New Newbie Setup

[Not Known 15]

Here is my current version in a table:

	A (6 Vanilla Townies , daytalk )	B (5 Vanilla Townies , daytalk )	C (5 Vanilla Townies , daytalk )
Mafia	Mafia Ninja and Mafia Goon	Mafia Goon and Mafia Night 1+2 Strongman	Mafia Ninja and Mafia Night 1+2 Strongman
Row 1	Town Cop	2 Town Mason	Town Watcher and Town Jailkeeper
Row 2	Town Jailkeeper	Town Watcher and Vanilla Townie	Town Watcher and Town Jailkeeper
Row 3	Town Jailkeeper	Town Watcher and Vanilla Townie	Re-Roll(if rolled 10 times in a row, use 1 C)

Does C3 mean you reroll everything (including mafia roles)
or just reroll for town and keep the Ninja and Strongman?

Everything.

Do you also oppose this, RC(and if yes, why)?

[RadiantCowbells]

sigh

u didn't get my thanos joke

[popsofctown]

Not personally a fan of Masons in newbie games. I'm mostly thinking about situations where a raw player is paired with one that has a

personality

who pushes them around too hard in the mason chat. I also think two newbie Masons won't get much value out of the chat, but that's more of a "might be weaker than expected" than a "might cause problems with fun".

We already have a two player team in every newbie game so if 2 player PTs are going to be too toxic for a newbie queue to function then you should be advocating large newbies with 3 man teams or something. If anything scum PTS are going to get more toxic because there's a bigger hit to winrate when your teammate messes up.

I don't believe Mason PTs do much for town win% in any case, they allow Masons to share ideas that they are aware are hard to put in a way that sounds protown even though the ideas are actually protown, but participation in them is probably a risk for getting PR hunted. The sliver of protown communication that's actually useful in the mason PT but not useful posted in the thread isn't really that big. It's mostly two ICs with a fun mechanic attached. With a really fun possible 2-2-1 LyLo with the duet fakeclaim. I think the current winrates for newbie queue suggests that 2 ICs is just fine for balance. I suggested even weaker stuff.

I think having a half, third, or quarter of the newbie queue be the 2-2-5 masons setup would be really good.

[Not Known 15]

sigh

u didn't get my thanos joke

No, and even if I would understand it it would not tell me precisely what's wrong.

[callforjudgement]

Pretty complicated claim strategies here...

That's going to happen in any nontrivial semi-open that isn't a Smalltown, or close to it. The more closely roles and alignments are correlated, the more claiming value you can get out of it. (I think similar but much more complex calculations exist for the various newbie setups we've actually run, but they're mostly too complex for anyone to have worked out in full.)

I think the general pattern A+6 vs. X+Y, B+6 vs. Y+Z, A+B+5 vs. X+Z is about the best you can do in terms of preventing a newbie-style semi-open from being broken by setup. (You can sort-of extend this so that, say, the town roles are A or B or C or A+B or B+C or A+C, which gives the scum slightly more scope for fakeclaiming, but then it's hard to avoid leaking information through the scum roles, and balancing all 6 subsetups is very hard at that point.)

[popsofctown]

Pretty complicated claim strategies here...

(You can sort-of extend this so that, say, the town roles are A or B or C or A+B or B+C or A+C, which gives the scum slightly more scope for fakeclaiming, but then it's hard to avoid leaking information through the scum roles, and balancing all 6 subsetups is very hard at that point.)

I would reiterate my suggestion that the scum are revealed as "Mafia Goon" or "Mafia Power". Flipping them both as Goon seems to deprive meaningful data point from the game that can be analyzed in associative scumhunting, but the difference between hesitating to bus the Mafia rolecop and hesitating to bus the Mafia roleblocker seems like a small enough difference that it's not ruining too much to hide it. You gain a lot of ability to balance differing setups when you can put a Mafia Rolecop or Mafia Roleblocker in each of them.
That said I'm also a sucker for purism so if very many people really think that information should never be removed from flip posts that's ok.

[chennisden]

i think the main problem is more psychological

newbscum tends to get way too intimidated and out themselves and THEN there are power roles on top of that

[chennisden]

you cant just change the setup.

im not sure what a real solution should be but i think this isnt the right place to look.

although NK15 if you run that as a semiopen i would love to in

[popsofctown]

The newbie winrates are carnage right now.

