"Mountainous but PRs are obtainable" theme games

[popsofctown]

I've noticed a disproportionately large number of theme games I've played have the concept that role powers and player slots are separate. On average, they've disproportionately been my favorite experiences.
In an ancient era, I played Majora's Mask Mafia, it was vanilla or mostly vanilla but putting a mask on changed your role, and maybe your alignment. I died pretty early but have positive memories, wasn't alive to too closely examine how the alignment shifting mask shook out.
I played Cyclic Mafia, I think I played that twice, players used a power once, then chose another player to pass it along to. Nothing stopped a scum player from using a power just as easily as a town player did.
I played a game from RedCoyote that had some kind of points system for PRs.
So that's only four, but like, how many large themes have I played, maybe 7? I don't know. I think there might have even been another one I played I can't remember now.

Much more recently, I noticed another such game that was either in queue or in signups or people are playing it now, it was/is called Marketplace Mafia, players get 500$ and they get 800$ if they're scum and they can bid on powers. I'm very /out on it mostly just because bidding on anything in any context is stressful for me, the idea of overbidding 30$ past what anyone would have spent or being overbid by 1$ on ebay gives me stress headaches, etc. That's a me thing; I think it's a very good idea for a setup.

This category of games has a lot of positive qualities I find very intriguing. I kind of have to wonder if the format is just better than "normal" mafia.

One benefit is avoiding the "named" townie problem, the idea that "2 goons, 7 VTs" is a different setup from "2 goons, 6 VTs, and a vanilla townie named Bartholomew." Is there a standard name for this dynamic? But what often happens Bartholomew is instead some weak or interesting power role, yet it inadvertently gains specific minimum power in a massclaim context from being uniquely identified. In opens that shoots down dozens of otherwise good setups, in closed games mods can fight it by defying expectations on duplicate power roles when possible, and giving power roles to mafiosis, and you can even do cute things like tell the mafia there's one of them in the game and leaving it up to them whether to be the first to claim it. But ultimately a closed game moderator can't thwart all of its players' expectations all of the time and still produce balanced games.

When the players are detached from the roles, this problem is removed, in both open and closed contexts. And you can freely subject the playerlist to your normative judgments about the ideal quantity of a particular role. You don't have to add the third odd-night jailkeeper to a setup to elude your playerbase's predictions, you get to just decide setups shouldn't have jailkeepers any time you run a game ever, or every game you ever run should have exactly one, and neither of these things add an extra power element in the massclaim context no matter how public you are.

Another benefit is getting to share. Taking a turn. Many players want to try out wielding a power role at least occasionally when they first start out. Games seem maybe faster than they used to be, but still, you could get quite a series of VT roles and a dry spell if powers were some of the draw for you. These days League of Legends has this whole system built in that guarantees you get to be the powerful mage at least occasionally.
It depends on the variant of this concept involved but most of them will spread at least a small dose of this dynamic to each player more of the time than standard mafia.

The third benefit is giving dayhunting townies the freedom to lynch players for scummy day play, independent of how powerful a power role they claim. Again, this depends on the variant. But in an imaginable implementation of Majora's Mask mafia, if you L-1 the guy in the Goron mask, and the guy in the Goron mask swears the mask is a JOAT mask that will trigger the confirmation of two innocent children, investigate a player, protect a player, and passively auto-govern a losing lynch in LyLo, no matter how powerful the effects they come up with, you can just lynch the player and use the mask later. The GORON mask sounds powerful, everyone is fond of that, the poor dayplay of the player -wearing- it should be totally separate. In traditional mafia, these elements are tied together. Correct play often becomes to back off of the lynch, leaving the player alive to allow them to exercise at least some of the purported powerful elements of their role. It arguably "punishes" proactive dayplay when players arrive at this wall. Providing a backup for a powerful role is one way to mitigate this issue in the context of standard mafia, but, do the two things need to be tied together at all? Why can't all power roles just be transferrable? Maybe only alignment should be a the permanent, immutable thing players got at the beginning of the game in a PM.

