Why do people play open setups?

[FakeGod]

Slight hijacking: Just finished FakeGod's Touhou-themed game. Fakeclaims were not given to the scum. A subversion, as one of the (Town) characters in the game started the game knowing everyone's character name, so that wasn't an issue, but I knew nothing about Touhou and it was a role madness game -- if I had had to claim a Mafia role based on the character flavor I would've been sunk. Knowing that this is the case, I am very unlikely to sign up for another game by the same mod because I don't want my unfamiliarity with the theme/flavor to become a penalty.

Mannnnn, that game was aimed at a

very

specific population of MS. You were simply not the intended audience. :/

Hell, I even put a disclaimer in the sign-ups that you might be at a disadvantage if you don't know the flavor. >.>

[FakeGod]

But yeah, it's important to make sure the game isn't breakable by flavor.

Here's a good example from a recent game I modded, which features fully developed fakeclaims for scum: Frozen.

[Kagami]

I'm sad that I missed Frozen mafia :<

That said, there was one aspect of that setup that I feel very leery about; notscience's role PM ability essentially confirmed that anorway was Anna (he wasn't).

Even though ns's role PM specifically stated that he didn't know Anna's alignment, if DBK had been lynched first (flipping "Duke's Bodyguard: aligned with Weselton"), the town would have very likely interpreted it as a confirmed innocent, given that the second scum would pretty much have to be the Duke.

[Eden]

Open formats emphasize the core town/scum interaction mechanic better than semi-open formats because they remove setup spec from the game. I dislike power roles in general and semi-open formats in particular because they add extra layers of what I mostly consider noise to the equation.

[AGar]

If you're scum don't get "caught".

Oh, duh. I've been doing it wrong all along.

[Jake from State Farm]

If you're scum don't get "caught".

Oh, duh. I've been doing it wrong all along.

Well now you know and knowing is half the battle

[kuribo]

Some people like opens because they're more straightforward in design

Some people like closed themes because it's an extra level of challenge on all sides


It's like the difference between pie and cake. Some people like one and not the other. Some prefer one over the other. It doesn't mean either is wrong.


Personally I avoid opens and even normals whenever possible, but that's just me

[Phoenicks]

I saw a Sonic the Hedgehog mafia where one mafioso was Knuckles -- to beat the mass claim. It worked too well. The town picked off obscure claims without ever thinking to check one of the heroes.

One solution I've seen: give everyone two claims that together are equally fishy. Someone with Mario/Bowser is just as suspicious as someone with Koopa/star child.

This is one reason I play open setups: I know the setup isn't conspiring against me too.

Open setups are best when you know how to work them. My favorite: 4 VTs, 1 cop, 1 governor, 1 GF, 1 goon, nightstart.

[goodmorning]

To answer the thread's original question:
I don't play Opens often. When I do, it's either because a new experimental one is happening or it's just one that I like (like Triplicate, for instance).
The reason I play the former is because they're interesting, they give me good ideas, and I don't get any setup paranoia.
The reason I play the latter is as stated: I just like them. Something about them wormed its way in and that was that.

On fakeclaims:
If I'm doing a flavoured game I provide fake flavour upon request. But they only get one per player.
I don't expect everyone to be familiar with the flavour. It's in my rules as not being relevant, and it's not. If giving the Mafia fakeclaims helps make it less relevant then I'm good with that.

[Feirei]

Let's say someone is playing a fictional "super mario RPG mafia". Scum is pretty much caught and at L-1. Scum is assigned smithy, but can't claim Smithy from 'cuz that would be autolynch. Smithy is obviously one of the villains. But scum could claim Jinx or croco, because they're not quite a bad guys, may be in said hypothetical game, are not so obscure as to question "who is that", but are not so popular that they would have been given to actual town players. Scum couldn't claim Princess Toadstool because that role is obviously going to be assigned to a town player and will be counter-claimed in this hypothetical theme. Knowing the meta of super mario Rpg in this hypothetical theme game should be a benefit to town and scum alike.

