[OLD] Open Setup Ideas and Discussion

[shos]

So, failing to get this filled in the micro queue, I figured I'll try to make this an open.

In the past I've run this setup (as closed theme), the smallest possible multiball, after Shark Mafia failed miserably to do it 9p:

Old and still supercool

Mafia A Goon
Mafia A Roleblocker

Mafia B Goon
Mafia B Roleblocker

1xBP townie
1xBP townie
1xBP townie

and people thought it was amazing and cool, and it indeed was.

Trying to make this an open, I tried adding 2 town VTs for balance.

So, opinions?

New and Improved

Mafia A Goon
Mafia A Roleblocker

Mafia B Goon
Mafia B Roleblocker

3xBP townie
2xVT townie

[Creature]

The Witness

Rolelist:

Town Backup Vigilante
Town Backup 1-shot Doctor
Vanilla Town
Vanilla Town
Vanilla Town
Vanilla Town
Vanilla Town
Vanilla Town

Mafia Vigilante
Mafia 1-shot Doctor

Bulletproof Serial Killer

Mechanism:

Mafia is gunless.
A Witness will be chosen among the VTs.
The Witness won't be notified they are the witness.
Mafia will know who's the Witness.
Mafia must lynch the Witness.
The Serial Killer must nightkill the Witness themself.
Mafia/Town may shot the Witness without ending the game in a SK win.
Another Witness will be chosen and mafia will be notified.
Mafia can win if the Witness is lynched even if both are dead.

Win Conditions:

Town wins if they eliminate all threats.
Mafia wins if the Witness is lynched.
Serial Killer wins if they nightkill the Witness.

[JasonWazza]

Is there any reason for the mafia to not shoot the witness each night?

Simply to stop the serial killer.

[Creature]

Is there any reason for the mafia to not shoot the witness each night?

Well, maybe they'll do it, but if the Serial Killer attacks the Witness too, Serial Killer wins anyway.

[Ircher]

Seems SK and/or Mafia sided.

[mith]

You mean distancing?

I mean, sure, technically correct. But this seems like it warrants a stronger/more specific term than "distancing". Distancing is very broad, covering the spectrum from "vague suspicions thrown in the direction of a scumbuddy" to "throwing them under the bus, jumping in the driver's seat, running them over, and backing over their mangled corpse".

My current pet name for it is "whiplashing", as in playing the role of Snidely Whiplash, tying up your poor innocent scumbuddy on the train tracks only to have them saved at the last moment by the Dudley Do-Right of pairing analysis. #mithramblesaboutmafiavocab #mithisoldandusesoldreferences

[mith]

It just occurred to me that in a Red Flag setup as worded, there might actually be cases where Mafia would want to nightkill one of their own (that is, one of the Mafia might be so obvscum that they consider his/her immediate lynch more likely than town lynching a different scum in two chances).

Probably the wording should just be "Town wins when two Mafia are dead.", but maybe leaving it as "Town wins when two Mafia are lynched (or all Mafia are dead)." is slightly more interesting.

[Realeo]

So, opinions?

New and Improved

Mafia A Goon
Mafia A Roleblocker

Mafia B Goon
Mafia B Roleblocker

3xBP townie
2xVT townie

I think if you make this a day-start, this will be very optimal.

[shos]

So, opinions?

New and Improved

Mafia A Goon
Mafia A Roleblocker

Mafia B Goon
Mafia B Roleblocker

3xBP townie
2xVT townie

I think if you make this a day-start, this will be very optimal.

Day start, yes.
Note that without the VTs the game still was pretty good.
I'm wondering if this can work with just 1 VT? this will make him a sortof named townie. Possibly even stronger than 2 VTs for town?

[BBmolla]

Town should always have a majority. Even in multi ball.

[callforjudgement]

With respect to shos' setup: in the setup without VTs, town can just repeatedly no-lynch and wait for the scum to kill each other, then try to hunt down the remaining scumbag. This gives them a 50% chance of winning (which is the EV of a 3:1 nightless).

If the VTs are present, then this isn't obviously the optimal strategy for town, as the VTs would end up dying. But given that it has a 50% EV, town presumably have better win odds if there's a better strategy out there.

[BBmolla]

Oh wtf I thought they were one-shot bps lmao

[shos]

Oh, I am sorry. I did mean they be 1shot BO. This town with its bulldtproof modifiera is something kike a 5-6 man towbies. So majority ruke doesnt fit here.. that is the koint

[callforjudgement]

The Townbloc

• 6 Vanilla Townies
  
• 4 Mafia Goons (special nightkill rules, see below)
  
• Instead of lynching, players vote on a "townbloc" forming (exactly) half the playerlist. (Most likely, they'd vote individual players onto and off the bloc, then vote to hammer the bloc.)
  
• If a townbloc that contains no scum is ever hammered, town win.
  
• If a townbloc that contains every member of the scumteam is ever hammered, scum win.
  
• After three attempts to form a townbloc (i.e. three townblocs are hammered, none of which are no-scum or all-scum), the game goes to a night phase. This repeats until game over (i.e. it's basically a Triple Day mechanic).
  
• At night, scum kills a town player, but also sacrifices a member of their own scumteam.
  
• Additionally, there's a restriction on kill targets; either both the killed townie and sacrificed scum have to be on the most recent townbloc, or neither of them are.

One interesting fact about this setup is that it has 50% EV no matter what the number of scum and town are (so long as there's an even number of total players; otherwise, "half the playerlist" is ill-defined). However, the actual numbers of scum and town likely make a big difference to the actual

winrate

(not to mention swing, enjoyability, etc.), which is mostly just an indicator that EV is not the only thing that matters! 6:4 seems like it's in a fairly interesting place (and after nine indecisive townblocs, leads to a 3:1 ending that's guaranteed to end one way or another on the next attempt; I imagine deadlines would be set for entire days (i.e. three townbloc attempts), rather than individual attempts).

