[OLD] Open Setup Discussion and Nominations

[Yosarian2]

"Playing blind" means not reading the role PM. If you're able to read your role PM and "ignore" it, be my guest. I'm not sure what that even means, but I'm sure it's not a new strategy.

If scum have strategies that make vote analysis obsolete, I wonder what you think the role of a vanilla townie is supposed to be in a game of mafia. If any scum worth their mettle can blend into the crowd, you don't have a day game beyond voting with a claimed cop.

If there was a situation where there was a 50/50 chance of a town win from random lynches in a pure townie/scum situation, then if you assume good play on the part of both teams, I would expect the scum to actually win more then 50% of the time, because they have the added advantage of knowing who is on their team. The scum have the option of either intentionally selling out each other to appear more townlike, or they could try to play in such a way as to make it less likely then random that their scum partners would get lynched while being subtle about it. Either one has it's risks and benifits, but I would think that

either

stratagy would actually tend to yield better then random results for the scum.

This might be somewhat balanced out by things like "scum tells" and slight psycological differences in behavor and thought between the scum and the town that smart townies can pick up on, but even so, if it was a game where random lynches would give the scum a 50/50 chances of winning, I would think that with equally skilled players on both teams, the scum would win more then half of all games.

[Yosarian2]

By "equally skilled" do you also mean "equally unskilled"? Is the average newbie scum as skilled as the average newbie town?

If you take a setup that gives 50/50 wins with random lynches, and it's all newbies playing, my money is on the town.

Well, that is true. Newbie scum tend to self destruct more often then newbie townies.

It seems to me that by your reasoning, if 12 of the greatest mafia players got together to play an open setup that gives 50/50 wins with random moves, the pro-town thing to do is lynch randomly, in order to keep the scum from influencing the lynches.

Well, except that if all the pro-town people vote randomally, then all the scum have to do is have a slight preference towards voting good guys over scum and they will clearly have the advantage. So townies have to pay attention to vote counts and scum tells and whatever else they can in order to have any hope of nullifying the inherent scum advantage of knowing who is on their team.

[Yosarian2]

Here's a thought for a simple open setup game.

Near-vanillia:

8 townies
1 doctor
1 jailkeeper (combined doc-roleblocker) (note:any attempt to doc-protect the jail keeper will always fail)
3 scum

The idea is a game that's not quite mountanous, but has no investigative roles; the possibility doc protection might stop the scum from just picking off all the experenced players, but without any investigative roles the town is going to have to find scum the old fashoned way, without relying on investigations or role-claims at all (as if either town power role does claim in the early game, they're dead; if they claim in the late game, the scum could counter claim easily).

Also, the fact that there are three seperate ways the town could prevent a scum kill means that the jailkeeper role can't really be used as an investigative role the way a roleblocker can. Even if the doc is dead, if you target person X and then there is no kill, that might mean that person X tried to make the kill, or that the scum tried to kill person X, or that the scum just decided not to kill just to mess with you.

[Yosarian2]

Ah, I see. I guess that would be a fairly scum-proof way of lynching randomally. Heh...if that was actually an effective stratagy, then perhaps the mod'd have to outlaw use of the dice feature, in that hypothetical game. I don't know if the game really need a way to prove randomness like that anyway.

Anyway, in any real game, the scum can be expected to make at leats a small number of mistakes. I probably was overstating my case a bit. Still, in a 50/50 game, with good players on both sides, I would expect the scum to win at least close to half of the time.

[Yosarian2]

Heh...if that was actually an effective stratagy, then perhaps the mod'd have to outlaw use of the dice feature, in that hypothetical game. I don't know if the game really need a way to prove randomness like that anyway.

(shrug) If random lynching is more effective than non-random lynching, the town can always find a way, whether it's by coordinating on the weather or stock market or even by saying "given that X is going to be lynched, we probably shouldn't lynch X" until there's some sort of equilibrium. In a balanced game, random lynching should never give the town a better than 50% chance, though I agree with you that it shouldn't be much worse than 50% either, assuming that (as in vanilla) the scum won't have any difficulty making claims.

