\o/
One thing to note is that we (the worst and I) are planning to make a series of games, of which this will be the first, which are meant to challenge expectations while still adhering to good balance and design principles, and we'll tell people this when advertising the game.
So in terms of this not being exactly what players will expect when they join a normal game, they will have some prior warning.
Something_Smart's mini normal review, June 2019
-
Something_Smart
-
Something_Smart He/himSomewhat_Balanced Something_Smart He/him
- Somewhat_Balanced
- Somewhat_Balanced
- Posts: 23146
- Joined: November 17, 2015
- Pronoun: He/him
- Location: Upstate New York
It's always the same. When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die. You don't know whose children are going to scream and burn. How many hearts will be broken. How many lives shattered. How much blood will spill, until everybody does what they're always going to have to do from the very beginning... SIT DOWN AND TALK!-
Something_Smart
-
Something_Smart He/himSomewhat_Balanced Something_Smart He/him
- Somewhat_Balanced
- Somewhat_Balanced
- Posts: 23146
- Joined: November 17, 2015
- Pronoun: He/him
- Location: Upstate New York
When I get home from work in a few hours I can skim the discord chat I had with tw and give you a recap of the main things we discussed.
The vanilla cop is supposed to be a strong PR for town, likely able to clear a VT and maybe two.
Aside from that, the info is strong, but I'm not intending for the informed players to necessarily be cleared. This goes hand-in-hand with the third scum fakeclaim option that you didn't mention-- claiming informed with different information, which could be related, or unrelated, or just completely made up. Possibly the N2 informed will be cleared, but I doubt the others will.
One thing I could do is combine the current scum info into one scum role (a N1+2 informed) which would free up the other scum role to be another informed with townier information that they can claim, or just another helpful role like ascetic.
How do you feel about that? Which of the informed townies do you think are going to be cleared by claiming?It's always the same. When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die. You don't know whose children are going to scream and burn. How many hearts will be broken. How many lives shattered. How much blood will spill, until everybody does what they're always going to have to do from the very beginning... SIT DOWN AND TALK!-
Something_Smart
-
Something_Smart He/himSomewhat_Balanced Something_Smart He/him
- Somewhat_Balanced
- Somewhat_Balanced
- Posts: 23146
- Joined: November 17, 2015
- Pronoun: He/him
- Location: Upstate New York
I guess I could just take out the informed neighbor entirely. That frees scum up to claim almost anything and they likely won't be CC'd.
I probably wouldn't be opposed to nerfing the vanilla cop if necessary, but I will say that even if ungated I highly doubt they will get more than two useful checks. A "not vanilla" check is basically useless unless on scum that claimed VT, and if town massclaims then yeah they'll be able to check VT claims but scum will just shoot them.
Two checks might be too much though. "No goons" informed + vanilla cop + two cleared VT's + probably a neighbor assuming town hits scum in the hood on their second try is five clears which is too many. Reducing vanilla cop shots to two probably only clears one VT and also makes the vanilla cop more mislynchable after they've used their shots.It's always the same. When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die. You don't know whose children are going to scream and burn. How many hearts will be broken. How many lives shattered. How much blood will spill, until everybody does what they're always going to have to do from the very beginning... SIT DOWN AND TALK!-
Something_Smart
-
Something_Smart He/himSomewhat_Balanced Something_Smart He/him
- Somewhat_Balanced
- Somewhat_Balanced
- Posts: 23146
- Joined: November 17, 2015
- Pronoun: He/him
- Location: Upstate New York
Okay so some of the things we talked about were:
- I was clear counting, I assumed that the vanilla cop would only clear one person even if ungated. Looking back that may have been a dangerous assumption because if scum kill someone who's cleared via neighborhood or informed status on N2 and/or N3, the vanilla cop could easily get three checks in and then they may get two clears. Assuming one clear from the VC I got to approximately four which is what I got here as well. I think gating the vanilla cop is probably the best way to make sure it doesn't get out of hand.
- We considered massclaim and decided that it's not gonna help town if it occurs on D3 or earlier (and if scum haven't hit any PR's by D4 it's kinda their own fault). Scum can claim all VT's (or informed with whatever info they want, if they choose), and then kill the vanilla cop followed by the N4 informed.
- We thought about whether the N4 informed was too gamebreaky. I don't think it is, because scum can almost certainly stop it if they try hard enough, and even if they don't but they split their claims among VT and not VT, it will just create more pool hunting and nothing complete. And with no protection for the vanilla cop, as soon as massclaim hits scum can claim whatever they want without worrying about getting found by it.
- The biggest problem, then, is probably the possibility of scum claiming VT on the stand or in massclaim and getting screwed by the vanilla cop having a non-vanilla result on them... but then again, this is something that can always happen with pretty much any investigative role. It means scum played badly enough to draw an investigative and also didn't see the vanilla cop coming (the N1 informed claiming there are no goons might tip them off that there's something that interacts with vanillas).
