Newbie Game Stats, and Solution?

[Patrick]

I would certainly like to think playing a Newbie game with me is a fair learning experience.

[Yosarian2]

Well, one suggestion I made a while ago to balanace newbie games was to make them all have a cop, and just flip a coin to see if they also have a doc or not; that would eliminate the "day one cop claim" breaking stratagy but would be better for the town then the currect setup.

[Mr. Flay]

No most computers don't come with it, it's a fairly pricey program.

However I can send you the file in a format that has the executable version of Access attached, probably (not tomorrow, work will be stupidly busy). Hope the file's not too large.

Nevermind, took another look and I don't have the version that can make portable databases. I'll either have to recode it in MySQL or figure out another way to import the data.

Are you able to extract cop-only stats and doc-only stats for those 100/99 games, PJ?

[Save The Dragons]

you guys are making me feel bad about my loss as scum, twice at the hands of bertrand.

[petroleumjelly]

Are you able to extract cop-only stats and doc-only stats for those 100/99 games, PJ

Yes, I could alter my stats for that purpose. Do you mean games with only 1 Cop, and games with only 1 Doc, though? Games with both power roles should (although I technically haven't checked to make sure) end up with a power role getting lynched more often. Any way you want me to arrange the data, I should be able to do it so long as I can find time.

[Fiasco]

Beat People to Death with a First Aid Kit Mafia

2 mafia
1 doctor
1 cop
3 townies

When the mafia nightkills the doctor, they immediately get to use the doctor's first aid kit to beat someone else to death and make a little speech about irony. That is, they get another nightkill.

Optional rule: the doctor survives. In either case, if the doctor is targeted, the doctor's protective ability doesn't work that night, and the second nightkill target dies.

Probably too abnormal to make for a good newbie standard, but the logic behind it is to make a minimal change to the old newbie setup that makes mass claim a bad strategy.

Would a mass cop (but not doc) claim still break this? I wasn't around back in those times. It probably would. Bah.

[Fiasco]

I guess a better description would be:

Beat People to Death with a First Aid Kit Mafia

2 mafia
1 doctor
1 cop
3 townies

Day start. If the doctor is nightkilled, skip the next day. (Optional rule: Resurrect the doctor the morning after.)

Unless people think this is broken, I'll nominate it as an Open.

[Brutal Assassin]

Given the nature of the games, Newbie, I'd say that wouldn't work. We're trying to give new players a sample of what Mafia is like and some of the basic gameplay rules. Throwing in rules not seen in any other games is just confusing for new players.

Can try it as an open setup I guess, but that would make End-Games real unbalanced. Or rather, would end an end-game real quick.

[mith]

Fiasco, I don't think the strategy in the original newbie setup was ever a full mass claim; the numbers I ran were just for the cop coming out day 1 and no lynching (and then the Mafia has to try to hit the doc).

[petroleumjelly]

I think that set-up will almost always end up with a scum win, Fiasco.

1.) The town can lynch a Town D1, Mafia kill the Doctor N1, get an extra kill, kill anybody, making it 2 v 2 and a scum win.
2.) The town can lynch a Town D1, the Doctor can protect correctly N1, and the town could:
-

A

: Have the Doctor claim who they protected, clearing somebody, which could end with lynching scum, scum kill Doctor N2, and somebody else N2.5, leaving the town at LyLo instead of normal 4-player endgame with a possible Cop alive.
-

B

: No-Lynch, and then scum might kill Doctor N2, get an extra kill, kill a townsperson N2.5, making it 2 v 2 and a scum win.
3.) Even if the town manages to lynch scum D1, if the remaining scum can kill the Doctor N1 and another townsperson N1.5, instead of the town getting two chances to lynch scum, they will only get

one

because it will be 3 v 1, even possibly without the Cop.

... and so on. I think that set-up would only scare newbies away from ever claiming or hinting at Doctor. Also, it would frighten people out of claiming

anything

, because even claiming townie narrows down who the Doctor is. The best strategy for the Doctor would probably be to just claim Townie!

Further, this set-up essentially makes the Doctor role completely useless: a successful block means little to nothing if the Doctor dies the next night, because the scum will simply get their kill back, and be able to use it nearer to the end of the game, when it could be crucial.

That set-up gives way too much incentive for scum to find the Doctor. If they are successful, they can kill the Cop directly afterwards, obliterating both power roles in one fell swoop.

I also agree with Brutal Assassin - strange rules only applicable to Newbie games are probably not the way to go.

[Fiasco]

Mith: I see. I'm not sure a cop-only claim is a no-brainer in this modified setup. By claiming D1, the cop runs some risk (usually 1/3) of getting himself killed N1.5. In return he probably gets some credibility. Not sure what I'd do myself.