The funny part is this game actually happened.

[reinoe]

Let's say someone is playing a fictional "super mario RPG mafia". Scum is pretty much caught and at L-1. Scum is assigned smithy, but can't claim Smithy from 'cuz that would be autolynch. Smithy is obviously one of the villains. But scum could claim Jinx or croco, because they're not quite a bad guys, may be in said hypothetical game, are not so obscure as to question "who is that", but are not so popular that they would have been given to actual town players. Scum couldn't claim Princess Toadstool because that role is obviously going to be assigned to a town player and will be counter-claimed in this hypothetical theme. Knowing the meta of super mario Rpg in this hypothetical theme game should be a benefit to town and scum alike.

The funny part is this game actually happened.

Oh wow, I can't believe that game wasn't broken by massclaims. I thought people in theme games always mass claim day 1. That's the impression I was starting to get in this thread...

Thanks for the link, but holy cow that game was a mess.

[kuribo]

There's no point to mass claiming because scum will have fakeclaims in a heavily themed game

Like in POTUS Mafia, the scum were lizard folk and the town were presidents, but the lizards were disguised as presidents
In Gay Mafia, the scum were the Westboro Baptist Church but we were given safe claims so that we could blend in if there were a mass claim


This is an extremely common practice in themes and to allow the game to be broken by mass claim is extremely poor modding practice


It's not done in theme games day 1 because there is some risk and little or no benefit (ie suppose someone is Lyncher to a certain role)

[callforjudgement]

I think day 1 / day 2 massclaims should happen more often than they currently do, in all sorts of Theme games (not just Closed ones). However, that's not to say that they should be done often, or even usually; just more often than "almost never". The reason is that scum can easily lock themselves into making claims that would hurt them later, and in some setups, this outweighs the benefit they get from knowing the town PRs / flavour names.

FWIW, whether I play an Open or Closed rarely has much to do with whether it's Open or Closed; I look at other factors (such as how long the game is, how much I feel I'd benefit from experience with the game in question, and so on). Given how I mostly only play via replacing in, most games are at least partially Open to me because some of the setup will already have been discovered by the players in the game.

[Desperado]

I'm sad that I missed Frozen mafia :<

That said, there was one aspect of that setup that I feel very leery about; notscience's role PM ability essentially confirmed that anorway was Anna (he wasn't).

Even though ns's role PM specifically stated that he didn't know Anna's alignment, if DBK had been lynched first (flipping "Duke's Bodyguard: aligned with Weselton"), the town would have very likely interpreted it as a confirmed innocent, given that the second scum would pretty much have to be the Duke.

yes, fakegod has done this more than once

crossroads

[BBmolla]

But scum, when cornered, should be forced to think about the game they're playing when they're caught. Fake claims should take effort.

Let's say someone is playing a fictional "super mario RPG mafia". Scum is pretty much caught and at L-1. Scum is assigned smithy, but can't claim Smithy from 'cuz that would be autolynch. Smithy is obviously one of the villains. But scum could claim Jinx or croco, because they're not quite a bad guys, may be in said hypothetical game, are not so obscure as to question "who is that", but are not so popular that they would have been given to actual town players. Scum couldn't claim Princess Toadstool because that role is obviously going to be assigned to a town player and will be counter-claimed in this hypothetical theme. Knowing the meta of super mario Rpg in this hypothetical theme game should be a benefit to town and scum alike.

I know I'm in the minority on this but since the topic came up I figured I'd share my thoughts on theme games and scum being handed safe fake claims.

a theme game without scum safe flavor claims would be easily broken by Day 1 flavor massclaim.

I disagree.

You've just stated in your example theme Princess Toadstool would be obvious town.

Therefore by not having the possibility that scum getting that (and other roles that you also describe as obvtown alignment), it reduces the lynch pool to just the not quite bad guys.

