[MAY CHALLENGE]

[northsidegal]

See [APRIL CHALLENGE] for last month's thread.

May Challenge

Create a new open setup.

Must contain at least

two

of the following:

• A variable playercount (that is, the ability to be played at multiple player amounts).
  
• One or fewer power roles.
  
• Something collectively voted or decided upon in addition to or instead of a majority lynch.
  
• An alternative method of deciding lynches than majority voting.
  
• An "escape" mechanic, as in Extradition Mafia.

Submit your setups as posts in this thread. You may re-submit and/or edit until May 30th, at which point we'll vote.

Winner will be in charge of the requirements for next month's challenge!

[Jingle]

drama

:jazzhands:

[BNL]

Can’t most setups be adapted to a variable player count?

[BNL]

I’m going to make a variant of a setup I just made:

Caught Red Handed

N+1 Mafia Goons
N Townies

N is at least 2

Every Day, there is a lynch. If Mafia is lynched, town immediately win.

Every Night, the Mafia will choose a Mafia Goon to escape. Each living townie and the townie who was just lynched get to make an arrest. Every townie who successfully arrests the escaping Mafia earns the town 1 point.

Town wins when they have earned points. Mafia win when all but two Mafia have escaped.

[Something_Smart]

Can’t most setups be adapted to a variable player count?

Technically yes, but most setups will not be balanced at multiple player counts. I'd recommend against people picking this option, and I don't plan to pick it unless I get an idea that works in an extremely mathematical way.

[Something_Smart]

For Caught Red-Handed, you don't need the variable player count to meet the requirements, so I would recommend fixing N at 4, 5, or 6. How many points does town need to win?

Also, wait a minute. Why wouldn't that turn into mafia all piling onto town lynches and then randomly escaping? What happens if there is no majority reached by deadline?

[BNL]

Eh, yeah that sucks. I'll think of something else.

[Irrelephant11]

I’m gonna write out my messy idea that probably won’t work and then play around with it
If it doesn’t work I can just scrap it later

chaos vs. order

”P” players
“O” Order Goons
“C” (starts at O+1) Chaos townies

During the day, lynch a player
During the night, if O is equal to C, one goon must flee. Otherwise skip night phase.

Chaos town wins by consecutively lynching 1/3 P, rounded up, of alternating alignments (so in a 9-11 player game, three players of alternating alignments, in a 12-14 player game, 4, etc)
Order scum wins by consecutively lynching 1/3 P, rounded up, of the same alignment, or by making town’s wincon impossible to achieve.

Absolutely NO clue if this is close to balanced

[TemporalLich]

Dragon Capturer

9 players

1 Dragon

2 Mafia Goons

6 Vanilla Townies

In addition to voting for lynches, the Town must also vote to Capture (jailkeep) a player.

A Capture vote can either use bold e.g.

CAPTURE: TemporalLich

or hurt tags e.g. HURT: TemporalLich

In addition to the factional nightkill, the Mafia may attempt a factional Capture once in the game.

The Dragon is bulletproof, but instantly loses if Captured. The Dragon wins if the game ends before this happens or the Dragon is lynched.

Mafia win when they outnumber Town, equal Town, or the Dragon is Captured with the factional Capture.

Town win when the Mafia are dead or the Dragon is Captured with the Capture vote.

Mafia may privately communicate at any time.

Probably not balanced, and hopefully the Dragon isn't too jestery. Likely will replace this either way.

[Jingle]

The lazy part of me wants to submit innocent evil people. The slightly less lazy part of me wants to find the balance points for innocent evil people. The rest of me wants to make a new setup.

Eh, might as well put in the numbers I just worked:

Innocent Evil People (Daystart)

Setup is VT v Goon. Each night, the mafia chooses one of their own to leave the game. Each day, a player is lynched. Mafia wins if they all escape, town wins with a single mafia lynch. Mafia escape is compulsory. Lynching is not.

5p: 3v2 60% town EV.
6p: 4v2 50% town EV.
7p: 5v2 43% town EV.
8p: 6v2 38% town EV.
9p: 6v3 62% town EV.
10p: 7v3 56% town EV.
11p: 8v3 52% town EV.
12p: 9v3 48% town EV.
13p: 10v3 44% town EV.

