[APRIL CHALLENGE]

[Awoo]

lol. The goal was to actually play mafia? I thought we were just talking about it. I would never actually play that game.

[Jingle]

I'm not really concerned about the ones that didn't win here (in fact, I AM modding a setup currently that wasn't a winner (and also not designed by me).) and agree that they should only be run if

I feel like the setups that win have a certain level of interest just by virtue of the fact that they won. I would be happy to mod them if doing so didn't cut into my ability to mod other setups, but in addition to the ones I've publicly announced my intention to mod I have 3 larges and 2 minis in various stages of development and a joint project with Bujaber in the pipes (Which should hopefully be workable in the very near future ).

PEdit: I'm pretty sure the goal is to design new, fun setups for people to play.

[callforjudgement]

My best conjecture for why the setups haven't been run is that the requirements have been so stringent that even the best setup designed under the requirements doesn't seem as good as most other open setups that people could run. In particular, most open games are run at either 9p or 13p, and three out of the four challenges so far have forced a player count other than these. I think that's a flaw in the design of the challenges.

I can understand challenges forcing unusual player counts to try to cover new ground, but that may well mean that the challenge winners will necessarily be experimental, and it can be hard to find mods and players for those.

There are some submitted challenges I'd be willing to mod (e.g. my own Microtown), but I don't have time for modding a setup right now.

Also, weren't some of the January Challenge submissions run as marathons? That's an easy way to find time to run them, but we haven't had a marathon weekend since.

[Jingle]

Off the top of my head, Panic Room from January I am currently modding and Tough on Crime from February was run as a marathon. I feel like one of RC's was a micro at some point too, but am not going to fact check that.

That's really not the point though. My suggestion isn't all challenge games get run specially (that would be insane) but rather specifically

the winner

each month. To be clear, this would be 1 open every month run outside of the normal queue regulations, and presumably only the best one of the setups.

I agree that the other setups should be left to individual discretion whether to take them to a queue.

[Jingle]

For reference the setups this would apply to are:

Rogue Agent (by mith)
Rivalries (by implo)
CYOA (by relly)

[BNL]

I have 2 setups listed, the one I actually want to use is Fibonacci (not Tree)

Edit: The current version of Fibonacci has 6 Mafia, not 5

[Irrelephant11]

I’m a fan of the idea of winning setups getting run immediately, but also I don’t necessarily want to sign up as a mod if I win
If enough of us want to do it this way though we can just try to collectively have a person each month who agrees to run the winning setup regardless of whose it is

[BNL]

I don't think any challenge winner has actually been run yet, but other setups from the challenges have been queued.

[T-Bone]

Okay, on a not-a-setup not for a minute:

So, I've been asked by a few people about this. Here is my concern that I want to share with all of you. Keep in mind I'm not saying no, and I like special events and usually champion them.

As proposed, I'm worried about the effect on the queue. We're pushing through maybe 2 to 3 games a month. Presumably if I allow the winner of this contest to the top of the queue this month, that means it takes one of the games that normally gets filled. Now, that's not so much an issue. I want games to fill.

However, the open queue is one of the queue where we send first time mods. I think we all agree that we want more people in the modding pool. My concern is that if I have this event going on, that's an experienced player every month getting to mod one of the games that fill, slowing the queue down for the other mods who get into the queue normally, including and especially slowing things down for first time mods in favor of the experienced ones who win this competition each month.

I pose this not to shut this conversation down, but to keep it going. Let me know your thoughts.

[Irrelephant11]

Can these threads simply be their own queue in some way? After a winner is declared, the winner picks a mod (themselves or a willing volunteer) and people can just /in to play in this thread? Then it can get run in Central Park without actually disrupting any queue.

[DrDolittle]

Bundle Mafia

12 Town

3 Mafia

Nightless.

Day n: Stage 1:

-> Every player starts the day belonging to a

Bundle

with only themselves in it.
-> Player A may use

Union: Player B

to create a joint

Bundle

with all the players in the two

Bundles

that A and B are a part of.
-> A

Bundle

may have at most 4 people. If the

Union

action would create more than 4 people in the joint

Bundle

, it is invalid.
-> At the end of stage 1, all players in a

Bundle

of 2 or less people are killed immediately.

Day n: Stage 2:

-> The 3/4 Players within each

Bundle

play mafia via plurality lynch, so that one player in each

Bundle

is lynched per day phase.
-> The individual games are played in separate threads, but publicly viewable by all players.
-> The surviving players move on to Day n+1.

Win Condition:

Town: All mafia players are killed or lynched.
Mafia: All town players are killed or lynched, or nothing can prevent that from happening.

Edited some things for clarity.

[implosion]

What happens if there are multiple mafia in a bundle? What are win conditions? Can a single player immediately union three others in their first post?

[Irrelephant11]

So D1, 3-5 groups get made, ~1 people die for lack of bundle, meaning ~5 people die d1.
Town has a lot of agency in directing who all of those deaths are by planning them before the end of stage 1.
Scum's only real "control" factor here is being able to bundle together and kill town, which would be publicly viewable.

This feels incredibly townsided at these numbers.
Also I'm just now seeing the "breaking" strategy of having the four towniest players bundle, disallowing all other bundles, and then if it's not a win probably going into nightless 3v1 (if one mafia snuck into the "coalition").

[callforjudgement]

I'm personally not convinced that giving the challenge winner an automatic slot is a good idea. Some of the winners are going to have more mod and player interest than others, and it wouldn't surprise me if some ofo them failed to fill. We'd likely want a moderator who's actually excited about the setup and players who are excited to play it, which might or might not happen with any particular winning setup; thus the setup shouldn't automatically get a queue slot (although obviously it should be runnable by normal channels).

