Overkill 1: Serenity/Firefly (GAME OVER)

[Varsoon]

Sorry about not doing more to try to balance this from a flavor perspective--I wasnt/am not super familiar with the flavor, so I didn't realize the roles would be such giveaways. I did propose a few options in the setup thread to curb flavor gaming and while we did go with flavor-on-flip, it clearly wasn't enough.

I think the best approach, really, is to either give scum a means of punishing flavor gaming (not fun, but can work) or to make flavor not intrinsically tied to alignment (somewhat against the spirit of staying true to the theme in most cases imo but most people seem to prefer this).

[Varsoon]

Also-also if you want more kills to absolutely go through, ensure that scum gets a Strongman kill or just run a public mechanic where 1 kill will ALWAYS succeed and that way town protectives are just around to try to keep it down to one kill. Really depends on how you want to approach the notion of OVERKILL and implement that. Obviously, here, we overlooked how much town would be able to keep its protective roles alive while also clearing enough others as town. I think, as rule of thumb, if you don't do something like a guaranteed strongman, there should be less protective roles than kills in the game and could even tie this to having protective roles that stop being capable of protecting once potential killers are eliminated.

[Varsoon]

Good! It's OVERKILL, the strongest town player can get KILLED.
You could also design protective interactions in such a way that they don't clear players as town. Guaranteed kill does that, to some extent.

[Varsoon]

Roles like Bodyguard or Redirector or Bus Driver make more sense for having a protective sort of role in a setup where you still want kills occurring but want town capable of protecting its strong players.

[Varsoon]

But yeah I think the setup, either by role-design or public/semi-public mechanic should have at least 1 kill every night if you really want to stick with the OVERKILL thing and not have a huge amount of swing. When NO KILLS happen, it puts protective roles in really privileged positions.

It doesn't have to be like giving scum infinite strongman, either. I envision a public mechanic where it's confirmed one kill will always succeed--if every kill is blocked, then the kill that becomes 'strongman' is determined privately by preset parameters.

[Varsoon]

I'd thought I'd done something similar in FFT, but it's actually kinda the opposite.
It was known only to scum that, while they could submit multiple kills, only one would every resolve, if possible--and their factional kill had higher priority than the 'Job Class' abilities, which were usually the means that players had towards stopping kills. Scum also couldn't be killed. Basically, since the setup only had 2 scum players in it, I tried to mitigate swing REALLY HARD with private mechanics. I wish I would've been a little more transparent about some of the mechanics, though, since town put all their eggs in a mass-protection play that could have never played out well for them.

Subject: FFTACTICS MAFIA : THE CHURCH OF GLABADOS

Spoiler: THE LUCAVI'S FACTIONAL ABILITIES

"THE LUCAVI OF LEGEND WAS AN UNBEATABLE, FEROCIOUS MONSTER":

You may not be killed. Only the collective strength of the Zodiac Braves can defeat you with a lynch. All kills, regardless of priority, will fail against a Lucavi.

"I OFFER MY OWN LIFE FOR YOUR RESURRECTION":

Even in death, The Lucavi know that more blood must be shed to herald Ultima's return. When the first Lucavi is lynched, during the following Night Phase, they may pick a player who was voting for them--the chosen player is killed. Nothing can prevent this kill.

"HE'S POSSESSED BY LUCAVI!":

The Lucavi hold sway over the hearts of humans. Once per night, you may target a player to cause them to be unable to take any actions. This does not count against your action limit.

"WITHOUT POWER, NOTHING CAN BE ACHIEVED...":

Each Night, a single Lucavi may decide to kill a single player. This factional kill does not count against your action limit. Job Classes exist that will provide players with a killing ability. Members of the Lucavi faction can only kill a single player at night--multiple kills may be submitted, but only one will ever succeed, if possible. The Lucavi Factional Kill will always take priority to succeed over Job Class kills. If submitting multiple Job Class kills, please specify 'high' or 'low' priority in the case that all resolve successfully.

[Varsoon]

But yeah it's hard to mitigate swing in a setup built around multiple kills.

[Varsoon]

Man that hidden-scum post-pregame recruit mechanic was golden and I can never do it again, at least, not any time soon while it's within fresh enough mod meta for people to suspect it.

I probably should watch Firefly though.
I saw some episodes back when I was young when I used to watch stuff like Sliders and Xena when it came on SciFi.

[Varsoon]

^When those shows came on SciFi.
dunno if Firefly aired and where.
But my parents I recall liked it.

[Varsoon]

Hey I kinda got that right
Sliders and Xena were late 90's/very early 2000's.
Firefly was 2002-2003 and on Fox, apparently.