New XKCD Forums

madge wrote: ↑Thu Oct 31, 2024 11:52 am

You don’t understand other people, not really. After all, you know where you came from - you’re your own mother and father, after all. The Ouroboros ring you wear to fend off unwanted advances serves to remind you of that.

The rest of the world - it makes no sense to you, which is why the invitation to the Time Traveller’s party appeals to you so much. Maybe that will be the time and place you’ll finally get the sense of belonging that you’ve needed.

And, given the way your life has been going thus far, you can’t help but suspect a future version of yourself will also show up at the party and potentially cause a stir.

You plan to take your ring with you, for it will no doubt interest other time travellers to hear your story and see this token of it.

Jane, The Unmarried Mother (" '—All You Zombies—' " by Robert Heinlein)

You are a Town Time Traveller.

You have the following active ability:

• Once per game, you may precommit to travelling back in time to the current Night. You will travel back in time from the Night two Nights in the future (e.g. from N3 to N1).
• While you are “travelled back in time”, there will be two of you, with the following logical consequences:
  • You can vote twice. Note that this ability will require you to specify who you unvote for when unvoting.
  • You will be immune to one kill (day or night).
  • You can perform two actions per phase, if applicable.
• Despite the potential for a time travel paradox, using up your kill immunity does not mean you will die on the day you travel back in time.
• Example: on N1, you opt to time travel. That means that on D2 and D3, you will have a double vote, one kill immunity, and the ability to perform double actions. On D4, you will effectively become vanilla.

You have the following passive ability:

• If you die before using the above ability, you will go back in time to prevent your death at the last minute.
• If that happens, you will still have the ability to double vote or perform two actions per night, but your kill immunity would have been used up.
• Despite the potential for a time travel paradox, using up your kill immunity does not mean you will die on the day you travel back in time.
• Let us know if you wish to disable this passive ability at any time.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Note: This role is a bit complicated, so feel free to ask for clarification or hypotheticals. The intention was for this to act as a sort of bulletproof temporary double-voter, and for the special abilities to last two full game Day/Night phases.

madge wrote: ↑Thu Oct 31, 2024 11:54 am

Great Scott! You’ve received an invitation to a party in honour of time travel, in June, 2009. That’s partway between your native 1985 and the far-flung future of 2015. You’re not familiar with it, exactly, but you’re sure your DeLorean can get there.

And if there’s a time travellers' party, then you’re going to be sure to bring your Flux Capacitor! Perhaps the other time travellers will be able to collaborate with you on better understanding its secrets.

What talent do you bring to the party? Why, you’re pretty dialled-in to things - nothing really gets past you, with your scientific mind. That said, you’re not exactly a subtle person - if you know something, so does everyone else. And, of course, as a mad scientist who gets his best inspiration from falling off the toilet, your results aren’t always especially reliable.

Time to get to 88mph, you don’t want to be late!

Doc Brown (Back to the Future film franchise)

You are a Town Compulsive Variable-Reliability Publishing Cop.

You have the following active ability:

• Each Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn whether that player is Town-aligned.
• Your result will not be PMed to you; instead, it will be posted in the game thread at the start of the day in the form “PLAYERNAME is [Town]/[non-Town]”, in bold mod-text.
• Your reliability varies depending on the Night, and is as follows:
  • Night 1: Inverse
  • Night 2: Cynical
  • Night 3: Reliable
  • Night 4: Reliable
  • Night 5: Naive
  • Night 6: Inverse
  • Night 7 and on, if applicable, will be provided to you upon request on or after Night 4.
• If you do not select a night action target, one will be chosen for you at random.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Note: “reliability” was formerly known as “sanity” and works as described in the Mafiascum wiki: https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Cop

madge wrote: ↑Thu Oct 31, 2024 11:57 am

You’re not crazy. Are you?

You come from a future where most of the population died during a plague, and you got sent back in time to try and find information that will prevent it.

And yet, somehow, amongst all this, the scientists that sent you back in the future want you to attend a time travellers’ party. They think there might be useful information, and have given you another phone number to leave a message on with your findings.

That phone number, stored in your memory, is a way of delivering information to the future. And you’re known for your ability to gather information, which might become useful.

But you’re done with all that: you failed to prevent the plague, and all you can hope for is that the past you get transported to, party or no party, will at least be somewhere you can walk around on the surface. You’re not going back there.

But en route to the party, your time stream crosses with someone who you feel a very, very strange sense of kinship with. It’s almost as if you’re the same person - though you’re clearly not.

Regardless, your connection in the time-stream has set you up with an encrypted line, so you can talk to each other in complete confidence. Moreover, your strange connection has you certain you can trust one another.

James Cole (12 Monkeys)

You are a Town Sibling Mason one-shot Loud Watcher.

