How can you tell when a set up is balenced?

[Fircoal]

IS there any way to tell when a set up is balanced?

[Mr Stoofer]

No. Not for certain. Even after the game has ended.

The best you can do is use your experience, and ask others for their opinion. If you post in the Set-up Review thread, someone will offer to help. I'll always give my opinion on a Large Normal Game if I'm asked. I'm a bit too busy at the moment to help out on other games.

[Fircoal]

No. Not for certain. Even after the game has ended.

The best you can do is use your experience, and ask others for their opinion. If you post in the Set-up Review thread, someone will offer to help. I'll always give my opinion on a Large Normal Game if I'm asked. I'm a bit too busy at the moment to help out on other games.

I already know about the Set-up review thread, but thanks for your input.

[Jack]

Well, you can make sure that no one person can have a huge effect on the game. For example, I played in a game once which had a cop who could investigate two people a night and roleblock them at the same time...lol. Bad idea.

[Fircoal]

Well, you can make sure that no one person can have a huge effect on the game. For example, I played in a game once which had a cop who could investigate two people a night and roleblock them at the same time...lol. Bad idea.

What about a mafia person who knows all of the roles and can roleblock 2 people, and still keeps their NK.

[Kelly Chen]

We sort of had that in Switch Mafia, where the scum could disable two out of three of the cop, doc, and vig, without knowing who they were.

It was criticized that this made the game practically vanilla. Some roles (cop and usually the vig) will just always be the block choices.

You can go a long way balancing a setup by looking at the most extreme directions the game can go. I always look at the best and worst case scenarios for the town and scum. If any possible result looks ridiculously unfair, then it's probably not balanced well.

[Fircoal]

We sort of had that in Switch Mafia, where the scum could disable two out of three of the cop, doc, and vig, without knowing who they were.

It was criticized that this made the game practically vanilla. Some roles (cop and usually the vig) will just always be the block choices.

You can go a long way balancing a setup by looking at the most extreme directions the game can go. I always look at the best and worst case scenarios for the town and scum. If any possible result looks ridiculously unfair, then it's probably not balanced well.

Sorry, for being noobish but how do look at the most extreme directions, when you have many different roles it might be hard.

[Fuldu]

Well, one place to start is to think about what would be the worst thing that could happen the first night for each group. Usually these are pretty unlikely outcomes, but they're certainly possible. If any group (leaving out singles like SK or, for N1 anyway, cult leaders) can be put in a position where luck of the draw could have them start the game totally outmatched, it's probably not a balanced set up.

You can do the same thing for subsequent days and nights, but it generally becomes too difficult to track, and also, by that time, if the worst possible thing happens to a group on a particular night, it's probably as a result of something they've done wrong, not luck of the draw.

[Yaw]

I normally do a basic check by assuming every role that can kill will do so at every opportunity, and that they'll all hit pro-town players. That tells me the minimum number of days the game could run, which is also the number of chances the town has to kill scum. I find it's best if the town gets around 3 to 4 chances before the game ends. Two chances is ok, but I personally think it's a bit too few.

Otherwise, just try to get an impression of how roles might interact. This is more where experience comes in, though, and you'll find each mod has a different opinion on relative strengths of roles. (I would rarely if ever include a role that couldn't be killed at night, for example, as I've played in such roles before and found them to be game-breaking. Others have had different experiences with that sort of role.) Even for the most experienced of us, though, there are going to be interactions we don't anticipate. (In the first game I modded, there was an insane cop and a mafia framer. They both targetted the same person the first two nights, giving the cop an innocent results. Then on the third night, the cop targetted the godfather, and of course got a guilty. I don't think anyone could have seen that one coming.)

The last thing to look at is the actual role names, and details you give in PMs. Make sure that the scum have the ability to reasonably claim roles that will seem pro-town. You don't want a situation like in The Hobbit Mafia where all the pro-town roles had important role names, and the scum had to make claims like "random hobbit down the street from Bilbo". It makes scum far too easy to pick off.

[Fircoal]

ok I see your first modding game was good for the insane cop. I'm modding a game, and I can tell which of the odd roles, I'm not going include. I haven't tried giving out role names yet, but I might.

[Mr Stoofer]

Like Yaw, I work out the worst case scenarios for each side, then consider how likely that it, and then consider how bad that scenario is.

if that game is (barring freak eventualities) still winnable by either side after several days, then that's the best you can hope for, in most cases.

I also often design games by strating with a game that has finished, which was shown to be balanced, and tinkering with that.