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Keep it as is

3 (12%)

Change it to a full Jester, with game-end on win

1 (4%)

Change it to a full Jester, but without game-end on win

5 (20%)

Change it to a full Jester, with game-end on win AFTER day 3

3 (12%)

Change it to a Jester with the loss of the Next Day phase

4 (16%)

Remove it entirely

9 (36%)

Other (explain)

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 25

[Leafsnail]

Pandar's sounds quite interesting, actually.  Plasma bomb + Shield would be fun .

[Mephansteras]

Could be interesting. I think for this time, though, we'll stick with the proposed changes I have in the 3rd post (or whatever it is on page one).

I'm thinking of holding off on starting until after Thanksgiving. Say, Monday 11/30?

Sign-up Thread is up!

[webadict]

That's great, but this is a signup thread. If you have issues with the rules discuss them in the rules thread please. You don't need to make some sort of statement by your absence. You won't be missed.

Did. Alas, if I am not to be listened to I shall make one last stand and renounce all ties. I only support the olde system, for it has undergone a change so drastic it has lost most, if not all, presence of its former self.

Perhaps you see not the consequences. I blame you not. You are but a young mind, corruptible by nature, and unable to foresee the actions as they unfold.

Ye. Ye are scum. Forsaken we, the ancients, are. Forgiven ye will never be, till time has gone full circle and be thou where I stand.

And lo, the Webadict didst turn his back upon the game, forsaking it, secure in his knowledge that without his support, it will have lost all legitimacy.

God, you're rather full of yourself.

If the new additions are shit, it will become evident, and they will be dropped from later incarnations. If not, they will be a welcome inclusion, irregardless of whether you accept that you were wrong.

tl:dr, you're on a fucking power trip, and I just bitchslapped you back to reality. Can we all grow up and get back to signing up for this game now?

Then I'll move the discussion to this thread: You're clearly misguided if you believe that I'm wrong by the mere fact that a game hasn't run. I run 50,000 games in my head every second (50 Kilogameperes, as it's called), and they aren't turning out right. Sure, you will have a game turn out right once in a while, but an NK-proof SK? These vampire things? Where did the aliens go? I thought that was a main fature in this game: Aliens are third parties.

Nah, now it's about vamping (Pun intended) the third parties up. We never really got around to fixing some of the problems the game has OH HEY LOOK AT THESE NEW ROLE!

You can't fix a problem by throwing more problems at it. Only through balancing of the previous set-up will progress be made.

I make these statements because I SEE the problems. I wouldn't have a problem with this game a lot if it didn't keep ending up with additional roles every game, many of them ridiculously overpowering some of the other roles we currently have, and then our solutions is to POWER UP those previous roles and then underpower the new role and HEY LOOK MORE ROLES!

So, go suck a lemon, kid. You'll look a whole lot smarter.

You can slap me back into reality when you get there.

[rickvoid]

That's great, but this is a signup thread. If you have issues with the rules discuss them in the rules thread please. You don't need to make some sort of statement by your absence. You won't be missed.

Did. Alas, if I am not to be listened to I shall make one last stand and renounce all ties. I only support the olde system, for it has undergone a change so drastic it has lost most, if not all, presence of its former self.

Perhaps you see not the consequences. I blame you not. You are but a young mind, corruptible by nature, and unable to foresee the actions as they unfold.

Ye. Ye are scum. Forsaken we, the ancients, are. Forgiven ye will never be, till time has gone full circle and be thou where I stand.

And lo, the Webadict didst turn his back upon the game, forsaking it, secure in his knowledge that without his support, it will have lost all legitimacy.

God, you're rather full of yourself.

If the new additions are shit, it will become evident, and they will be dropped from later incarnations. If not, they will be a welcome inclusion, irregardless of whether you accept that you were wrong.

tl:dr, you're on a fucking power trip, and I just bitchslapped you back to reality. Can we all grow up and get back to signing up for this game now?

