[SETUP] Predict the Flip

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[SETUP] Predict the Flip

Post Post #0 (ISO) » Tue Aug 30, 2016 6:40 am

Post by callforjudgement »

I had the idea for this setup a while back, but had to hold off on posting it because it was connected to a then-ongoing game. Micro 632 has finished now, so it's time to post this. It's loosely inspired on an idea by FakeGod.

PREDICT THE FLIP
  • 7 Vanilla Townies
  • 2 Mafia Goons
  • No kills, lynches or night phases
  • Each day, players vote for someone to flip (i.e. alignment becomes public); this doesn't kill them, like a lynch would; a different player must be chosen each time
  • After the vote, and before the flip, living players publicly predict (in the game thread) whether the flip will be town or scum.
  • If a player mispredicts a flip, they die
  • While a player is dead (due to misprediction) but not yet flipped (i.e. not voted for yet), they can still post in-thread, treestump-style
  • Each player has one "joker" that they can use once in a game to exempt them from having to make a prediction, meaning they survive that day regardless of the flip
  • Players must predict town for their own flip (i.e. scum will necessarily mispredict their own flips), and cannot joker their own flip
  • Town wins if any player survives the nine flips (i.e. is alive on day 10); scum win if everyone dies
  • Endgaming (in the sense of "scum kill town if they have more numbers") does not happen, although a faction wins as soon as its victory becomes inevitable

Unlike Micro 632, which was heavily townsided, I believe this has an EV of exactly 50% if broken correctly. (Additionally, the EV doesn't get that much lower if you don't try to break it, making it less critically based on breaking strategies.)

The basic idea of Micro 632 was that you need to choose a safe path, and players can to check for the safe path in order to avoid needing to guess. The safe path was chosen at random, and the game was about determining who you could trust to tell the truth about the path. Apart from the balance issue, one thing I didn't like is how likely it was for the game to come down to randomness (i.e. running out of checks and thus having to guess). Finally, there was no way you could gain information on whether someone was town or scum from their claim of path safety, because both paths were equally likely.

In this setup, I'm tying the safety of the daily choices to the players' alignments, meaning that scumhunting rather than guessing is what's needed to survive the flip. Flipping scum will necessarily kill them (as they'll be forced to predict town, thus have mispredicted, and will be flipped, preventing them being treestumped), so just like a normal game, you have a method of getting rid of scum. Of course, if no living players predict (or joker) the resulting scumflip, town will end up losing the game in the process. (Once both scum (or all townies) have flipped, all remaining flips will be highly predictable, and thus the game can be called at that point.)

In terms of balance, this setup has 36 possible scumteams, and each of the 9 players can survive two of them (one if the jokered player is town, the other if the jokered player is scum; in all other cases they have to guess alignment correctly). By assigning particular teams to particular players (so that no player is guessing a setup including themself as scum), you can therefore get a surviving player against 18 of the 36 possible scumteams, = 50% EV.

One thing I'm a little worried about is making sure that players understand the rules properly, so I'm hoping to clarify things with flavour. Here's what the setup looks like with the same flavour as Micro 632:
PREDICT THE FLIP (flavoured)A long time ago, nine engineers were commissioned to construct a maze. A deadly maze, which would one day be used to seal away a treasure beyond all imagining. But before it could be used for this purpose, its builders – the only people who knew how to solve it – had to be disposed of. As such, they were thrown into their own maze, hopefully to be trapped there for all eternity…

