Bastard games - does anyone actually like them?

[Majiffy]

Dont rebalance games on the fly. Not a hard concept. If you made a shit setup, you made a shit setup. Swallow the pill and take a swig.

[ZZZX]

Dont rebalance games on the fly. Not a hard concept. If you made a shit setup, you made a shit setup. Swallow the pill and take a swig.

Is this talking about my setup? o.o

[Muffin]

I like bastard games every now and then because people go into them with a different attitude.

I find sometimes people get SUUUUPER invested in the outcome of the game and things get nasty. I myself have been guilty of this and it's something I am trying to stop doing.

Bastard games tend to have a more collegial, light-hearted atmosphere that makes a nice break from srs bsns large themes or whatever.

[PokerFace]

I like bastard mafia games a lot

What you played was a bastard mod game

There's a difference. One is fun for all, heavily swingy but somewhat balanced. The other is something I'd never run or play

[quadz08]

that is a vocabulary distinction I have never seen made before?

[Vampirate]

I like bastard mafia games a lot

What you played was a bastard mod game

There's a difference. One is fun for all, heavily swingy but somewhat balanced. The other is something I'd never run or play

Thing is when it comes to bastard games the line is subjective. But i'll repeat myself, the bastardization has to fit in with the theme of the game.

[ArcAngel9]

My understand about bastard games is having roles that are not normal and have some extreme effects. Bastard doesn't mean improper games.. the right term is imbalanced game. Your example doesn't make any sense, It is not a mafia. No mod would ever one to run a game like that and feel good about it. I wont even care to sign up such games. Like others said.. Bastard games are fun becuz of the geeky roles not because it is unplayable.

No body wants to play a game that is unplayable.

[Cthulhu Dreaming]

My understand about bastard games is having roles that are not normal and have some extreme effects. Bastard doesn't mean improper games.. the right term is imbalanced game. Your example doesn't make any sense, It is not a mafia. No mod would ever one to run a game like that and feel good about it. I wont even care to sign up such games. Like others said.. Bastard games are fun becuz of the geeky roles not because it is unplayable.

No body wants to play a game that is unplayable.

Total agreement with everything here. I would never have signed up for that particular game had I known what was in store - nor am I the least bit interested in playing a game that the particular mod has anything to do with.

[BROseidon]

Giving the scum information about the setup is always delicate business, though - although most scum won't use the information properly anyway, being risk-averse and etc.

Giving players incremental information about the setup is good design in certain cases. Same with giving it to townies.

[BROseidon]

Also, ITT people bashing bastard games who are okay with things like Godfather, Ninja, etc.

[BROseidon]

A really important thing is expected outcomes. If a player expects X, they should generally get X when it comes to information, this includes:

1) Their role PM being honest
2) The mod being honest about given information (i.e., a cop inno is, in fact, confirmed town)
3) Actions resolving the way the mod says they would (and the mod being willing to answer all hypothetical resolution questions, regardless of the role's presence in the game)

A big thing with #2 is that if you want to include something like a GF, you can tell the cop that a GF exists in the game so that they KNOW their innocents have a certain % of being false. Because you know what really sucks? When town loses a game because a cop investigated a GF; it's not fun for anyone involved.

[BROseidon]

(Also, things that strongly defy expectations like scum getting a daykill are kind of borderline)

[Vi]

Giving the scum information about the setup is always delicate business, though - although most scum won't use the information properly anyway, being risk-averse and etc.

Giving players incremental information about the setup is good design in certain cases. Same with giving it to townies.

I don't disagree, but I'm saying that it's easy to do poorly. But, isn't all game design that way? The difference is that ba*d games are the type where the moderator intentionally goes into unknown or risky design territory.

(Also, things that strongly defy expectations like scum getting a daykill are kind of borderline)

I disagree. One of the core rules of my games and others from when these sorts of games were commonplace is that

confirmed role != confirmed alignment

.

The problem with scum daykills is that you have to balance a setup around them. Do that poorly, and the Town won't have a chance; when that comes out in postgame your game will get torn apart. However, it's worth it to subvert the meta that

dayvigs are always pro-Town

(because that's true so often that nobody questions it).

1) Their role PM being honest
2) The mod being honest about given information (i.e., a cop inno is, in fact, confirmed town)
3) Actions resolving the way the mod says they would (and the mod being willing to answer all hypothetical resolution questions, regardless of the role's presence in the game)

These are actually in diminishing order of what I would consider important as a player.

Mod notes on Role PMs (e.g.

Mod note: Role does not actually do anything.

) are a lot funnier to the moderator than they are to a player, and if there's any reason to disbelieve the role I would be polite enough to use fuzzy language in the Role PM - though I do that a lot anyway.

