How much should the mod be allowed to think for the players?

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How much should the mod be allowed to think for the players?

Post Post #0 (ISO) » Sat Jun 16, 2018 4:28 am

Post by BNL »

Sometimes, the game has evolved to a point where a breaking strategy can occur to find the last remaining Mafia, or conversely the Mafia can endgame the Town. However, these games cannot be called off simply due to the *possibility* that someone is lying about their role, even though it won't happen.

This brings the question, how much is the moderator allowed to think for the players? I've had a game declared before because scum apparently devised an unbreakable plan, even though there were doubts. In very complex games, it's probably best to leave the thinking to the players themselves as it does take some work to derive those strategies.

On the other hand, I've seen n Mafia:n+1 Town going into Night always declared over by the moderator when there are known to be no protectives/vigs etc. You could argue that the Mafia can choose to play dumb and refuse to kill the next Night, but that is stretching by a lot.

So where is a good place to draw the line where the mod thinks for the players in declaring endgame and where to let the players think for themselves?
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Post Post #1 (ISO) » Sat Jun 16, 2018 4:40 am

Post by Ankamius »

The "call it at x:x-1 going into night" thing is done because that goes into the "mafia equal players
or it's inevitable to happen
" that is part of most mafia win conditions.

Otherwise generally you shouldn't.
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Post Post #2 (ISO) » Sat Jun 16, 2018 9:55 am

Post by MichelSableheart »

Generally speaking, I would expect the mod to specify in their ruleset the conditions under which they call the game.

When a breaking strategy has been found, the game should be over pretty quickly anyway, as the only thing that happens during the day are the predetermined votes. Noone wants to drag out the day in such a situation.
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Post Post #3 (ISO) » Sat Jun 16, 2018 3:15 pm

Post by fdas »

I think games should be played out until all of the town are dead or all of the mafia are dead.
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Post Post #4 (ISO) » Mon Jun 18, 2018 10:48 am

Post by Flubbernugget »

I think 99% of the time a game breaks, it's against the mafia, at which point it should be on them to call a surrender to the mod.
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Post Post #5 (ISO) » Wed Jun 20, 2018 11:12 am

Post by Gamma Emerald »

I mean both me and the OP were in a game that was called due to the scum having too much of an advantage even though the next day would have been lylo, but that's honestly just a fault of game design (every scum had some 1-shot ability plus a multiple use ability, while the town wasn't stacked to compensate).
I think the yeah calling n mafia:n+1 town going into night when there's no countermeasures is fair, but if there's a fair bit of variance in how things could go I wouldn't call it even if it looked to be over just because there's might be something that was overlooked.
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Post Post #6 (ISO) » Wed Jun 20, 2018 11:39 am

Post by callforjudgement »

One technique that should work is to allow players to
commit
to a breaking strategy (as either alignment, although more commonly I see this done from scum). If the strategy is sufficient to win the game, or if (due to incorrect assumptions) it automatically loses the game, call the game right there; otherwise, continue the game. (Mathematically speaking, to avoid abuse, you might have to modkill players who deviated from stated aspects of the strategy. In practice this is unlikely to be a problem, as the information that the strategy neither automatically wins nor automatically loses is not likely to be helpful in most cases.)

In the case of a breaking strategy for town, I see no issue with simply allowing scum to surrender if they want to (as they can no longer win, all actions are thus playing to their win condition). I guess it's theoretically possible that the scum could talk the town out of it, and thus they should be given a chance to do so if they wish.

As for automatically calling the game (i.e. unilaterally by the mod, with no strategy commitments or surrenders by the player), that should happen when the result will be inevitable on any normal play. For example, if merely attempting to nightkill every night is sufficient for a scum win, scum should probably just be given the win immediately. Automatically calling the game as a town win should (with normal mechanics) only happen when all the players left alive are townies.

Note that in Opens, you can normally write win conditions to avoid the issue arising in the first place. (This isn't always possible in Closed games as doing so may potentially give away too much information about the setup.)
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Post Post #7 (ISO) » Thu Jun 21, 2018 5:28 am

Post by Flubbernugget »

Maybe the real answer is to address why games are becoming mathematically breakable in the first place?
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Post Post #8 (ISO) » Thu Jun 21, 2018 11:11 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Some people like playing in potentially breakable games.

Sometimes in Closed games it happens because scum made an ill-advised claim that gives the town the opportunity to break the setup. There's basically no way to control for that. (Of course, claiming scum as the last remaining scum would break the setup, but sometimes a less obviously bad claim turns out to give the town enough information to win because town power roles can have information that the scum don't.)
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