Then I'll move the discussion to this thread: You're clearly misguided if you believe that I'm wrong by the mere fact that a game hasn't run. I run 50,000 games in my head every second (50 Kilogameperes, as it's called), and they aren't turning out right. Sure, you will have a game turn out right once in a while, but an NK-proof SK? These vampire things? Where did the aliens go? I thought that was a main fature in this game: Aliens are third parties.

Nah, now it's about vamping (Pun intended) the third parties up. We never really got around to fixing some of the problems the game has OH HEY LOOK AT THESE NEW ROLE!

You can't fix a problem by throwing more problems at it. Only through balancing of the previous set-up will progress be made.

I make these statements because I SEE the problems. I wouldn't have a problem with this game a lot if it didn't keep ending up with additional roles every game, many of them ridiculously overpowering some of the other roles we currently have, and then our solutions is to POWER UP those previous roles and then underpower the new role and HEY LOOK MORE ROLES!

So, go suck a lemon, kid. You'll look a whole lot smarter.

You can slap me back into reality when you get there.

Now this is where the discussion belongs. I'm glad we could move it back here.

I agree that the roles seem overpowered. NK immune SK is fairly ridiculous. Can the Monster Hunter even kill a werewolf?

Anyway, at some point the game has to be run with the new stuff, somewhere other than the alleged 50,000 times in your head. Y'know, with real people. As I stated before, if it turns to shit, it turns to shit, and the new roles get scrapped. If they don't nothing is stopping anyone from running "Old-School" Paranormal sessions.

[Vector]

Now this is where the discussion belongs. I'm glad we could move it back here.

I agree that the roles seem overpowered. NK immune SK is fairly ridiculous. Can the Monster Hunter even kill a werewolf?

Anyway, at some point the game has to be run with the new stuff, somewhere other than the alleged 50,000 times in your head. Y'know, with real people. As I stated before, if it turns to shit, it turns to shit, and the new roles get scrapped. If they don't nothing is stopping anyone from running "Old-School" Paranormal sessions.

Yeah, but the problem is that pretty much the last 4?  5? games have been hopelessly broken due to new roles.  It's really time to stop adding new stuff, then try to fix the old mess... and then we can add new things, with time.  As-is, the setup just hasn't worked for a few months, now, and I think the players are getting kind of sick of it.

[rickvoid]

Now this is where the discussion belongs. I'm glad we could move it back here.

I agree that the roles seem overpowered. NK immune SK is fairly ridiculous. Can the Monster Hunter even kill a werewolf?

Anyway, at some point the game has to be run with the new stuff, somewhere other than the alleged 50,000 times in your head. Y'know, with real people. As I stated before, if it turns to shit, it turns to shit, and the new roles get scrapped. If they don't nothing is stopping anyone from running "Old-School" Paranormal sessions.

Yeah, but the problem is that pretty much the last 4?  5? games have been hopelessly broken due to new roles.  It's really time to stop adding new stuff, then try to fix the old mess... and then we can add new things, with time.  As-is, the setup just hasn't worked for a few months, now, and I think the players are getting kind of sick of it.

Intervention time then?

Paranormal Mafia, we love you, and we think you need help. Please, take the help. 

Seriously though, let's get some fix discussion going then. Let's start from the beginning: All Mafia's have two sides to begin with: town and scum. In this case, it was town and dopps. Then we had Aliens, with their own separate victory conditions. How well was that working?

[webadict]

Now this is where the discussion belongs. I'm glad we could move it back here.

I agree that the roles seem overpowered. NK immune SK is fairly ridiculous. Can the Monster Hunter even kill a werewolf?

Anyway, at some point the game has to be run with the new stuff, somewhere other than the alleged 50,000 times in your head. Y'know, with real people. As I stated before, if it turns to shit, it turns to shit, and the new roles get scrapped. If they don't nothing is stopping anyone from running "Old-School" Paranormal sessions.

Yeah, but the problem is that pretty much the last 4?  5? games have been hopelessly broken due to new roles.  It's really time to stop adding new stuff, then try to fix the old mess... and then we can add new things, with time.  As-is, the setup just hasn't worked for a few months, now, and I think the players are getting kind of sick of it.

