[MARCH CHALLENGE]

[callforjudgement]

Microtown

• Microtown is a 9-player game using the Smalltown mechanic: there are 36 possible setups, each of which has the same roles, but a different assignment of alignments to roles (each assignment of 7 town and 2 scum is possible).
  
• Each player's role (but not alignment, obviously) is confirmed by the moderator at the start of the game. (This means that the roles can be picked via WIFOMdraft, if desired, rather than randomised.)
  
• Mafia members automatically get the Multitasking modifier, allowing them to perform a kill and a night action at the same time.
  
• Normal phase sequence and kills (i.e. Day Start, scum have a factional kill).
  
• Scum win by killing the entire town, and vice versa; play beyond 50% is possible if town have a power role combination that could potentially allow them to eliminate all the scum first, despite not outnumbering them.
  
• The roles are as follows:
  • Night 3 Vigilante
    
  • 1-shot Roleblocker
    
  • Personal Redirector (investigative roles get "your target"-style results, so won't know they've been redirected; targets both the player being redirected and the player being redirected onto, thus can't redirect onto the Ascetic)
    
  • Rolestopper
    
  • Ascetic Alien Babysitter (by analogy with Alien Jailkeeper): all actions aimed directly at the Babysitter's target fail (not just kills), but if the Babysitter dies overnight, so does their target
    
  • Night 2 Informed (informed of the alignment of a randomly selected living townie, not counting themself, at the end of night 2)
    
  • Traffic Analyst (always gets "can communicate" on the Messenger, thus will likely investigate someone else)
    
  • Unlimited Messenger; can send an unlimited number of private messages to other players (via the moderator), day or night, but the recipients cannot respond privately (they'll have to respond in-thread or not at all)
    
  • Doublevoter (the variant which casts one vote and it's given double weight in the voting)
• Action resolution is Reasonable Action Resolution. That gives the following resolutions for loops of manipulatives:
  • Rolestopper, Babysitter target the same player: both actions fail, other actions targeting that player succeed
    
  • Redirector attempts to redirects actions onto a target who's rolestopped or babysat (but not both): redirection fails, actions target their original target
    
  • Redirector attempts to redirect actions of a target who's rolestopped or babysat (but not both): redirection fails, actions target their original target
    
  • Roleblocker attempts to block a player who's rolestopped or babysat (but not both): roleblock fails, that player's actions go through
    
  • Redirector attempts to redirect the Rolestopper or Babysitter onto a new target: redirection succeeds, unless the other rolestopping role targeted one of the Redirector's targets
    
  • Redirector attempts to redirect the Rolestopper or Babysitter onto their current target: the redirection has no effect
    
  • Redirector attempts to redirect the Roleblocker, who is roleblocking someone else: redirection succeeds
    
  • Redirector attempts to redirect the Roleblocker, who is blocking the Redirector: redirection fails, the Roleblocker blocks the Redirector and not anyone else

I've been wanting to make a good open Smalltown for a while, and this contest has finally spurred me into action (as the mechanic is conceptually one in which the game is fundamentally semi-open and everyone is Named). Besides, I make setups with nonstandard win conditions all the time, and aren't the monthly challenges a good time for a change?

To balance the various subsetups of a Smalltown, the sum of how useful a role is for town and for scum should come to a constant; thus, roles should be good for town and useless for scum (e.g. N2 Informed), or good for scum and useless for town (e.g. Doublevoter), or mildly useful for both (e.g. Rolestopper in a setup where it's known to exist). I haven't been able to do that exactly here, but it's close.

Balancing a 9p with 9 power roles is also difficult; you have to err considerably on the side of "useful for scum" (thus the large number of manipulatives, and the use of rolestop effects for protectives). It wouldn't surprise me if this were unbalanced, or even if some subsetups were broken, although I've tried to keep things under control. (If it's unbalanced, it's probably townsided.) It might have to be run to work out where the balance lies. (Monthly challenge setups tend not to be all that balanced anyway, probably because it's hard to balance a game that uses unusual mechanics without having some experience with them.)

[BBmolla]

I'd Take a Bullet

14 Players

1 Mafia Goon
1 Mafia N2 Suicidal Goon
1 Mafia 0-shot Vig

11 1-shot Fixated Elite Bodygaurds

• Fixated: This player may only target the player their vote ended on at the end of the day.
  
• Elite Bodygaurd: During the night, select a player. If that player is targeted for a nightkill, both you and the nightkiller will die.
  
• Mafia are all Multitasking.
  
