All right, let’s talk rules and regulations.
Jd- wrote:
Is it too hard to find the Informants, is it too easy, or is it just right?
I think it’s just right as well. Making themselves suspicious is basically in their job description and it’s up to the civilians and detective to deduce their informant status from their posts instead of relying on any actions. This is what makes informants such an interesting part of the game.
Jd- wrote:
On a related note, I think the Informant role is really a fun and challenging one at its core. It was the most fun (and most trying) I've had in a community game in a long, long time, and really put me through my paces trying to manage that web of madness KL & I had crafted.
Indeed, it seems like a fun role and I’m looking forward to playing it myself sometime in the future. ^_^
Jd- wrote:
I'm proposing that the Informants be given a one-time-use kill ability.
[...]
Personally, I feel that the Spy/Informant team needs just a bit more juice, and I think this may be the answer.
I agree that the spy/informant side is at a disadvantage with the current setup, so I think this is a good idea. Togop’s alternative idea of giving the informants the ability to silence a vote once or twice per round would also work very well, I believe.
Jd- wrote:
Should the Spy's kills take place before the vote to hamper voting initiatives?
Like Togop, I believe this might to too powerful and, as you said yourself, giving the civilians less to do is pretty much against the spirit of the game. Trying to get civilian initiatives and alliances together is where the fun begins, I’d say.

I do think giving the informant(s) the power to cancel votes in a limited way is a pretty good middle ground. Of course, if others are in favor of this I wouldn’t mind trying it out.
Jd- wrote:
It seems that the rule changes made prior to last round worked out well. Anyone feel otherwise?
No, I quite agree, the self-voting is a big improvement, imo.
And last but not least ...
Jd- wrote:
My #1 goal for overhauling the rules is to change the lists. Lists need to be shareable, but there needs to be a real risk to it: a reason to not share your list, in other words.
There are a couple of options here. The problem is that, as soon as the Detectives are dead, there's really no reason for everyone to not post their lists in full and quickly find the Spy.
Yep, that
is a pretty big problem. I’ve been thinking about this for the past two days, but I haven’t been able to come up with a satisfactory solution.
First let me respond to some ideas that were brought up.
Kleene Onigiri wrote:I had a random thought.
Would putting the spy and detective in every list maybe solve/help the problem with people posting lists?
The problem that arises with that is, that people not on the list are certainly civilians. But if the lists are big enough, maybe that won't be much of a problem?
Like with 11 players, making the list 8 units big?
I don’t think this solves the problem. It still means that once the detective is taken out, you just have to look for the one name that appears on (at least) all but X lists, with X = 1 + number of informants still in the game. This makes it almost certain that the spy will be arrested. Ironically, it makes it easier to identify the spy the sooner the detective gets taken out of the game (more civilian lists), when the exact opposite should happen.
It’s a problem with the current system as well, imo. Even if people were able to keep their lists secret, there’s the fact that once the spy side has made
their winninng move (getting the detective out of the game), the civilians suddenly get a very powerful tool to identify the spy, when in fact the chances of the civilians winning should drop at this point.
dumytru wrote:
We could also have a small lists of trusted civilians. So they know for sure everyone on the list is a civilian.
Er, no, that doesn’t work at all. This will allow us to identify all civilians and rob the spy of any chance of winning. Why? It’s quite simple. Let’s say it’s a super small list, just one person, but I know this person is a civilian. My list says Togop is a civilian so, I say I trust Togop. Togop’s list says Jd is a civilian, so Togop says he trusts Jd. Jd’s list says Stopwatch is a civ, so Jd announces that he trusts Stopwatch. What happens? I know Togop is a civ, so he has no reason to lie about Jd, etc, meaning that I now know not only that Togop is a civilian, but that Jd and Stopwatch are civilians as well. Just like that. This chain won’t go on forever (if the names are randomized), but there’ll be a lot of these chains of trust and the spy and informant will never be a part of them ...
It works better if you include the informants in the pool of 'trustworthy civilians,' as you should, since they’re supposed to be indistinguishable from normal civilians. However, the informants would then be absolutely forced to name the spy as 'their' trustworthy civilian, which means you would know who the spy is as soon as you’ve uncovered the informant, whereas it should be possible for the informant to lay a false trail.
But, as I said, I haven’t actually been able to find a solution to the list problem myself.
I’ll think some more on the matter ...