In post 8, Something_Smart wrote:No problem. You clearly have a good intuition for the elements that make an open setup fun and interesting, and balancing setups like this with tons of possibilities is very difficult. I'm not sure how vocal I've been about it, but the two common setups that are most similar-- C9++ and Stack the Deck are, in my opinion, pretty bad setups, but not for a lack of trying.
Actually, I didn't know that! I've almost never visited the setup-craft section and the last time I was on MafiaScum was umm more than a year ago. I suspected that the *9++ setups weren't super balanced, but the one game I played on JK9++ was super fun, even tho the serial killer got a derpwin in the end. That said, I'd personally love to see them remade with a point system.
When I've tried my hand at designing setups like this, I've usually ended up in a point system like you have-- see
here where I tried to rework the concept of Stack the Deck in a way that I thought was more balanced and interesting. You seem to have similar aims, coming from a more themed perspective.
Great minds, et cetera
(Just a note-- I know it seems cleaner to just edit the current version of the setup into the OP. The downside is that if anyone else comes to the thread and reads my comments, they'll make no sense, and they'll have lost some of the context for the discussion. Probably a good middle ground would be to have the current setup in the OP but keep previous revisions in a spoiler.)
Noted! That seems like a good idea, but since the setup is so long I'll probably just write a changelog instead.
First of all, your role selection mechanism seems a bit overcomplicated. By generating random numbers, you're really just assigning straight probabilities to each role being chosen, but taking several steps to do it:
Priest: 24%, Witch Hunter: 23.5%, Angel: 7.5%, Ranger: 15%, Healer: 12%, Enchanter: 9%, Trickster: 9%. I would recommend standardizing this distribution a bit, so people don't have to wrack their brains as much over what's more likely.
I'm actually really bad at maths and I thought that two layers of randomness would spread the power distribution more evenly between investigative, killing and protective. I never figured that it would come down to simple straightforward percentages in the end because... I don't know! :')
Concerning the point values of the roles themselves, there's two things to consider. The power of the roles relative to each other (to keep swing down), and the power of the town roles relative to the scum roles (to keep balance even).
Cop should definitely be 2. Maybe even 3. Vigilante's probably as strong as cop with so many counters to cop in the scum arsenal, so if you do buff cop to 3 vig should go with it.
You're right that cop is great even with the counters, but I'm not sure if it's *that* great? Consider the cop gets a guilty, the guilty is lynched and turns out it was innocent (tailored). Then the cop gets vigged at night, but a death knight is on the cop and the vig suicides on it, which is just ouch. Besides, the scum would be a lot more confident in claiming cop with guilty, then trying to attribute the mislynch to a tailor. Especially if it's a zombie fakeclaiming.
Then there's the matter of invisibility and enchanters which waste nights with no results. Invis is not bulletproof, it's more like a buffed-up ascetic that stops most anything except reactive and strong kills. Anyway, I agree it the priest should at least be a two, and the vig maybe three.
Witch hunter seems to fit between a 2 and a 3. I doubt they ever use their track or watch because the other powers are so much better. Perhaps you could eliminate the cop shot, then I think it would be comfortably a 2.
I think the track and the watch are *relatively* more valuable than usual in games with lots of power roles and lots of potential for fooling a cop. But I will think about the cop shot. It's mostly included for flair, because why wouldn't Van Helsing carry a vial with holy water to test his targets?
What if I got rid of the watch instead?
Trickster's power is very much dependent on whether scum have a strongman. Maybe just nerf them back to 1-shot and down to 1 point.
I understand why you made the modification to angel. But I personally would hate having that role, and I suspect most people would not enjoy it, because it puts so much emphasis on predicting whether you're going to die, and if you're wrong, you can singlehandedly screw town over. You could just allow the angel to get a vengekill whether they get lynched or NK'd. That would probably make it a 2, since fakeclaiming it is suicide and nightkilling it is dangerous.
I could make the invis active and non-consecutive, which would make it about as useful as a commuter (about as, because commuters dodge even strong kills). Do you think that's worth 1 or 2 points?
As for the angel, originally it was a vengeful bomb, but I thought that was WAY overpowered since it's guaranteed to kill scum. I like your idea that gives it a vengekill instead, BUT doesn't that make it even swingier than normal? If it kills town, that's 2 townies down in one night. I could get around this by making the night kill only work on cop guilties, and have the role be worth two points, but I don't know if that'll be balanced or not.
About the scum roles, the points seem about right, although I don't think zombie should be 3, it probably should just not exist at all. (How awful would it be to lose as town after lynching scum in LYLO because you happened to lynch the one that comes back to life?)
