This is going to be a fairly bare-bones game, in terms of flavor. The goal will be to get information to the players as quickly as possible, not to impress them with beautiful prose.

The basic format is that there is a single six-shot revolver available to the players as a group. This revolver contains exactly 1 live round at any given time. If the round is fired, a new round will be automagically placed in one of the chambers of the cylinder at random.

Each player may attempt to fire the gun once, until everyone has made an attempt. If everyone has made an attempt to fire the gun, but a successful shot hasn't been made yet, then everyone may attempt to fire the gun a second time. If only two players remain, it might become necessary to have a third round of attempts.

All valid shot attempts are permanent. Once a shot has been placed, it cannot be recanted.

If the gun hasn't been fired successfully by a certain deadline (it will be noted in the thread), then the gun will automagically target a player from amongst those who have not attempted firing, or who have fired the least, so far in that killing period. This deadline will be: 6pm UTC, 18 to 42 hours following the latest killing.

Revised, point by point rules follow:

1. The moderators for the game are me, Krypsyn, as well as adaliabooks and agentcarr16. Should you need to contact any of us, you can reach us through the PM system of this forum.

2. This game has 10 players total: 2 Mafia (with a scumchat) and 8 vanilla town.

3. All players may attempt shoot the gun at any player of their choice (including themselves), as long as there are shots remaining in the gun (6 total shots and 1 live round per reload). Only living players are valid targets.

4. Players may attempt to shoot the gun additional times only after all other players have fired an equal number of shots.

5. Shots will be queued up as necessary, but moderators will resolve any shots as quickly as possible.

6. After a successful shot, the gun will be reloaded and any shots remaining in the queue will be removed.

7. Please remember to bold your shots like this: Shoot Vitek.

8. All shot attempts are final, and may not be 'unshot'. Choose targets wisely.

9. Hard "Day" endings will be posted in thread after each death. If there hasn't been a death by this deadline, a player who hasn't attempted to fire the gun (or who has the least attempts) will be chosen at random to die.

10. When you are dead, you are dead - stop posting. A single "bah"-post is permissible and encouraged.

11. Don't edit your posts! This is very important! Editing a post is grounds for being modkilled. Due to the forum software I must also ask you not to double post. Two consecutive posts of the same user in a short time frame will merge, creating the appearance of an edited post. The time limit after which you can post without fear of editing post is 10 minutes.

12. Please bold any requests or questions to the moderator.

13. Do not discuss the game with anyone outside the thread, unless your role indicates that you may.

14. Do not quote or paraphrase too closely any PMs you receive from a moderator. Since this is an open set-up, and the role PMs are copied verbatim into the OP, there should be little need to anyway.

15. If you can no longer participate in the game or expect to be absent for an extended period, let me know and we can work something out or I can try to find a replacement. This hopefully won't be an issue since it is designed to be a quick holiday game.

16. All players on the winning team win, even if they are dead. Players who are modkilled or has replaced out will automatically lose the game.

17. Roles have been randomly assigned.

18. As this is a 'Nightless' game, the game thread and scumchat will be open 24/7.

19. Remember it’s just a game. Be polite and remain calm.

Sample PMs:

All players will get one of two PMs.

Mafia:

"You are scum. Your scumchat is here: <Quicktopic link>

Your scummy partner is <one other randomly chosen player>.

I may or may not (probably not) give you a more flavorful PM when I start the actual game thread. I will send you a PM to let you know that I have opened up the game thread, when that occurs.

Be advised: Town has not gotten a PM yet, and will not until right before I open the game thread."

"Here is the link to the Forum Mafia 34 game thread: <GOG link>. I will officially open the thread by making a new post in that thread shortly; please don't post until then."

Town:

"You are town for Forum Mafia Game 34.

Here is the link to the Forum Mafia 34 game thread: <GOG link>. I will officially open the thread by making a new post in that thread shortly; please don't post until then."

Universal Win Condition (not in any PM):

You win when only players of your alignment (whether Mafia or Town) are left alive.

