[OLD] Open Setup Discussion and Nominations

[Zindaras]

Exactly. That's the way they want to set it up.

Of course, that's still pretty difficult.

[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.

[Fritzler]

I'd like to run this setup as an open game sometime. It was such a sweet game. It deserves an encore with out aces-wild.

And if he's not there, I'm ok not playing too, since i can't kill him regardless.

Yea, Nominate bad idea mafia

that's what i have to do to run it, right?

[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.

[mole]

How would the Mountainous setup work if there were claimable roles?

2 Mafia
9 Townies
1 Greg (just randomly picked a name)

Greg is a confirmed innocent, so should he feel the need to claim the town can trust him--unless the mafia claims as well. Once Greg dies his role is passed on to another townie, chosen at random.

I'm not quite sure what effect this will have on the game, but it should throw an obstacle in the mafia's path for the first few days. In the endgame, it'll be safe for the mafia to claim Greg and go for the win, so who does the town believe?

[petroleumjelly]

Eh. That introduces too much randomness to the setup (as to who will be given the "Greg" role), and further, it will essentially make unlynchable townies for pretty much D1, D2, and D3, if not D4 [if there is a scum-lynch by this point]. This forces scum to decide whether or not they should kill a confirmed innocent or somebody who might not be confirmed but is dangerous. Forcing the Mafia to deal with or counter-claim a confirmed innocent every single day seems a bit rough to me.

[ChannelDelibird]

I'd like to run this setup as an open game sometime. It was such a sweet game. It deserves an encore with out aces-wild.

And if he's not there, I'm ok not playing too, since i can't kill him regardless.

Yea, Nominate bad idea mafia

that's what i have to do to run it, right?

Seconded, or whatever you have to do.

[Kelly Chen]

I'd like to try vanilla something like this:

3:9 daystart. But either 1 or 2 of the townies (it's random) are barbers. They have no special powers except that a claim is likely to get them out of a lynch.

Then scum can consider claiming barber to save themselves. They can also try to guess at night who the barber/s is/are.

So it's still pretty much vanilla, but a little more complicated.

(I pick "barber" because surely every town has at least one barber. And a barber is a very useless-sounding occupation in the context of the game. Maybe there's a better name though.)

[mith]

I don't think the "information" gained could possibly offset the Mafia's advantage in a 3:9 setup. I'm not even convinced that the town gains

any

information from that.

[mith]

Also, a reminder (specifically looking at Bad Idea): This is as good a place as any to discuss complicated open setups, but such games are not likely to ever been run under the Open Game list. That list is for basic setups, maybe with one or two new roles thrown in. Bad Idea is actually pretty basic in concept, but it's not a "normal" game - the "everyone can daykill" has too much of an impact on the game mechanics.

If you like an open setup and meet the mod requirements, by all means, sign up to run it on one of the other lists. There is nothing requiring a Theme Park game have a complicated closed setup - just that it have a theme or a significant change in mechanics.

[Kelly Chen]

Well, I didn't mean for the barber(s) to be a significant balance towards the town.

[Mr Stoofer]

mith's point is that 3 mafia:9 townies, with no cops/docs/other power roles, hugely favours the scum. It would be interesting if it were 2 scum, 1 or 2 barbers, and the rest townies - a slight variation on the standard Mountainous set-up.

[Fiasco]

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

[mith]

Best play there would probably be an immediate massclaim, followed by the newly confirmed innocents making all the decisions. Might end up being balanced, but it wouldn't be much fun.

(I'll admit to being a bit biased against the whole idea, though. I don't like people being able to prove things based on a claim, unless there is a significant drawback to doing so - like a cop coming out, which denies the town future investigations.)

[Kelly Chen]

mith's point is that 3 mafia:9 townies, with no cops/docs/other power roles, hugely favours the scum. It would be interesting if it were 2 scum, 1 or 2 barbers, and the rest townies - a slight variation on the standard Mountainous set-up.

Well, I wouldn't want to play it if it were 2:10. I'd rather play 3:9 even though it is biased. That preference is actually stronger if I'm

town

; as scum under 3:9 I would at least be stressed about tripping over my partners earlier.

I note that the odds of lynching at least one scum are about the same, as a higher scum:town ratio balances out the fewer opportunities to lynch correctly.

In response to mith and Fiasco's last posts: The whole point of having a variable number of barbers is so that you don't simply get off the hook by claiming and not being counterclaimed.

[Zindaras]

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.

Exactly. There's a lot of strategy in picking people.

[mith]

[edit]Corrected below.[/edit]

[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.

[mith]

Correction, it's 23/66.

It's with an optimal strategy. I'll type it up and edit it in here.