Innocent Evil People (Nightstart)

Setup is VT v Goon. Each night, the mafia chooses one of their own to leave the game. Each day, a player is lynched. Mafia wins if they all escape, else town wins. Mafia escape is compulsory. Lynching is not.

6p: 3v3 60% town EV.
7p: 4v3 50% town EV.
8p: 5v3 43% town EV.
9p: 6v3 38% town EV.
10p: 6v4 62% town EV.
11p: 7v4 56% town EV.
12p: 8v4 52% town EV.
13p: 9v4 48% town EV.
14p: 10v4 44% town EV.

[popsofctown]

I really love Temporal Lich's setup but I can't figure out whether it's actually a good setup or I am wooed by the flavor.

[TemporalLich]

Not sure if capturing a goon should just deny the Mafia NK outright or not

[Not Known 15]

Dragon Capturer

9 players

1 Dragon

2 Mafia Goons

6 Vanilla Townies

In addition to voting for lynches, the Town must also vote to Capture (jailkeep) a player.

A Capture vote can either use bold e.g.

CAPTURE: TemporalLich

or hurt tags e.g. HURT: TemporalLich

In addition to the factional nightkill, the Mafia may attempt a factional Capture once in the game.

The Dragon is bulletproof, but instantly loses if Captured. The Dragon wins if the game ends before this happens or the Dragon is lynched.

Mafia win when they outnumber Town, equal Town, or the Dragon is Captured with the factional Capture.

Town win when the Mafia are dead or the Dragon is Captured with the Capture vote.

Mafia may privately communicate at any time.

Probably not balanced, and hopefully the Dragon isn't too jestery. Likely will replace this either way.

Uhhh.... this looks not so good.
Day 1 lynch Town dies Day 1 nightkill town Day 2 lynch town game almost over for town.(If Mafia hits town, Dragon and Mafia win. If they hit the dragon, the dragon will vote with the town to capture and lynch mafia(to avoid being captured by the Mafia). If that unlikely scenario happens town can win with the
Town will most likely win via capture, not mafia elimination. If mafia hits Dragon Night 1.... that's a sign that the game will end Day 2/Night 2/Day 3.
Another ... not so great mechanic... is that the Dragon OR the town can win the game if the Dragon is captured or lynched... Day 1. The less worse of this would be a Dragon lynch. The worse of this mechanic is the dragon capture, because there is no good way for mafia to avoid it especially if the Dragon makes itself obvious.

[Irrelephant11]

I’m gonna write out my messy idea that probably won’t work and then play around with it
If it doesn’t work I can just scrap it later

chaos vs. order

”P” players
“O” Order Goons
“C” (starts at O+1) Chaos townies

During the day, lynch a player
During the night, if O is equal to C, one goon must flee. Otherwise skip night phase.

Chaos town wins by consecutively lynching 1/3 P, rounded up, of alternating alignments (so in a 9-11 player game, three players of alternating alignments, in a 12-14 player game, 4, etc)
Order scum wins by consecutively lynching 1/3 P, rounded up, of the same alignment, or by making town’s wincon impossible to achieve.

Absolutely NO clue if this is close to balanced

Any thoughts on this? I'm wondering if 1/3 P is too high in high-player-count games, like maybe it should just be a constant = 3 or 4

[popsofctown]

Titanzar Mafia V3

Semi-open
1

Town Voting Captain

2

Voting

Captains

of

Random

Alignment

: Town, Scum, Spaceship Lyncher, or Spaceship Unlyncher

8 Town Passengers

2 Scum Passengers

Evil saboteurs rigged the engine of the Titanzar cruise spacecraft to explode soon! Captains must go down with the ship, but some passengers can be saved in the limited escape pods. A good captain would help save the passengers that aren't part of the organized crime that ruined the engine... but it's not clear all of our captains are good..

Each day, all players collectively vote one player to grant an escape pod key. The voted player will receive the key and be scheduled to escape when the ship is going to explode. A captain can never escape in an escape pod, they must go down with the ship. They can vote, but can't be voted.
When six escape pod keys have been distributed each passenger holding a key gets into an escape pod. Then, one of the town captains yanks one escape pod passenger back into the ship and sets the autopilot of the escape pod to a well-known comet instead. (The survivors will never be discovered and rescued unless we make something noticeable happen in this star system, too bad if that means one fewer pod!)

