[OLD] Open Setup Discussion and Nominations

[Fiasco]

I'd put Nightless at 3:9 or 3:8. Lynches could be worse than random as well as better than random.

I think the definition of C9 should include the probabilities of cop and doc (50% each). Mods shouldn't choose the setup themselves.

Some nominations:

"Strawberry III" (13 players)

3 mafia
1 cop
9 citizens
night start

Pie C9 (7 players)

1 mafia roleblocker
1 mafia goon
1 cop
1 doctor
3 citizens
day start

Cop C9 (7 players)

2 mafia
1 cop
4 citizens
day start

dethy (5 players)

1 mafia
4 cops (sane, insane, naive, paranoid)
cop head start

dethy^2 (12 players)

3 mafia
9 cops (2 sane, 2 insane, 2 naive, 2 paranoid, 1 retired)
night start

Vengeful Mafia (5 players)

(not sure this would be considered simple/normal enough)

see http://www.mafiascum.net/cgi-bin/wiki.p ... ul%20Mafia

C9++ (12 players)

(even less sure this would be considered simple/normal enough)

see http://mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=389384

[Fiasco]

That is totally wrong. Do you think that if there's no cop, the town may as well flip a coin??

If the scum are reasonably competent, lynching isn't much better than coin-flipping. It's true that in a 50% game, the town has a strategy that wins 50% of the time. But the mafia also has a strategy that wins around 50% of the time; there's no reason they need to actually defend each other rather than behave like a typical townie, though of course they can sometimes do so if they think it makes their odds even better.

Admittedly the strategy that gives the town a 50% chance is slightly easier to play than the strategy that gives the mafia a 50% chance, so games should slightly favor the town (edit: that should say "mafia") given random lynching. 3:8 would probably be more balanced than 3:9, but 4:7 would be very skewed in favor of the mafia.

Himalayan was also very skewed in favor of the mafia. The first two lynches were mafia, yet the mafia still won.

[Fiasco]

It is not just "slightly easier" for town to agree to lynch randomly using the Dice function, than for ALL the scum to be so "reasonably competent" that they're no more likely to be lynched than a townie. Not that many players are that competent.

Are you sure? It's much harder to avoid lynching if you're actively trying to protect your scum-mates than if you don't care whether or not your scum-mates get lynched. We're talking about the latter situation; or if not, we need to take into account that scum are harder to lynch because part of the town is scum.

I'd guess that in a 75%-chance-of-scum-win game, a reasonably competent scum team can win 70%-75% of the time just by throwing away their role PMs and not talking at night, against

any

town. That shouldn't happen; ideally, given equal skill, each side should win half the time.

I guess scum play is more skill-dependent than town, so games with skilled players should favor the town more than games with unskilled players.

[Fiasco]

I'm not sure exactly what counts as "playing blind". I could see not reading your role PM as cheating, but I don't think there's anything wrong with reading it and then ignoring it if you're scum. Scum have strategies available that are close to "playing blind", and if that automatically gives them much better than even odds, the game is unbalanced. Of course, psychologically speaking it may not be possible to behave exactly the same, but any differences are going to be in subconscious tells rather than in who is trying to do what. That more or less means you can't catch scum with vote analysis.

The scum may have even better strategies available (selectively derailing bandwagons when they think it's safe), but that only improves their odds of winning.

[Fiasco]

"Playing blind" means not reading the role PM. If you're able to read your role PM and "ignore" it, be my guest. I'm not sure what that even means, but I'm sure it's not a new strategy.

If scum have strategies that make vote analysis obsolete, I wonder what you think the role of a vanilla townie is supposed to be in a game of mafia. If any scum worth their mettle can blend into the crowd, you don't have a day game beyond voting with a claimed cop.

I'm not claiming the strategy (of behaving exactly as if you were town, including votes) is new, fun, or optimal; just that, if something close to it is available, the scum have a chance of winning that is at least close to the probability of a win given random lynches.

Well, except that if all the pro-town people vote randomally, then all the scum have to do is have a slight preference towards voting good guys over scum and they will clearly have the advantage.

I think the idea is to use dice tags and make everyone vote for the same random target.

[Fiasco]

Heh...if that was actually an effective stratagy, then perhaps the mod'd have to outlaw use of the dice feature, in that hypothetical game. I don't know if the game really need a way to prove randomness like that anyway.

(shrug) If random lynching is more effective than non-random lynching, the town can always find a way, whether it's by coordinating on the weather or stock market or even by saying "given that X is going to be lynched, we probably shouldn't lynch X" until there's some sort of equilibrium. In a balanced game, random lynching should never give the town a better than 50% chance, though I agree with you that it shouldn't be much worse than 50% either, assuming that (as in vanilla) the scum won't have any difficulty making claims.

[Fiasco]

I thought each setup just had to be nominated once, and there would be voting later. (edit: turns out I'm wrong.)

I'd add some townies to Yosarian's setup; the equivalent vanilla setup being used has 14 townies and 3 scum. I'd also make it something like 3:3:8 nightless rather than 3:3:6.

[Fiasco]

So are the doctor and jailkeeper really worth 6 or even 7 townies? I'd expect a failed kill to happen maybe 1 or 2 times. As soon as the doctor and jailkeeper give their information, they'll be killed. (edit: the jailkeeper, at least)

[Fiasco]

Do people here just not like townies?

Kelly, you're saying there would be about three failed kills? That sounds like a lot.

It's true that in case both power roles claim, the scum have two "forced move" nightkills. Note that from that point on, no kills would fail. On the whole, I'd still add two townies to the setup.

72.2% sounds unbalanced to me (3:20 is a bit better at 65%), but let's not go there again.

[Fiasco]

Night start. I wanted to do it with those numbers for the reason that then, if either doc manages to prevent one kill at any point in the game, it buys the town an entire extra day, which I think adds a little more tension then an odd-number start would.

Well, that's another way in which this setup disfavors the town compared to 3:14-with-day-start. Having an odd number alive by day benefits the town; the 3:14 town will always have that advantage, while yours may or may not depending on the number of failed kills.

[Fiasco]

I'd like to nominate "Basic Twelve Player", so that it's now the sole nomination leader.

Here's some more ideas for setups that were mentioned in the Open Setup thread.

Kelly Chen mentioned another C9 variant:

Double Cop C9 (7 players)

1 mafia roleblocker
1 mafia goon
2 sane cops
3 citizens
day start

some others that may or may not be suitable:

Polar Animals Mafia (12 players)

mafia:
1 walrus (decides each night whether the vig gets a night action)
1 penguin (decides each night whether the doc gets a night action)
1 polar bear (decides each night whether the cop gets a night action)

SK:
1 seal (decides each night whether the walrus, penguin, and polar bear get their blocking actions)

town:
1 vig
1 doc
1 cop
5 townies

night start

Masons and Monks Mafia (12 players)

2 mafia goons
2 werewolves
8 townies
2 of the above are masons (selected randomly from non-mafia)
2 of the above are monks (selected randomly from non-wolves)
night start; the first cross-kill in both directions fails

[Fiasco]

"Pie C9" -> "Pie Micro" or "Bloptor Micro"
"Cop C9" -> "Donut Micro" or "Cop Micro"
"Double Cop C9" -> "Double Donut Micro" or "Bloppercop Micro"

Polar Animals (Needs to be "Unthemed")

By "Unthemed" do you mean the role names should be changed? Walrus was already the "official" name for that role, and to my knowledge the other polar animal roles didn't have a name yet, so I thought, might as well use these.

