[JANUARY CHALLENGE]

[Jingle]

I feel like for fairness I should say no, but also the point of this is to generate interesting open setups...
How about: you can post multiple setups, but either:
- I will find a way for the voting process to balance against your increased likelihood of winning, or
- You pick your fav by the 28th to actually be in the running, and the others will just exist in the world (its own prize, am I right?) w/o winning this challenge

Why?

I mean, if the point of the challenge is to create fun setups, why not let people submit multiple setups? The 'prize' is bragging rights for having created the best setup, and that's still valid if you submit one setup or 50.


Speaking of setups, raw as hell but:

2 Mafia Goon
1 Mafia Neighborizer/Poisoner

1 Weak Neighborizer
7 VT

Poisoner poisons everyone he neighborizes, they die at the beginning of the next night.

Probably needs EV tweaks, but I like the complexity strategy wise.

[Jingle]

Panic Room

11 players:

1 Mafia "Bomb" (Compulsive Multi-Vengeful)

2 Mafia Goons

1 Town "Recruiter" (Compulsive Day Neighborizer)

7 Vanilla Townies

• Upon the death of the Mafia Bomb, everyone not in the Neighborhood is killed. After this point, the game becomes nightless.
  
• The ability to recruit to the neighborhood is always passed on to the most recent recruit.
  
• If everyone in the neighborhood has died, the game continues on as Vanilla.

Who wins if everyone dies simultaneously? For example, Recruiter targets Bomb, lynch recruiter D1 lynch Bomb D2?

[Jingle]

You know what would be an interesting prize? Getting to choose the setup guidelines for the next Challenge if you want.

[Jingle]

seems great minds think alike

And Jingle's mind sometimes stumbles into the same vein.

[Jingle]

So they stop the protection of and protect the same player? Or do they target two people separately? I kinda dig it either way, tbh.

[Jingle]

Not an official submission:

3 Recruiting traitors

8 VT

Recruiting traitors target a player each night. If two cross target they become goons with a shared nk. ‘Nightless’ until then.

[Jingle]

Does the vig claim outcome need to be fixed?

Assuming vig claim D1, Vig is BP IC but the maf kill can be assumed to always work, and 2/3 of the scumteam is protected from kills every night. I could work out the math, but that doesn't seem overly townsided to me.

[Jingle]

Fair warning, I've submitted a bunch of your setups to the marathon open group (viewtopic.php?f=5&t=78147&p=10681845#p10681845). If any of you are offended by this, I think that's really weird that you wouldn't want people playing your game, but I'm sure we'll respect your wishes. Also, feel free to go over there and suggest more setups/get in on some marathon open mafia action.

/shameless promotion based on the idea that the two groups will have a lot of cross interest.

[Jingle]

There is a clear strategy... the Conspirator claims Day 1.

A missed kill is only an auto-loss for scum when there's only one scum left (scum can miss a kill at 4:3 without anything happening). As such, I don't see how this plan has a high enough town win chance to be worth trying.

You end up with a random townie dying N1, and a player of town's choice also dying N1; if town miss with both their D1 lynch and N1 vig, which is entirely possible, that takes the game down to 5:3 with one townie confirmed. If they hit with one, the game is 6:2 with one townie confirmed. Town's odds of winning from the first setup are near zero; from the second the best strategy is to forming a three-player townbloc, as you suggest (which is hard in a 6:2, there are 56 possible 3-player blocs and only 20 of them consist of three townies).

In order to win this, town pretty much have to try to block the scum kill early. Claiming would defeat the purpose of that.

Agreed. I think you'll get better results choosing a pool of ~4 probtown players that are valid bunker targets on D1 and then having the town players choose from that pool. That way there's no guarantee that any individual player is or isn't in the bunker, but the players who are most likely to be town are also the players who are least likely to get shot. Then when the Conspirator targets a player they bunker them the next night and get vig killed at the same time. That way, if the conspirator flips you know there's scum in the probtown pool and the PoE is relatively small.

[Jingle]

I added that red thing - the mafia player won't bunker, obviously.

