With what? "Please don't lynch me, I'm a townsperson, I swear!"?
The only possible interesting thing I could see happening is if the person says they're an important role, but then again, pretty much anybody about to get the hammer would claim that (assuming they have a heavy desire to stay in the game).

Well, the game doesn't explode with a bunch of votes going your way. There are a couple of days during which everyone is responsible for their contributions and standing later in the game. If your play is scummy enough you'll probably get lynched. If not - someone else probably will. So, getting lynched is usually a result of your own actions or the lack of such.

Way back in the dark ages we used to start games at Night. So the beginning posts of the game were usually the death of a player.

I agree it was harsh. However it eliminated the "Day One" boredom. Most sites did away with that years ago for the obvious reason. I am very intrigued by adaliabooks ideas regarding real time incentives and such. I shall ponder these things.

Fair enough, but I still can't fathom a way you'd make yourself seem scummy/un-scummy on D1 where there's literally nothing to do or go off aside from picking a person and going with it. Unless the players feel like milling around for a week and a half.

In a game with investigative roles one could also start with a non-killing N0. Of course, balancing has to be taken into account, since that would be a headstart for town. But it's feasible and it would be possible to start D1 with some more information at least for the players of the PRs, who then can try to steer the conversations. That should help getting rid of some of the D1 tedium.

The only problem I see with this (and the idea of N0 in general) is that even if you get a scum read Day 1 it's not generally a great idea to out yourself.
So whatever info is gathered N0 is only useful to the player who gathered it and only likely to become common knowledge on day 2 or 3 or if that player is pushed to lynch...


I do think our main problem with day 1 here is cultural. I know I have suggested random lynching in the past, but I never particularly meant that a dice should be rolled and a player should just be lynched based off that, but really instead of waiting for some kind of concrete proof town needs to just accept day 1 is likely to be a bust and pile on a bit quicker instead of hanging around waiting for scum to actually slip up (and let's face it, a true scum slip is rare on day 1).
The best you can hope for is a player who is poor as scum (like me) to mess up or someone who plays markedly different as town or scum so you can easily tell, and neither of those happen very often.

Even with poor reasoning for a lynch you can still make some analysis of a wagon and use it as a starting point for day 2.

But failing that, by disassociating the lynch with the NAs and NK you incentivise town to act because if you spend three weeks debating who the first lynch is you might already have lost the game.
Plus in a closed game you may not even know the cycles the NK will run on, so until the first kill hits you might think you have 10 days when really you have 3 (and good scum might actually keep the first couple of kills in their pocket longer than necessary so they can make an early kill in later days and surprise town) or vice versa, meaning quicker action is required.

One issue with just randomly selecting someone is that it punishes everyone, including those trying to move things along. Imagine being in a game with one Adalia, one Lift, and 6 CSPVGs (nothing personal, CSPVG!). Or even worse, if you're a neutral survivor; you only get one vote, but you're more likely than average to die if the larger factions decline to get moving.

If you're going to weight the kills, maybe weight them towards people who don't have a vote placed (as that is what ends the day) when the axe finally comes down. Or possibly just use the somewhat common rule of "whoever has the most votes is lynched at end of day, with ties being randomized". The more active people can then influence the lynch, and others can either sit back or step forward if they like/don't like the lynch.

Remember the hospital game, where the deadline kept creeping forward when Bler (the mod) got bored? It was inching slowly, but it was coming.

You could maybe put extra votes on a timer too, with a higher number of votes needed to lynch. Once a vote is placed, it stays, and everyone who has cast a vote gets a new vote every X days from their previous vote. Sort of like the Russian Roulette Mafia game we did. BANG!

Let me assure you, there are definitely ways you can make yourself appear scummy enough to lynch on D1. ;)

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I hate to wet blanket some of these ideas, but some issues to be resolved:

-It would suck to be vanilla if the PRs are running on cycles, because then the PRs might try to delay things so they can use their PR more, which leaves you stuck with nothing to do. How do we keep the game from revolving around the "night" actions?

-Don't forget time zone differences. People need days to hold an asynchronous discussion when they are 6+ hours apart. From Yog in UTC -8, Cristi in UTC-6, me in UTC-5, over to Adalia in UTC, Lift in UTC+1, and JMich somewhere in UTC+1 or UTC+2 (I think). Hunter might be our player farthest East in UTC+5 or maybe UTC+6.

We might have players with clocks displaying the same hour/minute, but opposite AM/PM.

Well, the game I'd originally intended the idea for doesn't have any vanillas... :P
But it's a similar issue to what we have now, and sure the PRs may not feel pressured into voting if they think they can make use of their powers but you could say that in the current setup PRs might stall to No Lynch (or actively suggest it) to get more uses of their powers.
Plus stalling (should) would generally be seen as scummy as it means more NKs and less lynches, so stalling PRs would be more likely to get lynched so they would have to avoid that behaviour.

Timezones is always an issue, and a tricky one to deal with. As long as you don't put the powers on too quick a cycle (2 or 3 days for a NK say) then I don't think it would be that much worse than it is now.
Anyway, the point would be to push people to talk less and vote and act more so the games are a bit snappier.

The way I see it you might come up with somewhat of a standard, probably centred around NKs. So an Alignment Cop gets a cooldown 1.5 times that of a NK, while a Role Cop is the same as a NK. Some powers have to be adapted a little (Doctor and Roleblocker would probably need to be somewhat continuous to make them worthwhile but you'd have to have a way to stop the Doctor just permanently protecting one player, I have a number of thoughts on it). And so on.
As people seem interested I might draw up my ideas for the system to see what people think.

GMT +2, affected by DST. More or less GOG's Monday promo starts at 13:00, their usual release time is at 16:00 and Steam changes its deals at 20:00.

Lol, I expected to find an empty thread here since a game seems to be running, but instead I find a discussion of time zones?

Anyways, I have some time on my hands again, so how late / early am I for the next game?!

A little bit late or very early depending on your point of view.

We're still day 1 on the current day, so it'll probably be a while before a new game starts.

Welp, that's just dandy!

But, you know - could need a sub at any time.

I'm not sure I can continue in my slot. Constant making appearances as the Living Statue is pretty tiring.

I like this.

and thank you all for the love and support. And I will be back into mafia as soon as things settle down. Which should be about November. =) I really do love you guys!