Lucid says that he'll add this if we get to 100 sigs ON MAINS ONLY. Let's see if we can't make it happen, people!
EDIT: We did it!
Introduction
One of the Mafia game's largest untapped areas for potential expansion is arguably interaction with the graveyard. This is largely because as it stands, the graveyard can see the entire unadulterated world, and so resurrecting players or communicating with the living is grossly overpowered as it stands. However, if the graveyard were changed to be obscured, it eliminates a big part of it being an educational tool for new players.
To open up this untapped potential while still retaining the use of the graveyard, I feel that creating a game option that opens up a new, interactive meeting place for the dead while also keeping the old dead meeting area under a new name is the best solution.
I repeat: THIS IS TURNED ON BY A GAME OPTION! It would be incredibly broken to just force this new, game-changing feature into every setup, so setups that want to play with it have to do so by turning on a game option (Just called Afterlife, using this icon..)
The Afterlife
The Afterlife is where people go when they're killed or lynched (if you couldn't figure that out on your own.) The Afterlife is a list on the sidebar that goes above the Graveyard (marked with a icon.) People in the Afterlife speak in blue text and can only see day speaking and the lynch vote unobscured. They cannot see any day actions, whispers will appear completely obscured "Someone whispers to someone." with none of the content. Night actions will not be viewable, and night meetings will be anonymous.
If you're in the graveyard, you do not count towards your team's total count and cannot vote for the lynch, do any kinds of actions (unless you're some kind of new role that operates from the Afterlife) or anything else of the sort.
While there are no roles that can currently interact with this form of the graveyard (except perhaps the Disguiser), here are a few example roles I compiled just to demonstrate the interactions I imagine could happen:
- Cubot's Resurrectionist: https://epicmafia.com/topic/81323
- Ohdearmycatisgone's Ghost: https://epicmafia.com/role/15851
- Blave's Soothsayer: https://epicmafia.com/role/12857
- Jimbei's Spirit Medium: https://epicmafia.com/role/15856
- Parudoks's Banisher: https://epicmafia.com/role/15857
- Parudoks's Channeler: https://epicmafia.com/role/15858
Disclaimer: Quality of these roles is up to the viewer, selected for demonstration purposes only, Golbolco is a bad user.
Having the Afterlife in a game wouldn't change the functionality of roles that simply analyze dead players (e.g. Mortician, Janitor, Pathologist) and it wouldn't change the win condition of roles that require someone to be killed (e.g. Fool, Lyncher, Creepy Girl). Also, trying to add any roles directly associated with the new game option into a setup without the game option enabled is basically pointless as they'd have nothing to interact with, like a mortician without a janitor or a no-reveal game option. So just don't do it.
Hitting the Leave button on a game with the Afterlife enabled while you're in the graveyard won't kick you out of the game immediately, but rather take you to the Graveyard.
The Graveyard
The Graveyard is just the current Graveyard in every game, you go there when you "put your soul to rest." Being in the Graveyard, one can see the entire world without obstruction and types in red text. When you enter the Graveyard, your name is moved to a lower "Graveyard" section in the sidebar like we have now and you will not be able to interact with any new roles that speak to, revive, or in any other way modify dead players. You cannot go back to the Afterlife after entering the Graveyard. This is the view that spectators have in games, as per usual.
Hitting the Leave button in the Graveyard will just take you out of the game. Hitting it while you're alive will still take you out as normal.
Benefits and Drawbacks
Obviously, the biggest benefit is that it allows dead players to still help out their term in whatever little form they can. In Main lobby, the meta part of the game could be heavily utilized (people knowing certain things but dying before they could say.) In Sandbox, more or less any roles associated with the Afterlife could be attached to the setup with no problem. It also retains the biggest use the graveyard currently has: being an educational tool.
Another benefit for this is that most people in Sandbox don't stay in games when dead, but they would be more inclined to stay in the Afterlife at least if there's potential to be revived or be of some kind of use to their teammates.
One of the drawbacks that I can think of is that in a closed role setup, a player in the graveyard will know all of the roles (though not players) with night actions. To be fair, it's not the most prominent drawback, but it is something to keep in mind if you want to make setups with reviving roles in a closed roles game.
Please tell me what you think of the suggestion overall and give any feedback you might have on how to improve it. You can also post any role ideas that you might have/have found that would be compatible with this idea.