Thanks again everybody, I'm really pleased with how the game played out, and how it was received!
Initially it was meant to simply be a setup that limited night powers, so there would be more wiggle room for mafia to lie and to force town to look beyond their own results for the best lynch. After ReZ suggested the theme, the rest of the mechanics kind of wrote themselves.
I made the powers a mystery initially to prevent an over co-ordinated town from breaking the game (eg, everyone investigate the person to your left), and I decided to include the indigo beans to balance out the strength of the discovery of the brown bean's function. In retrospect this choice may have made a 4 person mafia a more balanced choice.
I liked how the game developed through stages as a result of the setup;
Initial discovery and testing of beans,
Spending of indigo and brown beans,
Bean depletion and discovery of specials,
Analysis, reveals, endgame.
The way the indigo mechanic played out to undo the town was quite satisfying, starting with the initial deception, Jimbob's hilariously unpredictable investigation play, and ReZ's great spin that somehow allowed him to survive through the rest of the game.
Something interesting about this game type is that the endgame becomes a lot more complex. You can't fully get rid of redirectors, roleblockers, double voters, so at any time the power can swing either way, and if you get an inactive mafia member it's potentially possible for town to come back even if they have less players than mafia, if I remove the endgame rule that is. It almost happened in this game!
As the game went on, eat phase blended into night phase, but I think it was important to set it up that way at first anyway for clarity. Once people got the hang of things they started sending targets as they sent beans, which made things go more smoothly.
Interestingly, the bean bag was stored on file and could potentially have been depleted. It started with:
8x transparent - check a player's beans
15x brown - alignment check
12x light blue - redirect
20x blue - track
16x orange - reverse track
15x yellow - roleblock
10x green - protect
15x violet - jailkeep
10x crimson - double vote next day
10x red - eat two beans next day
And the specials were:
4x lapiz - lie check a post the following day
8x turquoise - steal a bean from another player
4x aqua - slap the cup from someone's hand
3x pink - make one substantial post any time after death
7x dark green - pick three beans
5x yellow and black stripe - find out the colours of beans a person has eaten
indigo - pose as town
white - kill
Seeing how the game played out I think I would balance the number of each bean type a little differently.
Good things about the game:
Ability to lie with relative confidence
Plenty of information to work with
Important decisions to make every day for every player
No one getting stuck with one role
Analysis encouraged
Bad things about the game:
No assured role elimination was tricky for mafia
Fluid roles mean no way to hunt for specific role types
Maybe too many mafia members
Certain bean mechanics were poor (red beans were almost useless)
Roleblocking was rarely successful as half the time people were picking new beans anyway
Confusing mechanics for casual play
I didn't have enough time to keep up the flavour text, so the plot never continued.
Getting crappy beans is crappy!
RNG element reduces reliance on skill, but tolerable trade off
I think for Jellybean mafia 2 I'm going to address how the mechanics affected the standard roles and adjust them for balance, and I think I will include clear instructions on how different powers interact in the initial post to avoid that sort of confusion. For example, roleblocking did not affect the crimson or the indigo bean, which may not have been immediately obvious.
MVP town @Esequiel
MVP mafia @ReZourceman