[Fiasco]

IIRC, yes.

edit: here's the source; actually the "polar animals mafia" walrus is slightly different in that it's a full mafia member rather than spy-like.

[Fiasco]

usually 2/3 chance of scum win given random play means just over 1/2 chance of scum win in real life.

How do you know?

[Fiasco]

I'd suggest calling it Switch Mafia, with a Vig Switch, Cop Switch, Doc Switch, and Master Switch. Though do note the other meaning of "Seal".

I guess that a simple HP-based game (like 3 vs 6, nightless, HP start at 10, no HP gain, hits every 48 hours) would be too experimental to play it as an open game? Or what about a simple Kingmaker game?

Just approximate guess based on experience.

"Just over 1/2" is much more precise than you should be able to guess from experience. Has there been even one game won by the town where you could calculate probabilities? To my knowledge all mountainous games so far were won by the scum.

[Fiasco]

Loser Mafia

2 mafia
11 citizens
day start
nightkills are compulsory
lynching is compulsory (use a suitable deadline rule)
losing side wins

[Fiasco]

Yes, nightkills must be townies. It may also be a good idea to disallow self-voting; I'm not sure.

[Fiasco]

I expect it to play a lot like normal Mafia, except the focus will be on which player is the most likely to be town, rather than on which player is the most likely to be scum. I don't see why the town would first play to win in the usual sense; that would just make things harder for them. They should try to get innocents lynched, and scum should try to get themselves lynched by looking innocent.

[Fiasco]

nominate: nightless, one scum group
nominate: nightless, two scum groups

[Fiasco]

Hm... maybe it's fairer to give the SK a one-shot nightkill immunity. (I don't have any special insight into the setup, though.)

Or, make it another mafia (the Metamafia?) with two members with no immunities: one master switch that disables the mafia's switching abilities, and one kill switch that disables the mafia's kill. But that's really a different setup, I suppose.

[Fiasco]

Here's one thing that may need to be clarified:

The Serial Killer can decide whether each of the Mafia Switches is able to block.

Does this mean the SK can say "I want to block the vig-blocker and the cop-blocker, but not the doc-blocker"? I didn't intend it that way, but I could see it working as well.

[Fiasco]

Another one that may be too unusual:

Menu Mafia

8? citizens
1 serial killer
1 mafia godfather
2 mafia goons
night start

Each night everyone selects one power from the Menu (and a player to target with it), except the Godfather, who selects two, and the Serial Killer, who selects three. (This takes the place of the scum's nightkills.) Each power has a limited chance of working. Taking the same power and target multiple times is allowed, but risks waste if more than one attempt succeeds.

The Menu:
Easy powers (50% chance of working): doctor, roleblocker, nightkill-immune, cop-immune
Hard powers (25% chance of working): cop, vigilante, lynch-immune, tracker

(variant: replace 2 citizens with masons, who don't get to choose from the Menu)

[Fiasco]

Oh, wait...don't bother with the random cop. obviously not open. *smacks face*

Mildly random things like that are considered OK, I think. Your setup looks like an interesting dethy/vanilla blend. I'm not sure about balance, though. Are the millers told they're millers?

[Fiasco]

It's probably best to leave it like you were interpreting it. "When in doubt, decide in favor of the SK", and so on.

[Fiasco]

nominate: 7p vengeful

Would Gambits III (possibly with some changes compared to the earlier Gambitses) fit in this queue?

What about a Bad Idea Mafia rerun?

[Fiasco]

nominate: Pie C9 except the blocker doesn't work on the cop

Here's another one that might not be normal enough:

Bitter Medicine Mafia

9 pro-town doctors
1 mafia killer
1 mafia doctor
1 serial killer doctor

The mafia killer and serial killer can make a kill attempt each night. Everyone except the mafia killer can make a protection attempt each night. A single protect prevents a nightkill, but

multiple protects are deadly

. Exception: for the serial killer, protects are never deadly, and any positive number of protects prevents a nightkill.

[Fiasco]

nominate: BGG5P

as per this thread

nominate: Resilient Mafia (5 players)

2 mafia
3 townies (3 lives each)
night start

[Fiasco]

While I'm at it,

nominate: any of the smaller standard setups, played two-headed or three-headed

nominate: any standard setup played with fixed quicker-than-normal deadlines (possibly depending on number of players remaining)

I think three-headed vengeful with 72-hour days would be a hoot. Maybe that's just me.

[Fiasco]

What Coron said; if most players get a doc protect, the mafia doctor can kill by double-protecting, as can the serial killer doctor. Maybe you're still right that the town is too strong, though. I'm not sure.

I just noticed I didn't specify whether the SK can kill and heal in the same night. I'm leaning toward yes, since SKs need breaks. Though this one has some breaks already.

[Fiasco]

Some more brainstorming:

1) 5 players
1 mafia doctor (with no kill ability)
1 serial killer (with no protection ability)
3 pro-town doctors
day start
multiple protects kill

2) 6 players
2 mafia (choose to either protect or kill)
4 pro-town doctors
day start
multiple protects kill

Thoughts? These look like weak towns, but I'm not sure.

[Fiasco]

more brainstorming inspired by the loophole thread:

12 players divided into 6 2-player teams (red, blue, green, yellow, white, black); 2 random teams are scum groups; the other 4 teams are mason groups; on death, only team is revealed; alignment isn't revealed until there's only one faction (out of town/scum1/scum2) left (then the game ends)

I guess this would be a lot like 2-headed (esp. in case of mass claim; would there be one?), but there's a lot of room for variations like having a large block of townies, revealing alignment on team extinction, varying sizes/powers, not telling people the identity of other team members, ...

[Fiasco]

Nuclear Mafia:

12 players (10 town, 2 scum) (or some different/more balanced number)
no nights
no votes
during day, any player can kill any other player by saying

nuke: player

a nuked player's alignment is revealed immediately; then they have to choose another player to nuke; the chain continues until someone decides to nuke the first nuker, at which point day starts again minus everyone that was nuked

Duel Mafia:

12 players (9 town, 3 scum) (or some different/more balanced number)
no nights
no votes (but see below)
any player can challenge any other player to a duel; then the rest votes on which one dies

[Fiasco]

So Nuclear Mafia is kinda like Bad Idea Mafia but instead of a kill ending day, it can feasibly end on D1 because someone liked the novelty of not ending the chain?

A lot of people are going to have the opportunity to end the chain. You're right that it could end D1, though. Maybe in that case you could just reassign roles and play again.

On D1 start a townie (green) is killed, and N1 two more townies are killed (yellow and blue) for example. The town knows that green was a pro-town group now because two kills occurred.

I don't see why; if the green team is scum, the one green guy can still kill at night.

