Open 530 "WSoB" (Stack the Deck): GAME OVER

[LlamaFluff]

I'm kind of one of those guys who likes games to be nice and consistent, so I wish it was "Change a Goon to Mafia Encryptor (daytalk enabler)" instead of "Enable daytalk", so that every ability involves tinkering with role names. The only noticeable differences are that a) it gives Town a clue if they flip about how many PRs exist and b) if combined with Recruit Traitor, could result in 2 Mafiosos' Day communication being severed if the wrong person gets lynched first.

Being the one behind this setup, the daytalk is worded that way to keep town in the dark intentionally. As its been pointed out without the recruit daytalk is not the strongest, this gives scum a mild advantage of when claims shake down it looks like there is one too many town PR claims.

Either way I still think that the best move for scum is actually to pick no PRs, and if anything just take the JOAT. With no PRs only two town roles pop up, and the biggest danger would be BG + Tracker/GC draw from town. The more PRs it starts getting to a situation where there are a higher number of threats and less options for scum. Its a predictability thing, you don't want to suddenly see something like BG + Tracker + RB + IC or anything like that as scum because that's going to be a pain to crack as you could have just picked the wrong counters to start. Plus Track and RB together are deadly when there are only two scum, and are roles that increase in power quickly with lower number of scum

[LlamaFluff]

Then why not improve the scum PRs so that it's to their benefit to take something?

To an extent that's the point of the setup.

Is it worth it for scum to take nothing additional (thus essentially confirming town claims) which increase the swing (some scum PRs are greater than what town would gain) for the risk of having town picking up something hard. Realistically, the third town role should be a scum fakeclaiming, but by getting an additional role, you enter that WIFOM territory. This is really a bit of a cross between Pick Your Poison and C9++ setups where town will know partial setup of what scum went with, while scum has control of how much power town has.

That and the old "Hard Boiled" phenomenon where a faction will intentionally do something that they see as more "fun" while it being obviously anti-town if you stop and look at it. I haven't massively dissected this setup so far optimization wise, but in the three runs:

Scum took zero roles and won
Scum took two roles (Role Cop + Daytalk) and won
Scum took two roles (JOAT + Daytalk) and lost

I think nothing works because worst case you are going to have a GC + RB vs 2x Goon + Traitor and that's something im happy enough about as scum (even though that would be a highly favorable town draw). You get something like IC + BG and scum should crush the game. Its looking like the setup may stick around. Will be interesting to see what becomes standard choices. I think a lot of it will come down to what gets drawn though.

[LlamaFluff]

You don't think it's worth adjusting it yet?

If the argument is "scum wont takes roles because it doesn't help them" there probably isn't because scum think that taking roles does help them, and im sure there are valid arguments to substantiate that point even though on the surface I disagree with them.

Its one of those things where again look at Hard Boiled - there is a correct way to play that game as town, but the option to not take it is there and its commonly not taken, if the correct option was forced, it would probably be pulled from the open queue. This may be similar, while some options are more vanilla and probably slightly bump win chances, both factions have won games already fairly convincingly (including scum splitting after taking roles). That may be the sign of a swingy setup in a small sample size, but still probably a balanced enough one to let it run a bit more.

Even then its probably not a massive advantage, I would say from a scum perspective I would expect to drop win chances maybe 5% in a large sample size taking extra roles.

[LlamaFluff]

ended