Epignosis wrote:Variations of this have been done before. Talk to MP (Game of Champions 2013) and boo (Video Game Mafia) for their insights on what worked and what didn't.
Imo, it didn't. I wouldn't do anything like it again. But Video Game Mafia was also one of my least favourite that I've hosted, just because there were a bunch of other things I tried with it that I wasn't happy with after seeing them play out.
A rabbit (and LT) game that comes to mind for what Roxy was talking about is King Arthur (my first baddie game). Days were 48 hours, everyone had to vote once in the first 24 hours, and then a second time in the second 24. I can't recall if there were actually 2 people lynched every day, but there was a bunch of other stuff that could get people killed besides lynches and NKs (the stupid round table, which gave posting challenges, which is what got me killed). Late into the game, every dead player was able to go into a dead only thread. The first part of it was everyone getting to vote for who they wanted ressed (which I almost managed to get. I want to say BR was one of the others, and the tie-breaker, and also the only civ among the 3 of us, as it turned out), and then the person who posted the most got ressed. I didn't get that, but I did get to come back using a sock account and screw with people. But not of that is all that similar for what Made talked about.
In a general sense though, the problem I've found with giving deadies a chance to do post-death stuff, is that there isn't usually a lot of participation with it. Even if people know there's going to be something that lets them stay in the game, most people pretty much check-out of a game once they're killed.
As for what Made actually outlined, the biggest problem is you said zombies that return to the living game would keep their new alignment. That wouldn't work. A dead baddie who returns as a civvie knows who the baddies are unless every other living baddie has died. And if every other living baddie has died, why would the game still be going? And if they're just rotating through roles (possibly. Some alignments would stay the same, but that's also something people found frustrating with the role switch up that occurred in VGM), then it's not really a game where suspicions have any meaning, it's a pure game of chance. And of course there's the obvious solution of the gag-order, where a former baddie can't tell people who their baddie partners were. But that kind of stuff is boring (which is why I dislike traitor roles and wouldn't use them in a game I host again, and try to avoid signing up for games where I know there are roles like that. I've had them twice as a baddie, it just saps the fun out of things in BTSC when there's reason to not trust someone, or be trusted by the other people).
This is stuff I've thought on before to. I'd like games where there's a lot less focus on regularly eliminating people, and more of a focus on eliminating the right people. It's how I wanted to set up the Harry Potter game I've still never hosted, but I couldn't make it work. And in a sense, it's sort of what happened in MP's Death Note game. I was a baddie there, and almost all of us were difficult to kill, which meant that even when civvies were able to get suspicions correct, they also had to properly time things, which is really just pure guess-work and chance. And that's frustrating. Even as a baddie in that game, where things ultimately turned out to work really well for us, there were times where we knew who the important civvies were, we knew we wanted them dead, but actually killing them was either not possible, or just a terrible idea since it could easily backfire. While a game like what you described would play quite differently, I still think that same kind of frustration would be inevitable. People don't like having their roles change, and they like it even less when other peoples roles (and alignments) change.
All that being said, if you think you can make it work, awesome. But from my experiences, I'm skeptical about mechanics in games that take control away from (living) players.