[WW/Mafia] Upick

[Unavenger]

...So I guess this is gonna be a weird one, huh?

Welcome to Upick, a weird twist on regular Mafia in which you pick your own role. How does this work, exactly? Read on!

Spoiler: Standard Mafia Stuff

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Mafia, AKA Werewolf, is a game in which members of an uninformed minority, known as the Town, who don't know anyone else's alignment but their own, try to find members of an informed minority, called the Mafia, who know who is one of them and who isn't. The game starts at "Day", and players vote for who they think - or are pretending to think - is a member of the Mafia. Whoever gets the most votes is eliminated at the end of the Day. After each Day is one Night, in which people activate abilities that they may have access to, and the Mafia can choose one person between them to eliminate. The game ends when only one faction remains, or nothing can prevent this from happening.

Spoiler: Specific Game Rules

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• Days and Nights are 48 hours each.
• The execution vote will kill the person with the most votes, counting the last vote that is not crossed out. For example, Avatarvecna, Xihirli, Avatarvecna is a vote for Xihirli, not AvatarVecna. Tied votes will kill the person who was first to get to at least that many votes the last time they did so. For example, if Xihirli is at 4 votes, then AvatarVecna is at 4 votes, then Xihirli drops to 3 votes and goes back up to 4 votes, AvatarVecna will die, not Xihirli.
• You may vote for No Execution. No Execution is calculated the same way as any vote for a specific person, but choosing not to vote is not counted at all. For example, four votes for No Execution and four votes for AvatarVecna is resolved like any other tie, but if there are four votes for AvatarVecna and four people not voting at all, AvatarVecna will die.
• No early day end or "Hammer" vote is used, even if more than half of people end up voting for the same person at some point. Days are always 48 hours.
• Some abilities may require a public broadcast that you are using them. I will resolve them as soon as possible; if you have an ability that won't be useful at the end of the day, using it near the end of the day might be inadvisable! Do not fake using abilities requiring a public broadcast (Such as REVEAL: INNOCENT CHILD or DAYVIG: XIHIRLI). This means you, Vecna and Valmark. Anyone doing so will die, and also lose the game even if their faction would otherwise win the game.
• Kill flavours may tell you something interesting about how someone died, and what faction did it.
• All actions are given a priority number. First goes first, last goes last. Generally, this tends to follow Natural Action Resolution, which is to say, abilities that can't possibly be affected by another ability go first.
• Either you'll get a faction QuickTopic because you're the Mafia, or you won't, because you're not, and will have to use your personal QuickTopic. You can't get more QuickTopics unless you have an ability that says you can, so no chatting with your fellow players behind the scenes.

Spoiler: Role Assignment: Upick

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Upicks are so named because you pick your role!

When the game is in the preparation stage - that is, after everyone has signed up to the game, just before Day 1, you will have a chance to send me two character concepts. These character concepts can be whatever you like so long as it's board-appropriate and otherwise just obviously not yikesy in any other way (be reasonable about this); the first concept should be your first preference, and please link an explanation for both concepts if they're something I might not know about. Other Upicks I've seen have featured anime characters, tanks, and the concept of YouTube Music videos as characters so do whatever you like.

Please don't use other real people - board members or otherwise - as characters, partly because yikes and partly because I don't want to have to write the sentence "AvatarVecna's role was Xihirli".

I will roll up the list of who is which faction before I create your character roles, so if you use a character who's actually a mafia member or actually a werewolf, you may still end up as town. I will then assign abilities that I think are appropriate to one of your chosen characters. I will try to use the first one, but if there's some problem with them I'll use the second one instead. They will match as best as I can make them while also (a) making sense within the context of Mafia, (b) not being very terribly overpowered, and (c) not being horrible to play with.

Abilities I promise I won't be using are:

• Cults and other alignment changing abilities;
• Dreaming gods, false seers, inventors who don't know what their inventions do, and other hidden/random chance abilities;
• Jesters (a role which wins the game by being executed);
• Antisocial, Flagbearer and other modifiers which mess with who wins and loses the game to a significant extent;
• Effects such as death millers which lie about death-reveal information;
• "Janitor", "Cannibal" and other effects which can prevent deaths from being revealed.
• Effects such as Beloved Princess which mess with the day/night order;
• Effects that restrict how a player can post other than by killing them;
• "Enabler" or "Switch" effects that can shut off a specified type of role (rather than roleblocking a specific player);
• "Bus Driver", "Transporter", "Transmuter", "Mind-controller" "Mindslaver", "Witch", "Lightning Rod", "Mirror" or other names for a variety of effects which force someone to target someone other than their intended target;
• "Normalizers" or other effects which permanently alter other people's roles (short of killing them);
• "Phantom Queen", "Reviver", "Resurrectionist", "Retributionist" or other effects which change how death works for players other than yourself.

