At the start of each day phase, the mod places a vote on a random player. Each post
must
contain a vote (forgetting to vote for another player counts as a self-vote).If there are no posts for 24 hours (tweakable for, e.g., weekends), the player voted for in the last post dies. This is the
only
effect of votes; they aren't counted, they don't have any effect beyond the next post, there's no plurality or majority lynch or anything like that. This mechanic should also mean that there's no need for a deadline.Each slot's post count must stay under the Day count × 4 (e.g. a player who has averaged 4 posts per Day cannot make further posts until the next game Day).
The basic idea is that voting for someone either forces them to use up one of their four posts to defend themselves (using their vote to shift the "hot potato" requirement to post onto someone else), or else for someone else to cut in to defend them (thus using one of their own posts to save someone else, which would surely be noticed).
My main concerns are not so much with balance (what I'm normally concerned with), but with game flow. What sort of beneficial/detrimental effects would a mechanic like this have on the game? Is there too much potential inflexibility with, say, V/LAs? (One possibility would be to explicitly allow for declared V/LAs of a specific length at the cost of a certain number of posts.)