[OLD] Open Setup Discussion and Nominations

[Zindaras]

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

Yes. Is there a problem with that? If I look at the setup, it's not very scumfriendly. I think it's a simple solution that makes sense.

Also, if there's a 50% chance of a specific role being in (I'm not sure what the chance is with this game), there's only a 25% chance of this being relevant at all.

[IH]

I've been playing some IRC mafia, and one fun setup is SS3.

3 player mafia.
1 Mafioso(goon)
1 Townie
1 Super Saint(Vengeful townie. Hammah voter is killed.)

[IH]

Also, Goon, Judas, Supersaint might be interesting.....

(Judas is town until he's lynched. lynching him makes him scum ally)

[mith]

Questions for Fiasco:

I grabbed Masons and Monks for an Open signup. Is Masonhood/Monkhood meant to be revealed on death? Can a player be both a Mason and a Monk? Can both Mafia be Monks (or both Wolves be Masons)?

[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.

[mith]

The first probably doesn't make all that much difference either way, so I'm inclined to say yes for that too.

The second (if it happened) would help the town, with a confirmed innocent (or even two, in the unlikely event that both were doubled up). And confirmed innocents are a bit safer in two group games.

The third would hurt the town, of course.

From a balance standpoint, it probably doesn't matter. It's pretty much equivalent to asking how much variance we want; answering no to each rules out the extreme cases on either side, but probably doesn't affect the overall (pre-assignment) probabilities much vs. leaving the extreme cases as possibilities.

(But from a gameplay standpoint, it might be more

interesting

if the answers were no, if the goal is to have partially confirmed roles.)

[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.

[Zindaras]

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 my math is good, this is a correct statement. By first picking the masons, the chance for mason wolves would be smaller than mafia monks, as, due to a reduction in town numbers to be picked from (assuming that at most one wolf is a mason), the chance of a mafia getting a monk role would be larger.

In the second situation, the order you pick them in is irrelevant.

[ShadowLurker]

I was planning to run this as a Normal Open Setup and was running setup by Glork and TSQ and Glork suggested I post here:

Pair Mafia

20 players

4 Mafia
8 Townies
4 Reds
4 Blues

Mafia Win Condition:
-To outnumber the Townies
AND
-To have all Reds and Blues leave the game

Townie Win Condition:
-To have all the Mafia dead and at least one Townie still alive

Red/Blue Win Condition:
-Get your partner lynched, you will both leave the game when this happens
OR
-Have you AND your partner still alive when all the Mafia are lynched
BUT
-If either one of you is nightkilled, you both lose immediately and will both leave the game

The Reds and Blues cannot talk at night at the moment.
This should be a day start


Possible tweaks are 3 mafia, a Cop instead of a Townie or possible other power roles, less R/B pairs maybe.

[Glork]

Just a note to the setup above: The reds and blues are split into pairs. As indicated in the role PMs, they are lynchers of each other; a red wins if his rival Blue is lynched and vice versa.

[Thok]

What happens when there are 4 Mafia, 2 R and 2 B and no townies left during day? That seems like it should be an auto win for the mafia and an autoloss for the remaining R/B pairs, but it's unclear given what you've posted.

[ShadowLurker]

What happens when there are 4 Mafia, 2 R and 2 B and no townies left during day? That seems like it should be an auto win for the mafia and an autoloss for the remaining R/B pairs, but it's unclear given what you've posted.

Autowin for Mafia as the endgame the rest.

[Yosarian2]

Hmmm...I don't know about that...it's an autowin for the mafia, but at least one of the red/blue people is still going to get lynched, so at least one of them would still win, right? Might as well play out the next day at that point to see who it is.

[mith]

It could be assumed that there is just a no lynch in the endgame days. The choice of who gets lynched in such a situation would be pretty much entirely arbitrary (with the Mafia not caring and acting as kingmaker), and besides, why would the Mafia want anyone else to win? NL, kill, NL, kill is a more natural resolution, and doesn't need to be played out.

(It's an interesting idea. Probably needs a bit of tweaking. Really, we need to run some small lyncher games before thinking about something like this.)

[Kelly Chen]

Lyncher (the 5p setup) doesn't qualify as normal due to the lack of a killing group. Would you make an exception due to the small size?

[Yosarian2]

Ok, Open Role mafia 5, Switch Mafia, has been completed. I strongly reccomend that the game not be run again in the same format; I do like the idea of switches, but the game was heavily tilted towards the scum, I think; the way it was set up it was basically a 12 player game with 3 scum, 1 SK, and effectivly no pro-town power roles of note, which is strongly balanced against the town. I think the only way the town could have had a decent chance would be to get exceptioanlly lucky and lynch a scum day 1 to give the pro-town power roles some breathing room.

[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.

[Zindaras]

Taking a quick look at the setup and how the game went I'd say that the Serial Killer is the most important role off the bunch, as it decides on the balance between Town and Mafia. The fact that it got killed off N1 essentially made sure that the Mafia was free to switch off whatever they wanted.

How about giving the SK a one-shot NK immunity?

[Zindaras]

Damn, Fiasco's too quick for me. *sad*

But, essentially, I agree with him.

[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.

[Zindaras]

Eh, upon a little contemplation, I got this idea:

A Switchblocker: Town Aligned, can target any player, preventing the targeted player from switching off any other roles.

[Kelly Chen]

Well I said some of this in-thread but.

Night start is too random with up to three deaths possible.

The town in this particular run doesn't seem to have been too heavily invested. The scum made mistakes (like the town), it's not like the town had no chance to see them.

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.

I don't feel it was very unbalanced. It just looks absurd that the town power roles didn't get to do anything.

[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

[Kelly Chen]

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

My comment wasn't a complaint btw. I'm just saying that the town had these power roles but didn't get to use them, and that intuitively looks like an error. But it doesn't necessarily mean it was not balanced.

It was more pro-scum than average but not brrrroke in my opinion.

[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.