But, if mafia is neighborized they're going to shoot the Conspirator anyway, and this way the Conspirator is guaranteed to take a mafia with them if they target one. This gives town a chance to have the conspirator in the bunker without outing AND without the mafia knowing whether their target is potentially in the neighborhood. The other bit was all about limiting access to the Bunker so that you don't end up with a D3 or so with everyone alive in the bunker, and it's also worth noting that none of the potential bunker targets are guaranteed to be in the bunker N1 given a presumable 6 bunker targets and each of those being chosen randomly out of ~4 people.

I don't think it's a breaking strategy, just potentially the best use of resources. And the 4 might be better served being a smaller number, that was just my initial guess.



If we're going to discuss the setup's balance more, though, you should probably make a separate setup thread. Either way, I'd definitely play in your proposed game.

[Jingle]

In that case...

Hi guys! the worst kinda suggested that I do this.

Here you go...

Balance is... Lol.

%%%

Spoiler: Setup

1x Town Weak Friend-Seeker (Alternating Neighbouriser/Masonizer) - When Masonizes, if hits Scum Traitor, converts to town and masonizes instead of dying. When Neighbourising, dies either way if targets Scum. Same chat either way.
1x Town Escort (Bodyguard + Hooker)
1x Town Empath (Follower + Voyeur)
1x Town Obvious Victim (Lightning Rod + Virgin)
1x Town Prejudiced Color Sheriff - Gets Red, Yellow, or Green for alignment, but doesn't know what each one means. Meaning randomizes at the beginning of each Day, then the Sheriff chooses a color. They must kill the player if the player is of that color.
1x Town Angel of Death (Non-Consecutive Night Doctor + Delayed Rodder) - Docs, then the following night that player becomes a lightning rod.
1x Town Obsessive-Compulsifier - Makes a player so they must take an action each night for the rest of the game, and must target the same target until that target is dead.
1x Town Idolator - Removes a player from any chats they are in until the end of the next day phase. That player cannot be protected or roleblocked.

1x Scum Traitor Escort (Bodyguard + Hooker)

1x Scum Moriarty - Godfather + Framer
1x Scum Love-Seeker (Alternating Neighbouriser/Nymphomaniac)

While this is super interesting as a closed, it's unfortunately broken by massclaim as an open. Too many named roles.

[Jingle]

Treacherous Jester

1 Mafia Treacherous Jester
2 Mafia Goons
10 VTs

- The game continues if the treacherous jester is lynched
- The goons know the identity of the jester, but not the other way around
- The goons win if half of the living players are Mafia
- The treacherous jester wins if they are lynched and the Mafia goons win after that
- The town wins when the goons are dead
- The treacherous jester counts towards the Mafia majority, so when 3 VTs, 2 goons and the jester are alive, the goons win, but the jester does not

The goons want to keep the jester alive, the jester wants to die without screwing over the goons, and the VTs want to kill the goons.

Is there any reason the jester doesn't claim in XLO? Like, there's no reason not to lynch them if they claim, right?

[Jingle]

I assumed it was Nightless. Like the setup it came from. It's basically a hydra 4p which is kinda cool in itself. (MOAR TINY SETUPS!)

[Jingle]

Isn't it better for the Poisoner simply not to act (except in an emergency)? Doing so would pretty much out them as scum, as it can't be hard to tell which Neighbourizer is which. (Strange though it looks for scum to have an extra kill and not use it.)

I don't think a Weak Neighbourizer is enough by itself to balance an 8:3 (although in an Open, there's always the risk of some sort of absurd claiming strategy). Note that scum will, if run up, claim to have been Neighbourized; any attempt by town to counterclaim this will lead to scum learning the identity of one of the confirmed townies (and if it happens D2, town can't counterclaim because they don't know whether the scum Neighbourizer acted, and thus no townie has enough information to know that the claim is false). If the scum Neighbourizer is forced to claim and survives the lynch for that night, they can poison someone overnight in the knowledge that they're doomed the next day anyway, so they may as well take someone with them.

It's a choice between an extra kill and presumably outing the IC for their own death if they act D1. Whether or not you should act D1 is kinda up in the air. Otherwise, it's pretty much a suicide bomber that also ends the day.

The scum could presumably dodge a lynch D2 based on a claim, but it would only save them for a day. I think you're right about this needing something else for town though. Perhaps a protective role?

