It's not really been a good year for the UN in 20xx. The space station went overbudget, and the orbital meeting to resolve the latest Taiwan Strait relations crisis broke down after the alcohol ran out, the Secretary General was accused of cheating at the poker game, and the station exploded. Still, there's business to be done, crises to address. The upcoming summit - tentatively on global warming, but potentially able to address even grander issues - will happen on schedule, damnnit. Just to be safe, the location will be much more reliable: the UN's new undersea base, on the seafloor near Bermuda. Where according to legend great pirate treasure sank to the bottom. And also was the burial-at-sea site of the Native Caribbeans for their worst criminals, said to still be haunted by the spirits of the damned.
The recent mysterious wave of disappearances & murders certainly won't follow the delegates undersea - after all, the entire facility will be locked off, for safety purposes. No spy would be crazy enough to seal themselves in with the world's most competent luminaries - they'd be caught immediately if they tried to pull anything, after all. So perhaps things are looking up after all - this Conference will be a magnificent success.
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This will be rather different than other games of Mafia at the DL. Specifically, this will be less of a "game" and more of a casual group deduction & bad fanfic analysis deal. I will write some screwball fiction each "Day", which will have a lot of red herrings, but also some actually useful information that may clear some characters or suggest who the actual bad guys are. Anyone can stop by and try and guess at what's going on. This means:
* No hardcore time commitment. It is a-OK to stop by, read the latest day update, and drop a vote off as a guess as your sole activity during the day (although obviously I'd prefer a little more activity, especially of the silly variety, and if you just sign up then entirely ignore the thread that's lame and you shouldn't do that and will still earn a modkill.).
* Guaranteed to be no direct alignment investigative roles (= cops), which would defeat the whole point. Minor roles will exist, though, and might help obtain information / perform actions / accomplish side objectives.
* Dead players can comment in the thread! (trust me, explaining the unusually active ghosts will not be hard.) Non-players can comment in the thread!
* Commenting at "night" is fine (if perhaps unwise if you help scum target their kill better)! Exclamation points are awesome!!!!
** ...although IRC / AIM / Facebook type communication is still out for fear of pressuring people out of thread. If you've got a comment just drop it here publicly for all to see. Unless you're part of the scumchat, of course.
* You can only vote once per day. Feel free to break out the FoS's if you suspect many people and want to talk earlier in the day, or to withhold your vote until you see which way the winds are blowing. Yes, this will crimp town some by having dogpiles that would have been reversed in a normal game of Mafia via convincing evidence arising late. Oh well, lynch them the next day.
*** There will be a smaller proportion of scum than is "usual" for Mafia games, since there will be less "game" content to work from, and town lynches are more erratic.
* For scum: as noted, this is less a "game" than normal Mafia, where scum can really pride themselves on wins they earn. I reserve the right to totally screw up and have a clue I thought would be subtle and inscrutable instantly identify you as a murderer on Day 2. Tough luck if that happens.
* Lynches will be by
plurality. Ties resolved by Hatbot. Day ends whenever I post the next update, there is no such thing as "hammer." I'll probably try and post a new Day every 72 hours or so, but a runaway majority early could lead to an early day close (similar to hammer, but not required), and real-life / laziness / hoping a tie is broken / whatever might cause me to delay longer than 72 hours for an update.
* Except for C-C-C-C-COMBO Breaker hijinx, of course.
** I might be willing to remove this rule if it is causing everyone to withhold their vote until 1 hour before deadline, but we'll see how it works.
If you want to see some examples of Mafias of this style (not required reading at all, these are long & ancient):
http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/115135-Mafia-XIX-Mafia-on-the-Nile
http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/116352-Mafia-XX-The-French-revolution
http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/114514-Mafia-XVIII-The-Island-of-Death
(Also note that the Apolyton Mafias had the bad habit of having their clues be based off the equivalent of "people who met superaielman at the Con know he has a giant scar running down his right cheek and enjoys fine wines" too often. You shouldn't need to know real-life facts to be able to follow along IMHO. These mafias were also totally roleless, which won't be the case here.)--
So. Who's interested? We're looking for an international consortium of weirdness. Ideally suggest a country or two you'd like to be the representative of, but I'll need some blank signups that can be slotted wherever, too.
