First of all, hi! I haven't posted or contributed to the Mafia community at all in months, and hopefully a handful of you remembers me. What I've come to talk about is a theme which I have not named or themed yet. However, what I ask of you fellows is not a theme to place around the skeleton, just ideas for the flow of the games. The teams are spread as follows: Team A, which could be called village, but carries some tweaks: Villager; "Power villager", with 10% reveal role hax in every night action; Mayor, with a vote worth 3. This mayor has a convert action that only works in one role, powering the target up; Mayor's target, in two states: State A (before convert), which evades nightkills, can reveal itself in the day and has no vote; State B (after convert), which evades daykills and has reveal role hax of 90%, making its turn as a substitute for the absent inspector; Vigilante, with one nightkill; Roleblocker, who knows the bodyguard; Bodyguard, who knows the roleblocker. Team B, a village-scum team, which has: Mafia inspector, who knows the mafia thug; Mafia thug, with one nightkill, who knows the mafia inspector; Mafia roleblocker, unknown to the other two (slower than village roleblocker). Has vote of 2. Team C, the mafia, with a speedrun role and its assistant: By "speedrun role" I mean an invincible role that dies if it doesn't win in a specified number of turns (increases in bigger games). It would: Be immune to nightkilling; Be immune to daykilling (if any); Have master vote OR invincible voteshield; If he gets invincible voteshield, a kill (either in the day or night). Its assistant, which I'm not sure what purpose would serve; A third, repeated as needed role, probably just a support voter for this side. [Role D, a loner] - I'm not sure this one is necessary or even fit, given the complexity of the rest of the theme. What makes this disposition interesting is the following: A.Mayor's target is supposed to connect the roles and coordinate things with his extreme hax, making the traditional inspector's turn; however, he can only claim safely and get the hax once daykillers are gone (thus I want to add a daykiller to Team B or give Team C's speedrun role this ability). C.speedrun role should win as fast as possible, or else rely on his team to do it; being a powerful role that can define the game in few turns or fail completely can be depressing at times, but looking community-wise it could speed up certain games when we have a lot of people waiting to join without ruining the experience of the players. Giving C.speedrun role the daykill would strictly mean the Mayor's target could only claim once he died. Giving it to a fourth role in Team B instead would make it variable, and make the village able to confront Team C instead of waiting for them to die. I wish the 7 players setup (min) works with something like A.Mayor, A.mayor's target, A.bodyguard, C.speedrun role, B.thug, B.thug, A.villager C.speedrun role would have increased life proportional to the number of players, so that he last only barely enough to have a possibility of winning alive instead of just cutting path for his teammates. Ideas? (also I can clarify anything if you ask, I'm afraid I can't explain myself very well in this situation).
Yay Zzyzx :D Anyways, onto the theme. It's rather confusing and requires a bit of headache to see how this would all fit together, and it would definitely need a test if it were to be approved. It's almost impossible to see balancing like this, as this could go so many different ways depending on who the roleblockers are on and other factors. What's with these daykill immunities? Is the hypothetical 4th loner role going to have a daykill? Or is this c.speedrun going to have a daykill? I'm a bit confused whether that note below on it is an idea, or information you forgot to include above. Anyways, that's all for now, I might update this post when I have more time.
My advice is that you try to find a flavour for this theme as soon as possible. I can tell by experience that having the skin but not the mechanics, or having the mechanics but not the skin are both terrible ways to make a theme. If you have both at least outlined beforehand, the theme will likely integrate both aspects better when finished, giving a feeling of a well-polished theme. And I know you are the type who says Gameplay > Flavour, but, also from experience, I can tell it's actually Gameplay = Flavour. Neglect any, and your theme most likely will face difficulties at being accepted by the players.
@(R)Ice, I have a theme already, and some of my ideas came from the theme's characters' storylines. I just didn't want to name all characters and stuff in the OP because people would be suggesting anything else than what I want advice in. If you'd like to know, it's based on The Silmarillion. @Rainbow, the last paragraph is stating the only way C.speedrun would work. It would require a lot of versions of this same role, but whatever. About daykilling, there will be at least one, as I mentioned somewhere in that big, disorganised OP - either in B or C. I will sort this post better as I have free time, sorry for being confusing.
Oh yay you finally came back to Mafia :o Team C could be like Exodia where it needs a couple turns (usually 6 or 7 is plenty as noted with Rayquaza from WWW and Neptunium from Elements, Black Knight was ready in 5 but FE is a really fast-paced game). However, I oppose hax in this theme. If you want to make it somewhat creative while still maintaining playability, give hax, but fix it so that the role or the person's identity will never be revealed. Could work especially in bodyguard-like roles. I have an idea. Scrap the assistant. Instead, give the guy on Team C a shield command, and have the actions shielded Protect (and possibly Safeguard if you're using that too.) Make the shieldmsg or whatever it's called "Your protection was deflected!" or something along the lines. I personally like to call it a leech, as it leeches the protect and safeguard. However, a recharge, number of charges, or a failChance (try to avoid failChances too) could work as well as limiting the use of this, because it would completely break the role, especially since after a set amount of turns it's invincible.