http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/forums/index.php?topic=30584.msg585568#msg585568Dude, you should get MoronSonOfBoron in here. He's run like, 6 AA mafia games on his Ace Attorney fan forums and he's experimented with so many ways to explore the theme in the context of a mafia game... yeah.
Maybe your bro could talk about it some.
Is this where I talk about it some? Let's pretend it is.
First off, Kairon mentioned a points system for voting: that round was an absolute mess. Some good ideas, but an absolute mess. I guess my hindsight is poisoned by my perception that it affected the game designs for the year to come, resulting in bloated and overly complex games.
Here's the scoop: in this particular game, the top three(!) people with lynch votes would be put on trial; being voted out did not mean certain death. What ultimately determined your fate was a bunch of dice rolls. There was the Prosecution score (-3 to +3), and the individuals' Defense scores. Defense is determined entirely by the evidence items submitted the preceding phase; evidence items were randomly doled out, and each one could either be consumed for a temporary power or consumed for adding to the Defense score. Submitted evidence was randomly distributed among the three "defendants", and anyone beating the Prosecution score would get off scot-free without their identity being revealed.
Of course, there were a number of other features that were stuffed into this game: three factions, hidden powers triggered by specific conditions (one went off and it ended up wiping out an entire faction, oops), not to mention the ten or so roles that were included.
TLDR: it was a clusterduckFor more or less complete documentation, here's a link: http://www.freewebs.com/crmafiapage3/risefromtheashesstats.htmIn retrospect, (more retrospect, run for the hills!) this particular game was unbalanced, but it introduced a lot of new ideas to my group of players.
Hidden powers were put in place for... well, just 'cause. They were intended to be fun, outrageous, and jaw-dropping, with big bold letters and custom Photoshop banners and lots of people dying left and right. Worked a little too well, if you ask me: Joe Darke ended up vengeance-killing Damon Gant, wiping out Gant's faction in one turn.
And it's a good thing, too! Damon Gant's hidden power had him essentially turning into a cancerous domino with eight legs: he could copy the power set of another living role and use them concurrent to his own powers. A friend of mine pointed out the possibility of Angel Starr being copied by this power in turn making some poor player into "Gant's Lover"...
Evidence items were distributed only to non-roled players, or as we call them, "Vanilla". This was meant to establish a more "democratic" system where roled players were not the primary source of investigative ability. A lot of players in my group weren't the best of critical thinkers and often felt overwhelmed by the game mechanics, so this was a chance to let them gain some confidence by having a little power.
There were no controls on the quantity of evidence in play, and in the end the glut of evidence items proved vital to the Town's victory. The Mafia "Godmother" role of Angel Starr had the ability to completely block herself from being placed on trial, and freely sacrifice her lovers to nighttime hits. To counteract this, the Town loaded up on Thinker statues to block her from ever taking these actions. DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SAVES THE DAY!
Angel Starr is an abusive variant of the "lovers" role in that she has two randomly-selected lovers she can freely use and abuse for above-stated purposes. One of them ended up being Ema Skye. Damn pedos.
I had a lot of fun making all the little banners, though! The players with those roles got to keep them for signature usage and such.