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On a purely tonal basis, if you're looking to inspire that sense of dread, I think unique hidden powers is the way to go. What I think is kinda interesting about the concept here is that fundamentally, the powers don't need to be balanced, at all, because the powers only get used by dying, right? So that sets up another couple layers of tension: internal tension for town players who know their power is AWESOME, so they're kinda torn on whether it's right to fight on and try to lynch scum and avoid a mislynch like normal, or whether this unique set-up is incentivizing them to kick it early, and then a tension within the town over who seems to be more sangfroid about getting lynched and who's fighting it kicking and screaming, and why.

Keirador wrote:On a purely tonal basis, if you're looking to inspire that sense of dread, I think unique hidden powers is the way to go. What I think is kinda interesting about the concept here is that fundamentally, the powers don't need to be balanced, at all, because the powers only get used by dying, right? So that sets up another couple layers of tension: internal tension for town players who know their power is AWESOME, so they're kinda torn on whether it's right to fight on and try to lynch scum and avoid a mislynch like normal, or whether this unique set-up is incentivizing them to kick it early, and then a tension within the town over who seems to be more sangfroid about getting lynched and who's fighting it kicking and screaming, and why.

Hmmm, that's a good point about increasing the tension and dread. I've already come up with a good list of town-positive powers by looking at a list of fairly standard Mafia roles and doing some tweaking. I could likely do the same to get some town-negative and town-neutral ones in there too.

I've also been thinking that since there won't be situations where a player goes "WAIT, WAIT, DON'T LYNCH ME I HAVE TO STAY ALIVE TO USE MY POWER!" because they might want to get lynched to help town, I'd probably give the scum scummy powers that actually will activate on lynch, as well as cover powers.

I still like both variants I originally wrote up, and what's also cool is that each one plays on one of the two main mechanics of the RPG it's inspired by. Pretty sure I'll end up just running both as two different games.

Well holy shit, that was easy. I have 5 that are reasonably positive, 5 that are neutral to somewhat negative, and 2 for scum's real powers. Which I was planning on being up-front that scum would have real powers under their claimed one, in case town called for reveals, because paranoia and dread, yo.

You're a beast.

I think it's not revealing too much to say that I put in one particular power that gets worse for town if the player reveals it in thread. I love the effect of not putting a gag order on it, just a serious incentive to keep shut up.

kimbyrle wrote:I think it's not revealing too much to say that I put in one particular power that gets worse for town if the player reveals it in thread. I love the effect of not putting a gag order on it, just a serious incentive to keep shut up.

Yes! This is how I think GMs should be going about things. Gag orders are unfun and give the player an attempt to circumvent the rules. I think it's the way to go, and maximizes the fun you get out of a ruleset.