[OLD] Open Setup Ideas and Discussion

[gorckat]

Guilty OR alive

COP HEADSTART
2 mafia
5 Townies
1 Cop- sanity confirmed

And there's a 50/50 chance of the following options:
an un-nightkillable Survivor (scum can win with the Survivor alive, town cannot).
OR
an additional townie that's a miller (they are not told) and one member of the mafia is investigation-immune.


Now here's an interesting scenario: if there's a survivor, scum do not want to lynch the survivor, and yet town

does

. Then this adds WIFOM as to whether there's a survivor or not. At the same time,

if

there's a survivor, scum has to try to find

who

it is, so that they don't waste their night kill, and so that they don't lynch them.

Questions and problems:

1) Should mafia be told WHO the survivor is?
2) Should I change it so that town can win with the survivor? I didn't want to do this, because then survivor could easily claim, and then the cop will know hir results are reliable.
3) Can you think of a better name?

Just make him a NK-able traitor who doesn't count towards victory condition for scum.

1) No- then you basically have three mafia in a 7 person game
2) As written, if its survivor/townie after lynching the second scum, the survivor wins? Seems unfair to the town.

In the case of a miller/GF, are they revealed as such on death?

What about not telling the survivor his true role? Sucks to find scum day one and get NK'd if that's the case, though.

This mostly seems like a setup of interest to the cop- when to claim, are the results accurate. I don't know if I'd want to be a townie in such a game.

[gorckat]

Whatever.

At 9 people, then, telling the Mafia who the Bulletproof Survivor is seems ok.

Setup still feels a little on the "blah" side.

BPS is a bit of a kingmaker who can't lose as long as he doesn't get lynched, which means he has to pay attention enough to hunt scum, but not so much that he actually finds them.

[gorckat]

Questionable Sanity Mafia:

1 goon
1 mafia sanity cop
1 traitor (same role as insane or paranoid townie)

(cops don't know their own sanity)
1 sane sanity cop (learns targets sanity)
1 insane sanity cop (given random sanity of target)
1 paranoid sanity cop (told targets are insane)

2 sane townies- told they win with X, Y

(true)

2 paranoid townies- told they lose if A, B win

(false)

2 insane townies- told they win if C, D win

(false)

Probably better to make the townies win cons not be paired a/b, c/d and x/y, but cover 6 unique pairings, and clean up win vs lose.

Just off the cuff based on an old comment about cop sanity in normals being near 100%.

Hopefully not to reductive (or whatever) or solvable via massclaims.

EDIT: Added italicized.

[gorckat]

On death, is the night of an action revealed, their role or nothing?

Why not have the N1 cop claim and then reveal his result Day 2 and so on as long as the right Nx Doc is alive?

[gorckat]

What about 1 shot BP and a vig?

[gorckat]

Joining Forces

1 Sicilian Mafia Goon

1 Calabrian Mafia Goon

1 Jailkeeper
1 Single Goon Cop
9 Vanilla Townies

At first, the Sicilian and the Calabrian Mafia Goons don't know each other, have separate NKs and SK-like win conditions.

At any point, they can indicate to the mod they'd like to "join". When both of them have indicated their desire to join (and they're alive), they'll become Mafia Goons at the beginning of the next Night. That means they'll get a QT with nighttalk, have a factional NK (instead of their separate ones) and their win condition becomes the usual Mafia one.

The Single Goon Cop gets a "guilty" on both Goons, but only up until including the Night they joined; after that, they always get "innocent".

What about swapping a townie for a Traitor Cop who wins with any living Goon?

ADD: Perhaps a late-game vig would balance the late game immunity the Goons get? Something like a N3+ vig who loses his kill once a Goon is dead?

[gorckat]

Gotcha. I had a feeling I was veering off into what "I thought was cool".

[gorckat]

Maybe make the survivor a faction with another survivor. So have like two survivors who can only win if they're the last ones standing. Make it so they can't win with anyone else also. And maybe to help them out a bit, give them a vig shot each night to use. You also make one them a "Survivor Roleblocker" or "Survivor Rolecop" but that's up to you and how you want to balance it.

Isn't that a 2-man scum team?

[gorckat]

One of the theme games I played in years ago was a 'Soviet' style game where the town had a cop and doc, but their targets were voted on by the town at large. Day 1 it was decided to cop/doc the same person, else scum could kill the cop target and avoid dealing with a conf-town the next day (or something like that). There was also an SK.