I haven't really thought about balance for the colors game. One thing you could add is anti-masons (who know each other to be in different scum groups, but who are unNKable and can't get each other lynched without giving themselves away to the town)

Another setup (basically vanilla with team captains):

Trash Talk Mafia (15 players)

11 townies
1 unkillable mod-confirmed good guy
2 mafia
1 unkillable mod-confirmed bad guy
unkillables have votes just like the other players; for endgame purposes, though, pretend that they don't exist (town wins if both ordinary scum are dead, scum wins if number of ordinary scum = number of ordinary townies)

variant: townies don't know which team captain is which

[Fiasco]

I'm now thinking that as a townie in Nuclear Mafia, you should always retaliate against the first nuker because it gives you the chance to cheat scum out of a free townie kill. That means people will die off in pairs, which is good for game stability but also boring. And it means scum won't want to first-nuke at all... though if scum don't first-nuke, then retaliating becomes a bad strategy... so there's going to be some sort of equilibrium between retaliating and not retaliating.

Nuking all but one player doesn't always work even when that player is town, but I suppose it works well enough that it shows the game needs more scum.

I agree the colors setup seems biased against the town. There are a lot of ways to change that; not sure which one's the most elegant. Randomness from crosskills could be reduced by making scum fully or partially crosskill-immune, but that has its own problems.

The problem with the variant for Trash Talk is that the scum captain has no real reason to keep his alignment a secret.

[Fiasco]

See also Speed Mafia in Coney Island; it took only two weeks, mostly because of the weird choice block mechanic.

For deadlines, how about one day for every two players remaining, rounded up? I think for your vanilla example that works out to about 50 days assuming two day game nights, or less if you use things like pre-sending kills.

[Fiasco]

You could get away with 24-hour deadlines if you made the game five-headed. You could play a few in a row (with different setups, obv). I'd force all five heads to post in the same text color.

Nightfall, I think mafia doesn't really work (as mafia) if it doesn't have an uninformed majority vs informed minority, so maybe one of those four ought to be a scum team and the others mason teams. The reverse masons are an interesting touch, but they won't work with masons/scum, who should probably know who their teammates are from the start.

[Fiasco]

Colorful Mafia (12 players):
2 mafia
10 townies
day start

Players are divided into 4 color groups independent of alignment. To lynch, all that's needed is one vote of each (remaining) color. ("But Fiasco, what if there's only one red voter left, and it's a scum?" Good question.)

Resolute Mafia (13 players):
2 mafia
11 townies
day start
no unvotes allowed
plurality lynches (ie when it's clear you're going to have more votes than anyone else, you're dead)

District Mafia (15 players) (I think something like this has been played):
2 mafia
13 townies
day start
players are divided into 3 districts of 5 players each (would 5 districts of 3 work?), each district's vote is determined by plurality, lynch happens when there's a majority (ie 2 out of 3) in district votes

[Fiasco]

Approval Mafia (13 players):

2 mafia
11 townies
day start
vote for as many people as you want
2/3 of votes lynches (also: whole town minus 2 votes lynches)

Not sure I'm happy with the lynch threshold.

Another alternative is to let people vote for three others, like Verbose nominations.

Rotating Death Mafia (12 players):

3 mafia
9 townies
nightless; game is divided into 24-hour or 48-hour blocks; at the beginning of each block, pick a random target (or assign numbers 1-12 at the beginning of the game and cycle through them); if three people say "yea" (or: if more people say "yea" than "nay") during any block, target for that block dies

Alternative: each target selects the next target (no matter whether they live or die)

[Fiasco]

I could really get behind this idea if, say, the cycle goes through once and then go to night.

There's already a dilemma in the nightless version, in that other people might execute someone you suspect less before you get the chance to hit your favorite target again. I do like your version better, though.

Ultimatum Mafia (15 players):
2 mafia
13 townies
day start
day is divided into 24-hour periods; each period there's a new target; the order of targets is determined randomly each day; in each period you can vote

for

or

against

lynching the current target; if there are more votes for than against, lynch and go to night; if all targets pass without a lynch, go to night with no lynch

[Fiasco]

Would this work?

1) 7 players
1 mafia
1 mafia roleblocker
2 townies
1 cop
1 (townie or cop) (50%)
1 (townie or doc) (50%)
night start

or for that matter:

2) 7 players
2 mafia
2 townies
1 cop
1 (townie or cop) (50%)
1 (townie or doc) (50%)
night start

or even:

3) 7 players
1 mafia
1 mafia roleblocker
3 townies
1 cop
1 (cop or doc) (50%)
night start

or:

4) 7 players
2 mafia
3 townies
1 cop
1 (cop or doc) (50%)
night start

[Fiasco]

How would these be over by the end of Day 1? I don't agree with this, either:

Any game that can be over by the end of Day 1 is not going to be decided by level of play.

[Fiasco]

Oh! I meant to say "start in day", of course. Sorry. The intent was to make them random like C9 (so you can have setup uncertainty and more fakeclaiming mayhem), but with more guaranteed power for the town and maybe a mafia RB to compensate.

[Fiasco]

Answer to Fiasco's question - well town failed if they let scum be the only remaining color, because when you're down to two players of a specific color, you're finally at lynch-and-lose.

But if there are 4 colors with 3 players each, that happens very quickly. I think the setup needs tweaking before it's usable.

I could also like Fiasco's Resolute Mafia, but it seems that the breaking strategy is to be lurking scum.

Maybe lurker votes solve this. You'd probably have to think hard about deadline rules.

I think they might be a little too different for open setups though

True, most of these probably don't qualify to be played as opens.

The "X accuses Y and then everyone votes between them" is a little limited here, I think. How are you supposed to come to a good decision as to whom to challenge?

Maybe people would set up a voting system as in Kingmaker. Maybe they'd base the first duel just on threats, and future duels on voting behavior.

[Fiasco]

And then everything will start over, and the town will still have about as good a chance.

[Fiasco]

Would docs be able to protect each other? If yes, that's too powerful. If no (ie doc protects don't work on docs), town looks rather weak.

I wonder what happens in a game with lots of docs if they're allowed to protect each other, but if they die when there's a cycle (like A protects B protects A). That might be another way to make Hospital Mafia work.

[Fiasco]

C9++ plug

You could also just pick a few random roles from a fixed list, but there'd be more of a luck factor, and scum might have more trouble finding a good claim.

GL's approach looks worth doing too, though I'd remove a scum and maybe make some other changes.

[Fiasco]

What if there's a backup cop but no cop?

[Fiasco]

So if they get a bad break they lose not one but two cops?

[Fiasco]

I'd say yes to all three questions, but that's more because it's a simple default than because I've thought about how it would affect gameplay.

[Fiasco]

If you disallow mason-monks, you should be careful about randomizing. First picking masons among non-mafia, then picking monks among non-mason non-wolves would make mafia monks more common than wolf masons. Instead, you should pick masons among non-mafia, pick monks among non-wolves, and then start over if you have a mason-monk... I think.

If it's not allowed for both mafia to be monks, then if someone turns up as "mafia monk", the other monk is suddenly a confirmed innocent. I'm not sure that's a good thing.

