What if everyone played one game

[Annadog40]

I guess this thread is a good place to mention an idea I had a while back.

The idea is that whenever someone died, a new player from outside the game would be added in to keep the playerlist at the same size. Players win or lose based on how well their faction did while they were in the game; neither faction ever wins or loses the whole thing, just individual players, and the game lasts indefinitely or until nobody wants to continue playing. (Players would be able to rejoin the game after leaving it if none of the players who were alive at the time they left are still there, although they would have to do so on an alt.)

Theoretically the setup could expand up to involving Mafiascum's entire playerlist, over the course of several centuries, and yet would remain manageable at all times. It also works a lot better if some of the players don't want to play

this way some slots will be marked for obvtown and some obvscum after some rounds screwing it up.

Then the game would become everyone's roles confirmed though if instead of a town majority and a scum minority, there are a couple of alignments and they all have an equal plurality, then it becomes all about political maneuvering and alliances between two factions to take down other factions.

[Frozen Angel]

No I mean player X is lynched becuase he was scummy. Player Y came to his slot. Y will be punished for just being X's replacement, after some cycles this cycle of meta will ruin the game

[BlackStar]

No I mean player X is lynched becuase he was scummy. Player Y came to his slot. Y will be punished for just being X's replacement, after some cycles this cycle of meta will ruin the game

I thought he was saying that when a new person replaced into the game they get a new role that's different from the person they replace

[Frozen Angel]

Now we're talking!

so the faction of the new slot might change?

what is the thing that keep the game balanced? plus is it guaranteed that more than half of the players are still town? becuase if not the game will be scum associations to lynch a poor useless townie!

[callforjudgement]

Right, the faction of the new slot might change. It's balanced in the long run but not immediately in the short run. (Presumably the way it would work is that each player would be replaced once, but not necessarily immediately; you'd start out with a pool of fake players waiting to be replaced, when someone is lynched their faction is added to the pool and a random faction from the pool is taken to determine the next entrant's alignment.)

If the game is large enough you can mathematically guarantee that this never produces a scum majority, while making it impossible to predict the alignment of a new entrant unless there have been n lynches of the same alignment in a row (where n can be arbitrarily large).

[Annadog40]

Right, the faction of the new slot might change. It's balanced in the long run but not immediately in the short run. (Presumably the way it would work is that each player would be replaced once, but not necessarily immediately; you'd start out with a pool of fake players waiting to be replaced, when someone is lynched their faction is added to the pool and a random faction from the pool is taken to determine the next entrant's alignment.)

If the game is large enough you can mathematically guarantee that this never produces a scum majority, while making it impossible to predict the alignment of a new entrant unless there have been n lynches of the same alignment in a row (where n can be arbitrarily large).

How many slots would that game have?

[callforjudgement]

The more it had, the further back you'd have to reread when replacing in.

As such, I imagine it'd be Mini-sized at any given point, or possibly a little larger.

[hiplop]

You're a genius

[PokerFace]

Wasn't there a game with like 50 player slots?

18000 dayvigs

A scum team of 750

Kills end the day


Game lasts 9000 days

I'm going to put this here and walk away

[Annadog40]

Wasn't there a game with like 50 player slots?

18000 dayvigs

A scum team of 750

Kills end the day


Game lasts 9000 days

I'm going to put this here and walk away

If that game had 18750 players, would the mods have to lock it just to keep track of who is dead?

[callforjudgement]

I'm going to put this here and walk away

I already mentioned Everyone Has One Bullet as a reasonable setup to base this on.

If you wanted something more like normal Mafia, I had the following idea:

First, you break all the players into 16-player pods. Each pod has its own thread, in order to make things easier to read. You are allowed to read any pod's thread and to talk (in the game threads) about players in any pod; however, any post you make must be in the thread for your own pod (or in scum/mason PTs, etc.), and you can only vote for players in your own pod. Each pod is guaranteed to have between 3 and 5 scum (this is information the town can use to narrow down who can possibly be scum), and each pod has its own days and nights (scum in a pod can only kill players in that pod overNight). Once two pods get down to 8 or fewer players, they are merged with each other into a larger pod, that has its own thread (the original two threads are locked, but linked to in the new thread's OP and remain publicly visible). This continues until only one pod is left and there are no town/scum in the pod in question.

Scum have knowledge of other scum in their pod, and in one other pod (this is mutual, so you have scumteams that cross two pods). Masons can likewise be masons with other players cross-pod, and will be given new mason partners (in other unrelated pods) whenever the pods merge.

As far as I can tell, this idea scales to any number of players, and keeps the amount of reading you'd need reasonable. It would probably require ½-1 moderators per pod.

[Annadog40]

I'm going to put this here and walk away

I already mentioned Everyone Has One Bullet as a reasonable setup to base this on.

If you wanted something more like normal Mafia, I had the following idea:

First, you break all the players into 16-player pods. Each pod has its own thread, in order to make things easier to read. You are allowed to read any pod's thread and to talk (in the game threads) about players in any pod; however, any post you make must be in the thread for your own pod (or in scum/mason PTs, etc.), and you can only vote for players in your own pod. Each pod is guaranteed to have between 3 and 5 scum (this is information the town can use to narrow down who can possibly be scum), and each pod has its own days and nights (scum in a pod can only kill players in that pod overNight). Once two pods get down to 8 or fewer players, they are merged with each other into a larger pod, that has its own thread (the original two threads are locked, but linked to in the new thread's OP and remain publicly visible). This continues until only one pod is left and there are no town/scum in the pod in question.

