Bastard Mechanic: Unpredictable VCs

[BuJaber]

This is an idea for a mechanic only suitable for bastard games (for reason that will be apparent immediately )

There are pretty much 2 rules:
1. VCs are always correct and final, until another VC is posted. That means even if there is a mod error the error is taken as the truth until the mod posts another VC.

2. Mod cannot count a vote for someone who has not voted.

Anything else goes.

The mod can at any time add loved/hated modifiers, give additional votes to players, not count votes, redirect votes, add arbitrary rules like "a vote post must contain the letter 'g' for the vote to count", etc.
As long as a player has voted their vote is in control of the mod. The mod may or may not announce these changes publicly/privately.

The idea isn't to have meaningless chaos. Only to introduce a sense of danger and excitement and randomness in that at any moment a wagon could theoretically be hammered. I suspect that purely because the mod

can

do these things there will be a significant effect on the players' behavior.


Do you think this could be fun, or will it just end up being a shitshow and ruin the game?
Would you add additional rules?
Comments/concerns?

[BuJaber]

^ wrong. The mod decides what happens based on his votecounts, mod error is taken to be truth unless it is corrected in a future post.

Yes in technicality, but i took that rule to resolve edge cases in VC's lining up with the actual thread and not as means to fuck with players just because

I put that rule to remove any guessing or doubt in players wrt VCs. If they see something and it doesn't make sense they don't question it they accept it and act accordingly.

^ wrong. The mod decides what happens based on his votecounts, mod error is taken to be truth unless it is corrected in a future post.

Not a great mechanic I think because the mod has perfect information and needs to have a pre-determined list of twists he'll do before the game to prevent it from being biased in favor of some faction (even then, something like "first L-1 wagon gets hammered" might be a rule in favor of one faction too).

What if you mixed this game with the leader mechanic from Heros Wanted? So each night town elects a votecounter, and all the votecounts that player makes are 100% accurate. Then they can either choose to make accurate votecounts, or instantly hammer someone, plus any error they make counts. Or, you could even just have a public knowledge pool of people who are eligible to be elected to be a votecounter, and at least one of them is town. Maybe the mafia could also pick how many of them go in that pool pregame. Could make for a cool mechanic in a 1984 Orwellian nightmare theme game where perception is reality and you could have other roles that mess with what is true and what isn't.

This does sound interesting but the reason I wanted it to be the mod was because they're supposedly neutral. The mod will probably end up favoring one side or another with every decision they make but they can also turn around and make another decision to tip the scales back in the other direction etc..