However, this does not mean that any of these won't show up:

• "Doublevoter", "Loved", "Hated" and other modifiers that can change the number of votes flying around or the number needed to kill someone;
• "Gladiator" or other effects which limit who is a valid target for a vote;
• "Godfather", "Framer", "Lawyer", "Psychotrooper" or other effects which cause someone else's investigation to provide misleading information;
• "Lover" and other roles that can cause a player to die when a condition is met;
• Roles which return the truth or falsehood of an arbitrary statement;
• "Copier" or "Illusionist" abilities which copy someone else's ability and use it on another specified target;
• "Parity cop" or "Parity seer" roles, which provide the same result for two members of the same faction, but no indication of which faction yields which result (so it might yield "Winter" for town and "Summer" for Mafia);
• "Restless Spirit" or "Vengeful" roles which change how death works for you;
• "Medium" or "Necromancer" roles which can talk in dead chat while alive.

Recruitment is open!

Players so far:

1. AvatarVecna
2. Captain Cap
3. Xihirli
4. Elenna
5. CaomhinTheCape
6. JeenLeen
7. Aleph Null
8. totadileplayz
9. Book Wombat
10. Apogee1

[AvatarVecna]

Yeah, I'm in.

[Captain Cap]

I'm really curious about this one, so count me in.

[Xihirli]

I was going to wait, but... you put my name in the rules.
Now I am required by law to play.

[Elenna]

Sounds interesting, I'm in!

[Valmark]

Do not fake using abilities requiring a public broadcast (Such as REVEAL: INNOCENT CHILD or DAYVIG: XIHIRLI). This means you, Vecna and Valmark. Anyone doing so will die, and also lose the game even if their faction would otherwise win the game.

Hey! I did it because it was disallowed!

I'll see if I can come up with something but if you don't hear anything else from me don't count me in. The premise looks cool but I'm not sure I got interesting concepts (at the moment, at least).

[CaoimhinTheCape]

I will be joining.

[JeenLeen]

I'm in.
Seems an incentive to make roles that could be useful as town or mafia, since we don't know what faction we'll be on before the game starts.

Do we know if it's just Town va 1 faction, or if it's possible there's mafia, werewolves, and/or aliens?

Hey! I did it because it was disallowed!

I'll see if I can come up with something but if you don't hear anything else from me don't count me in. The premise looks cool but I'm not sure I got interesting concepts (at the moment, at least).

Maybe the rule should be that the offending player dies unless dying is what they want and/or helps their faction, in which case they die at the first opportunity that wouldn't be helpful (usually when that Day/Night ends).

[Unavenger]

I'm in.
Seems an incentive to make roles that could be useful as town or mafia, since we don't know what faction we'll be on before the game starts.

Irrespective of your choice, I will make you have useful abilities. Don't try to game it, because gaming it won't work; choose something fun.

Do we know if it's just Town va 1 faction, or if it's possible there's mafia, werewolves, and/or aliens?

It's town versus one faction, but I might roll in a neutral or two. However many people there are, the alignments will be randomised before any characters are built.

Maybe the rule should be that the offending player dies unless dying is what they want and/or helps their faction, in which case they die at the first opportunity that wouldn't be helpful (usually when that Day/Night ends).

A player who is narrator-killed loses the game immediately as well as dying. Valmark only did it because he was dead on votes anyway.

[Aleph Null]

This sounds pretty neat, posting tentative interest

[totadileplayz]

Alright posting interest.

[Book Wombat]

Concept sounds interesting! Am in unless something comes up. Such as death.

[JeenLeen]

When we send you our Role (after recruitment, before Day 1), would you like us to include how we think it might play out mechanically, or should we just send you the fluff of the character?

Even if the former, I realize you might have to ignore the power requested/suggested and use something better fitting.

[Apogee1]

I'm in

Fun concept!

[Unavenger]

When we send you our Role (after recruitment, before Day 1), would you like us to include how we think it might play out mechanically, or should we just send you the fluff of the character?

You can tell me which abilities of the character you think are the most important ones, but don't send me what you think should be the mechanical result of them.

[totadileplayz]

So... May I ask when this game will start?

[Unavenger]

Well, it starts two weeks after recruitment starts, which would be... today! What joy!

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Okay, here's the deal, folks: I will send out a set of private messages which I intend to have done by 17:00PM GMT. After 17:00 GMT, you will have 48 hours to respond to to your private message by sending me a private message with the names of your TWO characters, and links to an EXPLANATION of each character I might not know about. At 17:00PM GMT two days later:

1: If you have signed up to the game, and you have responded to the private message with the necessary information, you're in!
2: If you haven't signed up to the game yet, but you've sent me a private message with the necessary information, then you will be added to the player list, and your entrance will be announced at the start of the game proper so that everyone knows you're there.
3: If you've signed up to the game, and you haven't responded, you will be killed off at the start of the game proper with the message: "[Name] died last night. They died of analysis paralysis. [Name]'s role was undefined."
4: If you haven't signed up to the game or sent me anything yet, then you're missing out!

[Unavenger]

JeenLeen, you have chosen not to be able to recieve private messages. Please disable this setting, then send me one message explaining your two character choices. Send links to any information on those characters along with your choices.

[Captain Cap]

A doubt that just came to me: do we have to choose named characters or general concept (e.g. space anchorman) are also okay?

[Unavenger]

A doubt that just came to me: do we have to choose named characters or general concept (e.g. space anchorman) are also okay?

I would prefer named characters but either way is fine.

[Unavenger]

Game thread is here. Your roles should be coming in hot so let me know if you don't have them within about 10 minutes.