In this game, you are one of the maze's constructors, now trying to escape from your own maze. You are on one of the following teams:
  • The
    Maze Guardians
    are loyal to the idea behind the maze, and value protecting the secrets of the maze even above their own lives. There are
    two
    of these players, and are the game's informed minority ("scum"): they know each other's identity and can talk to each other in secret. When they reach a portion of the maze they constructed,
    they will take a path that leads to death
    .
  • The
    Maze Engineers
    , meanwhile, do not hold the maze in such value; they took on the construction job like they might any other, and would prefer to escape unharmed. There are
    seven
    of these players, who are the game's uninformed majority ("town"): they do not know each others' identity and can only talk in thread. When they reach a portion of the maze they constructed,
    they will take a path that leads to safety
    .
Each day, you will vote for a portion of the maze to explore next; there are nine such portions, one constructed by each of the nine players. Then each player will (publicly) choose a path within that section to follow. There will be two such paths, one which leads to safety, one which leads to death. The player who constructed the portion of the maze in question will choose a path first, and then everyone else can choose either to follow them, or (if they don't trust the player in question) to choose the other path. Each player who chose the dangerous path (i.e. followed a Maze Guardian, or failed to follow a Maze Engineer) will die. This mechanic replaces the normal mechanics of lynching and nightkills.

Normally, living players
must
choose a path, and thus risk their life. However, each player has a "joker". Each player may, once in the game, use their joker in order to exempt themself from having to choose a path, and thus ensure that they survive the current portion of the maze regardless of whether its constructor was telling the truth about the safe path. Players cannot use their joker on a path they constructed.

Dangerous paths are often not
immediately
fatal; players may end up trapped (to eventually die of starvation), or suffer from similar fates. As such, although choosing the wrong path prevents you escaping the maze or choosing paths (or using jokers) in future, it does not necessarily prevent you from giving advice via shouting through the walls. Players who choose a dangerous path will thus be able to post in the game thread until their own portion of the maze has been attempted (this includes giving advice on what the safe path through their own portion is, and as usual, this advice will always be given and is correct from a Maze Engineer and incorrect from a Maze Guardian). Once a player's portion of the maze has been attempted, that player will finally succumb to the maze and no longer be able to post after death.

Once all nine sections have been attempted, if any player is still alive, then the
Maze Engineers
will win. (Note that any surviving players will necessarily be Maze Engineers.) Otherwise, the
Maze Guardians
will win.
Last edited by callforjudgement on Tue Aug 22, 2017 5:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Post #1 (ISO) » Wed Aug 31, 2016 8:22 am

Post by podoboq »

In post 526, callforjudgement wrote:(My preferred option) Increase the number of paths town has to survive to 7,
but place a bias on the randomizer between paths (I suggest that each day, you announce two paths, one with a 70% chance of being the safe path, and one which is safe only the other 30% of the time).
This should have more scumhunting involved than the previous option (because scum will have to decide if they're townread enough to lie about the 30% path being safe, and town will have to decide how many times they're going to ask for a second opinion). I'm not sure where the balance is but it isn't obviously broken. Note that in this version of the setup, a 2:2 or 1:1 endgame should not be an automatic scum win (town should have the chance to guess their way to the end of the setup even if they can't lynch anyone any more).
I remember this post from when Mislead was originally announced in the micro thread, and I like that you accomplished this in a way that was a lot more grokkable and flavorful. We are essentially still choosing paths, but the paths have a 22% vs 78% distribution inherently. Tying the percentages to alignment makes it a LOT more fun to play around with those numbers, and makes the decision a lot more interesting. If a group wanted, they could still strategically split the party in order to play the numbers, but it will never be strictly a coinflip, since a player's chances of being scum aren't strictly speaking 50/50. Also there will always be scumhunting to determine whether or not a path is safe, while in Mislead, at the end it could just be a numbers game with no player interactions taken into consideration. Aside from determining who went down which path, and who relayed information to the town, there was basically no scumhunting in our game. It was over 90% theory (which you handled phenomenally, I should add). This looks different, and it's very exciting.
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Post Post #2 (ISO) » Wed Aug 31, 2016 8:30 am

Post by Something_Smart »

This in theory looks like a good idea, and I'm happy to see a version of Mislead that's less townsided :roll:

However, I don't even know if this would qualify as Mafia.

Mislead did qualify IMO because, although it had no lynches or night kills, it preserved Mafia's system of living and then dying and then staying dead, and it provided players with actions that they could use, abuse, and lie about.