Then the pods land on a nearby desert planet, and the space ship explodes killing and flipping all 3 captains and the 5 remaining passengers.

Each captain beyond the first has a randomized alignment, decided by a d18.
1-9 Town
10-12 Scum
13- 14 Evil Spaceship Lyncher
15 Good Spaceship Lyncher
16-17 Evil Spaceship Unlyncher
18 Good Spaceship Unlyncher

Lyncher and Unlyncher do not receive their "good" or "evil" flavor in their role pm, only in their flip. Spaceship Lynchers win the game if their target dies in the spaceship explosion and lose if their target survives the spaceship explosion. Spaceship Unlynchers win the game if their target survives the spaceship explosion and lose if their target dies in the spaceship explosion. "Good" flavored roles are targeted in a way that benefits the town win condition.
When Lynchers and Unlynchers flip, the survivors learn whether they were Good or Evil, but the survivors do not learn who the target was.
After escaping the explosion, the five players living on the desert planet play a standard game of mafia with nightkills.

[TemporalLich]

Dragon Capturer v2

11 players

1 Dragon

2 Mafia Goons

8 Vanilla Townies

In addition to voting for lynches, the Town must also vote to Capture a player.

A Capture vote can either use bold e.g.

CAPTURE: TemporalLich

or hurt tags e.g. HURT: TemporalLich

Capturing Town protects the captured townie from being nightkilled.

You can't vote to lynch and Capture the same player.

In addition to the factional nightkill, the Mafia may attempt to Imprison. An imprisoned player can't vote the next day. The imprisoned player knows he is imprisoned, but the fact the imprisoned player is imprisoned is not public knowledge. The same player can't be killed and imprisoned.

The Mafia may not attempt to Imprison on a night where a Mafioso was Captured.

The Dragon instantly loses if Captured or Imprisoned. The Dragon wins if the game ends before this happens or the Dragon dies.

Mafia win when they outnumber Town, equal Town, or the Dragon is Imprisoned.

Town win when the Mafia are dead or the Dragon is Captured.

Mafia may privately communicate at any time.

Some major changes to Dragon Capturer made here:

Two extra VTs added to avoid losing D2 by parity
Capturing a goon now blocks the Mafia's Imprison outright
Mafia's Capture, renamed Imprison, now reduces vote weight to 0 and is unlimited
The Dragon is no longer bulletproof, and wins when nightkilled

[popsofctown]

That seems like a good improvement, the BP outcome seemed pretty awkward.

omg I was trying to look at the criteria and figure out why Lich's was ok.

I realize now I made my setup meet all the criteria, but I only had to meet two of them. I thought nsg seemed demanding

[Ircher]

Setup: Will of the People

6x Vanilla Townie

2x Mafia Goon

This setup is nightless. Therefore, the EV is exactly 50% according to the Nightless Expectation Rule.

Instead of the typical majority lynches, lynches are decided by using the condorcet system; see this link for more information. Basically, the Condorcet winner is the one who wins the most 1v1 matches against the other candidates. One of the advantages of this method over simple majority voting is that it accounts for 2nd, 3rd, etc. picks as well as one's top picks. So if you think Tom and Jerry are both scum, you don't have to choose to vote one over the other. (You still have to rank them, but inverting 1st and 2nd place is probably not going to make a huge difference in the long-run.) Instead, you can simply have both towards the top of your list, and you can rest assured those preferences are being accounted for.

(Note: As determining the winner is generally tough, you don't have to do it yourself. There should be online calculators for this thing; here's one I found from Googling.)

Because attempting to track all of these votes as the game progresses by hand is rather annoying (and difficult), the moderator instead only tracks the number of players who wish to end the day earlier. Once the day is over, the game enters a special Twilight phase where players send the moderator a ranked list of their choices for the lynch, including themselves (i.e.: it must have the entire player list), (with the person they want lynched most at the top). Players that fail to submit a list in time rank players in the order of the player list (i.e.: not random). The moderator then determines the Condorcet winner (likely using a calculator of some sort) and posts the lynch as well as everyone's lists. In the case of a tie or an undeterminable winner, no lynch occurs, but the moderator should still post everyone's lists. Then, the next day begin. Standard win conditions apply.