[Fiasco]

I think this was a very atypical run due to the serial killer 1) not blocking any of the switches, and 2) dying N1. I'm not sure the setup as a whole was unbalanced in favor of the mafia. It's a real problem in this kind of setup, though, that IF the mafia do well, they're going to do very well, and IF the mafia do badly, they're going to do even worse because they can't use as many switches.

The SK didn't have cop or single NK immunity, did he? Giving him those will 1) let him live longer and 2) give him more incentive to prevent cop/vig switching.

edit: also, lynching two innocents in a row is a better than average result for a 3-player mafia in a 10/8-player town, especially given that some townies could save themselves through power role claims. Usually you'd expect the town to hit one scum on the first two days; then the game is open again.

[Fiasco]

Another thing you could do is let the cop get a "serial killer" result on investigating the serial killer. It's not necessarily a disaster for the SK to be found out, so he could consider unswitching the cop. Imperfect cop sanity (godfathers/millers) would be another reason for the mafia and SK to consider letting the cop do his job. For the switches to add fun to the game, they need to have interesting choices, and in the current setup it's a bit of a no-brainer for the cop switch to always switch off the cop, and once the SK is dead, for the doc switch to always switch off the doc.

[Fiasco]

Another idea that I think I may have mentioned earlier is to turn the SK into a MetaMafia consisting of a Mafia Switch Switch (who can turn off mafia switches) and a Mafia Kill Switch (who can turn off the mafia kill).

Of course, any change that makes the game more complicated probably also makes it less suitable to play as an Open.

The switch mechanic strikes me as silly as long as it is a no-brainer what to do with the switches you have. E.g. giving the SK cop immunity just makes it obvious that he should not allow the cop to be switched off.

(nod) But what do you think of the idea of making the cop able to distinguish between mafia and SK? In the original version of the game the SK could only choose between turning off all or none of the mafia switches; that could also make his choice less no-brainy.

It just looks absurd that the town power roles didn't get to do anything.

Agreed, but part of that was a coincidence. Giving the SK a one-shot NK immunity would go a long way toward fixing the problem. I also agree day start would be better.

Here's one possible proposal for Switch 2 that I think has more interesting choices but that's also a bit more complicated:

mafia (can kill each night even if they use all switches):
1 cop switch
1 doc switch
1 vig switch

metamafia (can kill each night even if they use all switches):
1 switch switch (can choose to turn off either all three mafia switches or none)
1 kill switch (can choose to turn off mafia kill)

town:
1 cop
1 doc
1 vig
5 townies
1 switchblocker

14 players total, day start
setting: a village in the mountains of Switcherland

[Fiasco]

That goes the other way, as I don't believe the SK would believe that a cop would think it is worth keeping the SK's identity secret.

Guess you're right. Once the SK is out, town won't want to lynch him immediately, but he probably won't win either. Scum will target him too, but he might have kill immunity, and there might be a doc, but the scum might switch the doc off.

I think it's still pretty no-brainy. The possible reward from letting a power role operate doesn't to me seem to outbalance the risk.

I'd seriously consider letting power roles operate if I didn't think people suspected me enough to cop/vig me.

Anyway, see edit of previous post for a different way to make choices more interesting.

[Fiasco]

nominate: Kingmaker Mini Open (13 players)

:

2 mafia
10 townies
1 kingmaker (chooses king each day; king decides on execution; if kingmaker dies, random townie becomes kingmaker)
day start

nominate: Jurymaker Mini Open (13 players)

:

see Kingmaker Mini Open, except the Jurymaker chooses three Jury Members whose majority vote determines the lynch

[Fiasco]

Because it's an odd number, which is fairer on the town in the endgame. Jurymaker needs a dictator rule for the endgame, too.

consulmaker

heh; I assume that after a veto they could choose a new target rather than going to night with no lynch? IOW the execution happens only at two votes?

How about

Bombmaker Mafia

-- same as Kingmaker Mini Open, except the Bombmaker makes a bomb each night, gives it a setting between 1 and 5, and gives the bomb to a player (in secret); that player can then give the bomb to another player (in public), decreasing the setting by 1; when the setting is at 0, the bomb explodes? I'm guessing the bombmaker would claim and the game would reduce to ordinary Kingmaker, but maybe that can be fixed somehow.

[Fiasco]

14 might be fairer, but I guess it doesn't matter much.

Accuser Mafia: as Kingmaker Mini Open, except instead of a Kingmaker there's an Accuser who selects three other players every night; in day, there's a normal majority vote to lynch one of the three Accused.

Parliament Mafia: as Kingmaker Mini Open, but with no Kingmaker, and with a nomination phase as in Verbose; top 3 nominees then vote on a lynch. I guess in practice this would be the same as normal voting. Maybe the same Parliament should stay in place for 2 days, or maybe only 1 member can be replaced on each day.

Reverse Accuser Mafia: as KMO, with a Kingmaker, but with a nomination phase as in Verbose; King can execute one of the top three nominees

[Fiasco]

That's 1) pretty rare and 2) to some extent true of every game.

[Fiasco]

1) Sure it's rare (though it only takes one awful scum player), but when it happens it's bad. If you didn't get a lot of info prior to killing the first scum, you spend the rest of the game hunting an SK.

(shrug) If it's 13p, then in the worst possible case you spend 5 days hunting an SK. Those days should go by pretty quickly, and there shouldn't need to be any nights (force scum to presend kills). If those 5 days take very long (more than, say, 2-3 weeks), it's a mod/player failure.

2) I don't know about that. If you have three scum, and lynch a scum D1, you still have a game, as far as I'm concerned.

And then maybe on D4 another scum dies, and you're in the same situation (assuming there are no cops/vigs, so I should have said "all games without cops/vigs"). Though it's true that you have more information then.

[Fiasco]

I'm not sure, but I tend to think individual scum tells are a more important source of information than mafia-mafia interactions anyway.

[Fiasco]

Based on the calculations I still say 3:8 is more balanced. If 4:8 or 4:7 is more fun, it should be played with the understanding that it's a scum-favoring setup.

BTW: in most setups, the "hunting a lone mafia" problem can be solved by adding an invulnerable mod-confirmed good guy and an invulnerable mod-confirmed bad guy, as in Trash Talk Mafia.

[Fiasco]

And this is based on what? 4:8 nightless gives roughly the same random win odds as 2:10 night start, except the scum lose the kill they controlled, and they have to stick it out 7.7 days instead of 4.5. Not to mention there are so many of them that they're liable to trip over each other sooner. 2:10 doesn't hit this scum ratio until they've got two of the four mislynches they need.

I'd argue 2:10 favors scum also. From the statistics you posted earlier, 3:8 gives scum about a 55% chance of winning given random lynching; 4:8 gives you 67% and 4:7 gives you 73%. This is something the scum can accomplish by ignoring their role PM completely and not protecting each other. If the town isn't very careful, the last lynch will actually be

worse

than random, because of quicklynch opportunities.

