Well, it's kind of the same in all-vanilla. In the end you will always get someone to L-1. Only they can't really claim, so they get to L-0. Then someone dies at Night and next Day you anlyze the wagon and the night-kill.

I get where you're coming from, but you'll always find *some* reason that's not related to roles. Often to meta: he's too angry, too defensive, too quiet, not like his usual self, tunneling too much, looking busy too much... etc etc.

I think maybe it helps all-vanilla games if there are more people. So you get more Days, and even if it's random-ish Day 1 and 2, by Day 3 onwards you have more to analyse.

I've never played an all-Vanilla forum game. In face-to-face games you can rely on body language and facial expressions too.

I think a no-Roles game needs more time to get rolling. All you can do is analyze who votes whom and why. No PRs to rely on and also no claims to catch someone at a lie.

That's my point: scum will still lie about their alignment. But there is next to no chance to catch them at lying. So it all boils down to interactions. In small games this will lead to quite random results, I think. Rather favouring scum, because by the time Town has enough data to work with, the game may well be over. In large games, however, Town can catch up. So the balance evens out, I think.

Yeah, I don't see it working sp well with less than 13 people.

That's my point. You're kind of forced to kill people off for the sake of thinning the numbers and ending up with the smallest pool possible without risking to lose (or maybe even pushing it to MYLO/LYLO). And removing players to remove players in order to make the game "solvable" just doesn't seem fun to me.

OK, but we have nothing here. This is both detrimental to the Town as they don't have a solid lead and at the same time the scum can just hide behind it - "I don't have a read because there isn't a lot to read". And that's likely going to be valid in lots of cases at the earlier stages of the game.

"He's to quiet" - what is there to talk about?
"He's too angry" - over what, there's no reason to be angry.
"Too defensive" - there is no way defending anyway. The only defense that has some weight is to be part of a wagon that hit scum. And even then, as we saw, it's not a 100% proof as people are now bussing pretty much from the gate.

I don't know, it's probably worth to just try it and see what happens but I just can't think of how it can play out so it's enjoyable for everyone during most of the time.

Oops, sorry, link corrected.

But do roles really add that much? Scum pretty much know they shouldn't role-fish/discuss roles on D1. So no one from Town rolefishes because they know it's bad for Town, and no one from Scum rolefishes because they want to look Town. What then?

But it always happens or someone is accused of doing it. It always revolves around the inner mechanics to varying extents. If gives you something to talk and speculate about which drives discussions as opposed to killing people left and right for arbitrary reason until you randomly hit scum and get few enough people to get better odds for that. I don't want to convince you that such game won't work ever. I'm sure it will work technically - people will take part and the game will finish with a result.

I question the level of enjoyment of such a game for the majority of the players during most of the game. To me it seems like a few consecutive D1 RVSs. To which I say "fuck that".

I saw it was the wrong link, but in the future(for other links): In some browsers one can either right click and click translate(to translate an entire page), or add an extension that does the same thing to their browsers. :)

how useful are character names? some games, like the current one, you have a character name and sometimes the mod tells the mafia that they are actually something else masquerading as such and so.

i've given a wee bit of thought to trying my hand at volunteering to host a flavourless game, with no names at all (or public names) etc. How would this work? is flavour critical to the game?

All this talk of power-free games made me wonder when it's my turn to host that one I promised Lift.

To my shock I find that neither me nor that mysterious SirPrimalform fellow are listed. I demand to speak to the manager! As far as I can tell from the context, I should be there.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/forum_mafia_administration_and_general_discussion_1/post6154

If you do not actually quote me there is a good chance I will miss a question or comment directed at me, and you did not quote me in that post asking to be added to the list.

Added to the list

Would work perfectly.

Names sometimes have a game-play effect e.g. trent's last Disney game where we hade to think of claiming unused "good" Disney games. Or my Harry Potter game, or sometimes names hint at power roles. However, this relies on knowledge of the actual flavour, which if obscure, not everyone might have, so it's generally used only in well-known settings. It's not unheard of for the mod to provide safe-claim names for Mafia, or to prohibit name-claiming (e.g. trent's Supernatural).

But many games were nameless: Lift's Shodan's Children had them removed altogether. If you're going for flavourless game you don't have to include names.

One of the games I hosted was flavourless as I'm not grand on flavour (too lazy to read it, even lazier to write it). I did have roles, though but no flavour whatsoever. Worked fine in my opinion (in general terms, I can't recall how well the actual setup was balanced).
You can add me as well while you're at it.

...

now the hosting list is the same size as the player list in the current game sign-ups.

One of the lists is destined to best the other! but which will win?..