I've played a game on another site whose setup included an almost identical to the zombie role. It was great for fakeclaiming and wasting a lynch, but not much else. Vig/sk and even vengeful make it considerably less powerful than it normally would be. You do have a point that it would suck lynching the "wrong" scum at LYLO and losing the game, but that's also the danger with lynching an SK. It just means LYLO comes 1 vote earlier.
I think there are things in mafia that are just impossible to balance well to everyone's satisfaction. In newbie games, having one scum lynched D1 is almost 100% town win. If that scum is a roleblocker, town just follows the cop. It's super boring and cheesy but we've accepted it as part of the game. Don't get lynched as a mafia roleblocker before the cop dies.
I think zombies aren't nearly as gamebreaking as protected cops who can clear people faster than scum can kill them. But, if people feel that lynchproof scum is irredeemably unfair and punishing the town for guessing right, I will just think of something else to replace the zombie with. I'm not super attached to it at all, I just think it synergises with the rest of the setup.
One caveat is that many of the scum roles only seem useful against certain town roles. As callforjudgement (the best reviewer I know) said in response to my setup, with a similar idea:
In post 4, callforjudgement wrote:One awkwardness in the setup is that the immunity roles (such as the Godfather) might randomly end up not protecting against anything; perhaps picking the Godfather should force there to be a killing or role-investigation role in the setup (likewise for Framer forcing a role-investigation role, Roleblocker forcing an active role).
This issue applies to almost every scum role; avenger is useless with no vig, tailor and godfather are useless with no cop, strongman is useless with no doc or bulletproof. Perhaps my proposed solution to this problem could work for you: allowing scum to pick how MANY points they want, then letting them see exactly what roles town get before choosing what roles they want.
You're absolutely correct. That was my initial design, but then it turned out to be better to just not pick any powers. Why roleblocker if not picking it leaves nothing decent to roleblock anyway? Why strongman if there's no trickster otherwise?
If you do go with my point rework, you'll probably need to adjust the balance of points between the two factions. Off the top of my head, it seems like town might be balanced with 3 or 4 points if scum have none, so if you start scum with 2 you should start town with 5 or 6, depending on other balance considerations.
I like your point rework!
One, the duplicate role clause. I don't see why, if town gets one of a certain role, a second copy of that role adds more town utility. If anything, it adds less, because they'll be counterclaiming and stepping on each other's toes, as well as potentially targeting the same player and wasting potential. If you want to discourage role duplication, you could just ban it. This would work better if the scum know which PR's town have, so they don't randomly claim into a CC. If you don't go that route, I'd recommend just treating duplicate roles like any other.
This is actually one of the things I was influenced into by C9++, where one cop is worth one "Investigative" point, but two cops are worth 4 points. But if cops are worth 2 or 3 points, it will be redundant. I like your suggestion to have town draw their roles first and giving scum the opportunity to choose theirs during the pregame, based on what they know town have.
In this case, I might have to reinstate the different flavour for different kills so scum wouldn't be so much more informed compared to town.
Two, the SK. Certainly, SK's are a question where the MS community is split. I fall pretty strongly into the anti-SK camp, because of the types of games I prefer, but I'll endeavor to keep all points of view in mind, as I know there are many players who like them, or at least don't dislike them. But I do believe, as a designer, that everything should serve a purpose in the setup, and the SK seems like an unnecessary intrusion of the theme.
When I designed the theme the first time, town had no vig except the hunter's shot. The SK was included to fill in that role and pose more threat to the zombie in general. I like SKs over vigs because one bad vig who only shoots town is really frustrating for town, whereas the SK is scum so it's more excusable. SKs can also be endgamed by scum so they'll naturally want to kill scum if town's numbers dwindle too much, but if the scum become too few, the SK will want to shoot town again. It's kind of self-balancing that way I feel?
Plus, the death knight / avenger was included to reduce swing from the SK, that's why originally an SK would only enter the game if scum had a death knight or too few powers. Now that I *mindlessly* (:P) copied the 50% from C9, and included a full vig, the SK no longer filled its niche. I know you're against them on principle, but if you had to choose between vig and SK for this setup, which one would you keep?
Sorry for yet another text wall. I didn't intend to write so much, but this is an idea with many complexities and intricacies and I find it interesting to discuss
. Bear in mind, of course, that everything I say is my opinion. Also, a lot of my more qualitative review comments hinge on whether I would find the role or mechanic enjoyable, and I am clearly not a representative sample of MS players.
I will say, though, if this continues the way it seems to be going... I would totally play in it.
It's totally fine!! When it comes to forums I prefer text walls, they save time compared to bite-sized segments split over 12 hour intervals
Thank you so much for the quality reviews and the warm reception!
I would love to host a game with it in future, even if I'm the only one who ever does it