[Fiasco]

Two small setups with mafia groups that I posted earlier:

Resilient Mafia (5 players)
2 mafia
3 townies (3 lives each)
night start

(this has been tried in scumchat; I think it's balanced, and I've nominated it)

6 players
2 mafia (choose to either protect or kill)
4 pro-town doctors
day start
multiple protects kill

(not sure about balance for this one)

Another possibility:

5 players
2 mafia
3 townies
day start
town wins as soon as one of the mafia is lynched; i.e. there's only one day

[Fiasco]

Note: ANY oter outcome after D1 would've resulted in a scum loss, even if D2 they lynched Quag, scum would've still lost.

Is this a big deal?

By "this", do you mean the note? I don't think that is a big deal: 1) as far as I can tell it's not true that "scum would've still lost", 2) if a scum gets lynched D1 you should expect to have a hard time winning, 3) I think it was a mistake for the scum to target Quag N1.

Another possibility:

5 players
2 mafia
3 townies
day start
town wins as soon as one of the mafia is lynched; i.e. there's only one day

You need some reason why the scum can't just quicklynch, or there's not much room to have a game.

I'd even recommend allowing the scum to auto-quicklynch as soon as a townie votes a townie. Much of the game would take place before the first vote. I

think

there's probably a strategy that allows the town to win 40% of the time even with no information (not counting the use of dice tags), but I'm not sure. See the "randomize at lylo" thread.

If the game ends up being too short, you can always run it multiple times.

edit: you could also make it a secret ballot where only townies have votes; town wins if a majority of townies hit scum. Have secret ballots with only townie votes been tried, in general? They seem like a good idea. If not only scum don't get a vote, but power roles don't get a vote, then some people might be more motivated to play vanilla.

[Fiasco]

Mith, as long as you're being devious, do you think it would be possible to add a "no conspiracy" option to your vengeful lyncher/dethtrap setups (or to any mafia game)? By that I mean, you'd have a percentage chance of there not being a mafia at all, and if that's true, only the players who think there's no conspiracy win; I'm not sure how you'd combine that and ordinary mafia killing into a win condition, but there's probably a way.

Another setup (basically vanilla with team captains):

Trash Talk Mafia (15 players)

11 townies
1 unkillable mod-confirmed good guy
2 mafia
1 unkillable mod-confirmed bad guy
unkillables have votes just like the other players; for endgame purposes, though, pretend that they don't exist (town wins if both ordinary scum are dead, scum wins if number of ordinary scum = number of ordinary townies)

variant: townies don't know which team captain is which

another variant: each townie/scum that dies is added to the town/scum team captain as an extra head a la two-headed; this shouldn't matter for game mechanics, but guarantees everyone gets to play until the end of the game

[Fiasco]

Personally I'd really enjoy messing with the town's mind as a confirmed bad guy, but it's probably not for everyone and I can see your point. There would be no real strategy to playing such a role.

On the other hand, since the team captains aren't up for lynch, in the variant it doesn't really matter to the bad guy if he gets found out, so there isn't much more strategy to it. I also think it takes away the setup's main point, which is to have some players yelling at each other with alignments in the open.

On conspiracies: I wonder if you could use them as a scum group in a large game. You'd have a small group of neutral-aligned "paranoids" who have to say "conspiracy" or "no conspiracy" on death; the "paranoids" win if the majority of them gets it right, the "conspirators" (if they exist) win if the paranoids think there's no conspiracy. Conspirators would appear to be townies on death.

Different win conditions could be accommodated by scoring each player from 0-10 on a win condition satisfaction scale, then granting the win to whatever team had the highest average. In a normal game, townies (including dead ones) would get 10 points once all the scum were dead and scum (including dead ones) would get 10 points once all the townies were dead, but in weird games you could let the scores depend on all sorts of things (though they shouldn't depend on subjective mod judgment). Like conspiracy-guessing. But it wouldn't work if

both

the conspirators and the paranoids were townies, unless you made people only care about their own win condition score rather than their team's average.

I wonder if you could somehow put two alignment axes in a mafia game (d&d style).

[Fiasco]

Would Thok's setup for No Pressure Mafia (just the roles, not the special rules on participation) work as an Open?

Also: since vanilla games can be slow, how about a vanilla variant where everyone can vote for three people, with day ending at three lynches?

I've grabbed Strawberry III, but tweaked it. Hope you don't mind, Fiasco.

Not at all; your version seems like a clear improvement, actually.

[Fiasco]

Different win conditions could be accommodated by scoring each player from 0-10 on a win condition satisfaction scale, then granting the win to whatever team had the highest average. In a normal game, townies (including dead ones) would get 10 points once all the scum were dead and scum (including dead ones) would get 10 points once all the townies were dead, but in weird games you could let the scores depend on all sorts of things (though they shouldn't depend on subjective mod judgment). Like conspiracy-guessing. But it wouldn't work if

both

the conspirators and the paranoids were townies, unless you made people only care about their own win condition score rather than their team's average.

I wonder if you could somehow put two alignment axes in a mafia game (d&d style).

I guess I answered my own question in a way; if you scored each player 0-10 on some objective scale (defined in their role PM) and gave the victory to whatever team had the highest average, you could have any number of overlapping teams. For example, you could have four teams, with one team corresponding to "uninformed majority" and one team to "informed minority", on two distinct axes. Everyone would have to belong to two teams. Most players would be uninformed on both axes, some would be informed on one axis and uninformed on the other (corresponding more or less to classical competing scum groups), and a few would be informed on both axes. This is weird and maybe the incentives wouldn't work, but it could be lots of fun.

edit for clarification: maybe you'd have Towns and Scums and Clowns and Plums, with each Scum knowing the identity of the other Scums and each Plum knowing the identity of the other Plums; then in the end one of these four teams (Town, Scum, Clown, or Plum) would win depending on which best fulfilled its win condition. Most players would be Town Clowns, some would be Scum Clowns, some would be Town Plums, and a select few would be Scum Plums. Most of the time Town Clown would be the only viable alignment claim. Strife would not just occur in the open, but it would also occur as the Scums sorted out the Clowns from the Plums among themselves, and the Plums sorted out the Towns from the Scums among themselves. I would expect the Scum Plums to use their position within both scum teams to focus on finding and killing the most powerful among the Town Clowns, manipulating both the Town Plums and the Scum Clowns into not crosskilling one another.

did that make any sense whatsoever? calling (town clown = townie, scum clown = mafia, town plum = werewolf, scum plum = mafia werewolf) would also work, I suppose... except the mafia and townies or werewolves and townies could win together.

The 0-10 score part isn't essential, BTW, unless you want to mess around with personal win conditions. Normally everyone knows the win condition for their team as a whole, like "be the last team standing", and there should be no problem using that in 2D mafia.

[Fiasco]

Interesting. They're similar in some ways, but not quite the same thing. In this system, you'd get either a full win or a full loss. There would be no lesser victories.