You know that [Thea] is Town-aligned, and may speak to them in this private discord: https://discord.gg/w6bCfuTpTG at any time.

You have the following active ability:

• Loud Watcher: Once in the game at night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn which other players targeted that player that Night. The following Day, a public message will be posted with “[Player X] targeted [Target name] in the night.”

You have the following passive ability:

• Sibling: If either you or your sibling die, the other will die too. An exception may be made in the event of a modkill.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

madge wrote: ↑Thu Oct 31, 2024 12:03 pm

A time traveller party? Of course you’re coming, you’re The Doctor, you’re a Time Lord, you are famous for your forays through time and space surrounded by your various companions, fighting evil. Time travel is a tricky business, after all.

And you just know that wherever you end up - time traveller party or no - you’ll end up finding evil, so you’re ready to face it. You don’t take weapons, but you DO have your sonic screwdriver, which can do basically anything (except wood, of course).

You can’t wait to go to the party, using your many talents to fight evil, making new friends! Who knows, perhaps you’ll even run into your wife?!

Hopefully, everyone having fun at this party is a fixed point in time!

The Doctor (Doctor Who franchise)

You are a Town Loud Jack-of-all-trades.

You have the following active abilities, but may use only one per Night:

• Cop: Once in the game at night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn whether that player is Town or non-Town. (You will get "no result" if this action is blocked.)
• Role Watcher: Once in the game at night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn which other roles targeted that player that Night.
• Roleblocker: Once in the game at night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player's active abilities will be blocked that night.
• Doctor: Once in the game at night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player will be protected from one kill that night.
• Parrot: Once in the game at Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, if that player is using an active ability that has a single target, you will use that ability on that player, including all applicable ability modifiers.

You cannot target yourself.

You have the following passive ability:

• Whenever you use one of your active abilities, the following Daystart post will include text along the lines of “Jack of all Trades targeted [NAME] last night”.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

madge wrote: ↑Thu Oct 31, 2024 12:05 pm

A celebration for time travellers? Undomesticated equines cannot keep you from this.

You have engaged in more time travel experiences than you can shake a Ma’Tok (staff weapon) at! You’ve endured three months in a time loop, been to the year 1969, and to cap it all off you spent 50 years of your life on a space ship stuck in a time dilation field, before going back in time to undo all that.

Suffice it to say, there will be much to discuss with the other partygoers.

As the former first prime of Apophis, you know how to command an army, and drawing out the strength of every soldier. You’ve got your Ma’Tok with you, which, though lacking in precision, remains an impressive weapon in its own right.

Are you prepared for the party?

Indeed.

Teal’c (Stargate SG-1)

You are a Town Motivating Loudener.

You have the following active ability:

• Each Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will motivate that player, allowing them to act twice the next night.
• Some abilities, such as the Mafia’s night kill, may not be affected by this power.
• Players who are motivated will also be Loud that night (and will be informed of this). This will result in targets, night results, or other information being posted in the game thread at the start and/or end of the day.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

madge wrote: ↑Thu Oct 31, 2024 12:08 pm

You’re a tactician, so your job is to make sure everything runs smoothly on a mission. Your job is to make sure that everyone follows protocol and has all the resources they need.

Unfortunately, this mission has not gone according to protocol. The Director was not able to find enough targets and so chose you. You’d been cheerfully following Protocol Omega when you found yourself visited by a messenger and told your mission was to go to a Time Travellers’ Party to gather every item in a list for someone called ‘The Hawk King’. Given your job is to faithfully follow the opaque instructions of someone called The Director, this doesn’t invite questioning.

You don’t know what or why, and you don’t expect to find out (Protocol 6). You’re going to faithfully follow your instructions.

The Director gave you instructions to find your Team, a group of compatriots who are faithful to the Hawk King. You locate them and set up communications, verify loyalties, and prepare for the next phase.

You know the Director will give you some resources, and knowing how The Director works, it will probably involve someone else’s death…

Traveler 3465 (Carly)

You are a Mafia Loud Backup.

Your team-mates are [Wam] and [Somi].

You may talk to them at this URL: https://discord.gg/HzjJwwm8fx at any time.

You have the following personal ability:

• You will inherit the role of the first town power role to die, losing this ability in the process. When this happens, the mod will post in thread “[Role Name] has been inherited by the Backup”.

You have the following factional ability:

• Each Night, if no other member of your faction is performing this action, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player will die.

