Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Mafia

BM, let me first say that it's fun to have a flavorful game even if it's not perfectly balanced or run. I appreciate that you did this for us and I can see that it took a lot of work to both put this together and to run it.

Now I'm going to vent for a moment. Or two. Hopefully the commentary in and discussion following from this post will lead to improved games run by anyone.

It's ok to have some roles disclosed and others not, but it should be clearly indicated in the rules. The 'spell triangle' should definitely have been in the OP since you apparantely told Amber[Light] about it at some point. It's ok to have hidden game information if you're stating in the OP that there is hidden information. I could see the game design being like a couple of the experienced wizards know about the triangle and all the kids don't. You could mix in the spell triangle flavor with the role PMs so it looks like you're just explaining it to the experienced wizards without making it seem like a big deal that they should tell everyone else. Then when someone comes out and tries to explain it (like Amber[Light] did), they suddenly realize they have to convince everyone the truth of it (and the mod does NOT step in). If it's a rule that the mod can verify, it needs to be in the OP.

Majority votes are majority. Fortunately no one changed their mind to make this rule need to be invoked, but still.

Changing rules at the end was silly - you stated it was because you don't like vote races, so why arbitrarily give the victory to the mafia? Obviously mafia would win the vote race because they're organized, there was no need to step in here. Also, that you weren't there to make a start of day post was unfair either way because mafia were sitting trigger happy on their AKs and we couldn't respond with immediate voting. We didn't even know who was alive or dead and since you had set a precedent for days to begin without you present, of course the mafia went ahead and took their day actions. This made it impossible for town to even choose to react should they have the capability to (which we didn't in this case, as noted earlier, the game appeared to already be over the previous day).

Also, self pardoning is crazy powerful - practically unlynchable. You could just as easily have said to Rad that you can't self pardon. Details about elected roles should definitely have been in the OP (such as MoM having multiple votes and number of Gov pardons). They're elected, it's public, it just makes sense for flavor.

Why wasn't I told I was a nurse at the start of the game? Gaining a power and being a treestump made it impossible to soft claim treestump since the OP specifically states that the treestump has no other powers. To the point, when a rule is made, don't break it. Charlie could have been the nurse instead and it wouldn't have broken the game.

Were the Malfoys told they were lover-linked to Draco? Survivor win conditions are already pretty challenging even without something like this. The survivor-mafia thing didn't make sense, though. Couldn't Leucius just give the town the mafia team and claim victory with the town? Or was Leucius expected to both survive and have mafia victory in order to win?

Please don't post things that can possibly affect the game - even DTA got railed for wording something in his game that could possibly imply that a random person was receiving a blue role. It's important to be completely clear that any post you are making is not having an impact on gameplay. Most times mod responses need to any queries need to be kept very short and to the point - if even answered at all. This goes for PMs, too. The majority of the posts (and PMs) that you made that weren't day start/end info contained information that affected my knowledge - some dramatically so. I kept the info out of thread as best I could, but it definitely affected some of my decisions.

Day start and end posts should contain all the information about what happened throughout the night and signify the day start or end all at once. I think you realized that leaking some information throughout the night was a Bad Thing about halfway through, but you still need to post at day start so that we know nothing else happened during the night. Assuming it even mattered, on the last day if we had assumed it started at that 20 minute mark after your post we could have been playing and you show up half way through to say, 'oh wait, no, this guy is dead'. That's just not a fair day start. I might have felt it was fair to assume that I had successfully protected. If I hadn't already claimed, I might have in such a circumstance which would be thoroughly disruptive - it's not like I could take it back once you retcon the start of day.

Why were you so harsh against masons? The only reason I can see was because you included so many of them. This special no-mason-claiming rule would not have been needed if you had instead just not made so many masons. I'm not even sure the rule would have been necessary as is. If all the mason pairs claimed and the mafia stayed quiet, I think there's a decent chance we would have been like, "Wtf? We can't all seriously be masons, can we?" The only problem was that the mafia numbers were so few and didn't appear to have any real room for character claiming any significant roles. We could have just mass roleclaimed at the start and picked off the less important characters. Also, the lack of clarity on when one can claim mason was destructive - I wonder if Jayme realized he could have saved Jugan or if he felt completely bound by the flip flopping of the rules? Same with Jugan. It certaintly created a totally unnecessary argument near the end of the game.

How were Fred/George JOAT and had so many investigations (or were they just making up the DT stories)?

Was Amber[Light] or Radfield choosing the bans? I was really confused with our minister being Harry Potter but making bans that made it more difficult for us to communicate. I think the idea of posting restrictions is cool (and I have used them in games), but if this was just to suit your taste and wasn't something being implemented by someone's mechanic (seems MoM power most obviously), that's pretty arbitrary.

A couple things to be careful of especially in theme game design - make sure the game is still about an uninformed majority vs an informed minority. Honestly it seemed like the mafia had little effective force (were only 3 of the mafia able to communicate?) and the town was peppered with masons. Each town mason pair had almost as much communicative power as the mafia!

Also, you want to try to keep the game about sifting the truth from the lies and not just be a role-game. Even if you have a game where there are no vanilla townies (this game basically had no vanilla), you can make the powers watered down for balance. For instance detectives can get information that hints at a character, but isn't precise enough to specifically say who they are. Or a medic who can only protect against certain kinds of hits.

When possible, the endgame should be designed to be the climax. Daykills are really powerful in town hands, but much more so in mafia hands. If the town can suddenly get ambushed by a bunch of AKs, it really shifts the endgame point and gave mafia a huge advantage. I'll admit it did fit into the flavor of this game for death eaters to all have AKs, but consider how much earlier the game could have ended if Nagini had survived (and had AK). If we assume Radfield had 2 pardons and the town has no KP, once we were at 11 players the game would practically be over. If Nagini didn't have AK, same situation at 10 players. In a 21 player game, having 3 mafia survive to this point is not unheard of - especially with the Malfoys in the mix. What's worse is that the game would continue even though the mafia had practically won because the mafia is playing it safe (for medic protection and town daykills). Most game designs instead give limited use KP to town and just give the mafia increased night KP (eg at 3 mafia, mafia KP is 2). Mafia daykill powers are very strong since they can use them right before a lynch if they get caught.

Just a final question for my own personal curiousity, was the busdrive or the imperious curse ever used to any effect?

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