Standardized Rules and Role PMs (Open Games)

[Mr. Flay]

I'd think in an Open Game, all role PMs could be public, like most C9 games.

[Mr. Flay]

With a bit more standardization, we can have a bot do the modding.

That would put so many

humans

scummers out of work, it's not funny...

Seriously, I think in general we have a shortage of players, not mods. The Open, standard, easy setups are just designed to let people ease into the task, as well as making that type of game available for those who want it (I don't, generally). I don't see anything wrong with standardizing Opens and Newbies, but the rest should be largely freeform (though there's some concern about vetting Normals, which is a different issue).

[Mr. Flay]

Also, hypothetically a Doc/Vig combo could prevent Mafia from taking advantage of an "even numbers" endgame; I think "when there are more living Mafia than any other faction, or nothing can prevent that from becoming true" might work better.

[Mr. Flay]

I agree. >50% mafia doesn't take into account Vigs & SKs. The Mafia win condition should be:

You win when Mafia members are the only survivors, or when nothing can prevent the same.

This Win Condition wins, to the degree that I think it should be the example WC (substitute "members of your faction", maybe). Everything about endgames

must

be deterministic before the mod can call the game "over". Any power role that could change that outcome

must

be allowed to act.

Well spotted, ssf.

[Mr. Flay]

I guess what I'm trying to say is, whether the town *actually* has power to affect the Nightgame or not, you don't tell the *scum* that in their Win Condition.

[Mr. Flay]

I think "total victory -- or nothing can prevent same" is the only good answer. the "50% mafia" or ">50% mafia" rules are really an attempt to encapsulate "nothing can prevent same" in numbers.

I agree. >50% mafia doesn't take into account Vigs & SKs. The Mafia win condition should be:

You win when Mafia members are the only survivors, or when nothing can prevent the same.

But do you think the mafia

should

win if it's 2 mafia against a vig and doc only going into Day?

Well, since it's 2v2, there cannot possibly be a lynch. In that situation, it would move straight into night, and the night choices would decide the game.

There is no reason anyone should rationally expect this outcome to occur, and if I were playing in the game, I would be very surprised.

Once the day game is moot, the night game should be, too.

In fact, depending on deadline rules, the mafia should be able to simply both vote for one of the townies, and never move their vote, so that townie would be lynched at a deadline, no? (I understand that wouldn't work for all deadlines, but for most as written, they would!)

But as already mentioned, the day game

isn't

moot yet; the Doc and Vig can change a 3-3 endgame to 3-2 in their favor very quickly. And any two mafia that out themselves by both voting for a townie when a deadline is imposed deserve to get lynched by the remaining players.

But do you think the mafia should win if it's 2 mafia against a vig and doc only going into Day?

No, I don't. Do you?

Yes. There's even some game-historical precedent to the concept that once the mafia reach half of the living players in the game, they come out and openly slaughter everyone left. All games I run feature this aspect - even if the town could theoretically do something at night, they won't make it there.

This is a BIG problem if you're running Open Games this way; it's decidedly unstandard from any game I've ever seen/played in. The town only loses when there is

no way

they can possibly overcome the odds. Any chance, however small, should get played out, unless someone forfeits (as sometimes happens in Newbie Games when a single Mafia is facing a confirmed Cop and Doc).

[Mr. Flay]

You're arguing uphill. Provide evidence that there are a significant number of games in which scum DO autowin when there are potentially choices left to the town that could revoke 50% dominance. This is literally the first time I've seen a variant interpretation of this win condition's meaning, so yes I think it's

S

tandard

M

afia. But if you need an Argument from Authority, Princeton's definition is, was, and continues to be "If you are a member of the mafia, your goal is to kill off all the civilians in the game. If you are a civilian, your goal is to kill off the mafia before they kill you off."

Furthermore, I'm pretty sure you'll lose to most people on "aesthetics" here, especially if they're looking at it from the perspective of not being scum.

[Mr. Flay]

And mith agrees with me in the October thread, so what's your point?

I really don't see what you're arguing for anymore, so please restate or reframe the questions posed in your last post. I'm not talking about some obscure GF-Bulletproof scenario, but the generalization of Win Conditions. SSF's Win Condition is elegant.

P.S. I'm perfectly happy to have Win Condition posts split out of this one, but can't do so myself.

[Mr. Flay]

This whole thread is actually a very good argument for why the standard mafia win condiditon should NOT be standerdised, even for open games. There are some open games where the 50% rule shoudl be used for balancing purposed (for example, in anything with a bulletproof townie or multiple pro-town roleblockers it might be a good idea), even though I don't think it should be the norm. Slightly different mafia PM's with slightly different win conditions.

