[OLD] Open Setup Discussion and Nominations

[pablito]

Hmm...to expand on Patrick's idea:

3 Mafia (2 goons and 1 Mafia RB)
2 Roleblockers
7 Vanilla townies.

The Mafia RB prevents the pro-town roleblockers from claiming and trying to openly plan their roleblocking together, but the pro-town roleblockers can still try to hit the killing mafiate. At the same time, multiple roleblockers could be a good training exercise for an intermediate mod, but would be a nightmare for a new mod. Hmm....just throwing the idea out. I like Patrick's idea, but I don't think it's suitable for a seven-player setup.

[pablito]

I'd been thinking about how to translate the game played in the film Cry_Wolf into an open setup and what rules would work to balance it out (since the numbers in the film were very hopeless for the wolf).

So 7-player Nightless setup
1 wolf 6 townies

Rules:
Instead of a traditional voting process, players may nominate anyone they think is the wolf. However, a player may only nominate one other player during the entire game, so they should use it wisely.

Once a player is nominated - the cases are brought out. Then there is a vote between two people: the nominee and the nominator. One of these two must be voted out.

Only four rounds are played out (leaving an endgame of 2 townies and one wolf). If the wolf isn't voted out by the end of the fourth round, he wins. Going further would be too tough for the wolf to win. So it's assumed the wolf can kill two townies in endgame.

Win condition is to be the person who successfully won the vote when the wolf is lynched. Therefore the winner is the person who either successfully nominated the wolf or be the person who was successfully nominated by the wolf (and later turned the vote around). There is only one winner in the game so playing under the radar won't work for townies.

Perhaps the setup might work better with 6 players but I just thought that would be too small of a game.

[pablito]

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?

That one needs a bit more restriction on the nuclear cycle like time restriction before nuclear devices are used or also a time restraint/minimum on how long after being nuked that person must decide... but sounds like it can be very fun.


The six-color mafia game looks like it can be broken very quickly once people start claiming colors.
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. Green mason can claim and is confirmed. I think one scum must counter-claim in order to have a chance. The town, should not kill someone who claimed yellow or blue though. If they do, they have a 1/6 possibility of removing a NK, but they lose out later. They should lynch someone red, black or white to even out colors more. But no matter what during next morning, they'll find green dead (only confirmed) plus one other. After that, it can get tricky, but I think there's 2-4 scum left in a 6 person town. Town must rely on scum cross-hitting to win if they hadn't hit scum, and even if they were lucky that they lynched correctly D2 and scum cross-hit on N2, they still cannot mis-lynch if there are no more scum cross-hitting.

In other words, town may only have one opportunity to mis-lynch, I would recommend adding more players, one or two more colors. Some rules on color-claiming would only help mafia I think, and not town. A doctor might be an interesting role to add into the mix if two more colors are added. Even better to not let him claim to his partner that he is the doc. That may help mafia survive better due to numbers. The doc can confuse the number of NKs but also protects numbers. And it could confirm a team only if it is early enough.

Not sure if any of those suggestions help balance out, but I enjoyed reading those setups.

[pablito]

In my scenario, I was assuming a failed D1 lynch that the town didn't know about. I'm just thinking that the mason-groupings wasn't enough to balance against a 2 scum-group setup with 12 players that doesn't reveal alignment until one scum-group is dead.

Oh wait, I see. I made a mistake in that scenario. Green can't be confirmed D2 as pro-town. Never mind. That actually makes it worse for the town though, doesn't it?

And as always, with 2 scum groups, cross-kills make it less predictable as to how balance goes.

Also in nuclear mafia, a simple plan could just be to leave one person alive and hope that he's town.

I like the variant in Trash Talk Mafia. I would assume the unkillable mod-confirmed good guy has no knowledge of alignements but his evil twin would have knowledge of the other two mafia.

[pablito]

I'll nominate two of Fiasco's setups because I either like them or have thought of suggesting a similar setup - so therefore I think it's a good one.

