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Just to add my twopenneth. If lolita is still agreeable to co-hosting a match, then we (and by we I mean everyone other than me) had better go with the Qalyn bells and whistles duluxe edition first. Short-staffed at work has blown into threatened industrial action at work with me caught in the middle. I'm not going to be available for a couple of weeks. Could be that nobody cares, of course, but from this angle it looks like a point in the Q-plan's favour.
As for the rest of my loose change - I remain unconvinced that either approach is better but we have seen so far that the decisions and structure imposed by each mayor has had a drastic effect on the gameplay. I rather thought that this was one of the joys of the game in that it had a different flavour each time even ignoring the different settings. Playing with nothing more than the mafia and a large group of innocents is, in a sense, the purists version. The co-operation of the mafia pitted against the weight of numbers of the villagers. However, no matter how well the mafia do to begin with, in order to win, they have to master the end game when numbers are more even, but there is plenty of 'evidence' to manipulate. As the numbers start to even out, it becomes increasingly hard to conceal the mafias actions and the last couple of votes will always come down to how well they can baboozle the village into chasing ghosts. If one allows enquiring characters such as dectectives and finks, then one has to speed up the death rate by including a vigilante. If you want to have turn coats like the vampire or the changeling then you have to have protectors like the doctor, governor, angel and so on. It all comes down to balance - setting up the game so that the players go into the final rounds of lynching without too much or too little information to give both sides an even chance of victory.
As far as I can work out this can be achieved either by stuffing a smaller playing field with more 'specials' or by gathering more players and only having the mafia. Two very different approaches, but the same end in view.
As for the speed of the game, I would agree that a shorter time between rounds would be nice, but I think that there should be more time allowed in the early stages to accomodate the larger number of players. Previous games have only bogged down in the second half when most of the action is taking place off the thread and there are fewer votes to wait for. Shortening the intervals between lynchings might also add to the gorwing feeling of paranoia and tension. As long as everyone is clear as to when the next deadline is then it should all be fair.
On the other hand, I may just be getting a tad obsessive again... |
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