As for gating the vanilla cop, I originally liked your 2-shot idea. That should make it pretty likely that they only get one clear, if they get any at all.
However, I figured it's likely they would use a shot N1, and thus they'd only have one shot left by the time they actually know what the point of their role is. So then I wondered if Novice was better, but Novice just takes too long to trigger and it's more likely that they would die without getting any results at all.
Odd-Night is strictly worse than 2-shot unless they live to D6 which they won't.
I then thought about "not N3" which would be a funny night restriction but the N4 shot also seems kinda pointless as it's probably never gonna trigger.
By the same token, 3-shot is pretty much as strong as full.
So I think I'm right back where I started with 2-shot being the best. This is where I'm at:
Mafia N1 Informed (There is a town N2 informed that will learn there is exactly one scum neighbor)
Mafia N2 Informed (There is a town N4 informed that will learn there are 4 VT's)
Mafia Neighbor
Town Neighbor x2
Town N1 Informed (There are no mafia goons)
Town N2 Informed (There is exactly one scum neighbor)
Town N4 Informed (There are 4 VT's)
Town 2-Shot Vanilla Cop
VT x4
Without the informed neighbor, scum have a lot of freedom in fakeclaiming. They can go for the ballsy VT claim and hope it doesn't get disproved, or they can claim some other random info, or they can claim pretty much any PR they want (including something like Backup Vanilla Cop if they claim after the Vanilla Cop claims or dies).
And the number of clears shouldn't be higher than 4 except with really strong townplay.
Right now, what I'm concerned about is the 1/3 chance of lynching scum in the hood first, which might generate 5 clears. I would think that with the advance notice they get, the scum should be able to set their neighbor up to not be lynched first, but that's not a guarantee. If town gets two neighbors cleared, and the vanilla cop, and a VT, and the N2 informed, scum are rightfully gonna be a bit annoyed.
If we're still concerned about that, the solution is probably to give scum townier roles, so that the role speculation will be less trusted. I think what I'd do is, like I said, roll both current mafia informeds into one mafia informed, and give the other scum a N3 informed (creating a neat pattern of N1-N2-N3-N4 that will be very hard for town to tell which is scum, if any) for something LAMIST such as maybe the "one visiting role" info I just took off of a neighbor.
Thoughts?It's always the same. When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die. You don't know whose children are going to scream and burn. How many hearts will be broken. How many lives shattered. How much blood will spill, until everybody does what they're always going to have to do from the very beginning... SIT DOWN AND TALK!-
Something_Smart
-
Something_Smart He/himSomewhat_Balanced Something_Smart He/him
- Somewhat_Balanced
- Somewhat_Balanced
- Posts: 23146
- Joined: November 17, 2015
- Pronoun: He/him
- Location: Upstate New York
For simplicity, I'll give the combined scum informed all the info they need on N1. N1 informed is a lot cleaner than N1+2 Informed or N1 Informed N2 Informed.
So:
Mafia N1 Informed (There is a town N2 informed that will learn there is exactly one scum neighbor, and there is a town N4 informed that will learn there are 4 VT's)
Mafia N3 Informed (There is exactly one visiting role)
Mafia Neighbor
Town Neighbor x2
Town N1 Informed (There are no mafia goons)
Town N2 Informed (There is exactly one scum neighbor)
Town N4 Informed (There are 4 VT's)
Town 2-Shot Vanilla Cop
VT x4
I'll work on updating the necessary role PM's.It's always the same. When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die. You don't know whose children are going to scream and burn. How many hearts will be broken. How many lives shattered. How much blood will spill, until everybody does what they're always going to have to do from the very beginning... SIT DOWN AND TALK!-
Something_Smart
-
Something_Smart He/himSomewhat_Balanced Something_Smart He/him
- Somewhat_Balanced
- Somewhat_Balanced
- Posts: 23146
- Joined: November 17, 2015
- Pronoun: He/him
- Location: Upstate New York
Spoiler: Role PM'sIt's always the same. When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die. You don't know whose children are going to scream and burn. How many hearts will be broken. How many lives shattered. How much blood will spill, until everybody does what they're always going to have to do from the very beginning... SIT DOWN AND TALK!-
Something_Smart
-
Something_Smart He/himSomewhat_Balanced Something_Smart He/him
- Somewhat_Balanced
- Somewhat_Balanced
- Posts: 23146
- Joined: November 17, 2015
- Pronoun: He/him
- Location: Upstate New York
@implosion:we will be modding on the hydra Professor Moriarty.It's always the same. When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die. You don't know whose children are going to scream and burn. How many hearts will be broken. How many lives shattered. How much blood will spill, until everybody does what they're always going to have to do from the very beginning... SIT DOWN AND TALK!
Copyright © MafiaScum. All rights reserved.