Scum have knowledge of other scum in their pod, and in one other pod (this is mutual, so you have scumteams that cross two pods). Masons can likewise be masons with other players cross-pod, and will be given new mason partners (in other unrelated pods) whenever the pods merge.

As far as I can tell, this idea scales to any number of players, and keeps the amount of reading you'd need reasonable. It would probably require ½-1 moderators per pod.

If there are sixteen players per game and one mod per game, there would be 1102.94117647 games so 1102 games with, 16 players left over so one mod would have to mod two games.
Though since 1103 pods is an odd number, one scum team would be on there own.

[callforjudgement]

I assume we could have some number of 15-player pods mixed in with the 16-player pods to avoid even/odd-related issues.

[PokerFace]

I missed judgments post earlier...

[vonflare]

any progress on this?

[Creature]

Just make a setup with 18k+ players

[Allomancer]

cfj's idea is genius. Can we make a site-wide announcement for anyone who wants to play? Not necessarily every user on site would have to play, but there would be no limits to the player count.

[Ankamius]

I'm going to put this here and walk away

I already mentioned Everyone Has One Bullet as a reasonable setup to base this on.

If you wanted something more like normal Mafia, I had the following idea:

First, you break all the players into 16-player pods. Each pod has its own thread, in order to make things easier to read. You are allowed to read any pod's thread and to talk (in the game threads) about players in any pod; however, any post you make must be in the thread for your own pod (or in scum/mason PTs, etc.), and you can only vote for players in your own pod. Each pod is guaranteed to have between 3 and 5 scum (this is information the town can use to narrow down who can possibly be scum), and each pod has its own days and nights (scum in a pod can only kill players in that pod overNight). Once two pods get down to 8 or fewer players, they are merged with each other into a larger pod, that has its own thread (the original two threads are locked, but linked to in the new thread's OP and remain publicly visible). This continues until only one pod is left and there are no town/scum in the pod in question.

Scum have knowledge of other scum in their pod, and in one other pod (this is mutual, so you have scumteams that cross two pods). Masons can likewise be masons with other players cross-pod, and will be given new mason partners (in other unrelated pods) whenever the pods merge.

As far as I can tell, this idea scales to any number of players, and keeps the amount of reading you'd need reasonable. It would probably require ½-1 moderators per pod.

Wouldn't the setup already be a scum win if scum get majority in a single pod?

[callforjudgement]

There's a problem that if a pod ends up eliminating all its scum, or insufficiently many members of its scum, people will know how many scum are in the pod and adapt accordingly (e.g. lynch from a pod who's winning until there are no scum left). I think scum need more than a majority to get an automatic win (there have to be 8 scum left in the pod for them to survive a pod merge, although that is of course possible; something like a 7:6 majority isn't enough). Based on that, the setup needs some work, although I think the general idea could still be viable.

[Flubbernugget]

You're all going to end up trying something out of this thread and giving Kison a damned heart attack

[Ankamius]

There's a problem that if a pod ends up eliminating all its scum, or insufficiently many members of its scum, people will know how many scum are in the pod and adapt accordingly (e.g. lynch from a pod who's winning until there are no scum left). I think scum need more than a majority to get an automatic win (there have to be 8 scum left in the pod for them to survive a pod merge, although that is of course possible; something like a 7:6 majority isn't enough). Based on that, the setup needs some work, although I think the general idea could still be viable.

You'd probably have to have a shuffle mechanic where you put pods in a bigger 'group' (like 6 pods?) and occasionally shuffle them up in a way that gives a wide range of possible scum (1-5 maybe), so that it's harder to tell who is scum from the shuffles and so the pods stay somewhat balanced at least.

It would fix the problem of scum going extinct in pods causing scum in other pods to have an uphill battle merging into those pods and it prevents town having literally zero chance when two pods merge together and there's like... 10 scum in it (at least until there's enough scum that it's near required for each pod to be in lylo)

[Bicephalous Bob]

Right, the faction of the new slot might change. It's balanced in the long run but not immediately in the short run. (Presumably the way it would work is that each player would be replaced once, but not necessarily immediately; you'd start out with a pool of fake players waiting to be replaced, when someone is lynched their faction is added to the pool and a random faction from the pool is taken to determine the next entrant's alignment.)

If the game is large enough you can mathematically guarantee that this never produces a scum majority, while making it impossible to predict the alignment of a new entrant unless there have been n lynches of the same alignment in a row (where n can be arbitrarily large).

how large does the game have to be for that?

[Bicephalous Bob]

and what would be the starting alignment distribution?

[mhsmith0]

Events and ITAs or gtfo
(inb4 smith rands solo serial killer in a game of well over 100 )

[Creature]

Events and ITAs or gtfo
(inb4 smith rands solo serial killer in a game of well over 100 )

Inb4 backup scumteam because the original scumteam couldn't handle the game.