[Setup] Undertale Smalltown

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Undertale Smalltown

9 Townies

2 Mafia

across eleven

public

roles.

Each day, the players may

Fight

or

Spare

a player using HURT: and HEAL: tags to reach a majority vote. A

Fight

results in a lynch. A

Spare

removes the player from the game thread and puts them into the Spared neighborhood, where they become untargetable and unable to act unless they are mafia.
Throughout the game, the town accumulates Souls, in case they wish to use the Neutral Route, where they can win if they have seven Souls. The town cannot view their Souls, but they know the Souls count starts at 2. The mafia can always view the Souls count.
The mafia has a standard factional nightkill and can multiact but cannot nightkill mafia.

These actions accrue Souls:

Fight

Mafia: +1 Soul

Spare

2 Town: +1 Soul

Spare

Mafia: -1 Soul

After the day 4 decision, a route is selected based on the peacefulness or violence of the four decisions.

Pacifism

: If all four choices were

Spare

s, the town immediately wins if four townies were spared and loses if two mafia were spared. Otherwise, the town immediately spares a fifth player in a special day phase, and loses if that player is mafia. Then all living unspared players are removed from the game without flipping, and all spared players are returned to the game thread. The town votes on which player they think is mafia, and wins if correct, and loses if incorrect.

Genocide

: If all four choices were

Fight

, Night Four is skipped, and the town win condition becomes "kill all the mafia", the mafia win condition becomes the opposite.

Neutral

: All other cases are Neutral. All spared players are returned to the game, just in time to be a part of Night Four. The town win condition becomes "collect seven Souls" and the new mafia win condition is to lock out that outcome.

The Roles

• Toriel: N3 doctor if
  Fight
  has not been used.
  
• Sans: Sans may send the mod a list of players N2. If
  Spare
  has not been used by N3, for N3 the mafia are informed they cannot nightkill the earliest living player on this list, and that nightkilling the second earliest will grant the town a Soul.
  
• Undyne: Bodyguard
  
• Monster Kid: Monster Kid cannot be spared.
  
• Jerry: If Jerry dies as town, the town receives one Soul. Jerry is unable to vote himself for
  Fight
  .
  
• Ice Cap: If Ice Cap is town and town has exactly five souls when Genocide is reached, Ice Cap becomes Innocent Child.
  
• Froggit: If Froggit is town and town has exactly six souls when pacifist special spare phase begins, Froggit becomes Innocent Child.
  
• Metatron: 1-shot: Target ANY player. If that player is nightkilled, town gains a soul (this effect lasts all game). Everyone is informed who you targeted with this the following day, but mafia Metatron may falsify the announcement, without even using the ability.
  
• Temmie: Gain a soul when Temmie is spared. Do not count Temmie toward the "spare two townies" condition.
  
• Moldsymal: 1-shot: Psychologist. If Moldysmal receives a guilty result, town loses a soul unless Moldysmal is mafia.
  
• Dogert: 1-shot: Target a player. If that player is mafia, receive one Soul. Loud.

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No, the mafia cannot selfkill. I thought that is the inherent understanding of how factional kill targeting works, but maybe it's not and I should add that?

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Wait programming hacks hold my beer

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waaait it doesn't work.
Ok, I'll have to say "kill only other mafia".

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I could remove Monster Kid's ability to lower complexity, at the cost of some pacifist balance.

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Here is my suggestion from the Undertale dead thread. It applies to this smalltown version of Undertale as well as to the "normal" version of it:

It would be interesting with the Pacifist route to have all non-spared but non-killed players still around in the game as tree-stumps after the core is reached. Meaning that said players could still post in the game thread (and the scum PT if they are scum), but they could not vote. I think that would be balanced, yes? And it would make sense since said players are technically not dead.

I'm about at, I'll try this if Mafia schwreck scum in the pacifist route an additional time. As it stands I feel it would be too townsided and last time Elements just played really well.