Players:
1. Bookwyrm627
2. trentonlf - Dead (Town)
3. zeogold - Dead (Town)
4. Lifthrasil - Dead (Mafia)
5. drealmer7 - Dead (Town)
6. JMich - Dead (Town)
7. HypersomniacLive -Dead (Town)
8. bler144 - Dead (Town)
9. dedoporno - Dead (Mafia)
10. cristigale

I will officially open this thread in the next few minutes, after I have notified all players by PM. No shots will be officially counted until 6pm UTC today (Monday), and the deadline for the first killing is 6pm UTC tomorrow (Tuesday).

All PMs are out. This game thread is officially open for posting. Again, do note that the gun cannot actually be fired for another 2 hours and 42 minutes (6pm UTC).

This is designed to be used for questions or clarification on the posted rules, if necessary, but there is nothing preventing you from getting an early start playing the game.

I want to shoot Krypsyn :-)

You'll have to bold your sentence and the gun cannot be fired yet.

But actually this premature shooting raises a question I had anyhow: how do we play this? We are forced to shoot the gun each day at least once. (or whatever 18 to 42 hours means, probably a typo and Krypsyn meant 18 to 24 hours).
But still I don't think we should just shoot without discussing first. We can still try to find an agreement on who to shoot first and who next and so on.

But that still leaves two modes of play and I don't know which is better:
1) 18 hours after the last killing we check, who has the most votes collected (no matter if it's an absolute majority) and someone shoots this most suspicious person. - This road has the drawback, that scum can nicely hide behind inactivity, lurking their way to victory. If there's no need to come to an absolute majority, knowing you all, we won't get one. The voting trains will be short and therefore harder to analyse.

2) We try to get an absolute majority, like in traditional Mafia, before shooting someone. This has the drawback that we have very short deadlines and therefore the killing will more often than not occur randomly.

So, what do you all think? Which way is better? Or do you just want to make it a big shootout without voting? I think that would be a bad way for town, but of course you are entitled to your own opinion.

My post was just a joke ;-)

Correct. Unless the shot follows the given format, it will not be counted No, it wasn't a typo. The new deadline will always be the 6pm UTC that is at least 18 hours from the time of the death but at maximum 42 hours from the time of death. For that instant that 6pm UTC is both 18 and 42 hours away, the moderator on duty can decide.

You guys aren't forced to shoot. However, even if the gun isn't fired, eventually someone is going to die anyway.

Well, even it it wasn't "just a joke", all the moderators are Unlimited Bulletproof.

At least, I hope we are...

<_<

>_>

I'd assume that non-bolded shots can be used to express one's intention/interest/inclination, and serve as ground for discussion before going for an actual shot.

I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting, Lifthrasil. Do you want all of us to use their shots on a single player each Day, based on number of votes?

If scum want to lurk their way to victory, what is stopping us from shooting the lurkers?

Sadly, no. However we have unlimited clones, so it amounts to the same thing :P.

Seriously though, moderators are not valid targets. Only shots on players in the game will be counted. Maybe I should edit the rules to state that...

Edit: There we go. Point 3 in the rules has been amended. ;)

Yes. Non-bolded shots will not be counted.

Santa is suppose to be merry, not mischeivious. ;-)


@Lifrt - it might be a combination of the two options. A absolute majority is preferable, but may not not always be attainable. If majority is not reached, whoever has the most votes should probably be next. We might have two or more players with the most votes. In that case, it's probably fair to alternate shots between those players.

I agree that shooting without voting would be bad for town.

But dying is Painful! :'-(

No worries. Your clone will have no memory of that pain. ;)

This is actually one of the times where I would shoot at a lurker without blinking, especially if there isn't a better candidate at hand.

I'm not sure I understand the majority suggestion. If I'm not mistaken each shot fired may end up being the killing shot (speaking of which, @mods, do we get to know who succeeded or just that somewhere along the process the gun fired and killed someone?). More votes/shots will just increase the chance of taking out said person but without an unanimous decision there is always a chance (and an increasing one) of another person dying.

If Krypsyn were playing, he'd say now - Vote!