https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpYEJx7PkWE

I think what you have to do is impose small time limits. Really short. After that if the chancellor hasn't chosen a president, it gets chosen for him randomly, and if someone hasn't voted, his vote goes by default to Yes.

You fascist.

Well, since we're waiting, here is a setup idea that I had. Didn't want to discuss it while games were in progress.

The idea came to me during JoeSapphire's game, when myself and trent were pretty much confirmed, and I thought wouldn't it be nice to chat with him in private to explain to him my conditional modifier and maybe come up with a plan.

So:

Initial version: 8 players, 2 mafia. They from 4 pairs of neigbours with the stipulation that both mafia can't form same pair. Neighbours can talk day and night. No other abilities. The neighbourhood setup, including the stipulation that mafia can't be on same neighbour pair, is known in advance, though the exact pairings are not know. There is nothing preventing anyone from claiming all pairings on day start.
I wondered how balanced it would be 25%-75% is balanced, but the neighbours might give Town a sligh advantage, for example 2 confirmed townies can day-talk in private.

A variation to the above: 12 players, 3 mafia. 6 pairs of neighbours. Or with 10 players I suppose it would work with 2 mafia and 5 pairs of neighbours.

Another version would be like the above, but with normal PRs added. The neighbourhood setup is known in advance, but the PRs are not. 8 or 12 players. Or 10.

However... later it struck me that with the following stipulation, Town have a big advantage in the fact that if a mafioso is lynched, his neighbour is hard-confirmed Town. Which might make things difficult for Mafia. So, the final version would be that the even number of players get randomly divided into neighbour pairs without any restrictions.

It's not something I'll be trying for my next game, since I already have some different ideas for it, but maybe some time in the future.

Maybe you could make the neighbors also be lovers?

Yeah I saw that, but in that setup, your neighbor/lover is automatically same alignment, so in reality they are not neighbours but masons. I want townie to be not sure whether his neighbour is town or scum.

Those appear to be fairly fundamental changes to the game, esp. given its core nature of needing to read a lot into how other players voted on a fairly limited data set.

Depending on the time limits you set, you run into the issues we have with mafia, such as players in different time zones with sleep and/or jobs that don't allow access during the day.

It's worth exploring, but I suspect it's going to be hard to find a timeframe that's short enough to keep the game moving, yet long enough that you aren't blocking a lot of actions out.

And I think there's a small risk of incenting players to not vote in some circumstances and let the clock decide for them.

Maybe just decrease the number of players then? Last game was indeed too slow. Especially bad when we were waiting for one player to vote YES or NO on what was already an inevitable result.

You're absolutely right. Not sure why I misread it.

Interesting setup.

I think that was just me, lots of people seemed to enjoy it!

lol

I find deadlines to keep players active, especially in the Mafia game I have ongoing on Discord (you're part of it). The four-day long D1 followed by three-day long Days seems like a decent recipe to keep Secret Hitler from not being boring. As for randomized votes and chancellors, this could be considered, even capitalized on by flavor.

That's me.


Secret Hitler #2 was when agentcarr left and zeogold scrambled to find a person, eventually ending up with me playing in carr's place. Ever since then and things just haven't been the same...I've been all over mafia and Secret Hitler games now, and hosting a bunch of ones on a Discord server focused on games like it.

I also now understand what the hell are those large as heck "forum mafia" threads where people seemed to be talking about some weird stuff. Someone else has probably taken my place and is now wondering that.

Anyway, if agentcarr is looking for a mod for his next game, I can act as said mod. I can take a break from playing while effectively still participating in those games, just not directly. Win-win.

We actually ran that setup in Game #33. It was fun. I was paired with HijacK and was certain from the get go we'd be lynched first because the others would gun for him. That was during Hijack's how to win friends and influence people phase. ;-)

Well, the Lovers pairing would solve the issue of lynching-Mafia-hard-confirms-partner.

Still, I'd like to try something with neighbours too.

The other role I thought of during this game is Suicider Townie.

Suicider Townie: any time during Day or Night you may flip and die.

Unlike voting for oneself, which is always bad, this one could be useful in some situations. e.g. consider this MYLO

Microfish lock town, Bookwyrm lock town, dedo and flub, one of the last two is scum. No PRs. Normally, this would be a win for town or mafia depending on how Bookwyrm/Micro read the others and how convincing the unknowns are. No-lynch is practically useless, since during the night the mafioso will kill one of the lock-towns.
But, if one of dedo/flub is Suicider Townie then it's a sure town win. The Suicider dies and flips and Townies lynch the other.
More generally, the Suicider can die any time he's about to be lynched at MyLo, thus giving Town another chance at a good lynch. Even more generally, he can suicide any time he thinks his death and flip clears the waters. Instead of being lynched, which would give Mafia a free NK.

The Mafia wiki doesn't mention such a role. The only one mentioned is a passive suicidal role, which is detrimental to Town.