1.) The town can lynch a Town D1, Mafia kill the Doctor N1, get an extra kill, kill anybody, making it 2 v 2 and a scum win.
2.) The town can lynch a Town D1, the Doctor can protect correctly N1, and the town could:
-

A

: Have the Doctor claim who they protected, clearing somebody, which could end with lynching scum, scum kill Doctor N2, and somebody else N2.5, leaving the town at LyLo instead of normal 4-player endgame with a possible Cop alive.
-

B

: No-Lynch, and then scum might kill Doctor N2, get an extra kill, kill a townsperson N2.5, making it 2 v 2 and a scum win.
3.) Even if the town manages to lynch scum D1, if the remaining scum can kill the Doctor N1 and another townsperson N1.5, instead of the town getting two chances to lynch scum, they will only get

one

because it will be 3 v 1, even possibly without the Cop.

Those are all exceptional cases. Usually the scum aren't going to hit the doctor, and usually the doctor isn't going to protect correctly. Remember that there will probably be a cop claim on day 1 or day 2 that will help the town; usually the cop should get 1 or 2 investigations in, I think.

You may still be right that the double kill is too harsh on the town. If that's true, you could still use the rule where the doctor lives.

I think that set-up would only scare newbies away from ever claiming or hinting at Doctor. Also, it would frighten people out of claiming

anything

, because even claiming townie narrows down who the Doctor is. The best strategy for the Doctor would probably be to just claim Townie!

But that's a good thing! Pro-town roles should usually want to keep their exact role a secret. That's already true to an extent in other games, only there it's limited because the mafia takes more time to kill off power roles once they're out.

Further, this set-up essentially makes the Doctor role completely useless: a successful block means little to nothing if the Doctor dies the next night, because the scum will simply get their kill back, and be able to use it nearer to the end of the game, when it could be crucial.

The double kill rule would make the doctor more dangerous to the town, of course, but I don't see how it would make his healing ability useless. Getting a protect in may make the difference between 3 vs 2 and 2 vs 2 if the doctor is killed later.

I also agree with Brutal Assassin - strange rules only applicable to Newbie games are probably not the way to go.

That's true. Again, it would probably do better as an Open. But I'm not convinced it's a bad setup, especially with the "doctor lives" rule.

Come to think of it: if you use the "doctor lives" rule, it's almost like a version of Pie C9 where the blocker can only block the doctor and not the cop. Which would be a viable setup in itself, IMHO.

[Mr. Flay]

Are you able to extract cop-only stats and doc-only stats for those 100/99 games, PJ

Yes, I could alter my stats for that purpose. Do you mean games with only 1 Cop, and games with only 1 Doc, though? Games with both power roles should (although I technically haven't checked to make sure) end up with a power role getting lynched more often. Any way you want me to arrange the data, I should be able to do it so long as I can find time.

Yeah, I wasn't very clear. I want to know how many games had a cop, how many games had no cop, how many games had a doc, and how many games had no doc, independent of whether the other power role was there. Ideally random number generation should give them each a 50% chance, and I don't know how to do chi-squares for two degrees of freedom. For right now I just want to know more about our is/was-C9-random-or-not question...

Also a clarification on your original four numbers would be nice, as I think I read them correctly as 10 MMTTTTT, 22 MMDTTTT, 31 MMCTTTT, and 36 MMCDTTT? And if you're going to do it in Excel, I can send you my schema for the database. Access can pull in a lot of Excel data faster than I can type it in; if you've already done a lot of legwork, I'd greatly appreciate it.

[IH]

some people get disheartened when they suck

then they dont come back.

LAWL

[Yosarian2]

Mith: I see. I'm not sure a cop-only claim is a no-brainer in this modified setup. By claiming D1, the cop runs some risk (usually 1/3) of getting himself killed N1.5. In return he probably gets some credibility. Not sure what I'd do myself.

Basically, the theory is that the day 1 cop claim means that the doc will protect the cop, which prevents a night 1 cop death. In a normal newbie game, that insures the town gets at least one cop investigation, and if the scum don't kill the doc night 1 (which isn't very likely unless they're good at picking up doc tells), the cop will probably get 2 or 3 investigations, which pretty much always means a loss for the scum. The whole idea of the random setup was that the cop can't claim if he dosn't know if there's a doc or not.

[IH]

Yeah, there is another way to reinstitute C9.

Make cop claim a modkillable offense.

[Fiasco]

Basically, the theory is that the day 1 cop claim means that the doc will protect the cop, which prevents a night 1 cop death.

Doh! Of course. The cop claim is so the doc knows who to protect. It's not obvious to me that it would help (what if the scum claim doc when in danger of lynch?), but apparently people have gone through the analysis.