What about a slightly simplified version (or maybe just modified):

vCop
vDoc
vVig
Compulsive SK
5 Vanilla Town
Godfather
2 Goons

Town can (must) vote for two of: vig, lynch, cop

and

, doc

(edited for clarity)

So instead of just vote:X, it would be something like:

Cop: X
Vig: Y

or

Vote: X
Doc: Y

To simplify things for the mod, each post with a vote/cop/doc/vig must have two of those options and the mod can ignore posts with just one.

If the role associated with the power dies, then the power is off the table and the mod can ignore posts asking for it.

ADD: And once any option has hit majority (eg cop hits 7 votes on day one and no other option is at 7) then it is locked in and other vote counts reset and people only vote for one of the remaining options.

[gorckat]

gorckat: Why would I ever not choose "cop and doc" and "lynch"? How is vig and lynch different except for that the vig can get blocked/lost? Why would the cop not claim for protection every night? How does this game not end by the end of night 2?

I could have been clearer- each day, town gets to choose only 2 of: lynch, cop, doc, vig.

If the cop claims, then the town has to doc him each night and scum can pick off his innocent targets, leaving guiltys to be lynched, but then no cop (because they have to doc the cop and lynch the scum, giving scum a free night).

ADD: Oops- you had more than one question

No RB, so no way to block the vig.

Early ending is a fair concern. Maybe remove the SK and leave the vig option, or vice versa? I think the SK was needed for balance initially to make sure scum didn't control too much of the night game.

I think Simenon ran the original game, so it might be worth me digging for it to look at postgame thoughts. I've always liked the idea of the setup because it explores the space of limited public/shared resources and how to best handle them.

Double ADD: Hmm- can't seem to find the game, by post author or searching my history...was there a crash between 2009-the Nov 2011 one that ate entire threads that were never recovered?

[gorckat]

Well- there are a Cop, Doc and Vig (I called them vCop, etc to indicate the voting on their ability).

If the vCop dies, town can't vote for any more Investigations/Cops.

The original didn't have a Vig, so the SK balanced the scum ability to coordinate and influence the Investigate/Protect votes, but still competed with the town. I think it ended up a town win with the SK playing (and maybe claiming) as a Vig before a cross kill took it to town-town-goon lylo.

The original also allowed a lynch, cop and doc, so not as scum weighted as quadz points out with only one power role active.

I think to be interesting, there needs to be a 3rd night action possible. What about a JOAT with something like 1-shot vig, 1-shot governor (to override any lynch/cop/doc/joat vote the next day) and 1-shot <something else>

Should the setup be smaller with no SK and 2 goons? 9 player, maybe?

ADD: Forgot to check my wiki- the link was there

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?t=6150

And it ended Cop-VT vs SK lylo in a town win.

[gorckat]

Floating Governor is cool- would that be a public or private vote count? Does anyone dieing that night count towards the vote? What if no majority is reached- go with the highest and random.org any ties (or dice in thread)?

Private- scum can try to load the votes onto one of their own, while risking being caught out, and actually using the Governor on their own is risky.
Public- more info for town, possibly offsets scum slant?

[gorckat]

However, this setup does lend itself to breaking strategy. Cop outs himself D1, town votes Cop+Doc every day. Doc protects the Cop every night, while the Cop collects investigations until the scum can find and kill the Doc. Then town votes for Lynches and Vigs til scum is dead.

On Day 6, 5 people will have been investigated and 5 killed (typical 7 man bad town lylo ). Goons found have to be lynched, setting back the number of innocents found and tying up the doc. Prior innocents get NK'd (or not for WIFOM- was one the GF?)

Not sure if it's full breaking or just boring. Gonna spreadsheet some scenarios

EDIT: Just realized if the Doc is covering the cop each night, then Scum are free to WIFOM at will on whether or not to let an innocent see the day, so no innocents see the sun unless allowed to, rather than the after the fact next night killing I was considering above.

[gorckat]

I was also thinking public governor, just not sure on public/private governor vote counts.

[gorckat]

And since the same person can't kill and block, one scum is just gonna kill anyway (in the case of the RB and backup getting lynched).

[gorckat]

Eh. Fair point, but in a game sans Tracker/Watcher with maybe a 1-shot JK or two, it might not matter.

[gorckat]

Intriguing, but is it better with fewer players?

[gorckat]

If there's an investigator, they will always claim D1, seeing as the mafia wouldn't want them dead until the cult was eliminated, and the cult can't do anything to get rid of them.

