting) to add time to cooldowns.

Basically the end result should be that while scum and PRs both gain from stalling to some extent in most games it won't make sense to allow scum free reign to NK while town doesn't lynch so it should hopefully cut lynch and game lengths down. EDIT: It should also help to moderate the power of certain roles which can otherwise be overpowered or game breaking.

I do have a game idea kicking around to test this set up, but it's no where near finished yet.

Are the cooldowns shifting as the game progresses? In time the mafia may not have the use if their NK fast enough which will underpower them, I think. Especially if the Town starts playing aggressively and achieves a couple of lucky lynches before the NK cooldown is over.

I wasn't intending them to, but I suppose they could. See my response to Wyrm below for more thoughts.

True, but only to the Power Roles and I doubt most PRs would out themselves to reveal that info early. Plus that is only a guideline and individual mods could play with that if they wished so you couldn't 100% rely on it.

Resetting definitely wouldn't work. If the lynch happened just after the NK the scum would end up with two NKs in quick succession. It also means roles with longer cooldowns may get their shots more often which would affect balance (I didn't explicitly say it but another reason for this system is to allow powerful roles like Alignment Cop without making it too over powered). I could see maybe having the lynch drop a day or two off the cooldowns though.

Yeah, my gut says just leave it on all the time.. (forgot to put that in as an option above) I don't personally think day chat is all that powerful for scum but it depends on the game and the players I suppose.

It is probably going to be a little more effort for the mod (and I would definitely recommend assistant mods for these games) but I think it should be manageable. The actual 'days' could be played with as well for the mods convenience, so actions might only resolve every other day (and just half the cooldowns, so each 'day' is actually two days but a NK is only 2 or 3 'days' cooldown).

Yeah, I think that's a good idea. It could well turn out to be an over complicated mess in practice but you don't know until you try.

I'm sure adalia's post was well considered and thoughtful, and I'm just glossing over it entirely (moving today!) to note that, in gog-mafia-related-news, gog is having a SNK sale on the front page.

Will the cool-down times of PRs be public knowledge?


I have reservations about 24/7 scum chat; it can be quite advantageous and powerful as it allows scum to do a number of things in real time - plan and revise strategy as things develop, coordinate and assist each others play, warn about and protect each others from mistakes/slips/etc. If it becomes a regular asset in scum's arsenal against town, scum hunting via reading other players will become more difficult, even less reliable; what's the incentive to invest any time and effort into it?

I think a cool-down power, with a limited duration (perhaps they can spend days of recharge for a longer chat?), is the way to go for scumchat.

I like the nightless cool-down based play. But I do agree that the timer should reset on a lynch. That encourages town to actually lynch so that their PRs get a shot at acting. But the setup will require a lot of work and coordination on the mod's side.

It would also be possible to play it like this: town PRs get a shot after every lynch. But scum get a nightkill on a fixed cooldown. So if town drags their asses and doesn't get a lynch lined up their PRs will be useless. But if they keep lynching (with the danger of mislynches of course), their PRs get more actions than scum gets nightkills.

So, scum kills every X days (timing is unknown to town). Town investigators investigate once after each lynch.

That would be up to the mod and the game I think. In an open game I would say definitely, but in a closed one probably not.

True, but I think scum being able to chat all the time comes with its own set of tells, you can spot players who appear to have been coached when they suddenly change tactics etc.
There are a number of viable options (another that just came to me is that the scum chat opens when there are two days left on the NK cooldown, to give them a chance to plan and choose who will do it) if people don't like day chat.
There's a lot more potential for game breaking with that set up though. All town need to do is make sure there is a cop, push through three quick, random lynches and get three investigations with no NK, that's six flips or investigations with no chance for scum to react.

I think lynching could reduce cooldown but I don't think resetting would work.

So, one could drop dead in the middle of an argument at any time... Sounds like one more disincentive to put any effort into scum hunting.


But that's the thing, if scum chat is open 24/7, the chance of sudden changes is minimised.

This sounds more reasonable to me.



And if not mislynch, out the PRs in the process of fast-tracking the lynch.

I suppose you could look at it that way, but I don't think it's any worse than being the NK currently.
Besides if there is a specific action resolution time (which would always be known to everyone) then there's only one time each day when you could possibly drop dead.

Ooo. That's a good idea, and then chat closes once the NK has been decided. If scum want to delay their NK, they can chat longer. Opportunity cost!

Yeah, that was exactly what I was thinking. They can trade off more uses of the NK for more talking time.

Great Ideas.

This stuff is a mile over my head though.....and barkeep, I'll have another.

You were quick on the edit, but I am quoting it anyway!

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