[SETUP] Innocent Children Wanted

[Irrelephant11]

3 Mafia Goons

1 Innocent Child
8 Innocent Child Backups

Adapted from mutantdevle's "Golden Child" setup and the wiki's "Watchmen Wanted" setup.

Alternatively,

3 Mafia Goons

9 Vanilla Townies

Goons must make their N1 nightkill choice during N0. This player's green flip will be announced at the start of D1, but they will continue to have a voice and vote until N1, when they die. Mafia then chooses the N2 kill during N1, and the process repeats.

I think I like the second one more, as scum are continually forced to choose between conftowning players they would otherwise be able to easily mislynch (reducing mislynch options) or conftowning players who were already playing well (making a town leader out of a strong player).
But idk I thought I'd put both out there.

[Gamma Emerald]

The second option looks like Marked for Death but bigger

[Invisibility]

i like the second option because town leader not getting conf'd can lead to epic wifom

[mutantdevle]

I like the 2nd one more for the simple fact that there'd be more analysis potential.

[AnonymousGhost]

This player's green flip will be announced at the start of D1, but they will continue to have a voice and vote until N1, when they die.

Sounds like something between a Tree Stump and an IC.

If they have access to their vote though, wouldn't that mean that they should be a viable lynch candidate? Would they contribute to the required number of players it take to lynch someone?

[Irrelephant11]

a viable lynch candidate?

Only as much as an IC is a "viable lynch candidate"
Theoretically they could be lynched, but it would be dumb to do so, since it's already confirmed that they're green. It would basically be the same as a "no lynch", since that player would die by D2 either way.

Yes, their vote counts toward lynch equity

[callforjudgement]

The second version of the setup is clearly more interesting, so I'd assume you'd want to base the final version of the setup on that. (The scumteam could be Mafia Poisoners to add a bit of flavour explanation to the setup and make it more intuitive; if you use the variant in which the victim is self-aware, it's basically equivalent to your formulation but with no special rules, as scum would hardly benefit from fakeclaiming to be the poison victim.)

I like the idea, but I think it's scumsided as written. The balance is pretty close to my "old" balance guideline for a balanced 10:3 – I know it's a 9:3, but the delay on the kill gives it the same deadline/endgaming properties as a 10:3 – in that town have an inno on each of days 1, 2, and 3, with "something extra" (in this case a D4 inno if the game lasts that long). However, town don't get to aim any of the results, something that counts strongly against them balance-wise as it means they'll never learn anything about players who are widely seen as null. (I believe that correct scum strategy is to always aim for a player who's widely seen as town and unlikely to ever be lynched; that way, the confirmation has minimal possible benefit for town

and

you get to (eventually) get rid of someone who wasn't going to be eliminated any other way.) Additionally, this is an "old" balance guideline for a reason – after a while it turned out to be producing consistently scumsided results, so either it was flawed in the first place or else towns have gotten worse since it was established. Current thinking is that town needs a bit more even on top of this.

On the other hand, it's hard to see what you'd change to redress the balance. Going to 11:3 would pretty much suck to play (it's fairly likely to drag on even at the moment). Maybe you'd have to have a pool of weakish power roles from which one or two randomly go to town (and scum get a weak counter to them if town have two, along the lines of the old newbie setup F11, thus enabling them to fake-claim accurately and meaning that the main town benefit is therefore from the power roles themselves). You could even go as far as the C/9 strategy of "each player has a randomly selected role that's in most cases Vanilla"; that's way too swingy when the roles are powerful, but should work in the case when the roles are weaker.

[mith]

(I hadn't actually read this when I proposed this; weird.)

There's no particular reason to play this at an even count - town should still no lynch to restore parity. EV is the same as Vanilla + Bulletproof IC, which I've had my script calculate before:

2:6:1 - 45.31%
3:7:1 - 28.91% (equivalent to this after no lynch)
3:9:1 - 34.38%
3:17:1 - 48.07%