Well, I think that's what makes it "standard" rather than "universal". Obviously a game with announced and radical changes to Game Mechanics throws almost all the usual expectations out the window...

[Mr. Flay]

It's time for a PBPA!

(and people wonder why I don't

play

Mafia games right now...)

For another thing, wth is with saying "the real rule is total annihilation of opposing sides." That's either attacking a strawman, or you guys think the 50% camp is so dumb that they don't even believe mafia win by killing off the town.

But at least some of the 50% camp are saying that night actions don't have any bearing on a 50% daytime 'win'. I (and Glork, and Nocmen, and ssflea, and Yos, and mneme, and mith/Princeton previously) are saying that it does matter, at least where the town could pull out a

win

. Tie situations are usually a result of bad game design, IMO.

My metaishgame justification for mafia winning in that scenario is that the town's goal is to

find who the scum are fast enough

, and having them all be dead at the end is a consequence. This situation most likely came from a 2-town 1-mafia endgame Day situation where the town lynched wrong and thus failed to find scum who the scum are fast enough.

For tie-ists and townwin-ists: Suppose there's a mini with two scum and a complete bulletproof. The bulletproof claims and is cleared (somehow) Day 1, and the town lynches scum Day 1. Now, no matter what happens, the town cannot lose, because they won't lynch the bulletproof and so the best the scum can do is tie by not being found by the end. If scum counterclaims, (And the vest isn't cleared), the town can force a tie by finding the rest of the scum and not lynching either. Is this fair?

Two unnkable GFs: tie.
Mafia + Unnkable Townie: depends on the Moderator and the mafia winning condition. I would count it as a mafia win(the mafia, no longer fearing the lynch mob, comes out at day and beats the living crap out of the townie), although others count it as a draw.

Norinel seems to be arguing against passive roles like 100% Bulletproof Townie (which have been shown repeatedly to have problems of this nature). CES is talking about to resolve a true stalemate. Neither are dealing with games that still have viable options left.

I'd also like to see a reference on what is "Standard Mafia." I was not aware that was subject to capitalization. Lacking that, how can you claim that the 50% rule is "really chrome" when the basic game doesn't have vigs or double-voters to make it possible to tell what the practice signifies?

There's a big difference between saying that the "standard" game-winning condition (eliminate everyone but your faction) has changed as the game has evolved, versus the inclusion of new roles as the game has evolved. "50% = win" is/was just a shortcut to avoid a series of foregone conclusions in the endgame.

Finally, I'm sure there are any number of points that could be made along the lines of what Glork says in post 45, making a plea for townies with one-shot abilities. Personally I like the 50% rule because I like it to be clear for scum that when they reach a certain ratio, they win.

I agree, well before they get endgamed.

Disagree entirely.

Though this case isn't necessarily applicable for the purposes of our "standardized role PMs for open setups," consider the case of protown players with one-shot abilities. If these players choose to keep their aces up their sleeves, even to the very last possible moment, they should be allowed to use their abilities as long as they are alive. If night chocies can turn the tide of a game, then by all means they should be used.

For example: I asked Adel/Seol in Scrubs Mafia, if my ability to turn a kill back on scum meant that they wouldn't auto-win at "endgame," and when I was told that you would in fact

not

auto-win, I played a little differently. I decided that personal survival was much more important, as my role could very easily swing the game in favor of us (which it did, albeit not at endgame itself).

I was with you right up until you stripped one-time-roles of their ability without warning.

Nobody is talking about games where the mafia reaches half, wins, and lets the other townies go home.

Correct; no one is, including the "kill everyone else" 'camp', so why did you even bring this up? Obviously "50%=win" only breaks down when there are power roles, but "kill everyone not in your faction" never breaks down, AFAIK. Jesters are sort of outside it, but I don't believe they've ever ended the game for everyone else when they win, so they're kind of orthagonal to this discussion.

[Mr. Flay]

Sure, but except for BP Townies, we're talking about Mutually Assured Destruction, which is a Lose-Lose situation for pretty much anybody but a SK (who sometimes have a supremacy clause/everybody's dead clause in their WC). I should have been a bit more specific, in that I was talking about Living Ties.

Terminology sucks...

[Mr. Flay]

I'm saying that both

Princeton and mith

have said that the true goal is to kill off the other factions. That's about as close to "asking the (original) mod" as I care to get in any non-Theme game. Even still, I was

pissed

when RPS (a theme mini) came up with a "Paper beats Rock" mechanic to resolve ties when the 2-2 tie came about, because I'd orchestrated a very difficult to arrange MAD endgame between the two remaining factions. AFAIK, even the other scum group didn't ask if that was the case, but I could be wrong.