In the standard setup, town can adopt the strategy of having the PR delay their claim (provided Oversoul is not playing the setup, lol), and achieve a 45% EV purely off the 4 spares win condition (that's the value that assumes the PR dodges all three night kills, but they get to pivot to neutral if they like whenever they find out they've lost the PR). 45% isn't the whole story, in the other 55%, they still get a chance to win by sparing a townie and lynching the scum.
So adding tree stumps seems a bit much.

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Does anyone have more feedback on this setup, pleases?

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I feel like you want the power roles to push towards one phase definitively so 3 for pacifist, 3 for neutral, 5 for genocide (since Genocide is the worst EV one it should have the most encouragement?)

Genocide only slightly has the worst EV if it is rated using the "how many people must you outtown" method. Genocide comes out to "win when any player is on your team is 5th towniest"+ "win when you are the sixth towniest and your scumpartner is the 7th towniest exactly". Pacifist is more simply, "win when any player on your team is the fifth towniest".

Neutral is a bit of a train wreck. Rating it with that method, by my math it's possible for mafia to win when one of their players is the scummiest in the game, and the other player is EIGHTH towniest. So this minigame may not be the right answer but it kind of does need a rework because the pivot looks pretty messed up. That math assumes that the town is sparing people for acting townie, but if they pivoted into neutral away from pacifist, that is what they had been doing.

Pacifist has some obscured flips, so the comparison between Pacifist and Genocide is probably ok in terms of power. I might need to skew the roles towards Genocide just to make Genocide attractive and appealing since sparing people is fun.

I was thinking about making Moldysmal a Genocide only character, for instance. I think I'd like that.

"3 for Pacifist, 3 for neutral, and 5 for genocide" adds up to 11, but it occurs to me it doesn't have to add up to eleven. It's possible to make roles that work on two paths.

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I don't mind if scum controls the route the game goes down. I think they did last time, more or less.

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I feel like these roles push towards Neutral? I generally don't understand the use of the Souls mechanic. Seems too hard to accomplish if the mafia know the soul count at all times.

Town know the soul count most of the time. The ideal play with Doggo is to use him in Genocide and have him shoot a player, then kill that player to see if Doggo earned a point with his ability or not. Metatron finds out if he earned a point immediately. When you kill scum, you know you got a point. When you spare a player, you should probably just assume you earned points, if you can't spare people and assume they're town, you can't win pacifist either.

I could hide the Soul values from both the town and the players. The main reason the value is hidden is so that Doggo does not become a Sane cop.

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Alternatively I could make them public, and remove Doggo from the setup.

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Wait it's Dogert, not Doggo

I renamed some roles

Cause Dogert sniffs you in the game and you smell like mud then he gets happy.

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I don't mind if scum controls the route the game goes down. I think they did last time, more or less.

i think that's fine yes but i just think you should really keep that as the central idea of "balance"

If I'm keeping that in mind I might need to be careful with how effective the strats for dragging town into neutral and winning with zero scum alive are.

Could need more cushion against that.

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Haha guns and roses 2 was so EZ

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Changelog:

-Metatron can self target so it's harder for mafia to just "nope" out of neutral. Alongside that he became published so that you don't get the weird case where Metatron self targets, gets shot immediately, and can't tell people he self targeted so town doesn't know how many points they have (setup is balanced around Metatron always being trackable on points).
-Temmie always grants a point, even if she's mafia. Losing one point should be brutal enough, two is unnecessary.
-Dogert/Dogessa (No1/No2 on second revision) removed for roles that make souls matter in Pacifist and Genocide. This somewhat leans in towards Oversoul's criticism. If at least one role cares about souls for Genocide and Pacifist, Metatron and Doggo will be less depressed when Day 1 has a texture that strongly suggests a Genocide or Pacifist route for the game. It's different from Toriel in that these roles have to shoot

just in case

the game goes neutral.
Both roles are playing with "open games can't be bastard" mechanics that I think could be really fun.

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I removed "with one vote across both options".

Because, is it necessary? I think letting players track their townreads and scumreads using both options is more appealing.

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I cleaned up all three in the rules (all three were genuinely too ambiguous)

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I think this is polished enough to re-queue into mini-theme queue (side by side with the original).
It will never be perfect, especially before it is played.

I finished Genocide Undertale btw.