Heh...but who would be the one suggesting the method? If it's a scum, he might be able to suggest something that sounds random, but isn't quite....would be an interesting discussion, at least.

In fact, there are times when that might actually be a good stratagy; for example, if there are 9 townies, 1 doc, and 1 SK (no mafia), the odds of the SK winning through pure chance are low, but the one time that setup game was run on mafiascum the SK won, because it was a very highly skilled player running the SK (IS).

Or, for that matter, it might have been better if we had just started lynching completly randomally when there were about 9 of us left and only 1 scum in the recently completed Himalayan Mafia; if we'd done that, the town, more likely then not, would have won, hehe.

[Yosarian2]

I would nominate several setups (4:7 nightless, Pie C9, Yosarian's), but I'm not looking to pick up games at the moment.

Is Yosarian's day or night start? Personally I'd drop one townie and still do night start... It's true the two power roles are not as good at investigating as cops, but they can potentially stop some nightkills.

Night start. I wanted to do it with those numbers for the reason that then, if either doc manages to prevent one kill at any point in the game, it buys the town an entire extra day, which I think adds a little more tension then an odd-number start would.

[Yosarian2]

It's not that I don't like townies (which are almost crucial to an open setup), but that I don't like a low scum ratio. I think it's dull, and vulnerable to being screwed up by one or two inept scum players.

It's often said that a setup should have from 1/4 to 1/3 scum. I wouldn't want to play with less than that.

I would tend to think that those numbers should only apply to a game with investigative roles. I would go with a little less then that for a large no-investigative roles game, and even less then that for a mini with no investigative roles (as in a mini game, the town has less time to see voting patterns and such, which are epsecally vital for this kind of game).

Mathmatically, I would actually thing adding two more townies would make sensebut I would think that in a real game the ability to keep the more "useful" players (experenced players/semi-cleared players/active players) alive might counteract that to some extent.

[Yosarian2]

Night start. I wanted to do it with those numbers for the reason that then, if either doc manages to prevent one kill at any point in the game, it buys the town an entire extra day, which I think adds a little more tension then an odd-number start would.

Well, that's another way in which this setup disfavors the town compared to 3:14-with-day-start. Having an odd number alive by day benefits the town; the 3:14 town will always have that advantage, while yours may or may not depending on the number of failed kills.

Having an odd number alive at day benifits the town if there are exactally 2 deaths every day.

It's just a preference of mine, but I don't like it how if there's a newbie game with 1 doc and no cop, if the doc saves someone, it dosn't buy the town an extra lynch; in fact, it puts the town on evens, which can actually hurt the town. I much prefer a setup where if a doc manages to save one person, it helps the town in a clear way.

[Yosarian2]

I'll nominate:

"Strawberry III" (13 players)

3 mafia
1 cop
9 citizens
night start

Pie C9 (7 players)

1 mafia roleblocker
1 mafia goon
1 cop
1 doctor
3 citizens
day start

Cop C9 (7 players)

2 mafia
1 cop
4 citizens
day start

I like games where an early cop claim-doc protection isn't the best stratagy.


Anyway, about the possible balance issues in some of these games, the good thing with these open setups is we can run them a few times and see how they go. If my doc setup, or one of the other setups, seems to be usually won by the town or usually one by the scum, we can always add or subtract a few townies to balance it out.

[Yosarian2]

2 SK (who know who the other is)
2 Vig
2 Doc
10 Townie

Night Start

Do the SK's have to kill each other to win? Iif so, I could see that game often ending on night 1 with the SK's killing each other right away, both hoping the other SK will delay in killing him.

[Yosarian2]

It sounds sorta like reverse mafia in a sense.

Yeah, just what I was thinking; everyone would try to act pro-town in order to get lynched.

It might be even more interesting with a pro-town vig or two; if you're a vig you could help the town lose by trying to kill a bunch of townies, but would you still keep trying to get lynched, or would you try to not get lynched until the endgame so you'd have more nights to kill?

[Yosarian2]

Or add in a pro-town tracker. Considering the large numbers of people who are targeting other people, that could be quite interesting.