If the only problem with matrix6 was the follow-the-cop break, can we make the tracker macho and revert to Matrix6 with macho tracker and use that in the newbie queue until a new newbie setup is developed?

[RadiantCowbells]

That isn't even the issue

I spent a while looking at this a few days ago, I might have something to put forward

[Katyusha]

thought the issue w matrix6 was ppl getting bored when they rolled bulletproof IC when the claiming strat was found

[Toomai]

I seem to recall the Matrix6 tracker claim strategy dying out because no one could prove whether it actually helped town.

[Not Known 15]

thought the issue w matrix6 was ppl getting bored when they rolled bulletproof IC when the claiming strat was found

Yes,

back then

it was the only issue. However, the dramatically rising town win chances after the day phases were shortened strongly suggest that Matrix 6 would be roughly as townsided as the current setup nowadays; yet we don't want to increase the day phases because of player retention and because faster games are becoming normal. So Matrix 6 or a variant is not a valid solution.

[Irrelephant11]

	A	B	C
Mafia	Mafia Roleblocker and Mafia Goon	Mafia Ninja and Mafia Goon	Mafia Goon and Mafia Goon
Row 1	Town Rolecop and Town Roleblocker	Town Rolecop and Town Tracker	Town Rolecop and Town Doctor
Row 2	Town Doctor and Town Jailkeeper	Town Doctor and Town Tracker	Town Roleblocker
Row 3	Town Jailkeeper and Town Tracker	Town Jailkeeper	Town Tracker and Town Tracker

Talk to me, I think I'm nearing something goodish

No cops, notably, they just didn't fit anywhere. Kinda matches recent site meta for normals and most opens, though, I think, so I kinda like that about it.

I don't think I have any town roles here that are hard to figure out (investigative/roleblocker? Try to hit scum. Protective? Try to hit town. Jailkeeper? Admittedly a little complicated but it's also just a good & common role newbies need to learn)
I don't think there are any subsetups where scum don't have any fake claim options, and in the setups where it's punishing to fake claim it's also punishing for town to true claim
Is setup C3 too townsided? If so it could become Mason & Mason maybe?

I've stared at this long enough to want to throw out there and have y'all tear it apart. If nothing else I'm enjoying how much we're learning together by trying and failing to make a new newbie setup

[popsofctown]

On a mafia ninja flip D1, all players should claim Rolecop/not rolecop. The rolecop is a named townie, it's not as costless as a named BP but probably worthwhile. Outing the rolecop allows the Town tracker to target more accurately in 1B. Outing that there is no rolecop allows the tracker to safely claim for follow-the-cop in 2B. 3B it's just whatever. The EV on the strategy as a whole isn't backbreaking since you're losing some win% in 1B to gain a lot of win% in 2B but the actual 2B games that actually play out that way seem miserable. The mafia can start no-killing and try to play nightless but it just seems like miserable mafia.

Would column B be too scumsided with Mafia Ninja and Mafia Strongman? They are mutually exclusive power roles. It would make the nightplay more strategic for scum, with a 2/3rds chance of a town tracker and only a 1/3rd chance of JK "we should send the ninja" seems pretty dominant.

I want C3 to be masons, especially if you don't add a nonlethal trackable action to the mafia in column C.

I know nobody will like me for saying this but I feel like column C would be super sweet with Mafia Goon + Mafia Doctor instead of Mafia Goon + Mafia Goon.

[Inferno390]

Isn’t Mafia Doctor just a named Goon though?

[callforjudgement]

Not when there's a Rolecop in the setup.

[callforjudgement]

I know nobody will like me for saying this but I feel like column C would be super sweet with Mafia Goon + Mafia Doctor instead of Mafia Goon + Mafia Goon.

C1 then has pretty much mandatory WIFOM for scum when it comes to massclaim. Part of the reason we moved away from Original Newbie is that it required a lot of setup/fakeclaim knowledge from the scum.

