Elements Mafia: Lessons Learned

[MasPan]

Holypie: I'm not pissed at you. I'm raging at how a few things happened that royally screwed the mafia though.

Night 0 - none of our (mafia) PMs mentioned not being able to act on Night 0 (as is standard when that's the case). Rules vaguely mentioned info being in PMs. So we set in motion a plan that ended up getting me royally screwed over by tripping over suddenly not being able to hit the target I promised to my mason with my voteblock (ElectricSix). My comrades had similar plans that were ruined by suddenly finding out mid-game that we could not act afterall.
LL: Provide ALL non-hidden restrictions to players in their role PM. Doing so later gives players a significant disadvantage when suddenly they have a weakness they should've known about the entire game.

Supermasonry - while it probably DIDN'T occur, allowing it makes it is just as bad. It very easily could have, and the possibility made it impossible to argue against Dual's lie.
LL: Never allow supermasonry under anything other than highly restrictive or unusual circumstances.
That's all for now. Idk if others have lessons learned from that.

[Dual]

Rules for Masons based on personal opinions:

Masons should be restricted to 3-4 members. Anything higher should have forced group talk, but I don't feel you need more than that anyway. 1 on 1 talk is allowed in smaller mason groups because of less imbalance.

[MasPan]

Rules for Masons based on personal opinions:

Masons should be restricted to 3-4 members. Anything higher should have forced group talk, but I don't feel you need more than that anyway. 1 on 1 talk is allowed in smaller mason groups because of less imbalance.

Personal opinion is that anything more than 3 members needs group talk. Having 2/3 masons privately communicating is pretty fair, given that at any time all 3 players might be privately communicating with the other 2 unbeknownst to the 3rd person.

[Five Second Pose]

One thing I learned is making sure you organize masonry groups based on role AND person, not only one. I tried to have one of each mafia member in each group, IIRC. After that, I set to group "experienced" players with "inexperienced" players.

I need to pay more attention to what could happen in mafia setups, lol.

[Dual]

Personal opinion is that anything more than 3 members needs group talk. Having 2/3 masons privately communicating is pretty fair, given that at any time all 3 players might be privately communicating with the other 2 unbeknownst to the 3rd person.

That's actually the entire reason I use masons. To act as a secret game within a game of trying to guess who the mafia inside could be, if there even is one.

[Holypie]

You saw that there were mason groups, why didn't you tell me =(

[Five Second Pose]

You saw that there were mason groups, why didn't you tell me =(

I honestly don't remember looking at mason groups, so something went wrong on my end.

[Holypie]

I remember you saying "Oh so there are mason groups?" or it was Alex. I dunno but I think it was during the big balancing session.

[Lord Xela]

My personal opinion on the matter is that I dislike mason groups and feel that they shouldn't be incorporated into mafia games. They run too much of a risk of breaking the game, really, since they just add in one more thing that could end with supermasonry. I like the psychological aspects to a point, what with trying to figure out which (if any) of your group is mafia, but still. Masons (as the usual role of a 2-3 player town-aligned group that can talk) are fine in my eyes, but when everyone in the game is in one of those groups, things get... complicated. A little too complicated.