• If a Mafia player is lynched, any players on the wagon gain +1-shot. (This affects both Town and Mafia.)
  
• At the start of the game, Mafia may choose to give their vig additional shots, but changes their win condition and the Suicidal Mafia's Role. Town is not informed of Mafia's choice.
  • 1-shot Vig: Mafia win condition becomes White Flag, Mafia Suicidal Goon becomes a Mafia Goon.
    
  • 2-shot Vig: All Mafia become Lovers, Mafia Suicidal Goon becomes a Mafia Roleblocker.

Spoiler: 3/6/19 version

I'd Take a Bullet

13 Players

1 Mafia Goons
1 Mafia Shotcop
1 Mafia 0-shot Vig

10 1-shot Fixated Elite Bodygaurds

• Fixated: This player may only target the player their vote ended on at the end of the day.
  
• Elite Bodygaurd: During the night, select a player. If that player is targeted for a nightkill, both you and the nightkiller will die.
  
• Shotcop: During the night, target a player. You will be informed how many shots they have left of their ability.
  
• Mafia are all Multitasking.
  
• If a Mafia player is lynched, any players on the wagon gain +1-shot. (This affects both Town and Mafia.)
  
• At the start of the game, Mafia may choose to give their vig additional shots, but receive negative effects as a result of it. Town is not informed of Mafia's choice.
  • 1-shot Vig: Mafia become White Flag.
    
  • 2-shot Vig: All Mafia become Lovers.

[implosion]

@cfj's: smalltown is a nice idea. It's something I think hasn't really been innovated on in recent memory. I've never really thought about the principles that would go into a good smalltown game. And I don't think I've ever seen the idea for a 2:7 smalltown. It's a cool idea. Definitely hard to evaluate, but very intriguing.

@bb's: Also neat. And kudos on making it both semi-open and have alternate win conditions :p

It's actually a really interesting idea for a setup... and it actually matters what the answer to this is: are you using NL at deadline or plurality? I assume NL? I *think* it might be scumsided if scum don't give the vig any extra shots, maybe. But I really, really like the ideas in it.

[mith]

I'm pretty sure scum should always choose 0-shot as it is.

[OkaPoka]

PICK YOUR ALMOST EVERYTHING

First setup attempt so balance is out of the window. Also something like this probably exists. I just wanted to merge Greatest Idea Mafia and Pick Your Power X/Y without having alignment stuff.

3 Mafia

11 Town

PREGAME

Roll 1d2 for every player, determining whether they have pick choices from 1:

POWER ROLES

or 2:

MODIFIERS

.
Roll 3d20 for every player, any repeats per individual should be rerolled until every player has three different numbers. (Person 1 and Person 2 can have the same number(s), but Person 1 cannot have 1, 1, 4).
Roll 1d20 for every player.

Then the moderator will send each player 3 choices (based on whether they have pick choice from

POWER ROLES

or

MODIFIERS

using the 3d20) and the forced

POWER ROLES

or

MODIFIERS

based on the 1d20. Also the player will be pm'd their alignment. The player must pick one of the three choices.

After receiving the list of all the player picks, the moderator then runs tiebreaks. If any players ended up with either the same role and/or same modifier (EXCEPT FOR VANILLA AND NEIGHBOR), the moderator will roll tiebreaks to determine the winner of the tiebreaks. The winner gets to keep their POWER ROLE/MODIFIER while the loser(s) become "Informed," knowing that there exists that specific POWER ROLE or MODIFIER in the game.

Then the moderator will send out all Role PMS in the form of
<Alignment Name> <Power Role Name>, <Modifier>

for example:

Town Doctor, Loud

Mafia Informed, Informed

(You know that <redacted> power role exists and <redacted> modifier exists)

Game stuff:

Mafia faction have access to pregame chat.
Daytalk is enabled.
All neighbors are in one neighborhood.
Mafia faction have access to a factional nightkill.
Mafia faction may multitask.
Compulsive scum means they must perform both the factional kill and their ability as long as they are alive.
Indecisive scum means they cannot target anybody they targeted last night, (for example: "Mafia Watcher, Indecisive" who attacked Player A and watched Player B may use neither of his actions on either Player A or B).
Gunsmith returns guilty on all cop variants.
Informed flips do not return what they were informed about.
Picking Innocent Child/Strongman makes you IC as town, 1-shot Strongman as scum. IC is revealed at game start.
Being a Town Vanilla, Compulsive and stuff like that makes you essentially a named Townie.
Treestumps will flip your alignment + role + modifier, treestumps only activate upon death.
Vanilla'd targets are told they lose their power role/ modifier. Vanilla'd neighbors will lose access to the neighborhood.