I'll nominate Duel Mafia and Colorful Mafia.

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

which is similar, but simpler than something I proposed earlier

So 7-player Nightless setup
1 wolf 6 townies

Rules:
Instead of a traditional voting process, players may nominate anyone they think is the wolf. However, a player may only nominate one other player during the entire game, so they should use it wisely.

Once a player is nominated - the cases are brought out. Then there is a vote between two people: the nominee and the nominator. One of these two must be voted out.

Only four rounds are played out (leaving an endgame of 2 townies and one wolf). If the wolf isn't voted out by the end of the fourth round, he wins. Going further would be too tough for the wolf to win. So it's assumed the wolf can kill two townies in endgame.

Win condition is to be the person who successfully won the vote when the wolf is lynched. Therefore the winner is the person who either successfully nominated the wolf or be the person who was successfully nominated by the wolf (and later turned the vote around). There is only one winner in the game so playing under the radar won't work for townies.

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.)

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.

[pablito]

I could also like Fiasco's Resolute Mafia, but it seems that the breaking strategy is to be lurking scum. If lurking can be prevented in that game, I think it could be an interesting setup.

[pablito]

How about Almost-Vanilla setup with no power roles except for a few doctors.

3 Mafia
3 Doctors
6 townies

Basically the doctors exist on the off-chance that there's two successful NK protects and that would buy the town an extra lynch. But otherwise it would be practically a vanilla game, but at least scum have an extra claim if they can figure out how to fake some night choices.

[pablito]

No, doc-to-doc protects wouldn't work. And to strengthen the town, perhaps add three more vanilla townies?

[pablito]

GreenLiquid, I think we were talking about different things.

How about Almost-Vanilla setup with no power roles except for a few doctors.

3 Mafia
3 Doctors
6 townies

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.

No, doc-to-doc protects wouldn't work. And to strengthen the town, perhaps add three more vanilla townies?

However, to comment on your setup, I like how this one has a lot of power roles, or at least a few roles we haven't seen yet in the open setups. However, the randomization that occurs - cop sanity, role removal, role doubling - it just seems too complicated for the open setups here so far. I understand that if the open setup were to stay static, and there were role-reveals, it would give scum an extreme disadvantage. Also, some of the roles being doubled, like bulletproof townie, vigilante or cop would be much stronger than say a hider or roleblocker. The town is stacked if they have two bulletproof townies. I'm not a big fan of the doubling, but I could support the townie replaces a power role if there needs to be randomization of role setup.

As for balance, scum is underpowered, and the town has too many information roles I think with having a cop, watcher and tracker. I do like the one-protect doc though. The doc would need to know when to use it with so many power roles out there.

Oh, and is the vigilante suppose to be one of the twelve roles? I see eleven listed, but I see in the below scenarios that the vigilante was doubled. If so, the vigilante would be useful if another scum is added and would help with balance there.

[pablito]

Okay, now I see the reason to the doubling up, but I was mainly worried about two strong power-roles, like the vig, cop or bulletproof being doubled.

I think doubling wouldn't be bad if the vigs were also limited (two-shot) and the cop was 50-50 sane/insane or sane/naive. Then I could see doubling to be worthwhile because then any power role that is doubled is not overpowering the town. Then if there are two vigs, then four kills...which in a 12 player game is plenty. And if there are two cops, there's a chance of a sane/naive combo which I think is the optimal cop-duo to help scum I think sane/insane is still too powerful for a 12 player. Two docs would lead to two protects (which likely would lead them to protect the same person once a power-role claims uncountered). Two trackers or hiders I don't see as being highly powerful. And two watchers well that's kinda powerful actually but not much you can do there.

The more I think about this setup, the more I believe it works better as a larger game than a smaller one.

[pablito]

I like yours better, I'll third Yosarian's near-vanilla.

