Might be a little scumsided, but I wanted to design a 7p, and those things tend to inherently last only 3 days, so I may as well post it here. (OK, so I had to make the kills and lynches compulsive, but that probably benefits a setup like this anyway.)
The mechanics are inspired by 8-Ball and The One I Cannot Kill, and also a setup I never released because I wasn't happy with it (in which scum couldn't hammer
at all
; unlike most mechanical town/scum differences, that one's breakage-resistant in that forcing someone to hammer to prove their towniness ends the day). Another advantage is that unlike most compulsive-lynch setups, town have a genuine reason to hammer before deadline (in that town gets considerably less information if day ends without a hammer).
So on day 6, there are five players in zone A and five players in zone B. The towniest players have been sent to each zone, but since there are only 9 town, there must be at least one scum in a zone.
What happens if Zone A starts day 6 with 0 scum and Zone B starts with 3 scum? Scum win?
What happens if Zone A starts day 6 with 0 scum and Zone B starts with 2 scum? Does Zone A keep playing?
It's nightless so that should semi-balance the fact that at least one zone is likely to have 2 scum (if the game isn't already over by then)
I don't like that town can't win as a result of their D1-5 play, while scum can. Seems scumsided?
And also yes this setup as-is does not satisfy the challenge requirements. But it could with a few small changes, probably.
In post 24, popsofctown wrote:I think this is probably closer to 50/50, and last month Jingle said he preferred to see change history
So the townies might be able to get an inno sometimes, but only if they themselves weren't tracked (though at least then they'd know someone tracked them)?
Seems like a game focused mostly on "what did everyone do last night??" and puzzling out the occasional inno before going into playing mafia. I kinda like it? I'm having trouble getting a feel for what choices make sense for scum's nightkill. Maybe that's a good thing?
Hey all! Excited and nervous to play my first game with you!
Everyone is a cop BUT you can only get innocents AND you accidentally get roleblocked by cops.
I guess actually the mafia want to just kill the person they obligated to perform a kill the previous night on each night, so that there is never more than one confirmed innocent. This would make it easier to correctly track the next killer, but maybe is less interesting than I dreamed so perhaps there should be some restriction on the nightkills.
Maybe when someone kills someone else they get put in jail, so then they can't kill anyone else, except other people who are also in jail? I don't know.
Also I left out "mafia get to double vote when exactly two players are alive" to block happily ever after, hahaha.
"Let us say that you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this 'other world' worth to you? What do you have there that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?'"
"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"
This setup is way better after reread it holyhell that's cool.
But something something mountainous is bad, everyone wants to play follow-the-cop instead of mafia, we will never be as great as town of salem without 3 bus drivers per setup, etc.
"Let us say that you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this 'other world' worth to you? What do you have there that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?'"
"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"
The setup is actually 15p this time, extra VT added
1 Mafia Traitor removed, and replaced with a VT
In post 26, Irrelephant11 wrote:
So on day 6, there are five players in zone A and five players in zone B. The towniest players have been sent to each zone, but since there are only 9 town, there must be at least one scum in a zone.
somehow I listed the v1.0 setup as having 1 Vanilla Townie less than it should.
In post 26, Irrelephant11 wrote:What happens if Zone A starts day 6 with 0 scum and Zone B starts with 3 scum? Scum win?
Yes, that is a scum win since the Mafia have achieved parity in Zone B.
In post 26, Irrelephant11 wrote:What happens if Zone A starts day 6 with 0 scum and Zone B starts with 2 scum? Does Zone A keep playing?
Yes, and lynching still happens.
In post 26, Irrelephant11 wrote:I don't like that town can't win as a result of their D1-5 play, while scum can. Seems scumsided?
yeah, I changed it so Mafia/Masons can still talk in their PTs while in a zone for more townplay. (though it probably makes the game more scumsided)
In post 26, Irrelephant11 wrote:And also yes this setup as-is does not satisfy the challenge requirements. But it could with a few small changes, probably.
This technically doesn't meet the requirements in the case of a perfect scum win (which is a shame, because it looks like a pretty good setup, and fixing that might well ruin it).