Ok, I worded that a little poorly and I accept that. But there are also side characters who would nto be too obscure and are good characters: The Chancellor, One or both of mallows parents, Frogfucious, Frogfucious' apprentice, Link/Samus, Toadofsky, Fireworks Mole, or Culex. You can choose these and more and that's just off the top of my head. Knowing the rich tapestry of the theme game benefits town and scum alike.

That's dumb. It rewards people for knowing the flavor and means players who don't know the flavor literally can't play your game.

In Community mafia I had to do this. The scum were provided fake claims, but all the town main characters were power roles, and neither me or my buddy wanted to claim a power role. So we had to outguess the mod.

We succeeded cause I was a huge Community nerd, but someone not into Community would have lost the game just because of the flavor of the claim. Which is stupid.

[callforjudgement]

There's also the risk that no matter how much flavour knowledge you have, you might guess a flavour name that's already been given to one of the townies.

[reinoe]

Is it alright to have a theme game with multi-ball and give both scum factions the same fake-claims?

[quadz08]

I would say no - the point of fakeclaims is that the scumteam should be confident that no one else has that role. While giving both scumteams the same fakeclaims isn't

technically

giving someone the role your fakeclaim is for, it is betraying the purpose of a fakeclaim. (There's a reason that a commonly-used synonym for fakeclaim is 'safeclaim' - the claim itself should be safe to make in a vacuum.)

[kuribo]

Not to mention any half-thinking town will follow this train of thought:

1. "Okay, these two guys claimed the same role name. We lynch between them."
2. A-Team Scum gets lynched, flips not-that-role
3. "Okay, either the mod didn't give out safe claims or this is some insane scum theater."
4. B-Team Scum gets lynched, flips not-that-role
5. "Ahahaha wtf mod" *dead PT fills with people who mock you*

Alternatively, at step 3, A-Team scum says "Oh, fuck that guy," and kills B-Team scum because they figure they've found confirmed town. Also they yell at you for giving them a safeclaim that was actually in the game.

[kuribo]

Idea time: All town have the same rolename. All scum have the same fakeclaim of that rolename.

it could be called Clonetown Mafia


except the miller, he's not a clone

[RayFrost]

An alternative way to do things that was done by forbiddanlight / uncertainkitten in umineko mafia was to give mafia the option to give her a role / abilities breakdown and get a flavor-safe claim. The issue with this of course was shown by what happened in the game. I came up with a role so awesome that town believed it was too good to be wasted as a fake claim.

At base, we come into games to play mafia. Adding a theme and flavor should not inherently change this. Flavor effects should be minimal with regards to how the game goes. Flavor is called that because themes and such are meant to be a spice to make mafia games more interesting - it is, in essence, changing some names. This should not punish any side. Safe claims do not lead to scum being believed any more than fake claims in non-theme setups. It is up to town to figure out the truth, as is the case for all mafia games.

As soon as flavor supersedes the game of mafia in a mafia game, it becomes a toxic force rather than fulfilling the role of enlivening an experience. So, steps are taken to prevent it doing so.

[callforjudgement]

Something I've never tested but seems viable would be a scum ability: "Name a hypothetical role that might exist in the game. The moderator will give you full details of the most similar role that exists in the game, but not who has it." That way, you can test the waters to see if anyone has a role similar to the one you plan to claim, before you actually claim it, but the claims themselves still originate entirely from scum, who can make the final call on whether a claim will be believable or not.

[Cheery Dog]

Something I've never tested but seems viable would be a scum ability: "Name a hypothetical role that might exist in the game. The moderator will give you full details of the most similar role that exists in the game, but not who has it." That way, you can test the waters to see if anyone has a role similar to the one you plan to claim, before you actually claim it, but the claims themselves still originate entirely from scum, who can make the final call on whether a claim will be believable or not.

I think it would get used to find out what type of investigations they need to hide from rather that for fake claiming purposes.

[Whatisswag]

Why not avoid flavor? Some problems listed above would be solved then.

[kuribo]

Why not avoid flavor? Some problems listed above would be solved then.

Because normals and opens suck?