[OLD] Open Setup Discussion and Nominations

[Simenon]

Everything on wifom is bad.

[Primate]

Axis mafia was really annoying. It looks interesting, but actually it's just impossible to get concencus about anything. The only way one side can win is if people have a brain fart and forget their win condition.

[Mr Stoofer]

Nominate Nightless Mafia

again.

[Kelly Chen]

With the same 4:8 ratio? How did you feel about that?

[Mr Stoofer]

I think 4:8 was about right. If the scum hadn't imploded days 1-4 it would have been a close run thing. 5:7 would put the town at LyLo after one wrong lynch, whereas 3:9 would be an easy win for a halfway decent town.

[Kelly Chen]

I was thinking 4:7 for an 11p...

Having to get at least four mislynches, and not be able to kill anybody, seems kinda, I dunno, soul-crushing...

[Patrick]

I thought 4:8 was ok. We don't know just how differently things could have turned out if scum hadn't been lynched day 1. I can imagine the town easily becoming depressed and careless in some situations.

[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.

[IH]

I'd say it was balanced, other than one scum gave it away on day 1, and on day 2, we called out someone who was lurking out the wazoo and still didn't post. It was the speed lynches maaaan. The speed lynches.

Brian McQueso brought up a good point though. In nightless, it's balanced until town hit scum, which gives the town an "extra-life".

It got really lurky at the end, but other than that, that was a really fun game = )

[Kelly Chen]

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.

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.

Brian McQueso brought up a good point though. In nightless, it's balanced until town hit scum, which gives the town an "extra-life".

Huh, I didn't even notice that.

[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.

[mith]

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?

Forgot to respond to this earlier. To answer the question: I'd have to think about it. If there's interest, I would certainly take that into consideration. Good small games are hard to find, and I wouldn't mind seeing more of them run as a general rule. When I said we should run some small lyncher games before trying whatever setup was being proposed, I wasn't necessarily talking about the 5p version; the lyncher role can easily be used in games with more than one scum.

Speaking of the lyncher role and 5p games, I had a slightly weird idea last night that I thought I'd post here. Not nominating it (as it's a little wacky, there's the lone-scum thing, and it probably needs some kinks worked out), but it might be interesting to try in scumchat.

Vengeful Lyncher:

5 Players - 1 Mafia, 3 Townies. The fifth role is either a Traitor (in which case the Vengeful rule applies if a Townie is lynched day 1; this would play exactly like a normal Vengeful game, except the Mafia does not know who the Traitor is) or a Lyncher (in which case the Vengeful rule does not apply, and it players like a normal Lyncher game).

A more complicated variant on this idea, with another well-known 5p setup, which I am calling "

dethtrap

" for lack of a better name:

5 Players - 1 Mafia, 3 Cops of varying sanities. The fifth role is either a Traitor (Vengeful rules), Lyncher (Lyncher rules), or Cop (of the missing sanity).

You could even change that to an evil-C9 type setup, where both the Traitor and Lyncher could appear.

[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

[Kelly Chen]

Triple post coming up

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.

But people don't play like this, especially if it's not vanilla. It isn't actually trivial to play like this. You'll get messages in the night from your scumpartners and the joke is up.

And if you do read your role PM but just "play as though you were a townie," this is not enough since according to you it is mainly individual scumtells that find scum. If one expects the town to have any scum-hunting ability, a balance like 55/45 could only be right in a very short game.

Anyway, by this assessment of ideal balance, I don't think we play any games that don't "favor scum" other than some seriously broken themed games.

As an example: A 3:40 day start vanilla still slightly "favors scum." I can't imagine that ~3 power roles among 9 townies should be a similar balance to four times that many townies with no power roles.

[Kelly Chen]

Speaking of the lyncher role and 5p games, I had a slightly weird idea last night that I thought I'd post here. Not nominating it (as it's a little wacky, there's the lone-scum thing, and it probably needs some kinks worked out), but it might be interesting to try in scumchat.

Vengeful Lyncher:

5 Players - 1 Mafia, 3 Townies. The fifth role is either a Traitor (in which case the Vengeful rule applies if a Townie is lynched day 1; this would play exactly like a normal Vengeful game, except the Mafia does not know who the Traitor is) or a Lyncher (in which case the Vengeful rule does not apply, and it players like a normal Lyncher game).

Hmm, why not just flip a coin as to whether the setup is Vengeful or Lyncher? I'm not sure I see an advantage to the godfather not knowing what the setup is. The lyncher and traitor always know already. And it's a good basis for scumtells to seem to know which setup is in play.

A more complicated variant on this idea, with another well-known 5p setup, which I am calling "

dethtrap

" for lack of a better name:

5 Players - 1 Mafia, 3 Cops of varying sanities. The fifth role is either a Traitor (Vengeful rules), Lyncher (Lyncher rules), or Cop (of the missing sanity).

You could even change that to an evil-C9 type setup, where both the Traitor and Lyncher could appear.

The effect of the cops is probably pretty significant on the balance...

[Kelly Chen]

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)

ShadowLurker made this report:

2 Mafia (SL, Gamer)
3 Townies with 3 lives (Pod, Quag, Goin)

N0: Quag -1
D1: SL -1 DIEDIEDIEDIED
N1: Quag -1
D2: Pod -1
N2: Pod -1
D3: Quag -1 DIEDIEDIEDIED
N3: Pod -1 SL&GamerWINWINWIN

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?

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.

[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.

[Trojan Horse]

Like Fiasco, I disagree with SL that any other outcome would have resulted in a scum loss. Take just the case he singled out, where Quag is lynched day 2.

Night 2: Gamer, Pod(3), Goin(3)
Day 3: Gamer, Pod(2), Goin(3) (for example)

If Pod is now lynched, scum wins. If Goin is lynched, then Pod is shot again, and it's a 50-50 guess for Goin. Plenty of chances for scum to win.

Personally, I'm confident that the Resilient setup is balanced. (I was the mod of the game in question, by the way. So I'm biased.)

[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

[Glork]

The only thing about that setup is that if I were the confirmed unkillable bad guy, I'd basically not attack anybody, so as to give off as little information as possible. And I would only vote in order to hammer a good guy.


I like the townies "don't know which is which" variant better. It gives the confirmed bad guy a chance to play around with the town a bit, as people don't know whether his intentions are geniune or devious.

[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).

[mith]

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

(The tweak is removing a townie and making it a cop-head-start instead of night start; day 1 looks the same except for making sure the "9th townie" is killed, instead of the cop - 3:9 vanilla isn't balanced.)

[Simenon]

I'm nominating ss3.

[Blackberry]

I nominate/second any and all nightless mafia setups and/or any vanilla mafia setups

[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.