How so? It's not confusing, it just eliminates the math question we came up with.

Because every question is somewhat mathematical in nature, and it's hard to draw a clear line on what's OK and what isn't.

Plus, uclabb, semck, and I would find a way around anything.

It should be limited to things like

"Are krellin and ghug innocent?"

"Are two of X,Y,Z mafia?"

"Did two or more mafia members vote for Eden?"

No more "Does the sum of the letters of the names added from 1 to x equal the square root of the inverse tangent of Pi" type questions

all of those restrictions are entirely too arbitrary and vague to be effective

Your restrictions are both arbitrary and not sufficiently restrictive. For example. uclabb's original question seems to be OK under your rules.

Which was his?

The one about having an odd number of mafia in a specific group.

That's fine to me. I just don't want anymore of those sum of the numbers from the original post type questions. It seemed too powerful.

That question is similarly powerful...

Well at any rate, I think making it so you need a new question every time would be the most important rule.

It still isn't that hard. You just change the group you're asking about. The best option is removal of the role.

I agree that it's going to be almost impossible to weaken the QA with arbitrary rules- the only thing that seems vaguely possible to actually weaken the QA is to impose a character limit, but that could probably be gotten around as well.

I wanted to apologize to the town- I basically was trying to be suspicious but not too suspicious in a way that experienced mafia players would think I was innocent but newer players would think I might be guilty. I was doing this to try to avoid night kills and role blocks (as the mafia would think the town might kill me for them), and I felt like I was going to be able to talk my way out of pretty much any potential lynching situation. Maybe that was true, but it left me vulnerable to blitz lynches like what happened to me on day 3, so it obviously backfired- not to mention the fact that I got RB'ed because of the whole people thinking I was the serial killer thing. Anyway, it didn't go so well.

What's wrong with arbitrary rules? Isn't everything an arbitrary rule? I mean, hell, that isn't a reason to not do it.

No, everything is not an arbitrary rule.

You haven't defined a clear and specific rule. That's what's arbitrary about it.

"No math questions besides simple ones."

That seems clear, maybe not specific. But it would be up to the GM to make that distinction.

And that's why it's arbitrary. Every question is a math question, and none of them are. Every question is simple, and none of them are.

Strategy question: What is proper strategy with QA claiming/ claims in general? In my head during the game, I was actually thinking that if I were close to being lynched I (as detective) might claim QA in the last 10 minutes or so just to get through the night, but I decided that would be a bad idea. However, having thought that, I thought that if I were mafia I definitely would have claimed QA if I were about to die at the point TMoW claimed, so I thought that TMoW's claim wasn't particularly credible, especially from my point of view when the person who was going to be lynched, SD, was my inno scan. I guess I didn't realize how strong having an unkillable townie was, but it seemed to me that worst case scenario we were going to get a really strong lead on mafia from the question (a question we would never have answered now that the QA was revealed) and best case scenario (which I was thinking was >50%) we kill a mafia. Is that the right way to think about it?

If I were QA I would claim on the first day. It's pretty much a bulletproof vest.

I would consider claiming immediately if I were QA. Clear a townie early, disincentivize the mafia killing that cleared townie, and prevent fake claims. Plus, the town can lynch you if they can't find anyone else to lynch.

The downside is, the mafia would benefit from killing you day 1 when your question is ineffective.

Not if you ask the right question.

With claims in general, you want to claim with enough time for people to change the lynch. You're obviously balancing this the whole way against whether you should claim at all (because if you can escape being lynched without claiming you do that 100% of the time).

With the QA in particular, I think the optimal strategy is to claim day 1. The mafia have no incentive to counterclaim because they either lose a member to a lynch or open the Pandora's box with the question (especially in light of the fact that we now know how to optimize it). At that point you have a virtually unkillable confirmed town from the start. Don't claim immediately on day 1; with 48-hr days I'd say claim after eclipsing the 24-hr mark, maybe as late as the 32-hr mark if you think you can get away with it. You want to wait because you get more interaction data but you don't want to wait so much that the info that you're confirmed town doesn't get used.

And no you should pretty much never lynch the QA, you should be aiming to lynch bad guys every day that you're playing

If it's the case that the QA should claim on Day 1, then the role should clearly not exist. I'm not convinced that is true, though, especially if we are going to respect claims as much as we did this past game. I think it's probably better for the town for the QA to get mafia-killed during the night.

Uclabbs original question: "Is an odd number of group X Mafia?" is bad, because what do you do once you get the first Mafia in the group? Do you lynch the rest in hopes that there's 3 mafia in the group? If the answer is negative, how do you determine if it's 0, 2 or all 4?

Maybe it would be better if the QA can choose to commit suicide during a night phase rather than asking a new question?

You retain that information. The key is that the question doesn't stop being useful after you catch anyone in the group.

I think the optimal play for QA would be to play in a way that get's him nightkilled as soon as possible. A nightkilled QA means another Townie wakes up the next day and the Town gets the question answered.

What information? If the answer is negative, you won't know what the answer means until you have lynched all but one of the targeted group. If the answer is positive, after catching the first Mafia you don't know whether there's two more until you have lynched all but one of the targeted group.