Note that you'll need compulsive lynches and kills to avoid the risk of an odd number of players during the pair-up, and should probably ban scum from NKing each other for similar reasons.
Thinking about the setup more generally rather than specific to the challenge, my main concern is that the setup seems almost impossible for scum after one is lynched early, but you still have to play it out. The worst case, a D1 scum lynch, means that they have to create 5 town/town pairs and 4 of them have to be mislynched; it's typically pretty hard to find 4
disjoint
plausible scumpairs in a game of that size. This is a desirable balance property while you're actually playing D1 but it becomes less desirable once a scum lynch actually happens (what I think of as the "Red Flag problem", because Red Flag is great fun at the start but less fun once you actually have to go through the motions of closing the game out). Perhaps there should be some sort of "mercy kill" rule in which a sufficiently early scum lynch outright wins the game for town?
In post 31, callforjudgement wrote:This technically doesn't meet the requirements in the case of a perfect scum win (which is a shame, because it looks like a pretty good setup, and fixing that might well ruin it).
Well it actually does:
In post 0, Something_Smart wrote:At least two PT's can be created during the game as the result of a game mechanic (rather than a player's role).
You only say "can be created", not "will be created".
The cops get guilties on everyone except the Doctor, right? If so, this is basically a vanilla setup with an Innocent Child Doctor (as everyone is just as good at finding the Doctor as each other), which is not nearly enough town power to balance a 10:3. I feel like I'm missing something, though.
In post 34, callforjudgement wrote:The cops get guilties on everyone except the Doctor, right? If so, this is basically a vanilla setup with an Innocent Child Doctor (as everyone is just as good at finding the Doctor as each other), which is not nearly enough town power to balance a 10:3. I feel like I'm missing something, though.
The fact that scum only get one rolecop each night, as opposed to town which gets 8 cop results by D2, means that it's very likely that some town will know who the innocent child is before any scum do. So for a phase or two town get to be somewhat more informed than scum, like in Follow the Leader
Then if/when scum find the doctor, they have to pretend that they're not equally informed or else risk outing that they're the full team
It might be slightly more interesting with this change:
-scum don't have a factional rolecop
-doctor is 1-shot bulletproof
This way, when a kill is blocked, scum have to try to figure out if they found the doctor or got blocked by the doctor, based on whether or not some of the playerlist is treating their night target as an innocent child
Hey all! Excited and nervous to play my first game with you!
Each member of the scumteam knows about one player's doctor/non-doctor status per night. Each member of the town (other than the Doctor) also knows about one player's doctor/non-doctor status. So they gain information at the same rate as each other.
Either way, there's not much enough to having the one confirmed player even if it's a particularly useful sort of confirmation. In particular, townies can't use their knowledge of who the Doctor is to confirm
each other
Royal Mafia-style, because there's no reason to expect a
specific
other townie to find out before a specific scum member does.
When a player is nightkilled, that player becomes a part of another player's "Katamari". They have a PT they use to discuss the game, but they can't post or vote in the thread anymore, only influence that player's choices. The nightkill victim chooses whom to join. They can't join a size 2 Katamari unless there are only size 2 Katamaris left in the game.
The mod has access to all PTs and all PTs have activity requirements.
Mafia always have access to a daytalk PT unless they've been lynched.
Mafia can night kill a teammate or themselves.
Mafia can night kill even if their only remaining connection to the game is katamari.
A Mafia in a katamari can, at any time, by posting their role pm in the katamari PT, overthrow their katamari. The mod will have already PMed them the password when they joined the katamari. The player may now post in the main thread, masquerading as the individual who began the game in that slot, and has regained full vote potential.
The town wins when all mafia have been completely removed from the game by lynching them directly, and lynching slots that started town but now include a mafia in the katamari. A mafia that is in a katamari but has not overthrown it is still enough for the mafia to be not-yet-defeated.
The mafia wins when this becomes impossible.
"Let us say that you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this 'other world' worth to you? What do you have there that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?'"
"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"
So if a size 2 katamari gets nightkilled the master joins a different katamari and the slaves all die?