[pablito]

Hider/Commuter

3 mafia
1 compulsory hider (must hide with someone every night, cannot hide same place consecutively)
1 commuter?
6-7 townies

My guess is that the hider can't really announce because there is no protection from mafia NK but can only breadcrumb. commuter is just to possibly give a fake claim a chance in the setup.

gunsmith

3 mafia
1 one-shot paranoid gun owner (first time someone targets him that person dies instead) - maybe to prevent the breaking strategy of claiming D1, the action does not work N1?
1 martyr/bodyguard (in mbf's flash, known as martyr, tends to be known as bodyguard in most circles - dies in place of his target if target was up to be NKed).
1 gunsmith (gets gun result for everyone except townies)
6 townies

martyr cannot successfully protect gun owner, and gun owner claim means a 1-for-1 trade. Maybe add one miller (kid with squirt gun) to lessen power of gunsmith.

[pablito]

That sounds too complicated for an open setup. It might be interesting for your own themed game...but at the same time the mechanics seem too confusing.

I think it would be a strong disadvantage to the town to have to do a single ballot with all those roles on it. Because if it's voting in thread, the mafia have nowhere to hide. If it's private voting, then I'm not even sure there would be any plurality on any votes at all - especially with so few players. If I were town, I'd be changing my vote every single chance I got because there's no way I'd know who I'd want to lynch and make a vig at the same time.

First-come, first-serve is never a good idea in a mafia game as well. And some previous games have shown us that any mason group that has an additional cop/vig ability will strongly overpower the town, even if it were for a single day. Masons would have to go. The town already has enough power roles as it is. Plus I don't like the idea of roles going to the second most votes. Because if everyone votes player A for cop, but A got the most votes to be vig, then mafia just needs to vote their partner to be the vig. It just seems too complicated to work in reality.

I think that the setup, while it brings up some interesting points and mechanics, would fail because the mod has way too much work to do during the game and most role-voting would end up ties. Plus it's just wildly unbalanced in favor of the town.

As for Vanilla plus, a day one mass claim kills the game. I don't think it's balanced. It hearkens to a game of cry_wolf, and that game can be unbalanced unless scum is on top of their game.

[pablito]

2 cops + 2 docs needs like five mafia per family to give them a fighting chance. Doubling all roles will likely always improve town's chances by 9000%

Three vigs vs. three mafia with night start means that the game can be over before a word is said. That would be a stupid game.

Pretty much all those double or nothing games are unbalanced in favor of town and are way too swingy no matter what.

As for vanilla plus, look at cry_wolf to see how the game could go. In cry_wolf, some players get "whispers" in the beginning of the game. Generally two players get the same whisper on player X and thus player X plus the first person to announce that whisper are considered 'safe'. There's multiple sets of those, so it usually turns out that half the players day one. The mafia obviously know to kill those safe players beginning with player X. But in cry_wolf, only a few people get whispers, to balance things out. Cry_wolf also uses a nomination phase which also helps balance things out.

[pablito]

Shouldn't there be another vanilla game coming up soon? or

nominate: vanilla

[pablito]

4:8 is nightless vanilla, that might be what you're thinking of. 2:10 vanilla is traditionally used as the 12 player version. But I think 3:14 was open 2 vanilla.

So if I have to specify, I'd like to see the 2:10 come up soon.

[pablito]

I'll second mafia and werewolves

[pablito]

Triangle Nightless - I think triangulated lynchers defeats the purpose of having a lyncher and lynchee. I'm opposed to the idea.

Risk Nightless is your best option up there right now. It has standard roles and has mechanisms which have already gone through on the open queue. But I don't get the purpose of having lovers in a nightless game. It's pretty much a solid unopposable claim. If mafia tries to counterclaim, then there goes the game. You'd need an extra scum to balance against the nightless lovers or a single mafia daykill.

I like the idea of a Kingmaker Nightless and I think that the setup outlined would be balanced...except for the breaking strategy of the Kingmaker simply claiming to protect himself (hence why Big Brother is setup more like Death Kingmaker). If you find a way to take away the power of a kingmaker claim, then you might have a mini themed game for you there. Nonetheless, this would not be suitable for the Open Queue.