[Yosarian2]

nominate: Pie C9 except the blocker doesn't work on the cop

Here's another one that might not be normal enough:

Bitter Medicine Mafia

9 pro-town doctors
1 mafia killer
1 mafia doctor
1 serial killer doctor

The mafia killer and serial killer can make a kill attempt each night. Everyone except the mafia killer can make a protection attempt each night. A single protect prevents a nightkill, but

multiple protects are deadly

. Exception: for the serial killer, protects are never deadly, and any positive number of protects prevents a nightkill.

Probably too strong for the town. Take a look at what happened in hospital mafia; all that has to happen is everyone protects the person on the list under then, and the odds are either no one dies or the person under the mafia killer dies by the SK and then mafia killer gets lynched the next day.

[Yosarian2]

Also in nuclear mafia, a simple plan could just be to leave one person alive and hope that he's town.

Except that once a scum gets nuked, he can take that one person down with him.

[Yosarian2]

And then everything will start over, and the town will still have about as good a chance.

Actually, it'd generally be worse; say 1/3 of the town is scum, so say the third person dead is scum. 2 townies dead, then 1 scum, then 1 more townie. The townie/scum ratio would just tend to get worse from random chain killing, because townie kills would be random and scum kills wouldn't be.

[Yosarian2]

pablito: sounds a lot like the suggestion I made earlier.

Near-vanillia:

8 townies
1 doctor
1 jailkeeper (combined doc-roleblocker) (note:any attempt to doc-protect the jail keeper will always fail)
3 scum

[Yosarian2]

One of the problems I just realized is that a lot of the game's fun and strategy assumes that the scum will be able to successfully claim without being counter-claimed by a power role. This means that the mafia will either claim the townified role OR claim a victim of one of the lynches nightkills. If there is no death Night 1 (assuming a Night Start), then it is to the town's advantage to mass-claim, because the only way the scum could slip out is by hitting the townified role.

So what if the scum were told which role was townified? If this was the case, they'd get a free claim, plus any deaths would mean more spots for scum to sneak in. If it went through, it would be a very tense endgame, as the town scrambled to ferret out the false claims in one last desperate attempt.

I'd set it up with two of the roles not actually existing, and the scum are all told which two roles. And perhaps tell the scum (but not the town) the role of the people they kill, to give them more safe claims as the game goes on.

One more thing that might help to discourage mass roleclaims would be to give the scum a scum roleblocker, which is another way for the scum to punish townie power roles that claim.

[Yosarian2]

Hmmm...I don't know about that...it's an autowin for the mafia, but at least one of the red/blue people is still going to get lynched, so at least one of them would still win, right? Might as well play out the next day at that point to see who it is.

[Yosarian2]

Ok, Open Role mafia 5, Switch Mafia, has been completed. I strongly reccomend that the game not be run again in the same format; I do like the idea of switches, but the game was heavily tilted towards the scum, I think; the way it was set up it was basically a 12 player game with 3 scum, 1 SK, and effectivly no pro-town power roles of note, which is strongly balanced against the town. I think the only way the town could have had a decent chance would be to get exceptioanlly lucky and lynch a scum day 1 to give the pro-town power roles some breathing room.

[Yosarian2]

I think this was a very atypical run due to the serial killer 1) not blocking any of the switches, and 2) dying N1. I'm not sure the setup as a whole was unbalanced in favor of the mafia. It's a real problem in this kind of setup, though, that IF the mafia do well, they're going to do very well, and IF the mafia do badly, they're going to do even worse because they can't use as many switches.

The SK didn't have cop or single NK immunity, did he? Giving him those will 1) let him live longer and 2) give him more incentive to prevent cop/vig switching.

edit: also, lynching two innocents in a row is a better than average result for a 3-player mafia in a 10/8-player town, especially given that some townies could save themselves through power role claims. Usually you'd expect the town to hit one scum on the first two days; then the game is open again.

I don't really see any reason for the SK to let the town power roles do anything during night 1. Perhaps later, but again only in certain narrow circumstances. In any case, the town should not have to rely too heavily on the SK; if the town manages to lynch the SK on day 1 it shouldn't cause a town loss, that's just silly.