We COULD run old-school paranormal sessions. But why would we want to run someone else's idea? We can make our own idea and prefer to make this idea better, because it IS a good idea.

The problem is that the last few games have been ridiculous. Watcher role? Somehow, we still have it. That Disciple of Truth is FINALLY gone. We got horribly crushed last game, and there were only like two mislynches. That's a game where everyone had powerful roles in a small game. That is a BAD combination. You want powerful roles in BIG games, so the powers are distributed equally, instead of horribly OP scum vs. slighty powered town. Because every mislynch in a small game is much more hard hitting in that game.

Heck, it took a full PAGE of me explaining about the Telepath to prove it was overpowered. I think there's a couple of things we can change as well.

Now this is where the discussion belongs. I'm glad we could move it back here.

I agree that the roles seem overpowered. NK immune SK is fairly ridiculous. Can the Monster Hunter even kill a werewolf?

Anyway, at some point the game has to be run with the new stuff, somewhere other than the alleged 50,000 times in your head. Y'know, with real people. As I stated before, if it turns to shit, it turns to shit, and the new roles get scrapped. If they don't nothing is stopping anyone from running "Old-School" Paranormal sessions.

Yeah, but the problem is that pretty much the last 4?  5? games have been hopelessly broken due to new roles.  It's really time to stop adding new stuff, then try to fix the old mess... and then we can add new things, with time.  As-is, the setup just hasn't worked for a few months, now, and I think the players are getting kind of sick of it.

That worked well. It made you think past just Spy vs. Spy. But it was only a Survivor.
Intervention time then?

Paranormal Mafia, we love you, and we think you need help. Please, take the help. 

Seriously though, let's get some fix discussion going then. Let's start from the beginning: All Mafia's have two sides to begin with: town and scum. In this case, it was town and dopps. Then we had Aliens, with their own separate victory conditions. How well was that working?

[Vector]

We COULD run old-school paranormal sessions. But why would we want to run someone else's idea? We can make our own idea and prefer to make this idea better, because it IS a good idea.

Yes, we should make our own games.  The question is this: do we want to allow Paranormal to die here and now, or do we want to try to fix it and keep playing?  There are advantages to both, and I don't feel that I can decide (given that I've really never played a game of it).

[JanusTwoface]

It seems that the this particular forum has been struck with a case of entirely too many games and not enough overall interest to keep all of the games lively; however, Paranormal is my favorite of the more traditional mafia games on this board and I'd hate to see it go.  Therefore, I'm strongly in favor of trying to come to some sort of consensus on what would make for a fun Paranormal game for everyone involved and working towards that.

Having said that, I have been a proponent of adding more things and seeing what works in the past, but between seeing the last game and with the number of people withdrawing from this one, I think we may need to take stock of what we have and see if we can clean this up.  Please keep in mind that all of the following are suggestions and that I haven't had much sleep for a few days, so all of these are up for debate.

Basically, what I did is go through all of the roles put them into three categories.  Things that every mafia should have, things that we probably don't need, and things I'm not sure about.  Overall, I'm suggesting that we remove about half of the roles focusing the game on a standard mafia with a few twists and third parties.  If this works, then we can start branching out again.

Another point is, like I've said before, I'm fine with power role heavy games, but I think that we may have pushed Paranormal a bit much.  Perhaps there should be a hard limit on the town of no more than half power roles?  (With the dopps only being limited in points rather than numbers).  That way there would be plenty of townies to go around but also a good number of power roles to keep things interesting.  Also, I think that allowing any power role to be either town or dopp has helped to avoid having any confirmed townies (including the ability for more than one to show up), and I think we should continue with that.

Mephansteras, I hope I'm not stepping on any toes here.  After all, this is largely your brainchild and I thank you for running it for so long and hope you continue to do so.

Anyways, these are my thoughts...  What do others feel about it?

