New Newbie Setup

[RadiantCowbells]

whether you perform your nightkill with your strongman or ninja in 2/3 of the B setups is an almost purely RNG decision if no PRs are outed that could determine the game.

that's not a great precedent to set.

[Cinnamon]

Fair enough, I guess Ninja/Goon is probably a better pairing there

[Cinnamon]

	A	B	C
Mafia	Mafia Roleblocker and Mafia Goon	Mafia Ninja and Mafia Goon	Mafia Strongman and Mafia Goon
Row 1	Town Cop and Town Doctor	Town Cop and Town Tracker	Town Cop and Vanilla Townie
Row 2	Town Jailkeeper and Town Doctor	Town Jailkeeper and Town Tracker	Town Neapolitan and Town Doctor
Row 3	Town Neapolitan and Town Tracker	Town Neapolitan and Vanilla Townie	Town Tracker and Town Doctor

[Cinnamon]

I think if focusing on scum concepts like protecting PRs and allowing for fake claims, this setup does it quite well

[Cinnamon]

Almost all of the setups are close to won for town if the mafia PR is killed day 1 but I don't think that's so much of a bad thing. Conversely if the mafia PR stays alive many roles aren't as impactful.

[Cinnamon]

	A	B	C
Mafia	Mafia Roleblocker and Mafia Goon	Mafia Ninja and Mafia Goon	Mafia Strongman and Mafia Goon
Row 1	Town Cop and Town Doctor	Town Cop and Town Tracker	Town Cop and Vanilla Townie
Row 2	Town Jailkeeper and Town Doctor	Town Tracker and Town Doctor	Town Neapolitan and Town Doctor
Row 3	Town Neapolitan and Town Tracker	Town Neapolitan and Vanilla Townie	Town Jailkeeper and Town Tracker

Alternatively, B2 and C3 could be swapped to create this

[Ircher]

Ninja is a really overpowered counter to Tracker. B2 looks rather scumsided.

Edit: Maybe if you made A3 be B2, B2 be C3, and C3 be A3, it would work.

[Cinnamon]

	A	B	C
Mafia	Mafia Roleblocker and Mafia Goon	Mafia Ninja and Mafia Goon	Mafia Strongman and Mafia Goon
Row 1	Town Cop and Town Doctor	Town Cop and Town Tracker	Town Cop and Vanilla Townie
Row 2	Town Jailkeeper and Town Doctor	Town Jailkeeper and Town Tracker	Town Neapolitan and Town Doctor
Row 3	Town Neapolitan and Town Tracker	Town Neapolitan and Vanilla Townie	Town Tracker and Town Doctor

yeah I guess this version was better

[Ircher]

Edit: Maybe if you made A3 be B2, B2 be C3, and C3 be A3, it would work.

(Since you posted before my edit.)

[Cinnamon]

	A	B	C
Mafia	Mafia Roleblocker and Mafia Goon	Mafia Ninja and Mafia Goon	Mafia Strongman and Mafia Goon
Row 1	Town Cop and Town Doctor	Town Cop and Town Tracker	Town Neapolitan and Vanilla Townie
Row 2	Town Neapolitan and Town Doctor	Town Neapolitan and Town Tracker	Town Jailkeeper and Neapolitan
Row 3	Town Jailkeeper and Town Tracker	Town Cop and Vanilla Townie	Town Tracker and Town Doctor

edit: swapped A3 and C2

[Cinnamon]

What about this?

[RadiantCowbells]

I appreciate that you have a lot of experience playing newbie games and designing setups, but so far you’ve mostly just sad that every idea is bad. Want to take a crack at it, RC? I’d love to see what list you’d come up with!

there is a shit ton of moving parts necessary to make a 'good' setup
i've been thinking about it for a long time and i don't have a final answer

[Cinnamon]

@rc for you, are there particular things a new newbie setup would need?
or at least things that would improve the setup drastically

[Irrelephant11]

Yeah I guess that is the lesson I’m learning itt
I appreciate how many people are working to puzzle it out! I bet this thread could really generate something good

Pedit: this is re:moving parts

[Irrelephant11]

Some fun things I’ve noticed from these setups that help balance a semi-open
Cop + vts = Neapolitan + vts
Ninja vs. protectives = Goon vs. protectives
Strongman vs. investigatives = Goon vs. investigatives
Roleblocker vs. non-night-action PRs = Goon vs. Non-night-action PRs

Some things I’ve learned are probably important:
-Roles that are either recognizable or intuitive or both
-The ability for scum to fake claim in most subsetups
-Partial information about the setup for both teams
-A lack of a game breaking strategy for town
-A limited number of potential clears
-A limited amount of complexity

[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)

[Cinnamon]

Some fun things I’ve noticed from these setups that help balance a semi-open
Cop + vts = Neapolitan + vts
Ninja vs. protectives = Goon vs. protectives
Strongman vs. investigatives = Goon vs. investigatives
Roleblocker vs. non-night-action PRs = Goon vs. Non-night-action PRs

Some things I’ve learned are probably important:
-Roles that are either recognizable or intuitive or both
-The ability for scum to fake claim in most subsetups
-Partial information about the setup for both teams
-A lack of a game breaking strategy for town
-A limited number of potential clears
-A limited amount of complexity

I think at the very least this was pretty useful in helping me understand making setups specifically for forum based mafia. There's a bunch of things I learned here and I think I made some interesting setups, even if they aren't all perfect for the newbie queue. It's an interesting discussion about the newbie setup and there's a lot of things that I'm considering now that I didn't see when I first came into my first newbie game.