Concrete example: let's say there were two axes, small/big and furry/hairless, with small and furry being the uninformed majorities. The roles could be something like:

mouse (small, furry)
rat (small, furry)
rabbit (small, furry)
puppy (small, furry)

bear (big, furry)
gorilla (big, furry)

snake (small, hairless)
goldfish (small, hairless)

shark (big, hairless)

bear, gorilla, and shark know each other and have a nightkill; snake, goldfish and shark know each other and have a nightkill

If all the small roles died first, the winner would be everyone in the "big" group. If all the big roles died first, the winner would be everyone in the "small" group. Same for "furry"/"hairless". Only one of these four groups (small, big, furry, hairless) could win; if you were big and furry, and all the furries were exterminated, you'd lose (and all the hairless roles would win) even if, later in the game, the last small role would have died before the last big role.

3D, 4D, etc are also possible, obv. Not sure what happens if you make one axis informed vs uninformed and another informed vs informed or uninformed vs uninformed (with both halves equal in size).

[Fiasco]

Might as well just leave the doc out then. Odd/even issues are annoying anyway.

[Fiasco]

What about C9 with 80% chance of doc and independent 80% chance of cop? (or some other percentage between 50% and 100%) Would there still be breaking strategy problems?

[Fiasco]

Quick fix for the "evil guy doesn't have anything to do" problem:

Trash Talk Mafia (15 players)

11 townies
1 unkillable mod-confirmed good guy
2 mafia
1 unkillable mod-confirmed bad guy
unkillables have votes just like the other players; for endgame purposes, though, pretend that they don't exist (town wins if both ordinary scum are dead, scum wins if number of ordinary scum = number of ordinary townies)

Make the game nightless. Forbid any scum talk out-of-thread. Give the evil guy a daykill usable once in each 72-hour post-lynch period. That means he'd have to 1) pick targets, and 2) try to communicate.

Could this run as a normal?

[Fiasco]

That's a neat idea in itself, but I don't think you'd be able to get it to work in this setup. The invulnerable bad guy would just point at targets in public. (Also, I think kills should be limited to only one after every lynch.)

[Fiasco]

Inspired by an Elephant Hell post in the MBF flash thread:

Dr. Deth

1 mafia
1 sane doc
1 insane doc (target lives if nightkilled, dies if not nightkilled; changed this from MBF's flash)
1 naive doc (dies if targets mafia (counts as nightkill for insanity/roleblocking purposes))
1 paranoid doc (protects and roleblocks target)
day start; docs don't know their sanity, can't protect themselves, can protect nobody

Anyone want to speculate on balance/playability? I haven't thought about it.

I like both versions of Simenon C9, by the way.

[Fiasco]

Pair Mafia

(5 players)
2 scumbags
3 townbags
no deaths ever
night start
every day people majority-vote for one out of ten possible scum pairs; if it's the real one, town wins, if it's not, it gets crossed off the list
every night the scum must cross one possible scum pair off the list (not the real one)
at the beginning of night 4, scum win

(this should be close to 50-50)

its smarter for then to not protect

Dunno... if they protect they probably get slightly more kills on average, but they also get information. If you didn't allow endgaming, scum vs insane doc or scum vs paranoid doc would both be a draw... hmm.

[Fiasco]

The only thing is, how do you tell scum from town? People aren't normally going to vote for a pair including themselves (as they know that's the wrong pair), so whatever pair you vote for as a scum, it's always a "townie" pair. I don't think there will be much information in people's voting behavior. There are going to be individual scum tells, but it'll be hard to link people.

[Fiasco]

Zindaras, any suggestion for fixing it or using the idea in another context?

edit: I guess requiring only two votes for a "lynch" could be interesting, except for the D3 quicklynch.

Kelly: I figured 1/9 + 1/7 + 1/5 for a town win.

[Fiasco]

D'oh. You're right, of course, CES and KC.

Zyndi, I like the idea of role-guessing as a neutral win condition in general. How would you let town pick 5 people? Just take the 5 most voted?

[Fiasco]

I think there'd still be the problem that scum wouldn't really mind being on the list of 5. Unless all three of them were on the list.

[Fiasco]

I guess then the scum are best off having one scum on-list and one scum off-list?

[Fiasco]

OK, and town would still mostly want to vote suspicious people, as it's better to have both on the list than both off the list. I could see this getting interesting. On subsequent days the town may want to put some confirmed innocents on the list for that day, and maybe the most/least suspicious non-confirmeds, I'm not sure.

[Fiasco]

I think a problem with Bad Idea was too much time spent in night vs day. It might be interesting to have a game full of dayvigs that didn't end the day.

[Fiasco]

Maybe use 3 scum vs 5 townies and 4 different useless roles (townies named Greg, Bob, Fred, Jim).

[Fiasco]

Is this with random picking every day, or some sort of optimal strategy? With an optimal strategy, I think whether someone was Listed on day 1 (and the List Scum Count) would affect whether they'd be Listed on day 2.

1/3 for the town is a decent enough balance, but if the town's chances were closer to 1/2 that would also make me happy.

[Fiasco]

That's pretty neat. I suspect that in the presence of information from tells, connections, etc the best strategy could look different than that in all sorts of ways, which is good, because it gives players something to think about.

Since I'm guessing this is too weird to run on the Open list, I'm adding it to my "to try out if I ever get back into modding" list.

[Fiasco]

Toddler C9 (1)

1 mafia goon
1 doctor (50%) OR 1 townie (50%)
(1 cop + 1 mafia goon) (50%) OR 2 townies (50%)
3 townies

IOW:

25%: 1 mafia vs 1 doctor, 5 townies
25%: 1 mafia vs 6 townies
25%: 2 mafia vs 1 cop, 1 doctor, 3 townies
25%: 2 mafia vs 1 cop, 4 townies

Toddler C9 (2)

(1 mafia roleblocker + 1 doctor) (50%) OR (1 mafia goon + 1 townie) (50%)
(1 cop + 1 mafia goon) (50%) OR 2 townies (50%)
3 townies

IOW:

25%: 1 mafia blocker vs 1 doctor, 5 townies
25%: 1 mafia goon vs 6 townies
25%: 1 mafia goon, 1 mafia blocker vs 1 cop, 1 doctor, 3 townies
25%: 2 mafia goons vs 1 cop, 4 townies

Advantages (with newbie games in mind):
* town should have a better chance to win
* less variance in relative scum/town power level between possible setups
* involves cops, docs, and potentially blockers
* multiple scum are still possible from the town's point of view, so interactions are still worth looking at

[Fiasco]

The only way town is going to know there's only one scum (so they can stop looking for interactions) is if everyone claims and there are no cop claims. Still, I agree it's a real problem that half the time there's just one scum with no one to talk to.

[Fiasco]

jailer c9: scum scum vs townie townie townie jailer cop
one-shot-doc c9: scum scum vs townie townie townie one-shot-doc cop

[Fiasco]

I've been thinking about possible rules for what I'll call "Conspifia" (based on Conspiracy). The idea is to play a normal mafia game, but have the possibility that there's no mafia at all. Maybe the town could have the option to

vote: TINC

("There Is No Conspiracy"); if there were a unanimous majority for TINC, the town would win instantly if there were no mafia, and would lose instantly (or maybe just give the mafia a few free kills) otherwise.

As a setup you could maybe take Toddler Mafia 2 (above) and make it 1/3 probabilities for no mafia, 1 mafia, 2 mafia. You'd have to think about what power roles to give the town in case of no mafia. (Or you could guarantee a cop and have 2/3 probability of 2 mafia, 1/3 of no mafia.)