I don't do a lot of modding and setup design so I wonder if I'm missing a big drawback to these kinds of games that I should give more thought to. This thread is for people to dispel my dreams. If it was really the Best Thing Ever it'd already be more pervasive. So what's the problem with it? Is there a name for this class of games? For now I'm going to call them "mountainous with masks on the floor". Which is a terrible name.

[Irrelephant11]

I agree these are fun!

I especially like your point about rewarding good dayplay regardless of power roles.

I've designed a couple opens around the idea of sharing power roles, though neither are perfect. But I think it's a good idea to have more opens and themes that work this way; I wonder if it's possible to Normalize it.

[callforjudgement]

The reason you don't see more of these setups is that they're incredibly hard to balance. I agree that they're generally a lot of fun when they can be made to work correctly. (They do typically require players who are good at role madness / breaking strategies; there have been cases where the setups have been ruined by terrible town nightplay.)

Note that the setups can be quite different in nature based on exactly how the roles are distributed; bidding-based setups play out differently from setups with a Seraph (

a role that hands out permanent power roles to other players during the game

), for example.

[Alisae]

Much more recently, I noticed another such game that was either in queue or in signups or people are playing it now, it was/is called Marketplace Mafia, players get 500$ and they get 800$ if they're scum and they can bid on powers. I'm very /out on it mostly just because bidding on anything in any context is stressful for me, the idea of overbidding 30$ past what anyone would have spent or being overbid by 1$ on ebay gives me stress headaches, etc. That's a me thing; I think it's a very good idea for a setup.

btw I'm modding this as a secret alt game in the mini theme queue and you should totally join it ;D

[Creature]

Civilization mafia

[Alisae]

Civilization mafia

Thats a game that can be re-designed and re-ran

[popsofctown]

The reason you don't see more of these setups is that they're incredibly hard to balance. I agree that they're generally a lot of fun when they can be made to work correctly. (They do typically require players who are good at role madness / breaking strategies; there have been cases where the setups have been ruined by terrible town nightplay.)

Note that the setups can be quite different in nature based on exactly how the roles are distributed; bidding-based setups play out differently from setups with a Seraph (

a role that hands out permanent power roles to other players during the game

), for example.

I definitely get that they could be harder to balance. I think I might enjoy being on butt end of an imbalanced mountainous with masks games more than being in a perfectly balanced role madness theme though.

Irrelephant seemed to be at least hinting towards the same consideration so balance is probably the missing puzzle piece to this I wasn't noticing. I'm less sensitive to balance, a lot of players are more concerned with it. If I lose a game I get upset about a player I misread or at least a poor read a different player made, I'm pretty slow to turn to look at the setup.

It really seems worth the balance work, though.

[callforjudgement]

FWIW, this thread is giving me setup design ideas (including one which should theoretically be easier to balance than a regular game, rather than harder). I haven't worked out the details yet (and I'm full up on modding commitments at the moment), but I'll come back to this thread once I'm clearer on how it should work.

[BNL]

Completely agree, and there was an article made on this recently: The best way to spice up mountainous setups are by putting a mechanic on the game as a whole, not by giving random players power roles.

[callforjudgement]

OK, and several hours of setup designing later (have I really not gone to bed since my previous post), I have something that I think is ready to review. Anyone out there who's willing to review this (note that this would, of course, mean that you couldn't play in it?)

[singletonking]

(note that this would, of course, mean that you couldn't play in it?)

Why not? Wouldn't the mechanics be all open?

[callforjudgement]

The exact list of roles available would likely be Closed (as more become available over the course of the game), even though the mechanics would be Open. (It might be possible to balance it as an Open but the setup would likely be very overwhelming).

I'm happy with the mechanics, but adjusting role availability is where most of the balance challenge comes from.

[Irrelephant11]

I’ll review

[callforjudgement]

Thanks. I sent you a link to the review PT.

[callforjudgement]

Well, it took a while to balance it properly, but the setup is finally ready, and will be going into queue soon. Here's the advertisement, if you're interested.

The basic idea behind the setup is that players start out vanilla, but a list of roles will be posted each day; one per player. Then town get to vote on who gets which role. Repeat the next day, and so on. (One big problem with this sort of setup is simply in finding enough roles whilst keeping the setup balanced, but we got there in the end.)