Double Kingmaker sounds more complicated than its worth. Doesn't sound like a fun game when you have to pander to the power of someone who is not even in your village (and thus cannot openly discuss with him). Feel free to put it as a large themed when you become eligible. But it's not appropriate for the Open Queue.

Scum City Mafia - more mafia does not always make a better game. And a vig doc and cop will not help the town against all of those guys even if the crosskills always hit. Maybe needs one more power or a few more townies. Too swingy.

I like QuickBlitz as an idea for a mini themed game. It's not appropriate for Open Queue. I would suggest finding a different mechanic for the random killing. Randomized killing is usually not a good thing. But I like the threat of random killing as a reason to force a lynch.

I don't think that Philly Justice or Lol Nightless are serious in nature and are too unbalanced.

I think 4:7 nightless is supposed to be a good balance. I'm not sure that adding a cop/doc/NK on every other night is going to add much more or make things fair to either side. I think this one leans more to town actually.

[pablito]

Also, let's

nominate: Basic 12 player

(3 mafia, cop, doc, 7 townies). It's been a while since we saw some of the more standard setups.

[pablito]

Bapa, it is not a good idea to have a role suddenly appear when it has not been decided before the game. That just makes things possibly unethical in the wrong hands.

Also, I think it's actually harming the roleblocker to not know he's the roleblocker during D1. It might change his playstyle and it may be harder to prove that he's the true roleblocker and not just mafia faking the claim. The chance of lynching a roleblocker in D1 in an open setup isn't as harmful as you think.

[pablito]

Second: Near vanilla

I like the jailkeeper role.

[pablito]

Could power roles in a nightless game work for the open queue? If so,

Powered Nightless

1 Mafia Godfather (Investigation Immune)
1 Mafia One-Shot Day Vigilante
2 Mafia Goons
1 Day Cop
1 One-Shot Governor
6 Townies

[pablito]

I should think you'd want to prohibit no-lynch for that game, given that it gives the cop infinite investigations with no penalty. Although there's also the mafia vig to take out the cop if so, of course, but the town could get a bunch of investigations in if the vig wasn't around.

But no lynch is breaking with or without the vig since they could just begin the game with 12 no lynches and basically win. I'd say that if you prohibit no lynch then it sounds fine. What's the governor for, though? That seems similarly breaking due to the lack of penalty for no lynch.

Who the hell no-lynches these days? I want blood. I thought that having an investigation immune godfather would also make the cop have less importance.

Well we could also make the daycop like two-shot. and the mafia two-shot dayvig. Because dayvigs are fun.

[pablito]

East County Mafia

4 Mafia Goons
3 Cops
1 One-Shot Day Vig
4 Townies

Daystart

I hope these cops aren't all sane.

[pablito]

I don't see how the game plays out any other way than a mass cop claim day one. And I'd hate to be mafia in this game. I'm not a fan of dethy. However, I'd rather play this than dethy if a gun is to my head.

[pablito]

Because you didn't know that I tend to hate power roles. Does it matter that I am giving criticism?

[pablito]

Would you prefer 1 cop, 1 doc and 3 goons? I wouldn't.

Personally, I think cops are overrated these days especially the cop-doc combo. The majority do not follow my sentiment. I don't like the three sane cops because it puts the majority of the gameplay in the hands of the cops. Even if the cops fail and do not try to put themselves in the forefront of the game, the other players in the game will depend on the cops because of their plain existence. If your setup was a closed setup, I would like it much much better, because of the possibility of fun counterclaiming and general confusion.

Of course, I wouldn't prefer 1 cop, 1 doc and 3 goons because that's already game over and unbalanced. And if we put in 4 townies (as I assume that's what you're going for) then no I don't like that. I don't think it's well balanced. 6 vs 3 even with power roles would only require two mislynches to lose.