I can see some potential problems; you can sort of tell whether there's a mafia from nightkills, so maybe people should die at random, or maybe scum will choose not to nightkill to confuse the town (this could be an interesting tradeoff). I'd disallow no-lynch.

I haven't looked at Political Conspiracy that closely; maybe it's better.

[Fiasco]

Any glaring holes?

I was going to say yes, but then I realized venge/scumkills would be indistinguishable. I can't see town ever TINCing D1; not sure about D2. But it's worth noting that for a cop, the probability of TINC starts out at 1/3... (that's not taking into account cop results; with an innocent result (or whichever one it is that "sane/insane" cops get on an innocent), TINC is even more probable.

[Fiasco]

25% TINC is about right, I think; I'm guessing that on D2, TINC would be about as probable as lyncher and dethy combined (from a cop's pov).

Maybe turn TINC's "sane/insane cop" into an "important cop", with town losing when he's lynched. Not sure about death millers, but it's a shame if it never comes down to whether there's a 2-member mafia or none.

edit: what if you made the traitor show up as townie and gave him a vengekill?

edit edit: with that rule, even mafia + traitor vs townie could be a town win (assuming they didn't know each other's identity). If mafia claims, he'll be lynched if it's dethy (not sure about lyncher). If traitor claims, townie is forced to claim mafia; if both then lynch the traitor, the traitor still has to make a vengekill and may end up killing the mafia, leaving only the townie. I'm liking this idea...

edit edit edit: except they'd just vote TINC. Not sure how I'd solve this.

edit edit edit edit: maybe the least inelegant option is to have the traitor lose in case of a TINCing.

edit edit edit edit edit: except that doesn't work, since the mafia could then prove himself to the traitor by voting TINC. This game can be pretty frustrating sometimes

[Fiasco]

There was going to be an edit^6: what happens if a townie (or lyncher?) fakeclaims traitor?

I'm not yet sure death millers are necessary, and making traitors look like townies is a lot like making townies look like scum, anyway. (Usually dead nontraitor mafia = end of game.)

[Fiasco]

I think the best version of the setup may be with the Traitor and possibly the Lyncher showing up as townies on death, the Traitor getting a (mandatory) vengekill if lynched, and both the Traitor and the Lyncher losing on a TINC vote. (If the Traitor wins on a TINC vote, the first vote could end the game; that's a little harsh.) The Mafia wouldn't know the Traitor's identity; not sure about the other way around. The game would be guaranteed to last two days, with all four setups remaining possible in the eyes of a cop.

[Fiasco]

The game would be guaranteed to last two days, with all four setups remaining possible in the eyes of a cop.

This isn't true, of course. But it might be an interesting idea to force the town to lynch the scum and THEN vote TINC.

[Fiasco]

I'd still suggest this one ("Switcherland"):

mafia (can kill each night even if they use all switches):
1 cop switch
1 doc switch
1 vig switch

metamafia (can kill each night even if they use all switches):
1 switch switch (can choose to turn off either all three mafia switches or none)
1 kill switch (can choose to turn off mafia kill)

town:
1 cop
1 doc
1 vig
5 townies
1 switchblocker

14 players total, day start

[Fiasco]

This is bad?

[Fiasco]

After some pondering I've concluded that there's much more play experience improvement to be gained through smarter participation rules (think verbose/speed) than through new setups.

[Fiasco]

I

love

C9++, but I'm concerned that new mods will cry if they get the setup, and I think most mods who run through the OG queue are newbie mods (and I don't want ruined OG's by mods not understanding the setup).

If the problem is in randomizing the setup, I could volunteer to do that. I think Mith already no'ed the setup as an open game though, noting correctly that play would be more like a closed mini normal than like a typical open.

[Fiasco]

Oklahoma Justice

: like Texas Justice, but the mafia are all one-shot just like the town

Kansas Justice

: like Texas/Oklahoma Justice, but everyone has two lives

Nebraska Justice

: like Texas/Oklahoma Justice, but everyone can hide once (and be immune to nightkills)

South Dakota Justice

: like Texas/Oklahoma Justice, but everyone's a one-shot doctor (in addition to killing powers)

North Dakota Justice

: like Texas/Oklahoma Justice, but everyone's a doctor (instead of killing powers) and the mod nightkills everyone every night

Manitoba Justice

: like Texas/Oklahoma Justice, but everyone's a one-shot roleblocker (in addition to killing powers)

Nunavut Justice

: like Texas/Oklahoma Justice, but everyone's a cop of varying sanities (in addition to killing powers), like in dethy or dethy^2.

Add town/scum to taste. Most of these should solve the circle-kill problem, though it's not clear to me that was the best strategy in the first place.

[Fiasco]

An interesting way to balance vigs could be if they mangled their victims so that their alignment and perhaps role remained unrevealed.

[Fiasco]

Wyoming Justice

: mafia + mafia vs day vig + night vig + townie; play till one side's dead

balanced?

edit: guess there'd be a mass claim, but I'm sure there are other fun 5p setups with vigs if this one doesn't work.

[Fiasco]

Montana Justice

: mafia + mafia doctor vs vig + vig + vig (doc stops only one kill, I guess)

Idaho Justice

: mafia + mafia blocker vs vig + vig + vig

Vermont Justice

: mafia + mafia vs vig + sane cop + insane cop (cop head start, all the other setups in this post are day start)

New Hampshire Justice

: mafia + mafia blocker vs vig + mason + mason

Just throwing out some ideas.

[Fiasco]

Maine Justice

: mafia + mafia blocker vs sane cop + doc + vig

(guess it's getting harder to justify calling these "justice")

[Fiasco]

Colorado Justice

: 2 scum vigs vs 10 town vigs. If you're vigged by one player, that player dies. If you're vigged by more than one player, you die.

Utah Justice

: 3 mafia vs 9 vigs. Even number of night attacks (>0) kills, odd number does nothing.

New Mexico Justice

: 4 scum vigs vs 8 town vigs. Town vigs can only be vigged in nights when they do a vig attempt themselves.

[Fiasco]

Arizona Justice

: 3 scum vigs, 9 town vigs; every night you choose half the remaining players to reflect any of their kills back to (scum choose half the remaining town vigs). Variant: 1/3 works, 1/3 does nothing, 1/3 reflected.

Nevada Justice

: 2 scum vigs, 10 town vigs; every night you can either vig someone or redirect all vig kills to someone else (who may redirect them again). Think about how to handle infinite loops.

[Fiasco]

Sorry if I got carried away. I would want to play some of these, especially the 5p ones. Taking some to another thread would constantly interrupt the brainstorming process.

I like Transylvania Justice.

[Fiasco]

Die C9

: mafia blocker + mafia blocker vs cop + doc + vig + vig + vig

[Fiasco]

All the setups in #1372 and #1374 should be normal, at least.