Spoiler: POWER ROLES LIST

• 1. Vanilla
  2. Vanilla
  3. Vanilla
  4. Vanilla
  5. Vanilla
  6. Power role Cop
  7. Modifier Cop
  8. Watcher
  9. Tracker
  10. Vigilante
  11. Jailkeeper
  12. Gunsmith
  13. Cop
  14. Power Role Vanillaiser
  15. Modifier Vanillaiser
  16. Bodyguard
  17. Doctor
  18. Rolecop
  19. Roleblocker
  20. Innocent Child/1-shot Strongman

Spoiler: MODIFIERS LIST

• 1. Vanilla
  2. Vanilla
  3. Vanilla
  4. Vanilla
  5. Vanilla
  6. Neighbor
  7. Neighbor
  8. Neighbor
  9. Tree stump
  10. Vengeful
  11. Loud
  12. 1-shot Bulletproof
  13. Loyal
  14. Ninja
  15. Ascetic
  16. Hated
  17. Weak
  18. Compulsive
  19. Macho
  20. Indecisive

[BBmolla]

@cfj's: smalltown is a nice idea. It's something I think hasn't really been innovated on in recent memory. I've never really thought about the principles that would go into a good smalltown game. And I don't think I've ever seen the idea for a 2:7 smalltown. It's a cool idea. Definitely hard to evaluate, but very intriguing.

@bb's: Also neat. And kudos on making it both semi-open and have alternate win conditions :p

It's actually a really interesting idea for a setup... and it actually matters what the answer to this is: are you using NL at deadline or plurality? I assume NL? I *think* it might be scumsided if scum don't give the vig any extra shots, maybe. But I really, really like the ideas in it.

NL at deadline

Might toy with giving scum more power at 1-shot and 2-shot

[BBmolla]

Okay the setups should now be 4 mislynches, 3 mislynches, and 2 mislynches if I did the math correctly. Still suboptimal to choose option 3 but that is ideal.

[northsidegal]

Pick 5

13 players

• 3:10
  
• Pre-game, the Mafia pick two categories and assign one Mafia role from each category to a member of the Mafia.
  • The Mafia may assign two roles / a role and a modifier to the same member, should they desire.
• Three town players will randomly be chosen. Each will pick a Town role from one of the three categories that the Mafia did not select.

Encryptor

Multitasking

Cop

Watcher

Ascetic

Motion Detector

Jailkeeper

Vigilante

JOAT (Ninja, Strongman)

Informed (TPR Selection)

Neapolitan

Weak Hider

1-shot Redirector

Rolecop

Bodyguard

Tracker

Roleblocker

Asceticizer

1-shot Bulletproof

Neighborizer

So for example, if the Mafia chose an Encryptor and a Roleblocker, the three town PRs would respectively choose to be either a Jailkeeeper or a Vig, a Neap or a Hider, and a BG or a Tracker.


Specific category role distribution can obviously be tweaked for balance.

I'm honestly not all that attached to this idea, but I've had the beginnings of a setup similar to this rattling around for a while and it was close enough to the specifications that I just modified it a little bit. Plus, I wanted to ego post this thread

[ceejayvinoya]

Lalala

Pizza Mafia!

13 Players

3 Pineapple Mafia

9 Topping Townies
1 Informed Pepperoni

• First attempt at making a setup, so no guarantees of balance.
  
  
• Each Topping Townie gets a random topping from this list:
  • Cheese
    
  • Sausage
    
  • Pepper
    
  • Olive
    
  • Mushroom
    
  • Onion
    
  • Beef
    
  • Ham
    
  • Bacon
    
  • Tomato
    
  • Spinach
    
  • Chicken
• Mafia are informed of which toppings are not in the current game.
  
  
• Informed Pepperoni is informed of one topping not in the current game, and is informed of another topping not in the current game per night.
  
  
• Mafia has Daytalk and a factional nightkill.

[callforjudgement]

Are duplicate toppings allowed? (Note: the setup is broken whether you say yes or no, but in a different way in each case. Probably yes is more interesting.)

[ceejayvinoya]

Are duplicate toppings allowed? (Note: the setup is broken whether you say yes or no, but in a different way in each case. Probably yes is more interesting.)

No duplicates

Point me to where it is broken? I was thinking it's where everybody claims and this turns into a 2:9 chore.

[callforjudgement]

Oh right, I missed that everyone claiming exposes the cop as well as the scum.