[pablito]

Good idea for a future themed game. You might want to try posting this in the Theoretical Game Setup Discussion or maybe in Test Theme Market if you just want to gauge interest.

I've seen similar setups in scumchat that involve rooms. Certain mods are well known for creating these setups.

But this type of setup would not be good for open game queue.

Also, this thread has had many many ideas rejected for open game queue, but it does spark a lot of interesting discussion about gameplay and interesting setups. It's not that these are ideas are bad, but they're not appropriate for the open game queue. I wonder if less than 10% of new setups in here have actually been nominated and used.

[pablito]

I think it's been a while since the last one.

re-nominate: vengeful

And perhaps a

re-nominate: roleblocker C9

.

[pablito]

Max, how would replacements enter the game? Like...what if a mafia role has to be replaced and that guy can no longer read posts of his predecessor and is now royally screwed? Also, what prevents people from just deciding to quote the entire thread in a single post so they don't "forget"?

I think it's a very intriguing idea, but I think it looks much much better in paper than in practice. I would also suggest looking at Eternal Sunshine mini - which I believe also had some disappearing/forgotten posts as an element.

This is definitely not appropriate for open queue, but could be something for the mini theme.

[pablito]

We'll call this possible setup

"In the line of duty"

3 mafia
7 vanilla townies
1 naive martyr-cop
1 sane martyr-cop

Day start

The martyr-cop chooses one target each night. They will get to investigate this person and also be the "bodyguard" (another common name for this role) for that person. If the mafia try to kill the target, the martyr-cop will die in the place of the target.

If there's an existing name for martyr-cop or a better name for it, let's go with that role name.

Here's another one I shall call

"Community Pedophile Search"

3 mafia
1 Serial Killer - Role Blocker combo
1 paranoid gun owner
1 tracker
1 doctor
5 townies

[pablito]

Shanba, see this post for the explanation of why it is called Vanilla: viewtopic.php?p=436112#436112

Also, I am saddened that vanilla is no longer gaining favor.

[pablito]

I don't play forum games anymore and I'm very certain I won't be coming back after my next break. So I'm sure I've played out my last vanilla. So answer: "No".

Here's another setup for the hell of it. Kind of a twist on the basic 12 player.

3 mafia
1 non-consecutive hider
1 "CPR doctor" or "Insane doctor"
7 vanilla townies

[pablito]

I think it would be awesome if the doctors were masons as well. I feel that town may be underpowered.

[pablito]

You don't get to choose what setup you will use in the Open Game Queue. As for balance, I find it funny how you started off with 3 v 3 v town w/power and then later added the 4th PLUS extra powers to the mafia.

Also, you need to ask yourself if it's going to be an easier game to run if you have both a GF/AW plus investigative roles with sanity issues.

Then once you get into the unlyncher role in the setups, plus the randomization, I think you veer off course and start getting into themed territory instead of Open Game Queue.

I liked how the post with your setup started, but after you started to doubt yourself and tweak everything, you made the game more complex. I think you went into a direction which could be feasible (not sure on balance though) for a large themed game, but is definitely not appropriate for Open Game Queue.

Max, I'm not sure if you understand the process with the Open Game Queue. If you do, then I'd suggest keeping the setup simple. If you don't, please read how it works and then check if the Theoretical Game Setup Discussion Thread would be more appropriate for you.

And being sarcastic will only help you get your setup viewed. It's a proven fact.

[pablito]

xyzzy, how did you come up with those numbers. Also this sounds like a stupid long game that will frustrate people to no end. If I were scum, I would get tired of having NKs without any result. Also, crosskills is what helps balance against having lots of scum in different families, making a requirement for two NKs. Add in a dayvig for more fun and maybe a SK with immunity against NKs. I could also see a lot of No-Lynching in this game - which would get annoying for the mod and players. This sounds like it needs to be a speed setup, maybe only in scumchat even.

Also, this is not appropriate for open setup queue, but bring it up in theoretical setup discussion thread to see what happens.