The expectation that the moderator is always telling

the truth

is not a good one because Godfathers (or if you have a classy mod, Tailors) and (much less common outside more wacky Themes) Redirectors exist and they have for a long time, so there's really not much of an excuse for at least considering it. SIDEBAR 1: If you're concerned about this as a mod, it may be interesting to tell a player that no roles exist that can falsify a Cop's results. SIDEBAR 2: Ninja is a dumb role because Tracker was originally a Cop Lite, i.e. the idea was that the role was weaker than Cop on its own and Godfathers/Millers were not necessary to weaken it further. Ditto Gunsmith but for different reasons (you don't see "Paranoid Gunsmith").

Action resolution is something that should generally be self-explanatory for a role in isolation, but usually gets muddied when someone

else

claims a seemingly implausible role. In that case, the moderator is under no obligation to answer these things directly beyond "how do you think this role works? it works like you say" until the role's existence and its effects are confirmed.

[callforjudgement]

Bastard games work best when the bastardness is in the setup, not in the moderation style.

I liked Worst Role Mafia (the one I played in, IIRC the first), despite unquestionably being bastard. It was entirely possible to scumhunt, you could have a pretty good idea of how most of your actions would affect the game, and there weren't that many instances of people getting screwed over by things they couldn't possibly have known about (at one point, my faction was hurt by an unlucky result on a random role, but we managed to win anyway).

[BROseidon]

However, it's worth it to subvert the meta that dayvigs are always pro-Town (because that's true so often that nobody questions it).

This is honestly fine. Vig effectively being "IC at the cost of a player" is an interesting role.

[BROseidon]

The expectation that the moderator is always telling the truth is not a good one because Godfathers (or if you have a classy mod, Tailors) and (much less common outside more wacky Themes) Redirectors exist and they have for a long time, so there's really not much of an excuse for at least considering it. SIDEBAR 1: If you're concerned about this as a mod, it may be interesting to tell a player that no roles exist that can falsify a Cop's results. SIDEBAR 2: Ninja is a dumb role because Tracker was originally a Cop Lite, i.e. the idea was that the role was weaker than Cop on its own and Godfathers/Millers were not necessary to weaken it further. Ditto Gunsmith but for different reasons (you don't see "Paranoid Gunsmith").

You missed the part where I said that Godfathers should be considered bastard (and the only reason they aren't is because of site norms, not because of game design principles). Godfather is a really shitty role; using it is honestly shitty-ass modding.

The redirector thing is solved by returning investigative results as "X is blank" or "X went Y" so that redirects are "caught" by the investigator. Yeah, this gimps redirector a bit, but it gimps it in a good way that prevents the role from being unfun to deal with in edge cases.

[BROseidon]

A cop hitting a godfather or being redirected off scum to get an inno without realizing it is always a bad result, imo.

[Vi]

I'm not sure whether I agree or disagree. In a vacuum, results should be accurate. However, for the Cop and no other role, the assumption can be made that your results are not always accurate because of the existence of relatively common roles that specifically falsify Cop results. I'd also add that one weakness of most Mafia games is that it's not known at the beginning of the game which elements are in the game (e.g. whether there is a chance that there is a Godfather). Thus, if it concerns you so much, a solution that satisfies all parties would be for the moderator to specify that there may be roles that can falsify results in the game.

...but most people would assume that anyway.

[BROseidon]

If there were a godfather and cop in any game that I'm in, the cop would be told that a godfather exists at the start. Not doing that is objectively bad game design.

[quadz08]

I think it is subjectively bad game design, actually, but I don't think you're making a bad point

[BROseidon]

I mean, everything in game design is subjective in as much as fun is subjective.

That said, nobody has ever said "I feel really great about that time I won because the cop investigated me and I was a godfather. That was the pinnacle of a fun game."

[FakeGod]

but then andrew94 vigged a cop inno who flips godfather

I bet he felt like the god of scumhunting in that moment

[Tere]

I think it depends if you are working in a site meta where godfather is common. I've done that, but I get the impression it's less common in MS. So down to individual preferences.

[Untrod Tripod]

I mean, everything in game design is subjective in as much as fun is subjective.

That said, nobody has ever said "I feel really great about that time I won because the cop investigated me and I was a godfather. That was the pinnacle of a fun game."

you're someone who gets a lot of enjoyment out of figuring out a game and deducing everything that is happening

I, on the other hand, enjoy manipulating my surroundings and getting the result I want. I never consider information to be confirmed until the player flips. godfathers are always possible in explicitly not-normal games.

Godfather is just a hard counter to a cop, the same way a doctor is a hard counter to mafia or a bulletproof is a hard counter to a vig.

I think you find GF to be bad design because it introduces a facet of the game you don't like, not because it's objectively bad design.

[Bicephalous Bob]

A rolestopper for cops is more akin to a doctor, and an ascetic is more analogous to a bulletproof

Even a strongman isn't quite like a godfather, since it'd be immediately clear to a doctor their protection was tampered with

An unannounced godfather is just a shitty role