The scum played well, of course, and also had some lucky breaks, but even before the game started I was thinking that it was unbalanced. Basically, for purposes of balancing, I would consider the town as having nearly no power roles at all, which means the ratio of town/nontown should be much higher, more like the 20% scum/80% town ratio in vanillia mafia instead of the 25%scum/8%Sk/66% town ratio we had in this game.

Basically, I'd suggest that we add in about 3 more vanillia townies, which should both increase the town's odds and decrease the chances of one random nightkill throwing the balance off, and perhaps give the SK one-shot nightkill immunity to compensate.

[Yosarian2]

I think any game with more than 9 players but just 2 scum runs the risk of being really boring and frustrating when one of the scum gets lynched D1.

Not neceserally. The was a game early on here where there was a 10 person game with just 1 bad guy, a SK (IS), and he won.

[Yosarian2]

Not neceserally. The was a game early on here where there was a 10 person game with just 1 bad guy, a SK (IS), and he won.

That doesn't mean it wasn't boring or frustating, now does it? If there's only one scum, it becomes a lottery to some extent, because you don't have the mafia interaction to base things off.

(shrug) Well if there's a scum group of two people, and one of them gets lynched day 1, then you do have some mafia interactions to base things off of. But no, reading the game, I don't think it was boring or frustrating.

[Yosarian2]

Mith: Just so you know, I think the "near-vanillia" setup I suggest has been nominated by 4 people now; I got 2 new votes back on page 8.

[Yosarian2]

The only thing I don't like about bird's idea is that the doctor's ability to claim doctor is probably more useful than his night ability. Not really a balance concern.

I disagree; even if the doc can't protect the cop, the doc could still protect confirmed innocents created by the cop, which could help a great deal.

[Yosarian2]

Just to be perverse:

Cult C9:

7 Townies
1 Cult Recruiter

Day start, the cult recruits one townie as long as the recruiter's alive every other night starting with Night 1. (The night after the first lynch) Cult wins if they obtain

a majority

50% of the living players; if this occurs immediately after they recruit someone, the recruit loses with the town. (So the mod calls the game for the cult before the night begins)

The numbers for this are actually pretty cute if the town never no-lynches; they get two free mislynches rather than C9's one (But that's the Day 1 where they could hit the recruiter to win it all), and cult can't force an instant win by forcing a lynch of a cultist rather than the recruiter.

Very cool. Seconded.

[Yosarian2]

Although it might be more fair with the cult c9 if the town had some kind of minor power role; like, say, a cop who can find out if someone's a cult recruit, but can't find the cult recruiter.

[Yosarian2]

Renominate:Switch

tweaked a bit.

Make the SK night kill immune, which gives town a chance.

I don't really think it does, much. The town shouldn't be that totally dependent on the SK; lynching the SK day 1 shouldnt mean a town loss.

Besides, if the SK was night immune, he would always let the vig kill, and never let the doc do anything, which makes his choices less interesting. I don't think that really helps.

I'd suggest adding a few more vanillia townies, at least 3-4. When balancing the game, basically assume it's almost a vanillia mafia game, as the odds of the town power roles ever doing anything useful just isn't that high.

[Yosarian2]

Hmmm...at some point we should look at completed games and figure out which ones worked well, which ones need tweaking, and which ones didn't work at all.

[Yosarian2]

Vigilante Mafia

2 Goons
1 Mafia Rber
1 Vigilante
7 Townies

Blocker Mafia

3 Mafia
1 Rber
8 Townies

I'm not sure of the validity of those last two setups.

I'd only put 2 bad guys in each one of those settings. 3 scum in a 12 town setup is only balanced if the town has at least, say, a cop and another lesser power role. With just a vig or just a roleblocker, there should be less scum.

[Yosarian2]

The point is that SKs can work out who the other SKs are if a kill attempt fails, and try to get them lynched.

The only problem is, if they can't kill each other, then getting each other lynched isn't really a high priority to them, becauce they're not really much a threat to each other except through voting. I'd guess a lot of SK-SK ties would come of that setup.

[Yosarian2]

I've come to think that generally scum are happy to get whatever lynch isn't them, and aren't so inclined to try scumhunting just because it's their best plan.