Hillarious setup btw, also you could just play it like a disguiser game where you killed a mafia every night, then that mafia immediately overthrew his katamari the next day or am I missing it?
Yes, that's a strategy available to the mafia by design.
I hadn't thought about NK on a katamari, but that sounds correct and like it should work just fine, the master moves and the slaves die.
"Let us say that you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this 'other world' worth to you? What do you have there that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?'"
"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"
When a player is nightkilled, that player becomes a part of another player's "Katamari". They have a PT they use to discuss the game, but they can't post or vote in the thread anymore, only influence that player's choices. The nightkill victim chooses whom to join. They can't join a size 2 Katamari unless there are only size 2 Katamaris left in the game.
The mod has access to all PTs and all PTs have activity requirements.
Mafia always have access to a daytalk PT unless they've been lynched.
Mafia can night kill a teammate or themselves.
Mafia can night kill even if their only remaining connection to the game is katamari.
A Mafia in a katamari can, at any time, by posting their role pm in the katamari PT, overthrow their katamari. The mod will have already PMed them the password when they joined the katamari. The player may now post in the main thread, masquerading as the individual who began the game in that slot, and has regained full vote potential.
The town wins when all mafia have been completely removed from the game by lynching them directly, and lynching slots that started town but now include a mafia in the katamari. A mafia that is in a katamari but has not overthrown it is still enough for the mafia to be not-yet-defeated.
The mafia wins when this becomes impossible.
Last edited by TemporalLich on Thu Jul 04, 2019 11:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
popsofctown - katamari (i like the idea of this setup, sue me)
cfj - our target (id play this, world needs more 7p setups anyways)
singleton - fusion mafia (also sounds like a game id play)
temporal lich - two zones (tbh i think the "mechanic" would work better in a theme-ish game with prs rather than a one off thing)
elephant - follow the doc (its an interesting take)
chennis - (seems wildly swingy, maybe a marathon shenanigans game would work for this tho)
Two Zones (TL) - It's my setup and I like the zone mechanic personally.
Katamari Mafia (pops) - An interesting secret alt mini theme game that needs to be run at least once.
Follow the Doc (Relly) - I prefer the version with the changes in 36, that seems fun while the version without the changes is pretty much mountainous with a pseudo-IC doctor. My vote is based on the version with the changes. This setup without the changes would easily be dead last.
Fusion Mafia (singleton) - I like the variation on Lovers Mafia here.
Our Target (CFJ) - An interesting setup to discourage lolhammering.
Here's a Shitpost (chenn) - Pretty swingy and chaotic tbh, but still an okay setup. Too bad it scored dead last.
Our Target (CFJ) - I wanted a 7p, and I like this one. (The target mechanic is mostly there to balance the game despite the player numbers, but it at least does it in a way that's interesting to game for both sideds.)
Fusion Mafia (singletonking) - I really like the mechanic. I think this is scumsided, but am not sure, and even if it is it should be easy to fix by changing numbers.
Katamari Mafia (popsofctown) - Basically a cult game, but it fixes both of the main problems of cult games pretty well (including incorporating my favourite cult balance fix, in which the cult has to sacrifice an existing slot to create a new one). I have a suspicion that realistically overthrowing people may be difficult, though.
Two Zones (TemporalLich) - I'm not sure that there's that much interest in the decision about which of your two suspected townies goes to which zone. Maybe you could use it for associatives (because the late days of the main game thread are likely to be quite scum-heavy, so scum will be manipulating the vote).
Follow the Doc (Irrelephant) - The original version of this is clearly very scumsided without much usable power for town. The improved version is better, but it's an idea that's been done in the past and in a neater way (it's basically AitP but with groupscum and without the scum autowin if they figure out who the King is, which is much more Mafia than the original AitP is).
Here's a Shitpost (chennisden) - I think this is broken via circle-targeting/pair-targeting (not sure which is better): although town don't get any benefit from the
Cop
shot, they're effectively investigating players to see if they can roleblock! As such, all but 1 scum are likely to be caught N1 (I'm not immediately clear on what happens if scum get to target each other).
