Westworld Mafia (input welcome)

[kimpossible]

This means he may not reveal the location of The Maze during the day phase, and includes being allowed to say he is the MIB if shadowface some wiseass townie calls for everyone else to state that they are the MIB.

Hehe, that must have freaked you out a little

I had to message sjg going "HALP, what if SF does this?"

I realized on rereading some of that game that the gag order was why I sounded so tonally off for the first few pages.

[kimpossible]

Like if the MIB is something that for your mechanics you don't want revealed, you could put in mechanics that make it antithetical to the MIB's win condition to reveal. Like if either faction can, by majority, guess who the MIB is, then the MIB will automatically lose. But I kinda suspect that revealing already comes with its own, built-in risks here, PARTICULARLY if the MIB himself can never hold the Maze.

I guess the "no reveal" rule is largely an artifact from the previous iteration of the rules that I discarded. In that version MIB revealing himself would have been utterly game breaking.

Maybe it's not, in this version. What do you think?

Also, I don't think the rules here indicate that the MIB can't hold The Maze, do they? Was that a suggestion or an interpretation?

I do like the idea, btw. It actually works really well with the flavor, if you didn't already know.

I'm beginning to think the gag order might be unnecessary. Let the MIB gather information until he thinks there's a strategically advantageous reason to reveal himself.

[kimpossible]

I put up a few potential modifications to the MIB in the ruleset. Let me know if you think any of them are overly scum/town sided. I think they give the 3P a little more utility in terms of information-gathering and incentive to carefully consider if/when to reveal.

[Keirador]

Yeah, that last bit was suggestion based partly on flavor. The reason I don't think a gag order is strictly necessary is because at any given time, somebody wants the MIB dead, so your players should take care of an overly chatty MIB. Exception would be if he can reveal and grab the Maze, giving him another whole phase to gather and reveal information. That might actually be fine, in practice, but marrying an investigative role with a bulletproofing object--even a one-night bulletproof object--is certainly uncommonly powerful in theory.

[Keirador]

Yeah I think those modifications check out, but you'll want some input from somebody who has successfully written a ruleset.

[kimpossible]

Yeah, that last bit was suggestion based partly on flavor. The reason I don't think a gag order is strictly necessary is because at any given time, somebody wants the MIB dead, so your players should take care of an overly chatty MIB. Exception would be if he can reveal and grab the Maze, giving him another whole phase to gather and reveal information. That might actually be fine, in practice, but marrying an investigative role with a bulletproofing object--even a one-night bulletproof object--is certainly uncommonly powerful in theory.

Why did I suspect you would probably be familiar with the flavor?

I'm tending to think the current ruleset makes him a fairly powerful, albeit passive, investigative role, so a major weakness like that would mean he has to pick the moment for a public reveal super carefully, while his message-passing ability makes him not entirely useless if he chooses to just stay hidden.

Awesome flavor suggestion turns into game mechanic I'm super digging!

[kimpossible]

Yeah I think those modifications check out, but you'll want some input from somebody who has successfully written a ruleset.

And yeah, definitely. I may be at a point where I'm pretty happy with it, and will let it sit until I'm ready to put it up for sign-ups, at which point I'd kinda expect folks looking at it to chime in, as I've seen in other games.

Plus I'm pretty inclined to let this wait until shadow is done being an international jetsetter.

[Keirador]

MIB's decision to join the scum, once made, is irrevocable, right?

[kimpossible]

MIB's decision to join the scum, once made, is irrevocable, right?

Nooo... The intent is that he can change at will during the night phase.

[Keirador]

Oh, and. . . did I misread this on the first pass or have the rules changed? It now appears to be the case that if the MIB switches to a scum affiliation, he's not necessarily connected to scumchat or even aware of the identity of the scum team?