In that case, yes, it basically just turns into a 2:9 if everyone claims. Town can do better by delaying the massclaim to D2, though, in which case there's a small chance we end up in a vanilla 3:10 and a much higher chance that two scum get caught D2.

[Jingle]

Probably more interesting if potential toppings > # players, tbh.

[Jingle]

As is it's broken-ish by no lynch. 80% town win.

Edit: It's not quite 80%. It's 80% to have 3 1v1's that scum has to win all of. Still though, might as well be a townwin after 2 no lynches if the cop is still alive.

[Jingle]

Kind of a boring-ish setup, but I doubt I'll have time to come up with something better.

Setup A:

1x Watcher
1x Bodyguard
5x VT
2x Mafia Goon

Setup B:
1x Tracker
1x Doctor
5x VT
2x Goon

In addition to their nightkill, scum has a factional rolestop each night. Scum is multitasking.

[BBmolla]

Setup B is way more townsided imo even though Watcher is better than tracker.

What if the Bodygaurd was a Bodyblocker?

[callforjudgement]

Setup B is Matrix6 subsetup C (44.7% town win rate within Matrix6). However, the town win rate would be much higher in this setup because scum have no viable fakeclaims regardless of the subsetup, giving town a substantial advantage compared to Matrix6.

[Jingle]

Setup B is Matrix6 subsetup C (44.7% town win rate within Matrix6). However, the town win rate would be much higher in this setup because scum have no viable fakeclaims regardless of the subsetup, giving town a substantial advantage compared to Matrix6.

It's not, scum has a factional rolestop and is multitasking. If a tracker claims, Scum gets to have one scum rolestop themselves and kill, meaning the tracker gets no useful ninja. Scum have no fakeclaims, but they also have a way to interfere with town power.

I suppose I should specify that no result is indistinguishable from no target and that A and B each have a 50% chance.

[Jingle]

Setup B is way more townsided imo even though Watcher is better than tracker.

What if the Bodygaurd was a Bodyblocker?

I'm not sure that works. I'm interested in tweaks to the setup, but I think that one specifically is a bit counter to the point of it being a semi-open. Basically, as it is, in Setup A there's a reason for the mafia to target town with the rolestop, even if it's not a great one. I think if I were to tweak the setup it would be to make the play of mafia selftargeting with the rolestopper a worse plan.

What do you think about making the bodyguard a shy doctor (roleblocked if targeted).

[Not Known 15]

Kind of a boring-ish setup, but I doubt I'll have time to come up with something better.

Setup A:

1x Watcher
1x Bodyguard
5x VT
2x Mafia Goon

Setup B:
1x Tracker
1x Doctor
5x VT
2x Goon

In addition to their nightkill, scum has a factional rolestop each night. Scum is multitasking.

That's invalid, you have no alternative wincon.

Lalala

Pizza Mafia!

13 Players

3 Pineapple Mafia

9 Topping Townies
1 Informed Pepperoni

• First attempt at making a setup, so no guarantees of balance.
  
  
• Each Topping Townie gets a random topping from this list:
  • Cheese
    
  • Sausage
    
  • Pepper
    
  • Olive
    
  • Mushroom
    
  • Onion
    
  • Beef
    
  • Ham
    
  • Bacon
    
  • Tomato
    
  • Spinach
    
  • Chicken
• Mafia are informed of which toppings are not in the current game.
  
  
• Informed Pepperoni is informed of one topping not in the current game, and is informed of another topping not in the current game per night.
  
  
• Mafia has Daytalk and a factional nightkill.

This, too!

PICK YOUR ALMOST EVERYTHING

First setup attempt so balance is out of the window. Also something like this probably exists. I just wanted to merge Greatest Idea Mafia and Pick Your Power X/Y without having alignment stuff.

3 Mafia

11 Town

PREGAME

Roll 1d2 for every player, determining whether they have pick choices from 1:

POWER ROLES

or 2:

MODIFIERS

.
Roll 3d20 for every player, any repeats per individual should be rerolled until every player has three different numbers. (Person 1 and Person 2 can have the same number(s), but Person 1 cannot have 1, 1, 4).
Roll 1d20 for every player.

Then the moderator will send each player 3 choices (based on whether they have pick choice from

POWER ROLES

or

MODIFIERS

using the 3d20) and the forced

POWER ROLES

or

MODIFIERS

based on the 1d20. Also the player will be pm'd their alignment. The player must pick one of the three choices.