[Not Known 15]

	A	B	C
Mafia	Mafia Roleblocker and Mafia Goon	Mafia Ninja and Mafia Goon	Mafia Goon and Mafia Goon
Row 1	Town Rolecop and Town Roleblocker	Town Rolecop and Town Tracker	Town Rolecop and Town Doctor
Row 2	Town Doctor and Town Jailkeeper	Town Doctor and Town Tracker	Town Roleblocker
Row 3	Town Jailkeeper and Town Tracker	Town Jailkeeper	Town Tracker and Town Tracker

And here I am to... look at your setup and...
1A:Hmmm not sure. Really not sure. Needs testing. Rolecop can get an unlikely false guilty resulting in a very uncomfortable situation for Town that forces both to claim. On the other hand, a guilty can be devastasting with NO recourse plus an additional Innocent result. Hugely annoying. AND Rolecop isn't confirmable? hmmmm.
1B:Again selective guilties. And again a role(tracker) that benefits from a lynch. I got a bad feeling.
1C: Is that really enough power? I'd say no. Doctor needs to heal twice to have any noticable effect(after all,

saves

can be /noaction's instead) except if Rolecop claims(which means that this is REWARDED instead of punished); and Rolecop is totally useless apart from being confirmable!
2A:Probably roughly ok.(pre tested, no major interaction changes)
2B:As long as the Ninja lives the Tracker is useless - is that really a great idea? I'd say no. Especially because all you have left is the Doctor and... yeah.
2C:Roleblocker. Alone? Ok, can get some weak guilties while stopping kills. Unsure. Maybe ok.
3B:Jailkeeper. Alone. Functionally the same as with B but with a chance of doctor-play instead. Has higher setup confirmability duue to Ninja, restricting fakeclaims. A bit too townsided in 2d3, and the changes(Ninja) aren't scumsided! Probably bad!
3A: Maybe ok- moved up a power role here.
3C:No idea.



Needs a rework, sorry.

[RadiantCowbells]

I don't like aspects of it but it has less glaring flaws than a lot I've seen so... Potential

[popsofctown]

	A	B
Mafia	Mafia Roleblocker and Mafia Roleblocker	Mafia Goon and Mafia Goon
Row 1	Mason and Mason	Mason and Mason
Row 2	Town Jailkeeper	Town Cop
Row 3	Town Cop and Town Bodyguard	Macho doctor and Macho doctor

My submissions usually aren't popular.

I'd like to see people submit some four cell or six cell matrices though.

I don't think considering 9 different setups is actually fun as a newbie.

[Irrelephant11]

On a mafia ninja flip D1, all players should claim Rolecop/not rolecop. The rolecop is a named townie, it's not as costless as a named BP but probably worthwhile. Outing the rolecop allows the Town tracker to target more accurately in 1B. Outing that there is no rolecop allows the tracker to safely claim for follow-the-cop in 2B. 3B it's just whatever. The EV on the strategy as a whole isn't backbreaking since you're losing some win% in 1B to gain a lot of win% in 2B but the actual 2B games that actually play out that way seem miserable. The mafia can start no-killing and try to play nightless but it just seems like miserable mafia.

Would column B be too scumsided with Mafia Ninja and Mafia Strongman? They are mutually exclusive power roles. It would make the nightplay more strategic for scum, with a 2/3rds chance of a town tracker and only a 1/3rd chance of JK "we should send the ninja" seems pretty dominant.

I want C3 to be masons, especially if you don't add a nonlethal trackable action to the mafia in column C.

I know nobody will like me for saying this but I feel like column C would be super sweet with Mafia Goon + Mafia Doctor instead of Mafia Goon + Mafia Goon.

I might be okay with Mafia Ninja & Mafia Strongman for column B, to avoid follow-the-cop. The only problem is that it mildly unbalances B3, because the jailkeeper can't fully trust the results of their night actions until strongman dies.
Mmm I might just want to keep it as is actually because:
-Scum need to learn to protect their PRs over their goons during the day
-If follow the cop is only going to happen in the rare B2 game where the Mafia Ninja happens to die before either town PR, then it's already a game where scum *should* be facing an uphill battle.
-It's still winnable for scum, as you note.

	A	B	C
Mafia	Mafia Roleblocker and Mafia Goon	Mafia Ninja and Mafia Goon	Mafia Goon and Mafia Goon
Row 1	Town Rolecop and Town Roleblocker	Town Rolecop and Town Tracker	Town Rolecop and Town Doctor
Row 2	Town Doctor and Town Jailkeeper	Town Doctor and Town Tracker	Town Roleblocker
Row 3	Town Jailkeeper and Town Tracker	Town Jailkeeper	Town Tracker and Town Tracker

