Stagehands

Stagehands are an OOC role that players can take after they die. They take the place of the conventional observer/ghost, though they share a lot of the same properties. Stagehands are able to invisibly observe the show, flying around the station and watching events unfold. Additionally, they're given strong metaknowledge tools like players' masks and objectives, which help them follow along with peoples' motivations.

However, players do not automatically become stagehands upon death. Instead, they are first returned to the lobby, where they can then choose to opt into playing as a stagehand, which locks them into that role for the remainder of the round.

This solves a very common problem with observer gameplay in most servers: metaknowledge. Hidden knowledge can be shown to stagehands without introducing metaknowledge into play, since stagehands are unable to return to the round in any way. As such, players are better able to follow the personal stories of others while mitigating the risk of introducing potentially harmful knowledge into the round.

Stagehands also create a way to keep people involved with the round without resorting to options like ghost roles. For a ghost role, their impact on the round must necessarily be inversely proportional to their frequency, as to not allow them to overrun the action of the round. With stagehands, however, since each player only has a small part in these high-impact decisions, many more players are able to participate than they would otherwise.

Voting

Stagehands are collectively able to influence the round through votes which are run regularly through the round. These votes can impact various portions of the game, with stagehands given the option to influence what happens during the round.

This in effect creates a sort of "organic game director," where instead of leaving choices up to random chance or algorithms, real people can be given the chance to make those decisions. These observers, by virtue of being equal parts spectators and participants in the game with stakes and desires, are likely to choose options which create some sort of interesting outcome (though they may need to be 'adjusted' slightly).

Additionally, it creates a situation where, even though stagehands are not part of the physical round, they are still capable of having an impact on things as a group. Stagehands can freely talk with each other and coordinate votes to create interesting decisions, which helps lessen the feeling of being "excluded" from the round after death.

Blessings & Curses

Blessings and curses are types of stagehand-initiated vote that allows them to have a more targeted effect on the round. Rather than simply choosing options, a stagehand can create a vote for a specific action (good or bad) to happen targeting another player. The other stagehands are then required to vote Yes or No whether the action should be allowed to occur.

This essentially functions as a player-oriented version of admemes, where the stagehands as a collective can choose to reward or punish players for their actions, often to great comedic effect. While these things obviously shouldn't have as high of a game impact as regular votes, they can be a nice opportunity for the game to karmically respond to the things people are doing during a round.