The one drawback or potential issue I can think of would be collusion. The player who picks the bomb word could then inform someone else what they chose and that person could use that knowledge to eliminate other players and they work together and control the board to get to the end and face a final 2 scenario with each other.
I didn't even consider that people might try that. I guess I put too much faith in people... probably why I was never very good at Mafia...
I think one thing to further help that not happen would be to not add the standings of this game into the overall rankings. That way, there won't even be meaningless points on the line, making absolutely no reason to try to help anyone win.
It would just be that if it does get down to that player in the selection rotation, the only thing left would be that player choosing the remaining name still on the board with the only word remaining which would be the bomb word and eliminating them instead of their self.
And you don't think said player would be upset to be forced to take the bomb when they weren't the one who got to choose the bomb? That's what I was worried about with doing it that way, but it may still be the best way to handle it.
I'm not looking to completely change the game, I just like to add little twists here and there for the sake of variety. I still want to keep the basic idea of the game intact and don't want to make things too complicated or too much to keep track of.
So I take it from what you said that I should move forward with this idea, even with the potential for abuse? I guess we won't know if it'll work until we try but I think at least most people will follow the rules.
One thing that I'm surprised no one has ever tried and I've wanted to do it but haven't really had the chance before is for the bomb word selector to play mind games with those selecting safe words as to what he's chosen.
I've thought about doing things like this, but I rarely get control of the bomb word and I didn't see a good opportunity to try it out.