[JasonWazza]

Would it even be logically possible to get to the 3:1 ending without ever hitting the All or No scum ending?

I feel at that point, you probably haven't thought enough about the blocks.

[mith]

Yeah, it's pretty easy to counter the 50% EV claim. (The 50% EV would hold if all blocs were formed randomly without regard to information gained from previous blocs and nightkills, because if a random bloc is decisive one way its complement is decisive the other way.)

Counterexample:
4:2, indecisive bloc is hammered.
Information gained: there is one Mafia in each bloc.
Mafia is forced to nightkill one Mafia and one Townie. If the Townie is not in the same bloc as the Mafia, the town now has two confirmed townies and wins. Otherwise, the town has one confirmed townie, and can include that townie in the bloc with each other possibility, and a win is guaranteed.

So the EV for 4:2 is the chance of not hammering a scum win on the first attempt (if the first is indecisive, town can just hammer the same bloc two more times and go to night) - there's a 20% chance of the scum win, so EV is 80%.

[mith]

(It's an interesting idea though, and similar to The Coalition. One could mash up various pieces of this into The Coalition framework for some more variants.)

[callforjudgement]

I was reasoning on the basis that if a bloc's indecisive, there's not enough information to tell why. I'd missed that that wasn't the case when only 2 scum were left. (The scum controlling both kills was intended to allow scum to eliminate players who had been confirmed as town or scum.)

It might need a small mechanical tweak to allow for the balance issue, or might not. An earlier version of the setup just had scum win if town failed to hammer a townbloc at :2, and that would probably fix things here. Not sure though.

[Realeo]

Let us try this

Zombie game

7

healthy town

2

sick

zombie

Day start

with zombie having factional kill

. Nightless. The game follows the normal mechanic with a twist.

EDIT: It is now changed from nightless -> factional kill explain at 8779

During day phase, two players may

touch

if

both

agrees.

If two

sick

player touches each other, nothing happens.
If two healthy player touches each other, town

secretly

receives 1 point.
If one player is a

healthy town

while the other is

sick

town

or

sick

zombie

, the

healthy town

secretly

becomes

sick

town

.

As many touches can happen in a day, but two players who already touched each other may not touch again with each other for the rest of the game. (If in D1, Realeo touched with callforjudgement. Both Realeo and callforjudgement may not touch each other any more for the rest of the game, but I can still touch Mina and callforjudgement can still touch Mina.)

Town wins if both zombie is dead or town wins 10 points (that is 5 town touching each other. 5C2 = 10). Zombie wins if every town is dead (or nothing can prevent them) or everyone is sick.

[JasonWazza]

During day start, two players may

touch

if

both

agrees.

So is this only possible at day start (as in 24 hours sort of thing) or is it all day and you misworded?

[Realeo]

During day start, two players may

touch

if

both

agrees.

So is this only possible at day start (as in 24 hours sort of thing) or is it all day and you misworded?

Idiotism at my part. It's miswording.

[JasonWazza]

The best idea is to town hunt because of the need for only 5 touches, i'm sure there would be a way to break it by either forming blocks (a 4 man town block is an instant win for town a 3 man block is a win for town if your certain they are all town), or touching in a specific order.

[Realeo]

The best idea is to town hunt because of the need for only 5 touches, i'm sure there would be a way to break it by either forming blocks (a 4 man town block is an instant win for town a 3 man block is a win for town if your certain they are all town), or touching in a specific order.

I'm going to defend and discuss some point.

1) I believe you're under looking the difficulty of having 5 people town reading

each other

. 3 people townreading each other is manageable, 4 town townreading each other is tricky. 5 town townreading each other?

I believe 5 people is the magic number here. It's tough, but it's not the only winning objective they can pick. The bloc system that cfj and Mina proposes is the only winning condition, so I found it too strict?

2) And remember it only takes 1 incorrect town read screws it all.
3) Scumread is still necessary. If they lynch and the lynched guy flip zombie, they can backtrack who is sick and healthy and do crisis management.

This is going to be a subjective discussion. I'd like to hear your experience on townreading.

Question: Does setup that puts emphasis on townreading solely is bad?

[JasonWazza]

that is 5 town touching each other. 5C2 = 10

My bad i read this as 5 touches not 5 town doing a circle.

[mith]

I was reasoning on the basis that if a bloc's indecisive, there's not enough information to tell why. I'd missed that that wasn't the case when only 2 scum were left. (The scum controlling both kills was intended to allow scum to eliminate players who had been confirmed as town or scum.)

It might need a small mechanical tweak to allow for the balance issue, or might not. An earlier version of the setup just had scum win if town failed to hammer a townbloc at :2, and that would probably fix things here. Not sure though.

Any indecisive bloc gives the information that there is at least one Mafia and one Town in the bloc

and

in the bloc's complement. At X:2, that's game winning, but at larger counts it is still information that adds up. I suspect I can break 5:3 as well, messing around with that now.

A simple fix is to have Mafia nightkill one Townie, and then that Townie get a vengekill, and change the ratio (maybe 8:4). But figuring out the balance of something like that would be pretty difficult. Reducing the number of attempts per day would also help (4:2 after an indecisive bloc is no longer a guaranteed win if town only gets one or two chances at 3:1 and if scum win after they fail).

Let us try this

7:2 Nightless is already an EV of 56% for the town; town can obviously increase this a bit just by attempting a mass touching at the beginning of the game - there's a 1/6 chance that a random bloc of 5 will be all town, so just pick such a group and have them touch each other. If that doesn't insta-win, you can probably also increase the EV slightly with the additional information that at least one of the bloc must be scum.