The basic idea is that you have a ceiling of 27 "wins" out of 66 possible pairings - the town gets 3 days of information, and potentially 3 possible answers on each day.

However, it's not actually possible to get all 27 possible sets of answers out of the problem. There might be a way to get more than 23, but I'm not seeing it.

Code: Select all

Day 1: 2/12 - Pick 5 at random. (66 Pairings Remain)
  0 Scum. Day 2: 2/7 - Pick 3 at random, plus 1 innocent. (21 Pairings Remain)
    0 Scum. Day 3: 2/4 - Pick 2 at random, plus 1 innocent. (6 Pairings Remain)
      0 Scum. Day 4: 1 Pairing Remains
      1 Scum. Day 4: 4 Pairings Remain
      2 Scum. Day 4: 1 Pairing Remains
    1 Scum. Day 3: 1/3, 1/4 - Pick 1 from first group, 2 from second. (12 Pairings Remain)
      0 Scum. Day 4: 4 Pairings Remain
      1 Scum. Day 4: 6 Pairings Remain
      2 Scum. Day 4: 2 Pairings Remain
    2 Scum. Day 3: 2/3 - Pick 2 at random, plus 1 innocent. (3 Pairings Remain)
      0 Scum. NOT POSSIBLE
      1 Scum. Day 4: 2 Pairings Remain
      2 Scum. Day 4: 1 Pairing Remains
  1 Scum. Day 2: 1/5, 1/7 - Pick 2 from each group. (35 Pairings Remain)
    0 Scum. Day 3: 1/3, 1/5 - Pick 1 from first group, 2 from second. (15 Pairings Remain)
      0 Scum. Day 4: 6 Pairings Remain
      1 Scum. Day 4: 7 Pairings Remain
      2 Scum. Day 4: 2 Pairings Remain
    1 Scum. Day 3:                        (16 Pairings Remain)
      0 Scum.
      1 Scum.
      2 Scum.
    2 Scum. Day 3: 1/2, 1/2 - Pick 1 from each group. (4 Pairings Remain)
      0 Scum. Day 4: 1 Pairing Remains
      1 Scum. Day 4: 2 Pairings Remain
      2 Scum. Day 4: 1 Pairing Remains
  2 Scum. Day 2: 2/5 - Pick 2 at random, plus 2 innocents. (10 Pairings Remain)
    0 Scum. Day 3: 2/3 - Pick 2 at random, plus 1 innocent. (3 Pairings Remain)
      0 Scum. NOT POSSIBLE
      1 Scum. Day 4: 2 Pairings Remain
      2 Scum. Day 4: 1 Pairing Remains
    1 Scum. Day 3: 1/2, 1/3 - Pick 1 from each group, plus 1 innocent. (6 Pairings Remain)
      0 Scum. Day 4: 2 Pairings Remain
      1 Scum. Day 4: 3 Pairings Remain
      2 Scum. Day 4: 1 Pairing Remains
    2 Scum. Day 3: 2/2 - Pick Scum, plus 1 innocent. (1 Pairing Remains)
      0 Scum. NOT POSSIBLE
      1 Scum. NOT POSSIBLE
      2 Scum. Day 4: 1 Pairing Remains

The "optimal" strategy is pretty flexible. What matters is that you leave the possibility open for getting any of the 3 answers the next day. The way I've arranged things is such that the "goal" should be to try to pick both scum each day. You could arrange it the other way around for some of the cases, but it's more intuitive this way.

(The "middle" case - getting an answer of "1" each of the first two days - is too messy to explain elegantly; all that really matters is that you pick in such a way that you could get any of the three answers, and since there would still be 16 possible pairings left, that's trivial to do.)

[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.

[Zindaras]

You can play with the numbers in any given way.

I'd love to host a game like that.

[mith]

Incidentally, I think you can still get 23/66 if you are allowed to just pick 4 on day 1 (or if you are allowed to pick someone not in the game as the 5th, equivalently). You leave enough pairings possible in the "0 Scum" case to get the full 9 out of it, and still get 5/6 from the "2 Scum" case.

(That isn't to say it would be good play if the groups weren't picked "randomly"... scum could more easily manipulate it away from the "2 Scum" case. But I found it interesting.)

[Simenon]

How about this:

Democracy Mafia

2 Scum
10 Townies
At the beginning of each day, a majority vote will elect a mayor. A mayor can, once a day, can pardon a player. No more votes can be put on that player.

[Kelly Chen]

I think that is not good. It's too much work to elect a mayor whose only realistic ability is to stop votes on a player who probably wouldn't get votes anyway. (Pardoning a scummy player would probably be very controversial, and in a vanilla setup the mayor would have no special information on which to make such a decision.)

[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