You have the following factional setup knowledge:

• There are no rolenames from the following pieces of media / media franchises: Star Trek, HG Wells’ The Time Machine, Primer, Russian Doll

You win if at least one mafia member is alive and all other players are dead (or if nothing can prevent the same).

madge wrote: ↑Thu Oct 31, 2024 12:09 pm

An invite to a time travel party? EXCELLENT [cue sick air guitar riff]

You’ve passed your history test and avoided being sent to military school, but now you have to fill in the time before Wyld Stallyns get off the ground and change history itself. That’s no mean feat, of course.

And that’s why the time travel party invitation was so, well, excellent: it represents a great opportunity to get the band valuable exposure amongst your fellow time-travellers. You can show off not only your musical talents, but the phone booth that takes you both from place to place through space and time.

You’re known for your individual strengths, and are good at sharing responsibility. Above all, though, you’re good at making sure people are excellent to each other, though you’re not always subtle about it.

Time to take your magical, time-travelling phone booth and get to England, 2009.

Then it’ll be time to party on, dudes!

Bill & Ted (Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure)

You are a Town odd Bodyguard / even Loud Doctor.

You have the following active abilities:

• On odd Nights, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player will be protected from one kill that night and you will be killed in their place.
• On even Nights, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player will be protected from one kill that night and “[TARGET] was protected last night” will be posted in the game thread at the start of the day in mod bold text.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

madge wrote: ↑Thu Oct 31, 2024 12:11 pm

A time traveller party? Of course you’re coming, you’re The Doctor, you’re a Time Lord, you are famous for your forays through time and space surrounded by your various companions, fighting evil. Time travel is a tricky business, after all.

And you just know that wherever you end up - time traveller party or no - you’ll end up finding evil, so you’re ready to face it. You don’t take weapons, but you DO have your sonic screwdriver, which can do basically anything (except wood, of course).

You can’t wait to go to the party, using your many talents to fight evil, making new friends! Who knows, perhaps you’ll even run into your wife?!

Hopefully, everyone having fun at this party is a fixed point in time!

The Doctor (Doctor Who franchise)

You are a Town Loud Jack-of-all-trades.

You have the following active abilities, but may use only one per Night:

• Cop: Once in the game at night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn whether that player is Town or non-Town. (You will get "no result" if this action is blocked.)
• Role Watcher: Once in the game at night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn which other roles targeted that player that Night.
• Roleblocker: Once in the game at night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player's active abilities will be blocked that night.
• Doctor: Once in the game at night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player will be protected from one kill that night.
• Parrot: Once in the game at Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, if that player is using an active ability that has a single target, you will use that ability on that player, including all applicable ability modifiers.

You have the following passive ability:

• Whenever you use one of your active abilities, the following Daystart post will include text along the lines of “Jack of all Trades used their [NAME] power last night”.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

You cannot target yourself.

madge wrote: ↑Thu Oct 31, 2024 12:15 pm
[Above image is AI-Generated]

You’re most famous for being immortal, after an accident with a few rubber bands, a liquid lunch, and a particle accelerator. The boredom of Sunday afternoons, however, lead to you becoming a time traveller, with one simple goal: insult every being in the universe.

In alphabetical order. Needless to say, you are meticulous, ordered, and have spoken to every sentient being that has ever lived, or will ever live. Your misanthropy - which isn’t just directed at humans, of course, but at the universe, so perhaps misuniverpy may have been a better term - is caused from the irreversibly deep existential ennui you face. An ennui, you think, might be able to be solved by the Hawk King.

It is for that reason that you’re teaming up with two others to attempt to bring him to power by gathering all the items he needs to alter the fabric of space-time itself. And hey, if that doesn’t work out, at least you can insult all the time travellers who show up at the party.

Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged (Hitchhiker's Guide)

You are a Mafia Role Cop. Your team-mates are Wam and Moody. You may talk to them here at any time.

You have the following personal ability:

• Each Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn that player's role (but not their alignment). This will provide only the role name, not detailed role information.

You have the following factional ability:

• Each Night, if no other member of your faction is performing this action, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player will die.

You have the following factional setup knowledge:

• There are no rolenames from the following pieces of media / media franchises: Star Trek, HG Wells’ the time machine, Primer, Russian Doll.

You win if at least one mafia member is alive and all other players are dead (or if nothing can prevent the same).

madge wrote: ↑Thu Oct 31, 2024 12:16 pm

Your connections with the mob, as a former hitman, nearly got you killed, until your past self decided to have mercy on you and let you live. One thing led to another, and you ended up being able to get access to the time machine again. Having no idea how to get power over the mob, you did the only thing that made sense: set the coordinates to Stephen Hawking’s time traveller party in the hopes that you’d make some connections there.

You have with you your pocket watch, with a photograph of your late wife. Maybe someone at the party can help you find vengeance for the people who killed her. You’re going to use all the skills you picked up in the underworld to uncover the truth of what is going on.