And here I am to... look at your setup and...
1A:Hmmm not sure. Really not sure. Needs testing. Rolecop can get an unlikely false guilty resulting in a very uncomfortable situation for Town that forces both to claim. On the other hand, a guilty can be devastasting with NO recourse plus an additional Innocent result. Hugely annoying. AND Rolecop isn't confirmable? hmmmm.
1B:Again selective guilties. And again a role(tracker) that benefits from a lynch. I got a bad feeling.
1C: Is that really enough power? I'd say no. Doctor needs to heal twice to have any noticable effect(after all,

saves

can be /noaction's instead) except if Rolecop claims(which means that this is REWARDED instead of punished); and Rolecop is totally useless apart from being confirmable!
2A:Probably roughly ok.(pre tested, no major interaction changes)
2B:As long as the Ninja lives the Tracker is useless - is that really a great idea? I'd say no. Especially because all you have left is the Doctor and... yeah.
2C:Roleblocker. Alone? Ok, can get some weak guilties while stopping kills. Unsure. Maybe ok.
3B:Jailkeeper. Alone. Functionally the same as with B but with a chance of doctor-play instead. Has higher setup confirmability duue to Ninja, restricting fakeclaims. A bit too townsided in 2d3, and the changes(Ninja) aren't scumsided! Probably bad!
3A: Maybe ok- moved up a power role here.
3C:No idea.



Needs a rework, sorry.

- I'm not sure why selective guilties is necessarily a bad thing? It's the same idea as a godfather.
- I think you're missing that Rolecop getting a result on a townie can be useful for town. Rolecop getting "doctor" confirms the setup and generates an inno, for example. Rolecop getting "roleblocker" leads them to decide if they want to out their result or not based on previous flips, etc.
- Some of your problem with my setup seems to be that things are slightly scumsided (e.g. 1C, 2C). As far as I'm aware, though, that is one of the goals of the new newbie setup
- If 3B is townsided, maybe I would give mafia a strongman as discussed above. Something to discuss. I am not sure it is necessarily a townsided setup, as the sample size for the 2d3 setup is very small still, and it is considered balanced in other contexts as far as I'm aware.

More thoughts coming...

[Irrelephant11]

	A	B	C
Mafia	Mafia Roleblocker and Mafia Goon	Mafia Ninja and Mafia Goon	Mafia Goon and Mafia Goon
Row 1	Town Rolecop and Town Roleblocker	Town Rolecop and Town Tracker	Town Rolecop and Town Doctor
Row 2	Town Doctor and Town Jailkeeper	Town Doctor and Town Tracker	Town Roleblocker
Row 3	Town Jailkeeper and Town Tracker	Town Jailkeeper	Town Tracker and Town Tracker

I'm still feeling good about my setup. The main problem that has been pointed out is Column B: setup 2B can result in follow the cop safely after a ninja flip, because the 1B rolecop can just claim - though this does depend on both TPRs still being alive (this may or may not be an acceptably-unlikely possibility). Meanwhile, 3B might be townsided.

After staring at it for awhile, what if Column B has a Mafia Ninja and a Mafia Tracker? The ramifications for each column B setup:
Row 1: Rolecop is punished for claiming post-ninja-flip, as they would die before being able to investigate for the mafia tracker. Meanwhile, a rolecop getting a tracker result is not always a guilty or an inno, so scum still has wiggle room, and scum now have a way to identify TPRs.
Row 2: Scum tracker can find the TPRs more quickly, hopefully preventing follow-the-cop with good night actions (not to mention tracker is less likely to claim because subsetup 1B has changed). Town tracker will get more results, because there will always be a trackable action from scum.
Row 3: Scum have a way to find the jailkeeper, though the jailkeeper will occasionally block the tracker.

I think this fixes the 1B/2B interaction that was pointed out, and gives scum a chance to find and kill the jailkeeper in 3B, though this method of finding the jailkeeper will never be faster than a N2 kill


Anyone see glaring problems with this fix? The new setup:

	A	B	C
Mafia	Mafia Roleblocker and Mafia Goon	Mafia Ninja and Mafia Tracker	Mafia Goon and Mafia Goon
Row 1	Town Rolecop and Town Roleblocker	Town Rolecop and Town Tracker	Town Rolecop and Town Doctor
Row 2	Town Doctor and Town Jailkeeper	Town Doctor and Town Tracker	Town Roleblocker
Row 3	Town Jailkeeper and Town Tracker	Town Jailkeeper	Town Tracker and Town Tracker

It's still on the table that 3C could be mason/mason, and I don't dislike the idea, but I do like the idea of limiting the number of power roles newbies need to learn about to understand the setup. I've already included 6 power roles, so if 3C can stay the way it is I'd be happy. If it becomes clear that it's way too unbalanced, I'll swap it out.

