Right, I've finally got time to sit down and write up my thoughts on the game. I have to say, this is probably the game of Mafia I have spent (wasted?

) the most time on - the bazaar aspect is compelling and adds an extra dimension to the gameplay that I really appreciated. I love the intricacy of the backstory that Tapper has built and the depth and variety of the roles and objects in the game. I found myself being sucked into spending more time on the game than I really should have - a testament to the quality of preparation Tapper must have put into the game to make it fun! Having said all that, one of the other things I find enjoyable about such games is the postmortem afterwards in which the game design concepts can be evaluated. Here are some of the observations I had about what didn't really work so well and a few suggestions about how things could be tweaked to improve things. As always, I must stress that these criticisms do not in any way signal that I didn't really enjoy this game.
As I said in some of my PMs, I feel like there are some fairly gaping loopholes that will allow players to manipulate the bazaar system to get them money too easily. The principle one is that any ability that gains you extra money when you do something bazaar-related is instantly abusable the moment you allow two players of the same faction to talk to each other off thread. Player A can sell what he needs to sell to get a bonus, and Player B can buy the goods and then sell them back at the same price. No goods have changed hands but money has magically been created. The same principle applies to those contract-related bonuses twelve and myself had. Once I had my lover bond up with Khell, we could basically have generated infinite money by him posting contracts alternatively asking for people to either buy or sell certain goods. You could try to put limits on this by preventing players with a lover bond from selling to each other, but all they'd have to do is come up with a plan for when the link is broken and you're screwed (that's basically what Khell and I did to net me a title so quickly on Day 4...with a little help from twelve's contracts, of course). There isn't really a good solution that I can see apart from removing one of the two factors that make it possible - so either no lover conversations or no bazaar bonuses.
Unfortunately, if you remove bazaar bonuses you need an alternative method of injecting money into the game - you are producing new goods every day, so you need to produce new money to match it or you end up with serious deflation in the system (I would argue that we did see a bit of this - I certainly felt like I needed to constantly lower my expectations of what a good would sell for in order to make a sale. I suspect this was compounded by the fact that some people were saving a large proportion of their income in order to get a title, effectively taking that money out of circulation). I would suggest having more of the money be produced through buildings (I think I saw the "Commercial Enterprises" building about the place, which maybe fits the bill), or having more buildings that can convert goods into money (so that it might make sense to, for example, convert your Sandstone into Marble so that you can turn it into more money than you would otherwise). This would make Workshops more valuable, since there would be a real reason for using them other than just to create the stuff you need. I definitely felt like it wasn't worth converting my goods and then selling them because in such a small marketplace there was no guarantee of finding a buyer. So I only did conversion if I needed the result for something else (like an upgrade or filling a contract).
I notice that many others were not in favour of the information economy that sprouted up. I think you have to place pretty strict limits on that sort of thing, because unlike with goods, after you sell information you still possess the information and can sell it again. Perhaps only allow the results of a find to be sold once? You would probably also have to implement a rule that disallows you from buying information you already know, or you could quite easily just buy your own information like Omtose did to prevent others from knowing about you. Or maybe you could just make it more expensive to buy redundant info to discourage it.
Either way, I would strongly support the idea Tapper floated about having a limited set of worded contracts you could choose from. This prevents people from posting illegal contracts and allows a bit more control over the shape of the marketplace. Being able to predict how that will play out is a key facet in ensuring the game is balanced, which going forwards is what we all want from our games. It also greatly reduces the chances of infinite loops developing if you can control the parameters under which the game is played better.
What a game like this definitely needs is a much more extensive and complete detailing of the rules at the start of the game. I felt as though what was there only covered a small portion of the game's rules and I had to figure out the rest by asking PS. This disadvantages players who are not naturally inclined to ask many questions. All the player lists and stuff need to be freely available in the OP instead of hidden away in a different game thread. The rules on what is and what isn't a legal contract need to be clearly defined (I remember you said somewhere that you didn't want a post full of legalese, but if ever there was a game that needed one, it was this one). A guiding statement about the goals of the individual factions would probably have been very useful, both for the players and for the purposes of game balance (as we have seen, players do tend to follow the initial pointers they are given to a certain extent, especially in a game like this). I thought the amount of detail you put into the Role PMs was fantastic, I just would have liked there to have been the same level in the Opening posts. I understand that this was very much a beta test, and I'm sure when ToD 1.0 rolls around it will be more complete.
I'm not sure that not having at least one faction whose victory conditions require a majority is the way to go in the long run (if you'll excuse the double negative). In this game, it didn't feel like there was sufficient pressure to use the 'Mafia' part of the game, and I think it's important to try and make sure that that isn't lost among all of the additional stuff. Removing the incentive to lynch in order to win meant that as soon as it was obvious that the game was going to be decided by titles, the game thread became fairly unimportant to the majority of the players.
Finally, I would suggest that you try to enlist a co-mod (or co-mods) with a lot of time on their hands to get as much game coverage as you possibly can. I believe it is especially important to have full mod coverage in high TMDI games - in a game as complicated as this, there will always be a lot of rules that need clarification and enforcement. In addition, if you have bought something that requires information to be received from PS, it is often something you want to receive as soon as possible. That might be just because this particular game was more addictive than most and I wanted my information fix faster though

. I don't know if you had a spreadsheet to keep track of everything, but it seems like it would have come in handy and allowed some double checking of the maths. I know there were a few times (notably during my contract binge with Khell on Day 3) where I got the treasury maths wrong and had to go back with a fine tooth comb to make sure everything was correct.
ST
Don't look now, but I think there's something weird attached to the bottom of my posts.