See Hell on Earth mafia for some shocking behavior of scum who have learned that someone else is rival scum. About as much subtlety as many cops display.

Heh...well, I was subtle, at least...

[Yosarian2]

There would be nothing preventing the mafia from joining in the mass claim. I thought the one way trust relationships would complicate the game in an interesting way. Oh, I see it now: A mass role claim and townie lynch on day 1 would confirm between 1 and 3 townies. would 3:5 or 2:3 be a better ratio?

Yeah, the mafia would have to join in the mass claim, but the thing is, every time one townie died, another one would get confirmed, as everyone would look back to when the first townie claimed. Not only that, once one single player dies and gets confirmed, the person he said was town is confirmed, and so is the player THAT player said was town, and the player THAT player said was town, and so on. It wouldn't clear all the townies, probably, but enough for the town to win, almost certanly, just from that one dead townie.

The town would basically solve the game by day 2 or at latest 3 no matter how well the scum played, I think. Can't see the scum having a chance.

[Yosarian2]

@Guardian: Confirmation Mafia is not a good setup because if the docs claim and believe each other, the mafia can't win if they get down to 1 goon. If you subscribe to a "scum don't have an inherent endgaming ability" policy, then if mafia lose even one goon, the best they can do is draw.

Right. That's why when I designed near vanillia, I made it so the doc's cant really protect each other; the doc can't protect the jailkeeper, and while the jailkeeper could protect the doc he roleblockes him at the same time which kind of defeats the purpose.

[Yosarian2]

Yeah, it does sound like the best strategy for town is to No Lynch and let scum immolate themselves on the Gun Owners... way swingy.

If the town gives absolutely no clues, I think the scum's chances of winning are exactly 1/2, which is sort of nifty.

Alternatly, it might be the best stratagy for the scum to sit back and not kill until a few people have gotten lynched, at which point their odds of hitting the target go up.

Which means that there's a risk the game could go "happily ever after" right from the start.

[Yosarian2]

Make lynches + NKs compulsory?

Making nk's cumpulsory just foces the scum to take blind shots, probably not good. "If you guess right, you win; if you guess wrong, you die" is cool if you get the option of not shooting, but if you have to shoot every night, it makes the game into a total crapshoot, if you'll pardon the expression.

I agree with making lynches compulsory; the heart of any mafia game is the day game, and if the scum want to not kill and just try to out-lynch their opponents rather then take risky win-or-lose blind shots, that seems perfeclty fair to me; that seems like a much better game then one where the town no-lynches every day and the scum pick their targets with random.org because of the lack of discussion. Perhaps make it so the deadlines rules are "if town dosn't lynch by deadline, random person is lynched" or something like that.

[Yosarian2]

LML: A newbie game with both a cop and a doc where both cop and doc are known is unbalanced in favor of the town because a cop claim usually means a town win. A newbie game without one of those roles, though, seems to be unbalanced in favor of the scum. This looks like a good compromise to me; the doc's sole job is not JUST to protect power roles, it's also to make the scum second guess who they should kill and to stop them from automatically going after experenced players or whatever.

It sounds like an interesting open setup, and I'd be interested to see how it goes.

[Yosarian2]

LML: Because we're trying to come up with a balanced 7 person setup, which is something we have not managed to do before.

In any case, remember that we're not suggesting this as a repalcement for newbie games, at least not right now, just as something to try in an open game and see how it goes.

[Yosarian2]

(shrug) Well, you can't make it based on the cop claiming, because then the cop could almost-claim and get around it that way.

Anyway, a lot of people do think that it dosn't matter if the newbies aren't balanced, but I'm not one of them. That's an arguemnt for a different place, though...

By that was done with the new C9. By making it one of 4 different distinct possibilites for games, there is no guarantee that there is a doc in the game (50%), or a cop and a doc (25%). I'm just.. confused on how this works.

I see it as working just like the doc role works in the near vanillia open game, where any attempt by the doc to protect the jailkeeper automatically fails, except in this case any attempt by the doc to protect the cop has no effect.