After receiving the list of all the player picks, the moderator then runs tiebreaks. If any players ended up with either the same role and/or same modifier (EXCEPT FOR VANILLA AND NEIGHBOR), the moderator will roll tiebreaks to determine the winner of the tiebreaks. The winner gets to keep their POWER ROLE/MODIFIER while the loser(s) become "Informed," knowing that there exists that specific POWER ROLE or MODIFIER in the game.

Then the moderator will send out all Role PMS in the form of
<Alignment Name> <Power Role Name>, <Modifier>

for example:

Town Doctor, Loud

Mafia Informed, Informed

(You know that <redacted> power role exists and <redacted> modifier exists)

Game stuff:

Mafia faction have access to pregame chat.
Daytalk is enabled.
All neighbors are in one neighborhood.
Mafia faction have access to a factional nightkill.
Mafia faction may multitask.
Compulsive scum means they must perform both the factional kill and their ability as long as they are alive.
Indecisive scum means they cannot target anybody they targeted last night, (for example: "Mafia Watcher, Indecisive" who attacked Player A and watched Player B may use neither of his actions on either Player A or B).
Gunsmith returns guilty on all cop variants.
Informed flips do not return what they were informed about.
Picking Innocent Child/Strongman makes you IC as town, 1-shot Strongman as scum. IC is revealed at game start.
Being a Town Vanilla, Compulsive and stuff like that makes you essentially a named Townie.
Treestumps will flip your alignment + role + modifier, treestumps only activate upon death.
Vanilla'd targets are told they lose their power role/ modifier. Vanilla'd neighbors will lose access to the neighborhood.

Spoiler: POWER ROLES LIST

• 1. Vanilla
  2. Vanilla
  3. Vanilla
  4. Vanilla
  5. Vanilla
  6. Power role Cop
  7. Modifier Cop
  8. Watcher
  9. Tracker
  10. Vigilante
  11. Jailkeeper
  12. Gunsmith
  13. Cop
  14. Power Role Vanillaiser
  15. Modifier Vanillaiser
  16. Bodyguard
  17. Doctor
  18. Rolecop
  19. Roleblocker
  20. Innocent Child/1-shot Strongman

Spoiler: MODIFIERS LIST

• 1. Vanilla
  2. Vanilla
  3. Vanilla
  4. Vanilla
  5. Vanilla
  6. Neighbor
  7. Neighbor
  8. Neighbor
  9. Tree stump
  10. Vengeful
  11. Loud
  12. 1-shot Bulletproof
  13. Loyal
  14. Ninja
  15. Ascetic
  16. Hated
  17. Weak
  18. Compulsive
  19. Macho
  20. Indecisive

Another invalid submission!

Pick 5

13 players

• 3:10
  
• Pre-game, the Mafia pick two categories and assign one Mafia role from each category to a member of the Mafia.
  • The Mafia may assign two roles / a role and a modifier to the same member, should they desire.
• Three town players will randomly be chosen. Each will pick a Town role from one of the three categories that the Mafia did not select.

Encryptor

Multitasking

Cop

Watcher

Ascetic

Motion Detector

Jailkeeper

Vigilante

JOAT (Ninja, Strongman)

Informed (TPR Selection)

Neapolitan

Weak Hider

1-shot Redirector

Rolecop

Bodyguard

Tracker

Roleblocker

Asceticizer

1-shot Bulletproof

Neighborizer

So for example, if the Mafia chose an Encryptor and a Roleblocker, the three town PRs would respectively choose to be either a Jailkeeeper or a Vig, a Neap or a Hider, and a BG or a Tracker.


Specific category role distribution can obviously be tweaked for balance.

I'm honestly not all that attached to this idea, but I've had the beginnings of a setup similar to this rattling around for a while and it was close enough to the specifications that I just modified it a little bit. Plus, I wanted to ego post this thread

That's number 4!(they all break the wincon rule...)

[Jingle]

Semi open is an alternative to alternate wincon.

[BBmolla]

Yeah I made same mistake, it’s one of not both ahaha

[Not Known 15]

Semi open is an alternative to alternate wincon.

NVM, there are no strict rules this time, misread that.

[Jingle]

No worries. After I fucked up my first submission I double checked that this one followed the rules.

[Jingle]

Setup A:

1x Watcher
1x Shy Doctor
5x VT
2x Goon

Setup B:
1x Tracker
1x Doctor
5x VT
2x Goon

In addition to their nightkill, scum has a factional rolestop each night. Scum is multitasking. 50% for each setup. If a shy player is targeted by any action, they cannot act that night.

Updated