If 50% EV is too high, we can change the setup's composition. We could do something like 7 town and 3 scum, which has an EV of 40% according to the Nightless Expectation Rule.

[Jingle]

Any thoughts on this? I'm wondering if 1/3 P is too high in high-player-count games, like maybe it should just be a constant = 3 or 4

Yes. Probably 3. 3 has a 25% chance of any given triplet winning the game for town or scum. # of potential triplets is P-2(first two can't complete a triplet)-scumkills. As player list increases, the players have a harder time organizing, more than making up for the scum wincon of Oh shit we ran out of lynches decreasing in power. Honestly, I suspect even at 3 that it's too scumsided.

Also, might be interesting to have the scumkill be compulsive every night but always have to target someone of the opposite alignment of the lynch. Gives scum more agency, and trims a large playerlist to be more readable faster.

[Jingle]

Two extra VTs added to avoid losing D2 by parity
Capturing a goon now blocks the Mafia's Imprison outright
Mafia's Capture, renamed Imprison, now reduces vote weight to 0 and is unlimited
The Dragon is no longer bulletproof, and wins when nightkilled

Imprison might as well be public knowledge, inability to vote is pretty confirmable unless you want arbitrary modkills as part of the setup.

If capture can be hammered before lynch, dragon D1 happens every game.

(Either Dragon is captured D1, or someone else is captured and the Dragon goes "Hey yall, Imma dragon. If you don't lynch me maf imprisons me tonight and the game is over. Peace!"

Both Capture and Imprison are functionally investigative results. Investigative results that can be fucked with, sure, but capture and then imprisonment clears two players. Capture and no imprisonment implies a scum capture, because imprisoning the dragon is probably worth it. It's definitely worth it late game. Also, both investigatives are public.

[Jingle]

Titanzar Mafia

VTs and Goons: 5-3, 8-4, or 11-5

A formshifting member of the Skalg alien race is found in the engine room destroying the cooling core and engine shutoff switch. This luxury spaceship is going to explode, and there's not enough escape pods, so the captain keeps chanting "Humans and human children first!"

Each day, players vote for someone to escape. A player with majority or deadline plurality vote jets off in an escape pod and lands on the nearby desert planet. They lose access to the spaceship thread and gain access to the desert planet thread. Later escapees can summarize discussions on the ship but cannot quote it, like neighborhoods.

The mod has secretly chosen a population size for the desert planet before the game. When the desert planet has 4 + 2z players, the captain admits there is only one escape pod left and suggests that someone use the ship's DNA radar to help use that pod wisely. The vote for the last day is to elect a DNA radar operator. Once elected, the DNA radar operator becomes mute and learns the alignment of every player on the desert planet. Then she selects one last escapee. She may not select herself as the escapee, unless she is scum, then she may.

Then the space ship explodes killing all occupants. The residents of the desert planet panic. They play a standard game of mafia complete with factional nightkill.
Perished players still win with their faction regardless of where they perished.

Seems likely to be broken by designating an order before sending the first player. You don't actually get information from who leaves, so picking all of the 'saves' before voting just makes sense. If you pick the radar op first, it becomes autowin if town AND town has a majority on the planet. So basically its just a flipless game of vote for town that all happens on D1.

[Jingle]

Because attempting to track all of these votes as the game progresses by hand is rather annoying (and difficult), the moderator instead only tracks the number of players who wish to end the day earlier. Once the day is over, the game enters a special Twilight phase where players send the moderator a ranked list of their choices for the lynch, including themselves (i.e.: it must have the entire player list), (with the person they want lynched most at the top). Players that fail to submit a list in time rank players in the order of the player list (i.e.: not random). The moderator then determines the Condorcet winner (likely using a calculator of some sort) and posts the lynch as well as everyone's lists. In the case of a tie or an undeterminable winner, no lynch occurs, but the moderator should still post everyone's lists. Then, the next day begin. Standard win conditions apply.