[Jingle]

Actually, I think JK might be right. I just realized if the scum neighborizer activates on N1 they probably get two kills out of it, so the extra town power is kind of necessary.

Updated submission:

Poisonous Neighborhoods

2 Mafia Goon
1 Mafia Neighborizer/Poisoner

1 Weak Neighborizer
1 Jailkeeper
6 VT

Poisoner poisons everyone he neighborizes, they die at the beginning of the next night.
JK doesn't stop Poison.
Neighbors add new players to the same neighborhood.

[Jingle]

Is there any reason the jester doesn't claim in XLO? Like, there's no reason not to lynch them if they claim, right?

oh man, you're right. They can even claim day 1. Anyway, I too missed the fact that the setup has to have 11 players.

I wonder how close to balanced it is if the Jester lynch is game ending and town only have to lynch the goons? You might be able to drop it to 11p with that.

[Jingle]

That is a valid point (I don't like the potential scumwin N2) but the >25% for a stopped kill N1 kind of helps that, along with the presumable autoscumlynch D3 and potential autoscumlynch D2 if Weak Neighbor flips. It'll be a mess because of the number of variables, but I might try to calculate EV by hand tonight.

[Jingle]

2/3 chance of a townlynch D1.
7/9 chance of two successful kills if JK outed (optimal for scum).
5/6 Neighbor NOT poisoned (optimal for scum).

So there's a ~43% chance of an 8 person LYLO D2 with 2-3 confirmed town. 50% or greater chance to lynch scum, and either that gets rid of a kill or there's a confscum the next day.

Even if the neighbor dies and isn't the poisonee (1/3 of the previous) and it's a 7 person LYLO any scum lynch keeps the game going and there's a confirmed scum (Via poisoner, and also possibly the Neighbor target, depending on crumbing/claiming).

It's definitely a short setup, but I don't think it's scumsided. In fact, the fact that it hits LYLO/MYLO so early is probably necessary to prevent the potential clears from becoming townsiding.

Too many variables to keep track of to want to go through with an actual EV calculation though.

[Jingle]

I would suggest using darts.

[Jingle]

Eh. There's 12 setups, so I just put them in order and didn't vote the 13p setup. (Or mine)

[Jingle]

Hmm. I voted backwards because I don’t read your posts.

[Jingle]

I don't particularly care about privacy, either. Hell, I'd be fine with public voting.

[Jingle]

I think majority is a better voting system for most setups than plurality. Are there any other voting system suggestions we can use in setups?

[Jingle]

Reverse voting. Everyone picks x players to not get lynched, person with the least votes does. Day ends when only one person hasn’t been voted.

[Jingle]

Hmm. Tied results all lynched; # of votes = # of scum; day end when all votes active or deadline. I was joking but I think that solves your issue.

Edit: Upped # of votes, changed formatting, and decided I actually want to design a setup like this.

[Jingle]

Results?

Also, voting discussion for next time?

I'd suggest a tiered vote, +1 setups you like until 2 Days before end of month and then a straightforward 1 vote per person between the final three candidates who got the most +1s. That way we're really only choosing between the cream of the crop and there's no incentive to give votes to setups you just don't like to distinguish them from setups you think are bad. I'd be fine with cfj's suggestion too.

[Jingle]

Either letting people double up votes or going with my suggestion gets rid of the feeling of being forced to vote. I also don't really see a need to have it be a secret ballot, because I doubt anyone is seriously going to campaign or vote politically. Secret ballots just make me have to wait to see the results.

[Jingle]

Also, I think there is some merit to having the pick next month's rules prize be delayed a month to prevent downtime while the winner chooses the rules for the next month. If we decide to do that, whoever offered to come up with a set of rules in lieu of the victor could propose a set of rules for the dead month while we switch over (presumably March).

Also, congrats mith. Personally I think nsg's was the best tho.

[Jingle]

I thought he was supposed to pick the setup criteria, not necessarily run it wholesale.

NSG's proposed vote system also seems like a decent alternative.

[Jingle]

I'd suggest relly PM him, so that he isn't bombarded with PMs.

[Jingle]

viewtopic.php?f=115&t=78659

Link to the new challenge.

[Jingle]

Panic room is now in signups in the Open Queue, for anyone interested in playing in it.