[Toomai]

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".

[TTTT]

even if they get nothing out of the Mason chat
just having a town-clear is huge for a new player

[TTTT]

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?

[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.

[RadiantCowbells]

What did it cost?

[callforjudgement]

I've been thinking about this. I think setups with large numbers of subsetups are basically impossible to balance, because in order to avoid there being so much information leaked by flips that the game becomes mostly about nightplay, you need to use a small number of roles in a large number of combinations, and then some of the individual subsetups will come out either very townsided or very scumsided. (I tried this sort of setup and failed.)

Perhaps the best approach is to keep the number of subsetups low; the main issue here is giving scope for fakeclaiming, but I think it's possible. Here's a suggestion:

Three subsetups, equal probability:

• Doctor, Miller, 5 VT vs. 1-Shot Roleblocker, Goon
  
• Doctor, Cop, 5 VT vs. 1-Shot Strongman, 1-Shot Roleblocker
  
• Doctor, Cop, Miller, 4 VT vs. 1-Shot Strongman, Goon

This is considerably more scumsided than the existing setups; that's desirable, but I may have gone too far or not far enough. Nonetheless, I think these subsetups work from a claiming strategy point of view (and are also somewhat tolerant of theoretical misplays; for example, it's probably correct for the Strongman to claim Miller in subsetup 2 but the setup works even if they don't). In particular, it's intentional that the Doctor is effectively a Named Townie (Doctor is one of the few roles that doesn't

want

to claim, even to confirm themself); adding a subsetup with no Doctor in would make the first subsetup scumsided.

[Not Known 15]

I've been thinking about this. I think setups with large numbers of subsetups are basically impossible to balance, because in order to avoid there being so much information leaked by flips that the game becomes mostly about nightplay, you need to use a small number of roles in a large number of combinations, and then some of the individual subsetups will come out either very townsided or very scumsided. (I tried this sort of setup and failed.)

Perhaps the best approach is to keep the number of subsetups low; the main issue here is giving scope for fakeclaiming, but I think it's possible. Here's a suggestion:

Three subsetups, equal probability:

• Doctor, Miller, 5 VT vs. 1-Shot Roleblocker, Goon
  
• Doctor, Cop, 5 VT vs. 1-Shot Strongman, 1-Shot Roleblocker
  
• Doctor, Cop, Miller, 4 VT vs. 1-Shot Strongman, Goon

This is considerably more scumsided than the existing setups; that's desirable, but I may have gone too far or not far enough. Nonetheless, I think these subsetups work from a claiming strategy point of view (and are also somewhat tolerant of theoretical misplays; for example, it's probably correct for the Strongman to claim Miller in subsetup 2 but the setup works even if they don't). In particular, it's intentional that the Doctor is effectively a Named Townie (Doctor is one of the few roles that doesn't

want

to claim, even to confirm themself); adding a subsetup with no Doctor in would make the first subsetup scumsided.

The optimal claim strategy is probably as follows:
Situation 1: No Mafia dead.
Miller does

not

claim.
When decided as the lynch(except when CC'd):
-Doctor claims and is not lynched, Doctor should CC.
-Cop claims and is not lynched(unless LYLO), Cop should not CC Day 1; otherwise CC
-Miller is lynched.
Situation 2:Mafia Goon dead.
-->Miller claims immediately.
-->Cop keeps silent until LYLO/red peek/a green peek is threatened with a lynch
-->Doctor keeps silent until the day before LYLO.
When decided as the lynch,
- Doctor claims and is not lynched.
- Cop claims and is lynched.
- green peek is claimed and NOT lynched(they can't be bad)

Situation 3:Roleblocker dead.
--->Miller claims immediately; if Cop is alive they CC Day 3+.
--->No Miller -> Cop keeps silent unless run up to lynch, or their green peek is decided to be the lynch, or it is LYLO/Day before LYLO.
---->Doctor keeps silent until the day before LYLO.
When decided as the lynch,
-Doctor claims and... yeah... isn't lynched.
-Cop claims and is not lynched if it isn't a CC/CC'd, otherwise one of the CC's is lynched.(CC=LYLO ONLY)
-the green peek is claimed and not lynched.

Situation 4:Strongman dead.
--->Cop claims immediately. Unless Doctor died, they

don't

out their checks before LYLO.
--->Miller claims next. If there is no miller claim+red check ---> Town wins.
--->Doctor keeps silent until day before LYLO and heals the Cop.
When decided as the lynch,
-Doctor claims, is not lynched, and the Cop claims their results immediately. The Doctor heals the Cop(if the Cop dies then the Miller is fake) and someone else is lynched.
-green check is claimed and not lynched.

Pretty complicated claim strategies here...

[RadiantCowbells]

strong opposition to a setup built off of 3 setups with 1-shot scum roles :\