Whereas this almost reminds me more of Resistance on crack; the concept of dying but still being able to talk is really awkward, there are no lynches and night kills
and
nothing for scum to lie about other than saying "hey guys I'm town hurr durr", and altogether I don't think playing this would feel like playing Mafia.
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Post Post #3 (ISO) » Wed Aug 31, 2016 8:51 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Just like regular nightless Mafia, there's an informed minority and an uninformed majority, the game is mostly about scumhunting, and town can get rid of scum. (In fact, voting for scum, or for a townie who's already guessed wrong, is guaranteed to eliminate them, so the vote will be much like a lynch much of the time.) These mechanisms are accomplished via different means than in a regular Mafia game, but I think the basis of the game is still there.

The treestumping is necessary to prevent scum just guessing wrong early and then making it impossible for town to determine whether they were scum or not. Scum have a lot of things to lie about; they're trying to convince the town that town are scum and scum are town, in order to persuade townies to take the wrong path. As such, there'll likely be a lot of fake-scumhunting going on (possibly more so than in a more normal game!). I guess what's going on here is that the flip and death are separated, but the flip is what mostly acts like a lynch, and the death is separate. (An alternative method of expressing this setup that I was considering had everyone as 1-shot deathproof and had both an incorrect guess and a lynch kill the player. It comes to the same thing, in the end, but is probably a bit harder to understand.) One potential problem along these lines is that there will likely be some confirmed townies fairly early, and it's possible that everyone will just sheep them, but the same issue happens in some more regular setups.

For what it's worth, I consider Resistance to be a Mafia variant too, so I might be in the minority there. One advantage of this setup over Resistance is that this setup has flips and Resistance doesn't. (Forest Fire is also definitely a Mafia variant, and has some similar properties to this one, e.g. townies can keep talking after being lynched in that setup.) Of course, if this setup isn't what you're looking for from a game, there's nothing forcing you to join it.

(Sorry for being so defensive. I just thought I'd try to explain my point of view.)
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Post Post #4 (ISO) » Wed Aug 31, 2016 8:55 am

Post by podoboq »

In post 3, callforjudgement wrote:Scum have a lot of things to lie about; they're trying to convince the town that town are scum and scum are town, in order to persuade townies to take the wrong path.
I'd like to point out that this is also literally just mafia. Like, that's the whole game.

This version of the game still essentially has lynching in it, but it also has this tree-stumping mechanic which basically just marks a way to denote a player who has "lost" but is still alive, because you don't win the game by surviving. You win the game by being right, which is in some ways more skill-testing. This game is more Mafia than One-Night Werewolf is, and I've played One-Night on the site before.
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Post Post #5 (ISO) » Wed Aug 31, 2016 9:06 am

Post by callforjudgement »

I agree that One-Night Ultimate Werewolf is not Mafia. There's no informed minority. (I remember watching a 1NUW game a while back in which one of the scum convinced their buddy that they were actually town, which lead to a town win. If scum had been a little less convincing they might have won!)
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Post Post #6 (ISO) » Wed Aug 31, 2016 9:13 am

Post by podoboq »

In post 5, callforjudgement wrote:I agree that One-Night Ultimate Werewolf is not Mafia. There's no informed minority. (I remember watching a 1NUW game a while back in which one of the scum convinced their buddy that they were actually town, which lead to a town win. If scum had been a little less convincing they might have won!)
...I think that was me :)
Spoiler: One-Night shenanigans
Note before reading, I am the Minion (I know the one Werewolf but he doesn't know me), and I win as long as he isn't lynched (even if I am).
In post 340, podoboq wrote:
In post 339, Alexcellent wrote:Okay, I'm gonna bust this wide open/potentially throw the game.

I am/was the WEREWOLF.
Hoping for the latter, otherwise I'm screwed.

Would have come forward earlier but I wanted to be sure between Podo and 3DR who the Minion was. I'm comfortable enough that Podo is the Troublemaker for me to make the claim now, based on the fact that I don't think the Minion would say he swapped me, and overall I just see much stronger town motivation coming from Podo than 3DR. I'm still not 100% sure that this isn't just another gambit from Podo, but I feel like he would have come clean by now since both I and GL have posted since he made his swap claim and he wouldn't have gotten any new info. There's no real strong reason for him to keep bluffing about his swap targets unless he strongly suspects that I'm the werewolf.

