The Aftermath, Revamped

[Telleo]

Ha, ha, the title of this game is a sly reference to my last game. Aren't I clever.

Anyway. Basic thought; the mafia has already won, but those last pesky townies form a resistance that seeks to destroy the mafia by killing the Kingpin.

So, Mafia is an informed majority (9). They have a Kingpin, who has a vote in the lynch. No other mafia members vote will count. They win by forcing the resistance to kill the Ringleader.

The Resistance is an uninformed minority (3). Each Resistance member has a vote in the lynch. They have a Ringleader. Each night, the ringleader identifies one other player to carry out the day's voted-upon kill. He may not elect to conduct the kill himself. The Resistance wins by killing the Kingpin.

The way I envision this playing out is that the Resistance is trying to use the kills to figure out who the Kingpin is based on the votes. Meanwhile, the Mafia is trying manipulate the Resistance members into voting each other, or voting the Ringleader. Because none of the Resistance members know each other, the Mafia members can all lie and claim to be a Resistance player - it's not a matter of working out who's lying so much as working out who isn't lying.

Rough draft of the rules HERE.

[dodgy56]

i really like this idea. if you run it count me in

[Telleo]

So I'm finally getting around to reworking this, and I'd like to get it up and running fairly soon. Any criticism would be welcome.

[sjg11]

This might be me being dumb, but how is the Kingpin meant to force the Resistance to kill the Ringleader?

[Keirador]

Convince the other two Resistance members to vote for the Ringleader. . . but then the vote leader isn't automagically lynched, the Ringleader is just told to nominate someone to perform the night kill. . . hmm. And since the Mafia can't go rogue and kill a townie, that means the Resistance only loses if 1) The Ringleader was the vote leader, and the Ringleader nominates a scum to carry out the action, or 2) The Ringleader nominates a vanilla town to perform the kill and the vanilla town kills the Ringleader. Is that right?

Presumably the Ringleader can out himself without fear, since there's no scum night-kill, so the scum have to counterclaim in order to avoid basically an auto-loss, as an un-countered Ringleader is never going to be the true lynch leader or have a townie go rogue on him. That's actually kind of an interesting idea; but it puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the Ringleader role. But over time, the Ringleader will be able to prove his role by correctly claiming who was nominated the night before. The scum can try to counter-claim that too, but with no private communication I don't know how effective it will be.

Hrmph. Upon a first read I thought this was terribly scum-sided, now it seems to me the scum would have to work very hard to avoid a loss.

Interesting set-up, Telleo.

[Keirador]

How do ties resolve? If both vanilla townies are dead, ties need to resolve against the Ringleader, or he's in auto-win territory.

[Telleo]

Hmmmmm. You're right, the Ringleader could claim and not be hindered. What could I do to discourage a claim?

Ties are declared to the thread, and no lynch is enacted. This is to prevent the Kingpin from being able to create a tie at will if two of the town vote together. However, I'm going to change the victory condition for the mafia, and just make it that they need to achieve an even voting power to win- that way, if the Ringleader is the only town left, the town loses.

[Keirador]

Hmmmmm. You're right, the Ringleader could claim and not be hindered. What could I do to discourage a claim?

I've been thinking about it and cannot figure out a way to prevent the Ringleader from claiming. Even giving the mafia a role-specific nightkill is no good; since the mafia know the allegiance of the town, it would take at most three shots to kill the Ringleader. You could always simply GM-ban the Ringleader from claiming under penalty of mod-kill, but that's a pretty blunt instrument to wield.

Are you gay-married to the existence of a Ringleader? Looking at the set-up, I think a lot of the fun is had in figuring out which participants' votes actually mattered; I'm not sure the Ringleader's role in nominating an assassin adds a lot of value. It's special enough to be a townie, there are only three of them.

[condude1]

Hmm, I, for one, would stick to the school of K.I.S.S. Purely vanilla, with the town losing when they're down to one person, and the nightkill being randomly assigned to a townie every night (or nightless and no NK?).

[Telleo]

That's not a bad idea. The orinal intent was to give the town another tool to help they identify each other, but I think the limited number of votes already does that. I'll remove the Ringleader role.