Like, votecounts with things like (L-?) to lynch, deadlines, those not voting, and other things I've seen other games on other sites do. Makes the game cleaner and easy to refer to since the forum software isn't the most optimal for it.

Agreed here - the more info with votecounts , the better.

Also, it IS hard work taking part in two games at once - if you are going to keep to two games going at once, then restrict players to one game only.

Stick me down as a moderator-in-waiting as well - I enjoy the hell out of these games.

One other idea - with the GoG site being worldwide, we can get a mix of people from all over the world - it can make it fustrating trying to get a discussion going knowing that half your audience / participants are in bed.

Hows about some sort of region specific games?? You would have to get enough players, but it would make sense to have a game where everyone is around at the same(ish) time?? Restrict a game to U.S. only, or European only, or Australasia only......and all the other continents / countries that I should include but cant be bothered cos its late....

I disagree. Many players are capable of playing in several games, and may even get bored if they are in a single game only.
I don't think we should overregulate things. We should be able to trust players to find their own comfortzone when it comes to the numbers of game they participate in. Added. Strongly disagree.
First of all, people have different schedules - some post at work, some post at home duirng the evenings, and some are up all night, Second, the community here is much too small to handle constructed seggregation.

Yeah i thought tbh the GoG community wasn't big enough - it was only a thought....

blimey its like playing - i come up with a theory then it gets torn to shreds by everyone else...;o))

I also enjoyed the game (even when I got lynched *gg*). I would be up for moderating a game, I have a lot of themes set up already, as we play this in real quite often. :)

I'd like to host.

The most common way to do this that I have seen, and which I have used in the past, is to set up a Google group as a spectator forum. There you can be password protected and invite only. Works really well.

@Ghost: Added.

Sorry for lynching you Ubivis :)

The most common way I've seen is a "Dead QuickTopic", but a google group or some other spectator forum like that actually sounds much cleaner!

jess, no gaming talks in here :)
And my revenge will be bloody ;) Yes, there will be blood!!!

I think the main Problem with a dead talk is, that it will take some time, until there are enough players that are dead. And until there are enough, I think most players do not care anymore.

Because of that, I think a google group would be the easiest to set up. If a board software would be used, there must be given rights to each individual player. Other option could be a chat room software. I am using "PHP FreeChat" on the gogWiki Webpage and it runs quite smooth. This could be easily adjusted that the players will have a special key to add a specific Chatroom.

A chatroom would be live though? I don't think there would be sustained interest in that for spectators through the life of a Mafia game, just cause like the real life game, not everyone is on at once etc, due to time zones, and there are periods with little to no actual action (until lynch date approaches). A forum setup would be better I think just due to allowing communication between people in different time zones. Unless I misunderstand that FreeChat thing.

That would work for special speed games though, like if someone wanted to host short real-time games on some weekend where the time limit for lynch is like 30 minutes per day or something, and so games would be over in a couple hours. :p

This particular Chatroom always shows older posts :) If you join, you will always see the last 30 posts *gg*

but anyway, it was only a suggestion ;)


Regarding the Speed Games, this is something I am currently working on... a website, that hosts speedgames. Using this Chatroom Tool and moderating the games by itself. :)

Aha, interesting. Hm. I think I came across something similar in one of the games I read. I think they called it hypoclaiming, but it's probably the same thing? This is what was suggested:

Town had a tracker, cop, doctor, and like 6 VT in the game, Mafia had a roleblocker and two goons. There was a special rule that said if the doctor protected the cop, the cop would always get an innocent (or was it guilty?) result on whoever he investigated that night.

Anyway the town wanted to do something like have everyone, at the start of every day, put down who they investigated and who they tracked, with the knowledge that 11/12 of them would be false anyway but the power roles would still be able to get their info out, and once the real cop or tracker flipped later on, they would then be able to figure out the true claims because they wouldn't have bluffed their results and so would be able to give town their info even after they died.

Is that basically what you meant? It seems even more powerful when you *don't* have special rules like that doctor protecting cop thing that that particular game had, to muddy the waters.

That's not cryptoclaiming.
I haven't run across the scenario you're describing in a regular game, but to me it seems to be a poor strategy for town, really. It makes it easy for the mafia to narrow down who the real cop is. Since the mafia know who they are, they can be certain that anyone who claims a town result on anyone of them or a scum result on anyone else is not the cop.
While it may be a useful strategy at times, I don't see a problem with it, as there is a distinct downside. I wouldn't want to ban it until it is proven to be gamebreaking.


Anyway, cryptoclaiming.
Cryptoclaiming has no real downside for the town, and makes it close to impossible for scum to win.
The easiest way to cryptoclaim is to have everyone write up their claim, then post the first letter of each word in order, and the total number of letters (sans spaces and punctuation) in the whole claim. This means that everyone in effect has fullclaimed day 1, without giving much or any information to the mafia, while the mafia will also have to decide on a single falseclaim before they know much about the setup.
Let's take an example. You're playing in a Harry Potter themed mafia. You are Harry Potter, an untargetable (invisibility cape) town roleblocker (Harry never kills, he just stuns).
When writing up the claim for this purpose, you would probably want to avoid using certain phrases that would be too easy to guess (I am the cop/doc/vig etc.), play around a bit with the phrasing, and so on, but your claim should still be unambigious and easy to understand when read in full.

Here's what a cryptoclaim could then look like:
MCITNODAHSWGEIHEOPOABUMIHMFOCWMMUBAAAAAATAMWCTISSSTNAPAIATATIATTGQPTEL. - 69 words, 392 characters.

This one I wrote in a couple of minutes, and is pretty straight forward, but I doubt anyone is going to crack it anytime soon.

Here's the claim in full:
My character is the nemesis of Draco, and has some wicked green eyes. I have exactly one pair of abilities bestowed upon me. I have my father's old cape, which makes me unaffected by any ability and action anyone attempted to attack me with. Coupled with that I sling some spells that negates another player's ability. In addition to all this I am totally the greatest quidditch player that ever lived.

The idea behind the strategy is that most (or all) the scum will have to lie about something in their claim. By doing this at the start of day 1, they are locked into one specific claim, and can't tailor a claim to the situation at hand when they are forced to claim.

Yike. That's a new one I have not come across. With good reason. Thanks for the explanation! Harry Potter's totally a Mafia anyway though. :) Must lynch.

A way to counteract that cryptoclaim I guess would be for all scum to be given a vanilla safeclaim at the start as well (a simple line like "You know that Hermione Granger is not in the game") at the start, but it is kinda weird indeed.

And yeah I guess maybe part of that hypoclaim thing was used because there was the ambiguous nature of the doctor involved in reads. Plus roleblocks.