[Yosarian2]

It's still full of non-normal mechanics, Pooky. I think C9 does an okay job at balance, because 2-1-1-3 is wildly in favor of the town and 2-5 is wildly in favor of the scum, but you never know what you'll get. Percentages could be a little shifted, maybe, but most of the problem comes from self-destructing newbies, IMO.

I disagree; self-destructing newbies shouldn't make a difference, as scum newbies are just as likely to self destruct as town newbies in my opinion. When it comes down to it, the fundimental problem is that it's just really hard to figure out who the scum are in only 2-3 lynches

[Yosarian2]

Usually if you can get one scum, you can get both. If you can't ever get that first one though, it's tough.

That's not really true either...if a scum gets lynched day 1 or day 2, he's very often been bussed by his partner, and it's very hard to figure out who based on just that lynch.

[Yosarian2]

Yeah, miller in an open game is kind of wierd.

[Yosarian2]

Why would a scum counterclaim miller in a game where there's known to be just one? That makes it very likely you'll get lynched that day or the next.

It does make a guilty cop investigation less useful in lynch or lose situations, but otherwise, yeah, an open game where there is known to be exactally 1 miller sounds rather silly.

Now, if it was "0-2 millers, chosen randomally" that might be more interesting.

[Yosarian2]

Actaully, while the day vig does give the town one confirmed innocent, but other then that, in a game where it's otherwise all lynches and the scum has no kill, I tend to think that day vig killing, unless it's in the hands of an extremly good player, is more likely to hurt the town then help it.

Just make sure it's stated in the rules that the mafia wins when they have 50% of the town, otherwise the one day vig townie could win a 1-1 endgame, which would stink.

[Yosarian2]

Truth. Probably the Saulus role need to be very much specificied, as there's lots of questions, like "does he know who the mafia is?" (If he does, then the easiest way for him to win is to go jester day 1, get lynched, and then say who all of his scumbuddies are). "Does the mafia know who he is?" "Can he make a night-kill? When? Can he do it if the rest of the scum are dead?" "If he gets lynched, revives, and is nightkilled instantly, then who does he win with?" and so on, before running it as an open setup.

[Yosarian2]

2:2:7 day start with a somewhat weak town is balanced in my opinion.

I'm not sure about the effect of the "two kills on one target kill nobody" rule. At a glance it seems to help the town, but it could also affect scum behavior in a way that ends up bloodier for the town.

Well, it has some interesting affects; for example, it might make the scum semi-avoid the "obvious" kill, in a way similar to the way a doc does. It also has some really neat side effects; if the doc claims, and the scum want to night kill him, they either have to get lucky or they have to somehow signal in thread "Ok, tonight, fire lays back, Ice ices the doc".

[Yosarian2]

Indeed.

Very Vanilla Mafia
3x Mafia
7x Vanilla
1x Watcher


Thoughts?

That seems like a kind of weak town. The watcher's not all that likely to find a scum before he dies, and with only 1 fairly weak (but at least clamable) power role, I don't like the town's odds there.

[Yosarian2]

Fire and Ice v2 Final

2 Fire Mafia
2 Ice Mafia
1 Temperature normalizer (doc)
7 Normal temperature townies

If both mafia target the same townie, then no one dies.
If this happens, or if the doc protects successfully, steam is said to be rising off of the players...

The first two times that Ice targets Fire

and

Fire targets Ice, the kills are negated.
If this happens, steam is said to be raising off of the players...

Good deal? Y'all would play be /in?

The "steam rising" thing is bad. The town should not be able to tell the difference between a doc protection and the scum choosing to no-kill. That just gives the town information unnecessarally; in this case, if steam rises when only 1 scum group is left, it gives the doc a 100% confirmed innocent, which is probably a bad thing.

Generally speaking, the town should not get extra information from mod posts.

[Yosarian2]

In that case the doc becomes a cop, in a way. However, the other mafia needs to also be dead, and the doc actually has to protect successfully for this to actually happen. I don't think it's something we really need to worry about.

(shrug) I just don't see the advantage to the mod giving the town that kind of information, is all. Better if the town has to figure out for themselves what might have happened at night.

