[SETUP] The Council

[Kanna]

Spoiler: Old

The Council

7 Town

2 Mafia

Every day, players vote with heal tags for 3 people to become The Council. These 3 people are put into a PT that lasts for the remainder of the day. Eliminations occur as normal.

Before the day ends, The Council must come to a consensus on how to distribute power roles for that night. One investigative and one protective may be chosen. The list is as follows:

• Investigative: Neapolitan, Tracker, Watcher
  
• Protective: Doctor, Bodyguard, Hider

Additionally, each role is attached to a player, which the moderator randomly assigns. If chosen, that player is granted that power role for

one night

. It is possible for the same player to be attached to multiple roles, but it is not possible to give one player more than one role. The choice is given as [Choose one to grant: X is a Neapolitan / Y is a Tracker / Z is a Watcher].

After the roles are chosen, they are removed from the list and not allowed to be chosen again. Mafia can also remove one unchosen role during the night.

Mafia have a factional roleblock and a kill.

Town win when both mafia are eliminated. Mafia win when they achieve parity.

The Council v2

7 Vanilla Townies

2 Mafia Goons

• Every day, players use HEAL: tags to propose a
  Council
  of 3 people. Proposals can be changed freely, but a decision is locked in when the majority of players propose the same combination of 3 people. Should there be no council decided before an elimination is hammered, there will be no council.
  
• Council members are made elimination-proof for the day and put into a PT the following night. During the night, they vote in their PT to
  track
  one person and
  protect
  one person. These function as tracker and doctor actions performed by the group.
  
• There are no restrictions for these actions; they can be used on anyone in the playerlist, and both can be used on the same person.
  
• When day starts, council members receive the results of the track.
  
• The setup becomes vanilla on Day 4.

Town win when both mafia are eliminated. Mafia win when they achieve parity.

[callforjudgement]

I'm worried that an all-town Council will end up overbalancing the game very quickly. (If there's scum on the Council, they will know how to aim their kill and/or roleblock, which is an interesting mechanic as it may betray that there were scum there; but the all-town case is very good for town, and probably not all that unlikely given only three players there.) So I have some concerns about swing.

I do like this sort of mechanic for distributing power roles, though, because it avoids the typical Open problem of players confirming themselves by claiming.

[Kanna]

fair enough, how do you think it can be improved? weaker power roles? cop might be too much actually; that'd always chosen D1 and gives an IC by D2... changed that to Neopolitan

as for an all-town council, i was hoping it sounds better on paper than it works in practice, since, as scum, my first reaction would be to rb/kill council members because there'd be a good chance they shared the prs between themselves.

[callforjudgement]

Watcher is actually probably stronger than Cop. Predicting the kill is often easier than finding scum.

Tracker can be as strong as Cop if 1 scum is dead; in practice, it'll probably never be chosen because scum will (at least should) delete it in the gamestates where it's strong.

Neapolitan is interesting in that it's by far the most powerful if given to someone on the Council (who can avoid investigating a power role by mistake), but that makes it easier for scum to find.

Doctor and Bodyguard would probably be given to someone outside the Council, in practice. Hider could be given to any obvtown Council member, because you can't do much about the role even if you know who has it. (I'm assuming this is the purely-protective version of Hider, not the investigative Weak Hider, but it isn't obvious from the post.)

My guess is that this is still townsided, but with WIFOM-heavy setups, it's often hard to figure out the balance.

[Isis]

This is "breakable" in that you can have follow-the-cop doc onto cop and bodyguard onto tracker nights without informing the mafia who to roleblock (unless they've infiltrated the council). You would use the game thread to identify, for each player, who they should protect that night if they become a protective, making sure each person is targetted once. Then, the council grants the doctor ability to a player, then grants the cop ability to whoever that doctor pledged to target during the night.

If the mafia are in the council, they may roleblock the doctor and kill the cop or roleblock the cop and kill the doctor, but that suggests that the mafia are in the council and exposing that the mafia's most townread member may be in the council is pretty costly.

[Kanna]

thanks for the feedback! err... it probably is just as townsided as it looks then. in that case, would changing scum:town to 3:6 be good? or is it too much? a townblock PT could also be ++town for dayplay reasons too now that i think about it.

[Isis]

What if the council was given a random list of 3 cantidates or something, like "choose give Hectic doctor or give Isis bodyguard or give Kanna hider"

There's something unsatisfying to me about games where day 1 there can just be a Mafia Discussion thread-type theory discussion on how you order the power level of power roles. In practice games like this get run and since people have varying opinions it ends up interesting anyway, but, my aversion remains. I'd like for it to not be possible to play the "is cop the best role n1?" part of the setup before signups even begin.

6:3 with the council mechanic working like it does in OP is an overcorrection I would think.
Something with the same general style to this would be having a council that decides on a public copping N1 and N2, that'd probably be balanced.

[Kanna]

i like that idea and have changed the OP! i can definitely see mandatory setup talk, and it's understandable some people won't enjoy that. this correction makes people play the setup more as it's intended, i think.

[Isis]

Is each player attached to 1 protective and 1 investigative role? Also, do the roles last for just one night or the rest of the game in perpetuity?

[Kanna]

i tried to fix this again !

the different power roles probably made it unnecessarily convoluted so i changed it to a tracker/doctor action. public copping would be interesting, but i don't think being able to peek at that is especially helpful to mafia. peeking at tracker/doctor actions should be helpful though?

[Isis]

This looks playable as is but I think there's probably room to nudge it in the direction of green EV.
I can't think of an elegant way to do that right away.