[REVIEW] Open Setup Reviews

[Yosarian2]

I think Near Vanilla is probably scum-sided balance-wise as well. I'd be interested in seeing what Yos thinks about it. Personally, I don't mind it, but I know my tastes are different from a lot of people. If it was to be included, I feel like town would need a little something extra to help them out.

Yeah, it's probably a little scum sided.

When I first made it, it was both the first game with the jail-keeper role, and the first normal 13 player setup I knew of, so I wasn't sure how to balance it.

I don't think it's too far off, though. Town has won it 2 out of 6 games it's been run. It probably doesn't need much of a change to make it balanced. How about just adding one more person, boosting it up to a 14 player game? That means that if either the doctor or the jailkeeper manage to stop one kill (which is pretty likely; about a 23% chance on night 1 alone, and higher on later nights), then that gives town another day, giving town 7 chance to find 3 scum. If neither power role ever stops a kill, then town has 6 chances to find 3 scum. The setup should probably have an even number of people for just that reason, to reward town power roles for succeeding.

I think the game it would go well in today's environment. Today's play environment is very much about finding town tells and "obv-town" people, to a much larger extent then was true a few years ago; it seems like a setup where town can keep obv-town people alive with doctors that don't have any power roles to protect would be quite interesting in today's meta.

[Yosarian2]

I believe the binning is because Assassin in the Palace's optimal strategy is "Bandwagon the very first vote in a Day, absolutely no talking"

No, of course it's not; it's actually worse to start a bad bandwagon in an AITP game then in a normal game. Just because some people don't understand how to play the game, doesn't make it a bad game.

[Yosarian2]

I. Win conditions

If 1:1:1 is considered a mafia win 2:2:1 consequently needs to be added to the list of mafia wins, too. It just makes no sense to declare one kingmaker situation for town a win but not the other.

(shakes head)

The reason that 1:1:1 is a mafia win is that a pure kingmaker endgame sucks, and also, if mafia didn't win ties, then there's no way a mafia could win if he's the last member of is scumgroup.

2:2:1, though, is quite different. At that point, no one knows who is in what scumgroup for sure, no-lynch isn't an option since that just gives the game to the wolves, and it comes down to an actual game of mafia where each scum group is trying to lynch the other for the win.

[Yosarian2]

No, of course it's not; it's actually worse to start a bad bandwagon in an AITP game then in a normal game. Just because some people don't understand how to play the game, doesn't make it a bad game.

I understand how to play the game just fine. I also understand how to play Dethy just fine. I've played fun games of Assassin in the Palace. I've played fun games of Dethy. Assassin in the Palace still has a breaking strategy that is not only unfun, but if followed gives the town a > 50% chance of winning based on EV, as does Dethy.

Deathy is broken. AITP is not.

The first thing is that the "breaking stratagy" you're talking about ("lynch non-kings at random without giving scum any information") isn't actually possible. If you're lynching non-kings, then the scum will get information in the process. And you're likely to do worse then random, since the scum can also start wagons.

Second problem is that the more days the game goes before the assassin gets lynched, the worse the odds for the town get. Lynching at random is just a bad idea when you can do better, and you can do better.