I always figure out the results of non-MAD ties before I start my games, even if I don't tell the players explicitly, and I'm very careful in not lying in my role PMs. I'm willing to concede that I might be misinterpreting CES & Norinel, but I still disagree with this "inherent endgaming" concept, and I think its unusual, not just ambiguous. For instance, nowhere in the Mafia role does it usually say "...and you gain a daykill for each living member of your faction when you reach 50% of those alive", so why are you granting it to them suddenly?

[Mr. Flay]

My role pms usually do say that. If they didn't, it would largely negate the reason I prefer this endgame condition, since scum wouldn't know they had this in their favor.

Ahh, that explains it, then. I've never played in one of the famous Kelly Games

(tm)

.

??? You're implying something about the RPS setup I take it.

Not really, I just would be even more hacked off if I suddenly lost a game after carefully saving my one-shot vig until the endgame. Do your town PMs know that the scum have this ability, too?

I'm kind of surprised you think that that an "everyone dies" tie is somehow not as good as a "living" tie; I've never thought of it that way.

Well, they may both be ties, but usually

someone

on your team living is part of the Win Condition (even if it's just implicit), so it's a lower sort of tie, if that makes sense. It beats losing outright, but not by much, in my book. One may let me claim I satisfied my WC, while the other merely says I denied you yours.

Perfect Game > Winning > Tie/Draw/happily ever after > Mutually Assured Destruction > Lose > Modkilled

[Mr. Flay]

some screwy modding by Macros

Say it isn't so!

[Mr. Flay]

But the Town still has to be constantly vigilant.

Seems a fair trade for remaining alive. Mafia has failed to take over the town. The town has survived and neutralised the threat. Town has achieved what they want, Mafia hasn't.

Depends on who moves away, doesn't it?

[Mr. Flay]

My take on standardized roles for F11 are as follows:

Of course, this would all be a lot easier if you weren't so sure that some of you haddunit. Two of you, in fact, though you're not sure who else is what. Here's the possibilities:

Mafia:

You are a

Mafia Roleblocker

, along with your partner _________ (who is simply a Goon). Your goal is to eliminate the pro-town players so that only your side remains; you win if this happens, even if you personally are dead. During the Day, try to blend in with the rest of the players, and get someone lynched.

You may talk with your partner at Night, and send me a choice via PM of who you would like to kill/roleblock (your team can do both so long as you live).

Note: You may talk with your partner privately during confirmations to plan strategy, but no night actions will take place until Night One.

AND

You are a

Mafia Goon

, along with your partner _________ (who is a pro-Mafia Roleblocker). Your goal is to eliminate the pro-town players so that only your side remains; you win if this happens, even if you personally are dead. During the Day, try to blend in with the rest of the players, and get someone lynched.

You may talk with your partner at Night, and send me a choice via PM of who you would like to kill (if your partner also lives, they can send in a separate choice to roleblock someone).

Note: You may talk with your partner privately during confirmations to plan strategy, but no night actions will take place until Night One.

OR

You are a

Mafia Goon

, along with your partner _________. Your goal is to eliminate the pro-town players so that only your side remains; you win if this happens, even if you personally are dead. During the Day, try to blend in with the rest of the players, and get someone lynched.

You may talk with your partner when it is not Day, and send me a choice via PM of who you wish to kill.

Note: You may talk with your partner privately during confirmations to plan strategy, but no kills will happen until Night One.

Town:

You are the

Doctor

, and you can protect people from harm. Each Night, you may send me a choice via PM of who to protect; if they come under attack by the Mafia, they will live. You win if the scum are eliminated (even if you are dead by that time), so choose wisely at Night, and try to lynch correctly during the Day.

Note: Doctors are 100% effective in Newbie Games (the person you protect will never die on the night they are protected, unless you are roleblocked). You may not protect yourself.

You are the

Cop

, and you can tell good from bad. Each Night, you may send a player's name to me; I will let you know if your investigation shows that they are Mafia or Town. You win if the scum are eliminated (even if you are dead by that time), so choose wisely at Night, and lynch well during the Day.

Note: Cops always get a correct result in Newbie Games (no sanity issues), unless you are roleblocked. You cannot investigate yourself.

You are a

Townie

, and you've got no special powers at Night. No investigations, no protection, no gun to shoot people. Your only powers are the ability to post, vote, and think. You win if the scum are eliminated (even if you are dead by that time), so try to lynch well!

Pick apart, please.

[Mr. Flay]

Mmmm, good catch. I am not planning on revealing them differently, no; both should be Mafia Goon, in that case.

::edit:: Also added a clarification on people winning even if they are dead, which doesn't come up very often, but every bit helps...