You could make that trackable without TOO much work on the mod's part, actually. Give everyone a PT and post a list of all pairs. Whenever they want to vote, they just copy the list and bold the names they choose.

You could even make it public PTs by giving playerlist PT access and individual players mod access, banning PT edits. That way the player voting in that PT can vote while it's locked.

As a mod I'd find that less annoying than PM barrage at the end of the night, and as a player I'd prefer the ability to see people's reads change over the course of the day.

Also it's a significant enough mutation that I'd say go 50% EV and judge based on a couple of runs.

Edit: Oh misread. You don’t need to post a list of all pairs, just playerlist. Somehow I thought this was some weird gladiator condorcet hybrid originally.

[popsofctown]

Titanzar Mafia

VTs and Goons: 5-3, 8-4, or 11-5

A formshifting member of the Skalg alien race is found in the engine room destroying the cooling core and engine shutoff switch. This luxury spaceship is going to explode, and there's not enough escape pods, so the captain keeps chanting "Humans and human children first!"

Each day, players vote for someone to escape. A player with majority or deadline plurality vote jets off in an escape pod and lands on the nearby desert planet. They lose access to the spaceship thread and gain access to the desert planet thread. Later escapees can summarize discussions on the ship but cannot quote it, like neighborhoods.

The mod has secretly chosen a population size for the desert planet before the game. When the desert planet has 4 + 2z players, the captain admits there is only one escape pod left and suggests that someone use the ship's DNA radar to help use that pod wisely. The vote for the last day is to elect a DNA radar operator. Once elected, the DNA radar operator becomes mute and learns the alignment of every player on the desert planet. Then she selects one last escapee. She may not select herself as the escapee, unless she is scum, then she may.

Then the space ship explodes killing all occupants. The residents of the desert planet panic. They play a standard game of mafia complete with factional nightkill.
Perished players still win with their faction regardless of where they perished.

Seems likely to be broken by designating an order before sending the first player. You don't actually get information from who leaves, so picking all of the 'saves' before voting just makes sense. If you pick the radar op first, it becomes autowin if town AND town has a majority on the planet. So basically its just a flipless game of vote for town that all happens on D1.

I suppose I'd need to put back in a night phase and NK for the spaceship, which removes the former issue as far as I can tell. My reason for not including one is for the setup to reach down to lower player counts, since it seems like no one wants to run an open setup unless it's small :/. The player count already has to be high for there to be a game followed by a subgame.
Then with the kills it's flavory enough I don't see need for the radar operator, which I already had concerns about, I just wanted something that resembles flips before the second game (everybody on the exploded ship should flip, which I forgot about somehow, that is nice. It seems just strictly better for the mod to post that information on the desert planet).

I'm highly likely to submit an entirely different setup after learning there are half the restrictions I thought there were.

[Jingle]

Actually, just getting rid of the Radar operator is probably enough to make it not broken. It's a group decision in a mini on who plays the micro, basically. (obviously not necessarily a mini and a micro, but w/ever)

[TemporalLich]

Two extra VTs added to avoid losing D2 by parity
Capturing a goon now blocks the Mafia's Imprison outright
Mafia's Capture, renamed Imprison, now reduces vote weight to 0 and is unlimited
The Dragon is no longer bulletproof, and wins when nightkilled

Imprison might as well be public knowledge, inability to vote is pretty confirmable unless you want arbitrary modkills as part of the setup.

If capture can be hammered before lynch, dragon D1 happens every game.

(Either Dragon is captured D1, or someone else is captured and the Dragon goes "Hey yall, Imma dragon. If you don't lynch me maf imprisons me tonight and the game is over. Peace!"

Both Capture and Imprison are functionally investigative results. Investigative results that can be fucked with, sure, but capture and then imprisonment clears two players. Capture and no imprisonment implies a scum capture, because imprisoning the dragon is probably worth it. It's definitely worth it late game. Also, both investigatives are public.

Alright thanks for breaking Dragon Capturer. Sadly I can't unbreak it this time so expect a new setup from me soon.

I could fix the setup by making both the vote Capture and the Mafia factional Capture a treestumping power, but I'd probably have to make the setup a Large (and force the Lynch to be hammered before the Capture) and I don't see it as a fun setup.