[Fiasco]

More Pie C9

: mafia blocker + mafia blocker (vs) sane cop + sane cop + doctor + doctor + townie

Fi C9

: mafia blocker + mafia blocker (vs) sane cop + sane cop + insane cop + doctor + doctor

Deth C9

: mafia blocker + mafia goon (vs) sane cop + insane cop + paranoid cop + naive cop + doctor

[Fiasco]

not really open, but:

Ringmaker mafia: have a Ringmaker and maybe some hobbits, dwarves, elves, ring wraiths, gollum as SK. Ringmaker hands out sets of 9/7/3/1 rings. Each set of rings gives a kill or other power, target decided by plurality vote of the owners. Have some mechanism to destroy rings, hand them over to others, have using them be dangerous, etc etc.

[Fiasco]

I like townie-only secret ballots, but vote claims could become a problem.

[Fiasco]

I think sheep also need some sort of "survive to win" clause, or otherwise one of them could just come out, say "hey guys let's all target SilverPhoenix", die, and probably win anyway. Also, as soon as there's a metagame expectation as to whom everyone will target (seniority, alphabetical order, whoever posted first, whatever), it's really easy for the sheep. Perhaps the wolves (town??) should have a sheepblock ability of some sort? Sheepblock would remove the need for "survive to win" I think.

Also I'm not sure I like shifts in win condition (sheep becoming townies) for the same reasons people don't like cults. Maybe start with more townies and have the sheep all die when there are less than 3?

Waiting for someone to design "sheep dethy conspiracy in the palace".

[Fiasco]

I was thinking sheepblockers block the sheep's target, not the sheep themselves. Then if a sheep comes out he'll know his first target suggestion will be sheepblocked so there's no need to threaten people with modkill.

Perhaps just say sheep win when at least (3 + number of sheepblocks on target) sheep target the same player?

[Fiasco]

The WIFOM thing is OK with me, it amounts to sheepblockers losing if they're worse sheep than the sheep themselves. As for the win condition, remember that wolves could start gambling and kill on average almost one (?) sheep for every dead wolf.

Wait, do we even know whether in this setup people will claim town or sheep? Townies want wolves to die and one way that wolves die is by hitting townies that they think are sheep, so townies want wolves to think they're sheep, and for the same reason sheep want wolves to think they're townies, but if all the townies claim sheep and all the sheep claim townie then the wolves know to hit the townie claimers, so nobody will claim anything at all?

I feel another mafia-induced headache coming on.

[Fiasco]

ready aim mafia

(12 players, day start)

4 scum RAF vigs
8 town RAF vigs

you die at night IF AND ONLY IF (you are shot at and you don't shoot at yourself) OR (you shoot at yourself and you are not shot at by anyone else) OR (you shoot at someone else who shoots at himself)

maybe make all night targets public or add more townies?

[Fiasco]

In this post I would like to talk some more about sheep. With some changes, SilverPhoenix's setup turns into:

Sheep and Wolves 1.2

6 Sheep

- At night, target one player. Sheep win if at least 3 target the same player, +2 for every shepherd targeting the player that night. No night talking (obviously). If there are fewer than 3 sheep left, all sheep die.

4 Townies

- No powers. Town wins when all wolves are dead.

1 Shepherd

- At night, target a player to lead two sheep away from them. You win with the town.

1 Roleblocker

- At night, target a player. That player will be unable to perform any action (sheep, shepherd, kill, protect). You win with the town.

1 Doctor

- At the beginning of every night, target a player. Any kill attempts during that night on that player fail. Cannot self-protect. You win with the town.

3 Wolves

- At any time, target a player. If target is a sheep, the target dies, if target is town, you die. Additionally, you can talk at night and send a normal night kill. Wolves win when they equal or outnumber the town and sheep combined.

1 Wolf in Shepherd's Clothing

- A wolf, but with the powers of a shepherd.

Day start. Sheep do not know the other sheep. Wolves do know the other wolves (they are essentially scum).

I still like the basic mechanic but it can probably be made more elegant. Some ideas for expansion:
* split the sheep into a faction of white sheep, who want all sheep to pick the same target, and a faction of black sheep, who want all sheep to pick different targets
* instead, have a small group of black sheep who win when many normal sheep target one of them; this might obviate the need for wolf instakills and/or shepherds, because black sheep will make fake target coordination suggestions
* instead, make it so that sheep who target a wolf are eaten; again, wolves will now make fake target coordination suggestions
* add a sheep in wolf's clothing

[Fiasco]

Wolves and Chickens, 0.1

6 townies
1 doctor
1 blocker
1 vigilante

VERSUS

1 wolf
1 wolf doctor
1 wolf blocker

VERSUS

3 chickens

day start
wolves are an ordinary scum group with a joint nightkill
chickens are a scum group with an optional joint nightkill; if chickens try to use their nightkill and a chicken is lynched the next day, wolves win; if chickens try to use their nightkill and a chicken is nightkilled by wolves the next night, town wins; otherwise play continues as normal

inspired by the game of chicken, of course

[Fiasco]

Wolves and Ducks, 0.1

6 townies
3 one-shot vigs
3 wolves
duck 1 (flies away and leaves the game if alive after N1)
duck 2 (... N2)
duck 3 (... N3)
duck 4 (... N4)

day start
wolves are a standard mafia
if three ducks make it out of the game alive, game ends in a duck victory. Otherwise, play as a normal mafia game.

[Fiasco]

Wolves and Cows, 0.1

6 townies
1 doctor
1 roleblocker
1 governor (makes night target unlynchable the next day)

3 wolves

1 cow doctor
1 cow roleblocker
1 cow governor

day start
wolves are a standard mafia
cows win if the game ever reaches N7 (note: I haven't thought about this number), whether or not any cows live

probably this game needs an info role

[Fiasco]

Don't know. I think the sheep and chicken games have more potential than the duck and cow games btw.

[Fiasco]

Yes, sheep win means town and wolf loss.

The problem with letting multiple factions win is a metagame tit for tat dynamic can arise.

[Fiasco]

They'd be allowed to say that, but then if the wolves picked up on it they'd kill whoever said it, and if the shepherds picked up on it they'd target me.

[Fiasco]

Three Hat Mafia

16 players, 4 scum 12 town, cop head start
everyone has a blue hat or no blue hat, a green hat or no green hat, a yellow hat or no yellow hat, a red hat or no red hat (all 16 combinations happen once)
the scum all have 3 hats, for the rest it's random (this means one role is a "miller" with 4 hats)
the town consists of 12 hat cops, 2 sane and 1 insane for each hat color (they know what color they can see but not whether they're sane)

the point is to have lots of little pieces of objective information that don't necessarily overwhelm the normal day game, but I hope this doesn't become too puzzle-y like dethy

[Fiasco]

Info Drizzle Mafia

3 scum
9 55% sane 45% insane cops
cop head start

[Fiasco]

In setups with alignment change, always specify whether players should play to their current or their expected final win condition.

[Fiasco]

In setups with alignment change, always specify whether players should play to their current or their expected final win condition.

???

expected final, always.

We had a long discussion on this earlier. Some people thought "expected final" was obvious, others thought "current" was obvious. I don't think either is obvious.

[Fiasco]

That's not the point of disagreement. The point of disagreement is what they should do if they're town and they expect to be turned into scum.