My setup doesn't have this problem; claiming cop just changes the mafia's problem from finding the cop to finding the doc (with one candidate, the cop, now ruled out).

[Kelly Chen]

Yeah, there is another way to reinstitute C9.

Make cop claim a modkillable offense.

Hilarious

Can you at least claim your results?

[MrBuddyLee]

I know this is anecdotal, but I'm 5-1 as town in newbie games. I love the challenge, and it's fun to teach the new players how to be good town regardless of outcome. Fritz and MeMe set great examples as scumhunters and cautious players in my first game, though I must admit the Fritz thing puzzled me at first. I probably wouldn't have stuck around if it weren't for the good examples they set.

So yeah, keep separate stats or whatever. Aspire to a 50% win percentage as town. And most importantly, help create more good town via your influence. After all, that's the main goal of newbie games.

But yeah, the game should stay as simple as possible to help teach the most basic principles.

[MrBuddyLee]

Also, how much of the "town is more likely to be on a lynch of town" is due to the fact that there are 4 town and only 2 scum who could be on it?

[Fiasco]

Not enough -- each

individual

townie is more likely to be on a town lynch than each

individual

scum (though not by much).

[Kelly Chen]

For fun I tried to go through the completed minis from 250 on. The stats weren't as interesting as I hoped, so I'll just post them in this thread...

Regular Minis (seven-player games excluded):
100.0%, 43 games total
44.2%, 19 mafia wins
32.6%, 14 town wins
20.9%, 9 abandoned
2.3%, 1 draw

Themed Minis:
100%, 62 games total
60.0%, 37 town wins
22.6%, 14 mafia wins
9.7%, 6 abandoned
4.8%, 3 other scum wins or scum draws
1.6%, 1 draw
1.6%, 1 win with town/mafia distinction not determined

It might have been better to leave out abandoned games that never took off at all...

[IH]

I personally think that no setups will give the town a 50% win percentage.

It's newbies, unless they've played before, they're going to have problems, they're going to think lurking is ok, they're going to think that they can't get anywhere without a cop, they're going to think that they can't change their votes.

And I'll be damned if there isn't a game somewhere, where a first post isn't similar to

L0L U R TEH M4FIA!1

I think that the only problem with these games is that they could get VERY discouraging...

Anyone know the odds for 5 town newbies and 2 IC scum?

[Yosarian2]

It's newbies, unless they've played before, they're going to have problems, they're going to think lurking is ok, they're going to think that they can't get anywhere without a cop, they're going to think that they can't change their votes.

That is somewhat balanced out, though, by the fact that newbie scum tend to self destruct early quite often, sometimes bringing down their scumbuddies with them.

Doh! Of course. The cop claim is so the doc knows who to protect. It's not obvious to me that it would help (what if the scum claim doc when in danger of lynch?), but apparently people have gone through the analysis.

The breaking stratagy went like this:

Cop claim day 1.

No lynch. (Avoids any risk of outing the doc day 1, slows the game down to give the town more cop investigations).

Day 2, lynch a scum if the cop found a guilty; otherwise no lynch. (Only a 1 in 4 chance of the doc being killed night 1, which is about the only way this plan ever loses).

Day 3, cop reveals two investigations. Town almost always wins at this point. If the doc's still alive, OR if both people the cop investigated are still alive, then it's a 100% guarenteed win, I believe. Even if not, the odds are still in the town's favor.

The stratagy let the town win most of the games, and what's worse it didn't rely at all on the town scum-hunting or scumtells or any of the things that makes mafia fun, which basically completly ruined it as a learning experence.

My setup doesn't have this problem; claiming cop just changes the mafia's problem from finding the cop to finding the doc (with one candidate, the cop, now ruled out).

Well...perhaps. It would make the "cop claims" stratagy more risky, at least.

[Zindaras]

I know this is anecdotal, but I'm 5-1 as town in newbie games. I love the challenge, and it's fun to teach the new players how to be good town regardless of outcome. Fritz and MeMe set great examples as scumhunters and cautious players in my first game, though I must admit the Fritz thing puzzled me at first. I probably wouldn't have stuck around if it weren't for the good examples they set.

So yeah, keep separate stats or whatever. Aspire to a 50% win percentage as town. And most importantly, help create more good town via your influence. After all, that's the main goal of newbie games.

But yeah, the game should stay as simple as possible to help teach the most basic principles.

This is pretty much how I see it. You're there to teach the new guys how to play the game, to show them how it's supposed to be done. I aspire to set an example and to interest the players in the game. A challenging setup just makes it more interesting.

Anyone know the odds for 5 town newbies and 2 IC scum?

That's pretty easy. 2/7*1/6=1/21.

[Fiasco]

Yosarian: that does look like it'd work, but what if you disallowed no-lynch?