Yeah I like my latter setup more vote on that one.
"Let us say that you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this 'other world' worth to you? What do you have there that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?'"
"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"
Fusion Mafia (singletonking) - This is a really exciting core mechanic, and I love giving the mafia the ability to sculpt the playerlist in this way. I'm somewhat worried in practice that midgame loverization could be frustrating for a "victim". This setup has to be run for anyone to know what it's like.
Katamari Mafia (popsofctown) - On the plane ride home from Seattle I passed by a middle-aged woman in first class playing an iPad game where she dragged a huge hole in the street around with her finger to move it around a city, and objects like trees, traffic cones, and cars would fall into the hole and make it bigger. I thought, this poor woman, she does not know what game that is ripping off, and how much more joy destroying a city would bring her with a dose of Japanese whimsy. But it did make me realize that the idea of something conglomerating in a game is not tied to "sphere of objects" and so the game concept can be adapted to things.
The final product is not nearly as Katamari-esque because I prioritized making it a good setup to play. Actually being able to pile a 3 stack and remove that slot from the game all at once would be not great. Then I had to think about what happens if a Katamari has multiple alignments and ended up with "the cult mechanic" as CJF has called it but I didn't set out to make a cult game. But you know probably the best cult and jester games happen when that's not what you were trying to make, like Temporal Lich's Dragon Capturer, which is very good.
I like the extent to which the mafia can opt out and de-emphasize the katamari and overthrow mechanics as needed, it can play out as a good game of mountainous if it needs to (you could do this thing with light PRs too but I think that'd be better closed). The thing I dislike the most about this setup is that the mafia are hobbled in their ability to silence productive townies. But since two "keep talking when dead" mini themes both fired quickly off the queue lately, I probably care more about that than most people I guess.
Follow the Doc 2.0 (Irrelephant) - Having a secret that some of the townies know and none of the mafia know is a pretty nifty mechanic and adds a new dynamic to the day. It gives the mafia something new to think about. I think I would rank this much more highly during a site meta where additional ways to challenge the mafia's play was what site meta needed, but from what I hear, scum winrates have been low. Of course even the 2.0 version of this has lower town EV win % than some silly closed setups that are getting run which is a Good Thing but on top of that if we're not great at playing the bad guys lately we should focus on learning the basics of how to play bad guys before moving onto, playing bad guys and pretending to know who the secret IC is.
Two Zones (TemporalLich) - I'm really not sure, this might be more fun to play than it looks, but generally I'm more excited by PTs with a special purpose or mechanic or assymetry. When people run 10:3 closed setups with a 3p starting neighborhood and an alignment unconfirmed neighborizer I'm similarly nonplussed and skeptical. Although it might turn out more fun than I'm expecting (and maybe enjoying the playerlist of a larger game without the commensurate commotion is just Always Good and hasn't been tried, like the new TFT minigame in League of Legends).
Our Target (callforjudgment) - I think for a challenge that says "design a 7p", this is a really inventive way to get a 5:2 game to feel similar to a 7:2 game and this should score really really highly. But among all mafia setups ever, I dislike hampering any player's dayplay options, and here the mafia can't make some opportunistic plays. This is probably the lesser of all possible evils you could visit on a 7p setup to balance it: making it an SK setup takes away so much from mafia, vengeful townies remove the town hall feel from mafia, investigatives are gross, etc. This is one of the most elegant solutions I've seen. And it adds its own subgame. But I'm ranking these setups as though I'm viewing all of them in the queue with 1 more player needed to fill them, I guess.
Here's a Shitpost (chennisden) - I like the design, of course; it's similar to my first submission, Matsuda mafia. But I think the setup is broken by multiple potential strategies, so I have to put it last on principle. Matsuda mafia took more than ten minutes to write in a way that wasn't clearly broken (and I can't promise I didn't miss something even then) so I think that's kinda what results from a shitpost. But I do think it's good brainstorming that makes me look forward to hearing more from you in this subforum.
"Let us say that you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this 'other world' worth to you? What do you have there that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?'"
"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"
