[MECHANIC] Guns

[ArashPey]

hey guys i came up with this idea of a mafia-like game

there is no lynches and night kills, but there is guns.
there is a mafia Inventor who doesn't know other mafia members (if existing) and passes guns to other players. each day, the player who has the gun, can kill a person. the goal for town is to kill the Inventor (and the game ends after that since there is no gun)

what do you think? can it make a good setup? and what other roles (mafia and town) can it have?

my opinions is that mafia should be small as possible and there gotta be another win condition for them to be balanced, like having a power role killed or something like that. i came up with a townie Chief who can seize and steal guns, but town loses if he's dead.

[Invisibility]

interesting mechanic but i think no lynching throws it a little too in favor of the scum especially with the town godfather (godfather = lynched and lose)
also you dont really need a 1 person mafia because the inventor can just be a godfather
(the reason godfather is better in mafia than town is the scum knows who the godfather is)
also you might want to put [MECHANIC] in the title

[callforjudgement]

There badly needs to be a way to find the Inventor via associative tells; otherwise the game will be mostly random, based on who gets the power roles. That implies there should probably be a scumteam who knows who the Inventor is (although not vice versa), who the Inventor is trying to help to win.

However, it's important to avoid scum being able to break the setup via claiming once they get a gun (thus being given the gun every night from then on). Preventing the Inventor repeating targets is an obvious start, in that it means that scum can't endgame the town even by claiming the entire scumteam unless it'd get down to an endgame situation in a more normal game. It's probably good to have some sort of endgaming ability that works like that, as otherwise scum will have huge trouble getting over the finish line even when they're winning.

New mechanics are often more interesting to test in a vanilla setup first, unless they need power roles to balance. I have a suspicion that you need a large scumteam to balance it (this mechanic is comparable to Nightless except that scum have multiple disadvantages, as one member of the scumteam loses them the game if "lynched", and Nightless is pretty townsided as it is). An EV calculation is nontrivial, though, as there are three variables (number of living town, number of living scum, how many of the living scum are eligible to receive the gun).

You can make it a bit less scumsided by making the gunholder secret, and allowing them to shoot via PM. That way, scum have the option of not claiming and immediately shooting a townie when they get the gun, preventing town from directing the kill. (The downside is that it may make their identity clear later in the game, by elimination from the people who have claimed to receive the gun.)

[ArashPey]

There badly needs to be a way to find the Inventor via associative tells; otherwise the game will be mostly random, based on who gets the power roles. That implies there should probably be a scumteam who knows who the Inventor is (although not vice versa), who the Inventor is trying to help to win.

However, it's important to avoid scum being able to break the setup via claiming once they get a gun (thus being given the gun every night from then on). Preventing the Inventor repeating targets is an obvious start, in that it means that scum can't endgame the town even by claiming the entire scumteam unless it'd get down to an endgame situation in a more normal game. It's probably good to have some sort of endgaming ability that works like that, as otherwise scum will have huge trouble getting over the finish line even when they're winning.

New mechanics are often more interesting to test in a vanilla setup first, unless they need power roles to balance. I have a suspicion that you need a large scumteam to balance it (this mechanic is comparable to Nightless except that scum have multiple disadvantages, as one member of the scumteam loses them the game if "lynched", and Nightless is pretty townsided as it is). An EV calculation is nontrivial, though, as there are three variables (number of living town, number of living scum, how many of the living scum are eligible to receive the gun).

You can make it a bit less scumsided by making the gunholder secret, and allowing them to shoot via PM. That way, scum have the option of not claiming and immediately shooting a townie when they get the gun, preventing town from directing the kill. (The downside is that it may make their identity clear later in the game, by elimination from the people who have claimed to receive the gun.)

I don't think it will be random even without mafia team, since they can read scum by discussing why a person has been given the gun by Inventor and who is the player shooting. but anyway I do tend to put some mafia members.

preventing repeating targets is good but it narrows down the choices for town as Inventor himself cannot have the gun, and this need to be taken into balance.

and town godfather seems a bit too "sudden death" and scumsided, it can be changed into something like baker or another town role that if killed, mafia can have nightkills, which makes them able to get over the finish line.

[ArashPey]

so after changes i made, the setup is now like this. the game does not end when either Gunsmith or Chief is dead. instead, lynching will be back when Gunsmith is dead and there is no gun in play, and Mafia's Nightkill will be back if Chief is dead, so they can reach the normal win condition.

Any ideas or suggestions?