[Yosarian2]

This is personal opinion, but if you ever have a bulletproof role in the game, you

require

a decent understanding of how the game will play out if a really great scumhunter ends up in that role. Because right now in Blueberry Pancakes, I can see that role randomly going to someone like Jeep, and it being over for the scum before the game even begins.

Not sure I agree with that, Yaw; even the best scumhunters are rarely accurate more then, say, 50-60% of the time. You can probably find an example of cases where one bulletproof excellent scumhunter caught several scum and won the game, but I don't think that's any more "game-breaking" then, say, one bullet-proof cop-proof Godfather manipulating the town all game and winning.

[Yosarian2]

Actually, I'd think the bulletproof townie would not claim day 1, I'd guess he would try to soak up at least one scum kill first.

Still, I don't really see it. I guess I just don't agree in principle to the idea that there are some players the scum HAVE to nightkill and otherwise they just lose; I mean, if so, a single high level player should also break any nightless vanillia game without kills, and I just haven't seen that happening in that type of game. Sure, a really good bulletproof pro-town chatacter could be quite dangerous to the scum, but I don't think it's something that good scum couldn't play around.

[Yosarian2]

The only problem I have with that role in an open game is, again, the problem that by claiming it you basically confirm yourself as pro-town. What about a game with 0-1 bulletproof townies, a vig, and a bulletproof scum godfather?

[Yosarian2]

I think it's more or less balanced, and certainly more interesting (which I feel aids town). The mafia will probably often end up getting the traitor lynched...

Eh, sometimes, but even if the traitor decides to wait until day 2-3 and then act like a jester and get himself lynched, it's significantly worse for the town then a 9 town 2 mafia game would be. The fact that he knows who the mafia is makes it even worse, as it skewes the ratio of pro-town votes/pro scum votes further in the scum's favor, making it harder to lynch bad guys and easier to lynch good guys.

Vanillia games are hard for the town; this one is harder. The town needs something extra; either a good power role (like 1 cop), two weaker power roles (say, 1 doc and 1 vig), or several extra townies.

[Yosarian2]

Guys, let's go for quality over quantity. I'd much rather see a few setups with high quality/playability than a lot which are harder to ascertain the quality thereof. It will help people comment and construct as well.

Truth; people have proposed so many setups over the last page and a half I haven't even skimmed them all. Suggesting 1 setup, and then spending a few pages discussing it, would much better.

Vanillia games are hard for the town; this one is harder. The town needs something extra; either a good power role (like 1 cop), two weaker power roles (say, 1 doc and 1 vig), or several extra townies.

How about 1 cop, and the Traitor comes up as town?

That sounds good to me. So:

2 scum
1 scum traitor (looks innocent to investigations)
1 cop
8 townies

Yeah, that sounds pretty balanced to me.

What if the traitor is the last bad guy left? Does he lose automatically? Does he get the ability to kill at that point?

[Yosarian2]

mm. I don't see any reason why the traitor should auto-lose if he's the last scum. I don't see why he should get a nk either though. It would just turn the game into a nightless game (although if the cop is still alive, he's in trouble: but he should still be able to win).

Well, the problem is that if he dosn't have a kill, then unless you're using a "50% endgame" rule, the traitor can't win; the best he could do would be to get to a 1 townie 1 traitor end-game tie.

[Yosarian2]

Why shouldn't you be using the 50% endgame rule? I always assumed that was standard.

There's a lot of debate about that; many people only use the 50% endgame rule if victory by scum in inevatable at that point; for example, some people don't automatically end the game at 50/50 if the town still has some way of not losing (for example, going into night with 3 scum against 1 townie, 1 vig and 1 roleblocker is still a theoretically winnable positon for the town.)

At any rate, if you decide that the town don't need to kill the traitor, that means they only need two successful lynches with 8 townies and a cop. Which seems unbalanced, imo.

Ok, fair enough. This is just the kind of thing that needs to be figured out before the game starts.

[Yosarian2]

I think it's interesting in theory, but in practice I think the scum would use their knowledge in an awfully transparent manner. You know, like most cops.

There was some of this behavior in Hell on Earth mafia...

