[SETUP] Mafia Matchmakers

[Hoopla]

This is an 11 player setup, inspired from the building blocks of Lovers Nightless style setups. This setup aims to address the core problem of both Lovers and Nightless setups,

and

introduce a delicious element of wifom.

With small Lovers games, the problem is you're frequently dealing with even numbers. These phases require a higher ratio of town players to form a lynch, which can make EV predictions deceiving, as lets be real, there's always going to be one or two townies who just won't compromise and play ball.

And with Nightless setups, you end up in a positive feedback loop where any lynch on scum earns you another mislynch opportunity. This, coupled with the info you gain from such lynches, and the lack of nightkill to remove obvtownies/premium scumhunters, means it's very difficult for scum to win this setup once they lose one or more scum.

Anyhow, enough of a preamble. I present:

Mafia Matchmakers

11 players:

3 Mafia

,

8 Townies

- There is a Day 1 lynch as usual to get the juices flowing and build some information for the Night 1 phase, which is where the magic happens; cupid's arrow striking through hearts of the town. Here is how it works:

- On Night 1, the Mafia kill one townie
- Also on N1, the mafia must loverise four sets of two players (including themselves). The pairs are now bonded forever, shacked up in a private QT. They may talk in them indefinitely once Day 2 starts.
- Pairs are revealed publicly at the start of Day 2 by the mod.
- One player is left over. The Loner. This role does nothing. It is strictly there for wifom purposes and to create an odd-numbered lynching cycle; Day 2 starting with 9 players.
- Once Day 2 starts, the game is now Nightless.
- A lover being lynched causes their partner to suicide immediately.
- Mafia may choose to partner with themselves or be the Loner.
- Mafia win when they occupy 50% of players alive
-

Lovers may openly mock the Loner

This setup gives town at worst three mislynch opportunities. N1 also gives the scum to get rid of one obvtownie that may otherwise make it to lylo, and an opportunity to rig the setup in a way favourable to them. There is creative scope for adventurous scumteams to pair obvtownies with themselves or mislynch candidates together, or even go for a brazen scum/scum combo etc. It also seems like a smart play for scum to occupy the Loner slot, as the town should probably avoid lynching the Loner slot on D2 or D3 to stay in odd-numbers, unless they're

really

sure it's scum. But! Town should know that scum would probably put themselves there, so maybe they won't, and will use that slot to frame a townie for a late game mislynch. And so the wifom will flow...

[Isis]

I marked this read like ten minutes before going to bed one night and didn't come back to it like I meant to. This looks really good. Maybe not my favorite thing ever but I'd queue for it.

It seems like you partially resolve each of your thesis problems? You still go to evens if the Loner is lynched, and you still get the classic momentum swings if a double scum lovership or loner scum is lynched (and those plays need to be part of the ~Nash equilibrium of playing this setup). But you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, or whatever.

You could keep odds by making it part of the rules that the Loner gets to be lynchproof until LyLo? But that's a kind of antifun mechanic, games get yucky when a large part of a game thinks they're playing with an Evil Child.

[Something_Smart]

Cool idea, but it seems fairly scumsided at the current numbers. If we make the simplifying assumption that scum will pair scummy players with towny players, then effectively every time town lynches a scummy player a towny player dies as well, giving them effectively a NK. And yeah they don't have full control over it but the EV is going to come out pretty similar to 8:3 mountainous, which is of course horribly scumsided. I doubt that the qualitative benefits town gets from the setup (the possibility of their reads changing to make scum's pseudo-NK's inaccurate, or the chance the pseudo-NK's land on scum) would overcome that completely.

[Isis]

That assumption is way too simplifying. Even if you totally ignore the WIFOM where if scum fully commit to always pairing scum with UTRs and could actually just get located by lynching UTR, setting that aside: normal nightkills happen based on the previous day phase, these loverships all get locked in night 1, so that's not apples to apples.
I think it favors scum as it stands but not to the point where you could add two townies and not overcorrect. I would remove the nightkill and townie slot that exists for it, I think you're left with a pretty fair setup then.

[Hoopla]

It seems like you partially resolve each of your thesis problems? You still go to evens if the Loner is lynched, and you still get the classic momentum swings if a double scum lovership or loner scum is lynched (and those plays need to be part of the ~Nash equilibrium of playing this setup). But you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, or whatever.

I mean, the direct to solve the runaway momentum scumlynches produce in nightless games would be to allow scum full access to a nightkill (aka a normal game). these are the two polarities i'm aiming to avoid. one nightkill + lover suicides seems like it's about halfway between these two poles.

Cool idea, but it seems fairly scumsided at the current numbers. If we make the simplifying assumption that scum will pair scummy players with towny players, then effectively every time town lynches a scummy player a towny player dies as well, giving them effectively a NK. And yeah they don't have full control over it but the EV is going to come out pretty similar to 8:3 mountainous, which is of course horribly scumsided. I doubt that the qualitative benefits town gets from the setup (the possibility of their reads changing to make scum's pseudo-NK's inaccurate, or the chance the pseudo-NK's land on scum) would overcome that completely.

I think this would be much better than 8:3 mountainous for town. Some properties of nightless (an overwhelmingly town mechanic) still pseudo-exist in the game - one key one, is that scum have no direct control over killing specific townies after N1. If a scumlynch occurs at any point (and town get three mislynch chances before losing), it will provide a lot of information, and I'd expect the town to have one or two obvtown players after a scumlynch. Obviously scum can still be partnered with these players, but the town also has four 1-on-1 interrogations occurring in neighbourhoods too. If scum split themselves across three neighbourhoods, those are three townies that need to be fooled in an intimate way, not to mention the possibility of a town/town lover pair deducing they're both town. Seems like there's a lot more information in the game than 8:3 mountainous.

Having said all this, if it still appears scumsided to other commenters, I'd be open to playing around with the loner role before adding more townies. An easy balance adjustment for town would be not allowing scum to be the loner, essentially turning it into an innocent child. You would need to attach some 3p-lylo rules to it though, as an IC + scum/town lover pairing in lylo, means that the IC can be wrong and still win, which doesn't seem right.

[Isis]

I don't feel fully convinced the original is scumsided beyond tolerance