Yeah, that's a problem.

Hm, I hadn't thought about that but another bad scenario could be if the mafia got lynched town could just no-lynch and let the investigator check things out until the entire cult is found.

<snip>

Yeah, cult setups are difficult to balance, but I would think that number 2 would be the best option to solve this one problem.

Off the cuff idea- is there room for an 'all factions lose if no factions have won by X day'?

[gorckat]

With Open 425 complete, Carbon-14 town is 4-7, so not wildly unbalanced.

What if the scum faction didn't know what they were (mafia/werewolf) or the investigators didn't know what they were (seer/cop)? The former option might be balanced, but the latter feels off (but maybe interesting elsewhere).

Assuming Magna's rules from 425 get recycled, the goal of scum not knowing their actual nature would be to prevent them from willingly trading for the role that can find them.

Magna's rules were:
-everyone promises to not fakeclaim at start of game
-intent to hammer must be declared to allow a claim
-VT claims can be hammered right away
-power claims get hammered only if countered (forces a 1 for 1)

So if seer claims while at L-1, a werewolf could counter (probably only if they were likely to be looked at or an alternate lynch choice) in hopes of protecting the other scum.

[gorckat]

Probably could have left that out- I don't think it needs to be fixed so much as towns need to play better- a couple losses I scanned had insane early hammers, iirc.

Do you think the scum not knowing if they're werewolf/mafia adds anything to the setup without unbalancing it?

[gorckat]

If only there were a Micro Queue where such a game could be run with no regard for balance and to see how it plays

[gorckat]

Should the voteless goon go early (Day 1 or 2) the kill-less goon is gonna have a real bad time.

[gorckat]

Having drawn out a game as long as possible as the last poorly playing scumin TBM's Scumhunter Speed, Black Flag looks much better from the scum side.

I almost forgot to say something because I saw it before the game was finished.

[gorckat]

Yeah, I like Black Flag Nightless. I'd like to see it run at any rate.

Regulation

2 Mafia Goons - Can either factionally vanillaise or kill each night.

1 Cop
4 Vanilla Townie

There are also two doctors to be distributed randomly amongst the non-Cops (inc. Goons).

Cop claims and barring both goons as doc is covered. If both goons are docs, then cop dies and doc claims are busted.

[gorckat]

I read that as 'go vanilla themselves' and avoid a guilty in exchange for giving up the kill.

[gorckat]

If you can't beat'em, join'em.

[gorckat]

That said... maybe a different smaller setup like

1x Doctor or Cop
1x Nurse or Deputy
5x Vanilla Town

vs

1x Gunsmith (positive on Cop/Deputy) or Pharmicist (positive on Doc/Nurse)
1x Goon

Just a rip on old F9

1x Mafia Gunsmith
1x Mafia Pharmacist

Can't kill and investigate in one night?

Do you mean the same player can't kill AND investigate or that the mafia faction can only kill or investigate?

If the latter, probably not worth ever investigating...

[gorckat]

A variation of Carbon-14 where the scum can be any combo of Mafia/Werewolf.

[gorckat]

That doesn't seem fun for the Hunters and hard for the town...

Hunters act scummy and/or obfuscate until LYLO, shoot a dude, probably win.

If Hunters shoot both goons, does the town still win? In that case, halfway random lynching down to MYLO, no lynch and let the hunters sort it out.

[gorckat]

The Hunter role does

sound

awesome, but maybe I'm reading the setup as too much of an old man I definitely didn't read the town as winning with them the first time.

So they are really Bulletproof Innocent Child 1-shot Dayvigs (change Hunter to Superhero ).

I don't think the goons should lose their kill if a townie gets shot.

[gorckat]

Yes, it's a lot of power, but it's also a lot of pressure. Miss, and you they lose. Also, if town lynches scum before either hunter gets a shot off, one of them has to lose.

Hmm...hadn't thought about this.

But since they win with town, both should claim and town should help them...but this creates a point of do town lynch the scummiest or the townies that aren't quite the scummiest...

Hmm...would NOT want to be scum here, I think.

[gorckat]

Actually- mass claim day one, no lynch.

Either townies die at night...or they don't. Hunters win.

(Not that mass claiming a game with all townies means much, but you get the idea.)

There has to be something else to make it work.

[gorckat]

Just riffing here since the 5p version looks like a non-starter...What about a 6-man no-flip nightless game with 2 Jesters, 2 Masons and 2 Goons?