Spoiler: Keep these (click to show/hide)

# Doppelganger - Standard mafia member
# Doppelganger Leader - Standard godfather
# Advanced Doppelganger - Interesting variant, break town centers

# Agent - Basic cop, always useful
# Detective - Can be used to detect liars and form town centers
# Medium - Interesting role, keeps dead people more or less involved
# Reporter - Can be used to detect liars
# Guardian - Basic guardian role, this is fine
# Psychic Warden - Basic role blocker, this is fine too

# Townie - Basic townie, keep it (duh)
# War Vet - Good way to keep the dopps on their toes, also can make townies lives interesting
# Vigilante - More or less standard, good to have

# Alien Scientist - Having third parties is useful, and I think having one kidnapper is good, can be problematic if there aren't enough aliens, maybe 1 vanilla townie, 1 human with a role, and 1 dopp?
# Survivor - Change (if this isn't the case) to they don't obstruct either side's win and they have to try to figure out who is winning and help them

Spoiler: Remove these (click to show/hide)

# Cult Leader - Just another mafia, don't think we need it
# Cultist - Ditto the cult leader
# Telepath - It's basically a mix of Agent and Detective, I don't think we need all three
# Bodyguard - Duplicates the guardian, could be useful but we end up with quite a few of them
# Mad Scientist - They can be useful to either side or they can break the balance somewhat, depending on who gets them
# Enchanter - I've never actually seen one of these be useful

# Agent Seeker - The Seekers alwys seem to win and I don't think they add much to the game because they're so focussed on their own goals less than a team goal
# Doppelganger Hunter - Ditto Agent Seeker
# Cult Hunter - Doesn't make sense if there isn't a cult

# Werewolf - As soon as people figure out we have one, we're going to be focussed on killing it instead of dopp hunting
# Monster Hunter - Not really necessary without the Werewolf

# Watcher - I don't really like having a limit on the game beyond normal scum takeover, it takes to much focus away from the main game

# Alien Tech - The only remaining alien roles would be the Scientist and the Survivor, with that I think we should remove the tech completely and force them to rely on their wits

Spoiler: Could go either way (click to show/hide)

# Witch/Warlock - Similiar to a less focuessed War Vet, I don't think we need both
# Vampire - I like the idea of a weakened cult, could be interesting

# Exterminator - A serial killer is an interesting varient, but I'm not sure if we need it
# Operative - Has to help the serial killer, maybe gets promoted if the Extermiator dies?

[webadict]

I think if you're going to have a Vigilante, you'd need to have a SK, because the chance that the Dopps get a Vig are extremely low.

I do like the list though. Add in the Exterminator and it's almost perfect.

[JanusTwoface]

What do you think of an Exterminator as a basic serial killer (with Alien flavor)?
- One kill per night
- Has to kill everyone (or just townies?  I'm a little fuzzy on this one)
- No tech (it would be odd to have them as the only ones with tech)

Granted, it would be really difficult to pull off, but I'm sure someone could do it.

[webadict]

Hmm... They could pull it off, IF they had some ability to avoid instant Copness. You'd also need Cops to be less than 100% awesome. Sanities might work.

[Pandarsenic]

Strongly seconded, with slight changes suggested in accordance with my fierce love of the Exterminator.

Aliens should still get the Tech pool, Exterminator should be there with the "1 small, 1 large" tech options. Remove Stun Bomb - Mind Control Ray does everything it can and more, better.

[JanusTwoface]

I guess that the tech pool does allow the 3rd parties to be a little more interesting (and gives them more of a chance, perhaps).
How would you work out the tech then?  Currently it's 1/2 slot items; how does that translate to small/big?  (Unless I've missed newer rule sets)

With Exterminator, Survivor, and Scientist, would it be better to require the Scientist abduct one of each or to stay with vanilla townie, power townie, dopp?

[Pandarsenic]

Anything 2-slot now becomes a Large Tech (intel, Plasma bomb, etc.)

Anything 1-slot now becomes a Small Tech.

You can take 2 small if you want to, like now, but taking a 2-slot tech doesn't deprive you of the ever-precious Personal Shield.