Bay 12 Games Forum

You are a dragon. This is nothing new. You've been around for millennia. To all those insolent humans, arrogant elves, respectable kitsune, and deceitful lying scum wyverns that say they wish they could be immortal, you are an example of what they wish they could claim. They are jealous.

As it turns out, immortality is really boring. By the name of the First, living forever is the worst. You've mastered chess over the course of a few decades, most other board games too. New ones are even easier to learn. Your hoard is well stocked, of course - it is your status symbol. Most hoards these days are fairly equal, however - ever since the humans and elves signed that peace treaty, every time you try and steal something properly valuable you get an army dumped on your doorstep - the nerve of those mortals, to think they can oppose you! Except, unfortunately, it's been proven that they can do so, in such large numbers and with the powers of their own mages, massed and used in cohesion. It's no fun.

So by now, you would be utterly insane if not for the game of FBYOR.

As the records clearly state, Most Elder Fallacy, the dragon called 'Of Urist', inscribed the rules for the game on a slate of adamantine. Most Elder Fallacy never quite explained what the sigils making up the name of 'FBYOR' meant, but the game itself is perfect for a dragon of your immense intellect.

Your invitation for this decade has arrived. There is nothing left to do but to declare your acceptance and return, with your response... your 'role submission'.

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This is my attempt to make a BYOR that is less bad. Can we please just pretend FBYOR 1 through 4 didn't happen? Thanks.

This will be a medium-high power game. You could call it semi-bastard by default, because while I will not try to be a bastard intentionally, things will just not be truly predictable and will only somewhat be sane. I'll try to make it comprehensible enough for a beginner, but no promises on whether or not I'll succeed.

Here are, for reference, the fundamentals of the game of Mafia.

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While the dragons may not know this, FBYOR stands for Fallacy's Bring Your Own Role. When you sign up to play, please PM me your role name. I will design your role and abilities based on your role name, and once the game begins, you will possess the role I custom-designed based on the name you chose. Whether you're Town or Mafia or Third Party will not depend in any way on your role submission, since I randomize the alignments. However if you are a Third Party, the role name you sent in may influence what type of Third Party you are. Or maybe you'll submit Paragon of Niceness and Charity and end up being a Serial Killer.

You may select anything at all for your role name as long as it does not violate the forum rules and guidelines. You could submit your favorite physical character (Batman, Squirrel Girl, Omori) or an abstract concept (Murphy's Law, Purpose) or some bizarre amalgam (Cheshire Cat Strikes Back In Theaters Monday, I'm Right Behind You, Shakerag, Can't You Hear Me Whispering), or even a Shakeragian style role (The FBYOR 5 Role That Ignores Rules). I reserve the right to give you silly, broken, absurd, or seemingly useless Abilities if you submit a Shakeragian role.

Don't worry. Everything in the role you eventually receive will have some purpose. Hopefully most of the time that purpose will be obvious, but remember you can always ask me questions about your role in private. In fact, please do so. If you do not read your role correctly and don't ask me about it, what happens next is on you. Did you know Maximum Spin and Roden missed a way to gain infinite Gold last game because they didn't fully read their abilities? Now you do! Always read your role fully and never be afraid to ask me questions about it. In private. Not in public. If someone's dead, you can even ask questions about their role, too!

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Some more specific rules, including some things I'm explicitly stating now:

Day Phases last 72 hours for the first and second Days, and 48 hours henceforth, though they still end immediately on Hammer. I reserve the right to extend the duration as needed if a player replaces into the game, a real-life emergency occurs, or an extreme Day Ability resolves. Night Phases last 24 hours always, though they may be shortened if every player submits their desired actions or lack thereof quickly.

No editing your posts, and no directly quoting any PMs you have received from me. You are freely permitted to paraphrase. If you have access to a private chat where your alignment is mod-verified, such as the scumchat, you may quote PMs from me in there. If you have access to a private chat without alignment verification included, you do not possess this privilege. Never directly quote PMs from me in the main thread no matter your alignment.

After the Day is ended via hammer, do not post. You may edit your posts to nullify content posted after the hammer, which is an exception to the above rule. If the Day ends via deadline and not hammer, you may continue to post until I close the thread, but further votes will not count and whoever was Executed may not post (except to produce a single 'bah' post useful for mockery, a joke, or humor, but not permitted to contain game-related content).

Don't be too much of an asshole. Some aggression is fine, too much will have me stepping down from my cloud to warn you to cut it out.

By default you will not be informed when redirection (that is, the changing of your action target by the use of an ability) has occurred during the Night. Sorry.

I'm using sane Natural Action Resolution. While I reserve the right to make super-priority actions, by default your Night actions are resolved according to the Natural Action Resolution as seen on mafiascum wiki, paradox resolution handled via the emergency list, and then rolling for initiative if even that fails.

Again, please talk to me about your role so I can help you understand it. You can't just say 'what am I missing', but you can ask me about any details you like or even make absurd hypotheticals. Your roleblock might have a niche case to it that does something incredible in an unlikely circumstance!

On action failures: there are multiple different types of action failure. Most will give you a result of Your action failed. when they occur. Let's go over the most common types.

Failure to target: Congrats, your target is outside of the game space due to a banishment effect or commuter ability, and cannot be targeted. Your action failed, because you couldn't even use your ability in the first place. Any shots you would have used have not been used.
Failure upon use: Something jammed you at the moment you used it. 'Target player's action will fail' would fall under this category, as would action failure due to "(Status) Curse: Your actions have a 50% chance to fail when used!" or such. Any shots you would have used have not been used.
--Roleblock: A roleblock is a specific type of power that forces action failure. Unlike other failures, if someone is roleblocked, they are explicitly given the message You were roleblocked. - but only if they attempted to act. If a player was roleblocked and did not attempt to act, they do not receive this message. This also does not consume shots.
Failure upon arrival: You successfully used your ability, but alas, woe is you, you hit a player who causes all non-kill actions used on them to fail. Unfortunately in this case your ability fully resolved, it just didn't do its job, so you do lose any shots you tried to use.
Sneaky failure: You successfully used your ability, you got the You performed your action message - and your killshot on webadict hit a protect action. You aren't told your action failed, and technically it didn't - but the effect failed completely even if your action didn't.

This should help resolve some of the confusion I saw about Night action messages.

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Let's talk about alignments. There will be a Town team, and there will probably be a Mafia team. I may or may not include Third Parties, based both on randomness and player count, and in an especially big setup I may or may not include a second scumteam with a name such as Werewolves or Gamers. Or in short, there will be a Town, and there will also be an anti-Town, which will probably be the Mafia.

But for your reference here is the Total List Of Alignments. I will not include any alignments outside of these, and the win conditions will always be as stated.


With all that said and done, here's the signups.

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Player List:

I'll close signups Friday, unless we reach our desired playercount before then.