[popsofctown]

On a mafia ninja flip D1, all players should claim Rolecop/not rolecop. The rolecop is a named townie, it's not as costless as a named BP but probably worthwhile. Outing the rolecop allows the Town tracker to target more accurately in 1B. Outing that there is no rolecop allows the tracker to safely claim for follow-the-cop in 2B. 3B it's just whatever. The EV on the strategy as a whole isn't backbreaking since you're losing some win% in 1B to gain a lot of win% in 2B but the actual 2B games that actually play out that way seem miserable. The mafia can start no-killing and try to play nightless but it just seems like miserable mafia.

Would column B be too scumsided with Mafia Ninja and Mafia Strongman? They are mutually exclusive power roles. It would make the nightplay more strategic for scum, with a 2/3rds chance of a town tracker and only a 1/3rd chance of JK "we should send the ninja" seems pretty dominant.

I want C3 to be masons, especially if you don't add a nonlethal trackable action to the mafia in column C.

I know nobody will like me for saying this but I feel like column C would be super sweet with Mafia Goon + Mafia Doctor instead of Mafia Goon + Mafia Goon.

I might be okay with Mafia Ninja & Mafia Strongman for column B, to avoid follow-the-cop. The only problem is that it mildly unbalances B3, because the jailkeeper can't fully trust the results of their night actions until strongman dies.
Mmm I might just want to keep it as is actually because:
-Scum need to learn to protect their PRs over their goons during the day
-If follow the cop is only going to happen in the rare B2 game where the Mafia Ninja happens to die before either town PR, then it's already a game where scum *should* be facing an uphill battle.
-It's still winnable for scum, as you note.

I think I shouldn't have emphasized balance, because on second thought, that is not the key casualty. The key casualty is simplicity and having a matrix with no "metagame" optimal claiming strat. I read one of my extremely old newbies the other day from when the setup was roleblocker-cop-doctor and we lynched the roleblocker day 1. It was a bunch of newbies knowing the setup was broken but not sure exactly how (it looks easy but it looks like newbies, including newbie-pops, are pretty dumb) and for like 8 pages nobody was dayplaying and scumreading and townreading slots they were just doing dethy stuff. I don't want that to happen again in our newbie games.

[Irrelephant11]

	A	B
Mafia	Mafia Roleblocker and Mafia Roleblocker	Mafia Goon and Mafia Goon
Row 1	Mason and Mason	Mason and Mason
Row 2	Town Jailkeeper	Town Cop
Row 3	Town Cop and Town Bodyguard	Macho doctor and Macho doctor

My submissions usually aren't popular.

I'd like to see people submit some four cell or six cell matrices though.

I don't think considering 9 different setups is actually fun as a newbie.

A couple glaring issues:
- A2 is very scumsided, as scum has three opportunities to prevent the jailkeeper from accomplishing anything each night
- A3 is similarly overly scumsided, as it's unlikely TPRs will accomplish much of anything successfully unless mafia are lynched early
- B2 is overly reliant on the cop in a way many seem to agree is unfun.

I like B3, though! The more I think about it the more interesting it gets.

I like the idea of a simpler setup, and understand why your impulse is to simplify to two columns. A few issues arise when there are this few setups, though:
- The options for scum to fake claim are drastically reduced. This is a common problem in open setups, where the ability for town power roles to confirm themselves as town must be taken into account.
>>> In a micro, that drastic reduction of PoE upon claiming can severely townside games unless some claims aren't 100% always confirmed (because subsetups exist without that claim).
>>> Even just the ability for scum to save themselves D1 with a believable fakeclaim that doesn't get immediately counterclaimed is important - scum Normal-ly have that option on MS, and I don't think it's valuable to take that away completely for newbies. Scum need to learn to fake claim; town need to learn to lynch fake claims.
- Having multiple setups balanced requires that the [more townsided setups] have more room for scum gambits like fake claiming than the [more scumsided setups]. This usually requires a higher number of subsetups
- As a town power role, knowing the specific subsetup you're playing in can be a distinct advantage that scum never have, so to balance for that possibility every TPR must exist in multiple setups, or else this must be addressed in another way