I checked card B, which is actually Apprentice Seer, and it's just crazy dumb luck that GL checked A and C and not B. By the time I announced which card I looked at, I already knew GL hadn't seen B and that Villager would have been a safe bluff to announce for the middle card. So yes, there are actually 3 villagers in play.

Provided Podo is telling the truth, then I should no longer be the Werewolf.
Werewolf should now be GuiltyLion
, which makes me the Seer.

If I've just fallen for a massive gambit, then I apologise to my Minion friend for possibly losing us the game here, but I have to play to win and I think my win con has changed.

So basically, the roles after swaps and everything should be:

Werewolf – GuiltyLion
Werewolf – Card A
Minion – PDR
Seer – Alexcellent
Apprentice Seer – Card B
Troublemaker – Podo
Robber – PokerFace
Villager – Lane
Villager – Shos
Villager – Lowell
Insomniac – Fire Starter
Doppleganger – Card C

This is only incorrect if:

1) I'm wrong about Podo and 3DR is actually the Troublemaker, in which case I was never swapped.

2) Podo still hasn't told the truth about who he swapped, in which case, GG, I just lost the game.
3) Lane still could have potentially robbed me. His PokerFace crumb definitely makes it seem like he's town, but I don't think it completely clears him.


Basically, I feel like I have to claim now. I don't see Podo retracting his Alex/GL swap claim, so going into night fall I'd have to basically flip a coin on if I'm still a Werewolf or not. I'm thinking it's more likely that I don't have the Werewolf anymore, so I'm taking a bit of a gamble and choosing to believe Podo.

@Podo, for my peace of mind, please confirm if you were telling the truth or not. I reserve the right to pretend that this post was just a big joke for the lolz in case I'm wrong.
This makes the game a lot simpler all of a sudden. I meant it when I said that Alex and GL were my actual swaps.

So now town only has to decide between the highlighted options I quoted, unless there's something I'm missing.

If I'm lying about Troublemaker, and I'm actually Alex's Minion, town should lynch Alex.
If lane actually robbed Alex, town should lynch lane. I don't think there's anyway for us to discover this information, so I think this option has to be ignored.
If neither, town should lynch GuiltyLion.

VOTE: GuiltyLion
VOTE: nightfall
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Post Post #7 (ISO) » Sat Sep 03, 2016 7:27 am

Post by podoboq »

So I run a traditional gaming club at my university, and we just started meeting again for the semester. We play werewolf all the time, and only had 11 people last night which is a bit small, so I thought, hey, why not try out this setup?


We had eight townies and two goons.

The first round, they singled out an obvtown, and everyone predicted her town, nobody jokered.
Then they decided to have two people per round joker or predict something that the majority doesn't predict, in case they're wrong. People just jokered.
Town wasted several jokers, and the group kept picking townies to flip
Then we lost half of the town at once when they predicted a scum flip incorrectly.

We're down to four players, and they have six people left to flip. They pick the scum, one of them guesses correctly (thinking he was wrong, but splitting the numbers just in case), and he was left the only living player.
He had four other players left to flip, and basically needed to guess which one of them was scum. He guessed two town correctly, then guessed town on the remaining scum, and lost.

It was super cool. Players were pretty confused about the whole thing for a while, and since they're mostly familiar with role madness, I got a lot of people asking "So how do we find out who the werewolves are?" So my group probably wasn't going to play it the best, but the scum did a good job. It's scum that convinced people to waste their jokers early, and intentionally picked off townies early. Very fun game. Very excited to play it here.
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Post Post #8 (ISO) » Wed Sep 28, 2016 2:46 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

For anyone monitoring this thread (just in case there is anyone), a game of this setup is now in the Micro Queue and accepting pre-/ins. Let me know by PM if you're interested!
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Post Post #9 (ISO) » Fri Sep 30, 2016 7:17 am

Post by Chuck »

This sounds really interesting. Congrats on creating a setup that has an exact 50% EV (hypothetically).
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