But en route to the party, your time stream crosses with someone who you feel a very, very strange sense of kinship with. It’s almost as if you’re the same person - though you’re clearly not.

Regardless, your connection in the time-stream has set you up with an encrypted line, so you can talk to each other in complete confidence. Moreover, your strange connection has you certain you can trust one another.

Old Joe (Looper)

You are a Town Sibling Mason one-shot Loud Tracker. You know that [Fred] is Town-aligned, and may speak to them in this private discord: here at any time.

You have the following active ability:

• Loud Tracker: Once in the game at night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn which other players that player targeted that Night. The following Day, a public message will be posted with “[Target name] targeted [Player X] in the night.”

You have the following passive ability:

• Sibling: If either you or your sibling die, the other will die too. An exception may be made in the event of a modkill.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

madge wrote: ↑Thu Oct 31, 2024 12:18 pm

You’re not a time traveller, exactly, but you can see your future just as clearly as you can remember your past, ever since you learned Heptapodian. And a key consequence of being able to see your future so clearly is that you now no longer have the ability to change it: just as you know your daughter will die in a climbing accident in a few short years, so to do you know that you can act in no other way than to allow it to happen.

Somehow, your future knowledge of Stephen Hawking’s time travellers party actually allowed you to attend it. It doesn’t make sense, given what you know about predestination and your experience with your astonishing ability to see your entire future, up until the moment of your death. But you’re a linguist, not a physicist; you can only assume that the other guests, time travellers all, will help you shed light on things.

You bring a copy of your grammar of Heptapod B, thinking that its knowledge might prove useful to time travellers, or that they might have different ways of interpreting its strange symbolic properties.

In return, you’re hoping your knowledge of linguistics, of grammar and communications of all types, will be helpful to your fellow party attendees.

Dr. Louise Banks (The Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang)

You are a Town Traffic Analyst.

You have the following active ability:

• Each Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn whether or not that player is able to privately communicate with another living player (you cannot distinguish between a player who had chat partners who are now dead, and a player who never had chat partners).

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

madge wrote: ↑Thu Oct 31, 2024 12:19 pm

A time traveller party? Of course you’re coming, you’re The Doctor, you’re a Time Lord, you are famous for your forays through time and space surrounded by your various companions, fighting evil. Time travel is a tricky business, after all.

And you just know that wherever you end up - time traveller party or no - you’ll end up finding evil, so you’re ready to face it. While you might have moved away from weapons in your later years, you did bring your Moment Detonator.

You’re attending the party to try and help gather all the items the Hawk King needs to commence his reign. You can tell that you’ve attended this before - or you attend it in the future, who knows, it’s all pretty timey-wimey. One of your fellow conspirators gave you a memory unmangler that allows you to—somehow—remember being at this party… in the future? Clearly, the timelines are converging.

The Doctor (Doctor Who franchise)

You are a Mafia Jack-of-all-trades. Your team-mates are Moody and Somi. You may talk to them at this URL: https://discord.gg/HzjJwwm8fx at any time.

You have the following active abilities, but may use only one per Night:

• Cop: Once in the game at night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn whether that player is Town or non-Town. (You will get "no result" if this action is blocked.)
• Role Watcher: Once in the game at night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn which other roles targeted that player that Night.
• Roleblocker: Once in the game at night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player's active abilities will be blocked that night.
• Doctor: Once in the game at night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player will be protected from one kill that night.
• Parrot: Once in the game at Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, if that player is using an active ability that has a single target, you will use that ability on that player, including all applicable ability modifiers.

You cannot target yourself.

You have the following setup knowledge:

• You remember doing all this before: there is another JOAT with identical abilities and the rolename of The Doctor (but played by Jodie Whittaker). This JOAT is town aligned, and their abilities are all loud. That is, the following Daystart post will include text along the lines of “Jack of all Trades used their [NAME] power last night”.
• You remember doing all this before, before: there is ANOTHER JOAT with identical abilities and the rolename of The Doctor (but played by David Tennant). This JOAT is town aligned, and their abilities are all loud. That is, the following Daystart post will include text along the lines of “Jack of all Trades targeted [NAME] last night”.
• This daystart post only refers to Town JOATs’ power usage pattern. None of your powers are loud by default.
• If you wish to claim, the eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) would also be a good candidate for Town’s JOAT, though any Doctor is fair game.
• Flavour note: John Hurt will definitely stand out as scummier than the two Town Doctors, hence the fake claim.

You have the following factional ability:

• Each Night, if no other member of your faction is performing this action, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player will die.

You have the following factional setup knowledge:

• There are no rolenames from the following pieces of media / media franchises: Star Trek, HG Wells’ the time machine, Primer, Russian Doll.

You win if at least one mafia member is alive and all other players are dead (or if nothing can prevent the same).