Agreed. What would probably happen would be that as soon as a scum was about to get lynched, he would reveal the names of everyone in the other family on the spot. The other family would do the same. Town would win.

It's in each scum group's advantage to wipe out the other family before they can reveal any info, and the only way to even try to do that would be to reveal info. The scum would be basically doomed; I guess they could try to come to some kind of "let's kill all the townies first" agreement, but someone would break it and they'd all die anyway.

[Yosarian2]

The millerness is probably limited in effect. It could cause the cop to claim prematurely when he gets the guilty result, and that would cause the DK to have to claim. I can't see it resulting in a DK lynch though (not the investigation itself anyway... unless the DK had earlier claimed to not be DK). I also don't think mafia would ever try claiming DK (which was the first thing I considered when I read the DK was a miller), since that's just asking to be vigged.

Meh. If there's any sign of a SK in that setup (IE: more then one death) then a dark night claim should equal an instant lynch. Even if there's not a sign of a SK, the dark knight had better be being really darn helpful to the town, and he still might get lynched anyway. If there was someone who had a 50/50 chance of being a uber-endgame-winning-SK, I'd probably lynch him if I was town town unless the mafia was about to win, and I'd definatly lynch him if I was scum under any circumstances. So no, I don't think a dark knight claim is ever going to be helpful, even if it's believed (and people who get a guilty on them from a cop often aren't believed). If he gets cop investigated, he's probably dead. Which is a good thing, as it's the only thing that makes the role somewhat sane.

[Yosarian2]

Yeah, 2 is completly busted for the town; the disabler claims, and he will not be lynched, simple.

4 is much more interesting.

[Yosarian2]

Yeah...I don't know about that setup, Adel. Good guys are what makes a setup go, they're the ones who have the obligation to be active and make things happen and be agressive. With only 6 good guys out of 14 people, and with it quite possible for there to very few good guys by the start of day 1, I tend to think that everyone would just sit there and do nothing, pretty much. There's a reason that the town should be a majority; games where there is no uninformed town or town-like majority tend to get wierd, and to often just not work very well or go anywhere. I mean, the scum have no real reason to scumhunt, as they don't really care who gets lynched and as there's really no one group that's more of a threat to them then any other group. If the town looks like the faction that's the biggest threat, then looking pro-town might actually just get you lynched by all the different scum factions. And there's no way for the scum to even know if a different scumgroup is a threat to them, as they have no way of knowing which or scumgroups have 2 people, 1 person, or are gone completly at any point in time. So basically, everyone will probably just lurk and do nothing.

[Yosarian2]

Use Less Acronyms, Please.

SEAG is clearly a Sarcastic Evil Acronym Giver.

[Yosarian2]

The Jungle Republic game was awesome, and seemed very well balanced to me. If anything, we should run a (I suppose flavorless) version of that as the open setup, without changing a thing other then that.

[Yosarian2]

Unplayers are not a team; each wins or loses individually.

An unplayer wins if the mafia tries to nightkill him at any point, or if he is the last unplayer to be lynched during the game. (Or both.)

[/i]

Hmm...

I like Kelly suggestion that if an unplayer is nightkilled, they should die and win. Of course, the funny thing is is that you're going to have lots of unplayers claiming doc to try to get killed, hehe

"the last unplayer to be lynched" seems wierd...so, you win if you get lynched, but not if another unplayer gets lynched after you do? What's the goal there?

In general, I'm not really sure how the game would work. The unplayers don't really have any reason to hunt scum; in fact, if the scum either win or make it to a 3 person endgame, they've got a much higher chance of being nightkilled. Nor do they really care all that much about looking pro-town, as they'd rather be lynched then be ignored. So...they might just act random and annoying or something. Not really sure.

[Yosarian2]

Defender of Reality: Neutral

Each night, you can target a person and, if they are a unplayer, they will die, and will autmatically lose the game; if they are a player, there will be no effect. You win if all unplayers die before the game ends.

[Yosarian2]

Also, I don't like the whole "can't vote or do actiosn for the remainder of the game". If they can't vote, and can't do anything at night, you might as well just kill them; otherwise they are just basically irrelevent to the game, and just make lynches harder.