Bear in mind that we're generating 1 setup per month via these challenges. Games last for a lot longer than that, and as many of these setups are Larges, we'd be creating a notable increase in the rate of Larges starting Mafiascum-wide. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a more or less total exhaustion of players if we ran all the challenge winners.

[Irrelephant11]

Bear in mind that we're generating 1 setup per month via these challenges. Games last for a lot longer than that,

this is a really good point
to be sustainable we'd have to have much faster deadlines than average for these games, which isn't necessarily preferable
I'm not sure the right answer is to make these challenges last longer, either (interest in making setups seems to naturally wane after a few weeks, at which point we vote and move on)

The answer *might be* that most of these challenges should be micros, but that feels pretty limiting...

I'm starting to feel like maybe this just isn't a good idea

[DrDolittle]

You're right elephants it's not a great design. Meanwhile, scum can come in and just post real fast as soon as thread opens
bundle scum A
bundle scum B
bundle scum C
bundle town D
and it becomes more like a timing game

[Jingle]

Bear in mind that we're generating 1 setup per month via these challenges. Games last for a lot longer than that

I mean, yes, this is a concern in the short term, but I don't think it really is in the long term. Obviously I'm not expecting everyone here to play in every challenge winner game.

However, adding a game every month should reach equilibrium fairly quickly. IME Micros run to completion in 1-2 months. Minis in 3-5. Larges in 4-6. Even then, a lot of the proposed larges (especially this month) would finish considerably faster. Quite a few of the proposed setups would work as a Blitz. So, a few months down the line we'll have games ending at approximately the same rate that they began. If there is a real interest in playing these games, I think that the opportunity to see them run is worth potential growing pains.

As far as games not filling: we already have that. They have a set time to fill before they're pulled from signups. With the challenges, that would naturally fit to be less than a month, probably around 3 weeks.

What I think is a bigger issue is the impact on first time mods, which was the reason I suggested it as an /invititational format in the first place. I would say that we could let first time mods run some of the winners, but let's face it. So far most of the setups have been ones that wouldn't be a good fit for a new mod to tackle.

My biggest concern is definitely whether this would be something enough people would be interested in to offset the "There's an additional game outside of the normal signups" impact such a thing would probably have.

[BNL]

Bundle is definitely townsided. The Nightless game is already townsided by EV at those numbers, and there are no scum directed kills here.

[BBmolla]

We don’t have the players to play each months winner.

Maybe after a year vote amongst the 12 winning setups for one to be run?

[northsidegal]

Spoiler: Mutiny Mafia | OkaPoka

Mutiny Mafia

13 Town (alternatively some flavored name like Crew Members)

4 Mafia (alt: Mafia Crew Members)

This game will feature a "mutiny" mechanic which will be explained more in the night phase section. All deadlines are for example and subject to change along with # of town members and # of mafia members.
Yes the game goes Dawn -> Day -> Dusk -> Night -> Dawn etc.

Dawn

->The names of all mutineers from the previous night will be published.

Day

->Thread will be unlocked for ~12 days
->If there is no captain, by plurality vote, the town must select a captain. If a majority vote is reached beforehand, the captain will be immediately selected.
->Thread will thus be locked at the selection of a captain. However if there already is a captain, the captain may elect to end the day at any time.

Dusk

->The captain will have 36 hours and must select one crew members to "walk the plank" (kill).
->This kill will be published at the end of dusk/start of night

Night

->Is 36 hours
->The crew(everyone except the captain) may submit to the moderator whether they would like to "Mutiny"
->If a majority of the crew elects to mutiny, the captain will "walk the plank" at dawn.
->If the mutiny fails (not enough votes), the captain will remain the captain.

Other notes

->Mafia wincondition is to reach parity with town
->Mafia have access to daytalk at all times
->Days with failed mutinies should have a shorter deadline. (Normal Day/2) ?

@oka

, is there no nightkill in mutiny mafia? i really like the idea, but i think that it's probably townsided without one. it can basically reduce to 13:4 vanilla nightless where the captain has to kill whoever town agrees upon by majority or get lynched himself

[OkaPoka]

i guess adding a nk would balance it more in theory

but i think having an unrestricted nk might be too powerful in dealing with powertowns in practice for scum because this is essentially mountainous
but i don't really understand balance

thematic idea:

scum have access to a "forced mutiny" where they can auto-mutiny a captain (ofc limited shots. maybe even just 1-shot)

[northsidegal]

could maybe make it vengescum? some way for mafia to get rid of a locktown i think would be a good idea. just a suggestion though

[OkaPoka]

do you think giving every mafia a vengekill would be better or limiting it to a factional x-shot ability be better ?

[OkaPoka]

or maybe upon the death of a scum captain, they have the option to vengekill a mutineer

*this should theoretically allow power town dayplay at the cost of paranoia/failing a mutiny, and enables powerscumming

[Jingle]

We don’t have the players to play each months winner.

Maybe after a year vote amongst the 12 winning setups for one to be run?

Yeah, I was kinda worried about the lack of player interest myself, tbh.

I do like the idea of having it be one from a pool of setup winners (although maybe not a full year?). It definitely helps with the concern that a month's restrictions might not produce any fun setups down the road. What does everyone think about making it 6 months (which should mean that the games don't really overlap) and voting on it in August?

I'd be fine with committing to run a setup then if the designer would rather play or spectate.