Of Kings and Jesters (new game idea)

[The Great Pope of OUTSIDE]

1 King
2 Lords
1 Prankster
X Townspeople

Everyone knows who the King is and who the Lords are from the beginning. No one knows who the Prankster is.

In order for the King to win, he must find and hang the Prankster in seven days (seven rounds) of the game. In order for the Prankster to win, he must have 3 free Minions to help him escape town forever, taking the oppressed townspeople with him.

Each round, the King threatens to imprison one of the citizens unless they produce the Prankster to be hanged. The citizens, not knowing who the Prankster is, have to vote amongst themselves on who they think the Prankster is, so that person will be imprisoned and sentenced to hang. (If they imprison another citizen, that person will be out for two rounds, unable to speak or vote in the thread until he is proven innocent and released.) After the citizens have voted and the person is imprisoned, the Lords then PM the King as to who they think the Prankster is. The King then decides which of those choices he thinks is best, and PMs me as to which person will be hanged. Then the Prankster PMs me as to who he wants to try to make a Minion (like in the Spider game converting Discordians.) The thing is, if the Prankster is hanged before the seven rounds are up, and he has a Minion who is not imprisoned, that person then becomes the Prankster and the game continues until the seven rounds are up. Once it has been decided whether or not the new person will convert to being a Minion (not sure how that's decided) the new round begins.

The idea is that instead of one thing killing everyone off, there's only one person who's going to die if the bad guy wins, namely, the Prankster. But if that were to happen, the Citizens become obsolete. I'm still trying to figure out how only one person can die and yet still have the Citizens involved in every round. Also, I don't know how it would be decided if someone becomes a Minion, and I also don't know what would happen if the seven rounds ended and there was a tie.

Any thoughts, critiques, ideas, whatever are totally welcome.