[SETUP] Undertale Semi-Open

[Jingle]

Have you considered switching the roles around so that instead of being 2 benefited from each path you have one for each path and one for NOT each path?

For example, Undyne is already potentially useful in Neutral. If you tweak it a little you could have a role that has utility when Core hits as long as it's not Pacifist (or either of the other two). As is I think it's pretty much always right to go the Pacifist route because outing your PR gets rid of their potential use, and no one else should have a preference over Pacifist.

As is, I think Asgore, Undyne and sans all need significant boosts to make their respective paths less crapshoot-y.

[Jingle]

Just that in my experience it's easier to find town than to find scum. I'd disagree that you have very little info in that route as well, since you still get the nightkill information regardless.

As far as tweaking things to make the Pacifist route less attractive, Alphys is already pretty bad, tbh, but you could make her addition compulsive. I'd say Toriel could be made unsavable as well. (She's still pretty decent in the Neutral path, and if she successfully saves they become the named townie that any other role would give to pacifist route) Additionally, you could put something with negative pacifist utility on a genocide PR. Potentially a rolecop everytime someone is saved? That way the town has a real threat if they don't pick the right path.

[Jingle]

If you're going to go the 5 spares route, I'd say go with the same people alive D4. So that the person with the most Spare votes and the person with the second most are both spared. On the other hand, an extra spare phase having deadlock isn't something I'd consider likely or bad. I'd just say town wins if they consecutively spare 4 town because holy shit that's some good townblocking. The 7 most townread players in a game all being town? Yeah, scum deserves that loss.

I think a big part of the reason that that route is better though is that it's the highest utility for an out of path PR. Like, Alphys in Genocide route is pretty much 0% useful. Sans in Pacifist route is just as useful as Alphys. If you drop the town utility of the others in specifically the pacifist route, I think it solves that issue.

[Jingle]

Named townies bug me. If I ran this I would give everyone a character flavor but only have one player's PR work validly, secret miller style. You could still bias towards your PR in case you're the real slim shady.

This would be an interesting open setup design, but a functionally unique one. Basically, you're suggesting a smalltown with 'dud' PRs. Very bastard, very hard to balance, but if you want to try it go ahead and I'll probably duck in and give my 2 cents.

That does make me wonder what a Undertale smalltown setup would look like.

[Jingle]

I'm not sure if a confirmed town is better in a townhunting game than it is in a scumhunting game. Yeah it's someone you can auto-spare but it's also someone who will be auto-killed come Core. Whereas, the out of path PR's in Genocide take away a potential mislynch for scum.

?

In Genocide, a named townie is useful to town IF they live long enough under the radar to be an important lynch. Meaning they only really impact the game if they live til LYLO. If they claim in LYLO it changes the math from 1/3 to 1/2, which is good.

In Pacifist, a named townie is useful to town IF they don't get shot. Them having to claim early doesn't actually negate their use in MYLO. First, they reduce the number of chances scum has to infiltrate the Core by 1 meaning 2/3 slots need to be scum for autoloss instead of 2/4 (which is big) and second they bodyguard the most obvious town of the town pool. Yes, they are the obvious kill. But that means that the obvtown player that would've been shot instead isn't. It's not quite a 1/3 -> 1/2 jump, but it is a notable jump unless scum is otherwise likely to win the LYLO.

[Jingle]

Probably, but I don't really know how.

Mountainous is balanced-ish (except still pretty scumsided) at 11:2, and 5/6 times Genocide is basically mountainous.

[Jingle]

You could have 5p pacifist flip the remaining players as a little boost to make alphas not negative utility.

[Jingle]

Oops.
If three townies are spared and the dayvig doesn't hit scum, mafia get beyond-parity for the day four decision. That's uh, probably not good?
Although, they can't do anything that ends the game and they are still accountable for their behavior. HMMMM

If 3 town are spared and the daykill hit town, don't the spared players make the decision anyway? Mafia doesn't have control.

It would be funny to say that scum only get to NK after a spare, but as soon as someone is spared the scum get all the NK's they would have gotten before.

I endorse this as an option. Sort of a "As long as you're killing you have the momentum to be the only people killing" gig.

I could also see "Whenever a player dies, they submit a nightkill before joining the deadthread. If genocide is reached, the living player with the most votes is killed." although tbh I think SS's suggestion is more spicy.

So town is always forced to lynch onto a Beloved Princess and lose on a miss, making it equivalent to the "1 shot to guess who the mafia is" from the second run of the setup.

I think you should change this to "A town lynch or No Lynch after New Home is reached is a mafia victory." That gets rid of the ambiguity of the no lynch scenario and cuts out any questions about the uncommon BP role.

[Jingle]

someone review this please

I don’t think you ever don’t eliminate toriel D3. Assuming the first two days are normal elims, not spares regardless of choice (my understanding correct me if wrong) then going into the rest of the game you have a mountainous game, potentially an unwinnable one for either faction in mercy route. Not liming toriel takes the game to evens with no way of returning. Probably runnable, but the game should just be called if it starts with two scum lims.

If the spares/elims decision is retroactive, it’s townsided. You just get rid of the two hardest to read players, decide post flip based on whether they were town or scum. If it’s 1-1, you base the decision on whether Toriel is towny or scummy.

[Jingle]

I would have D3 be a vote for whether heal or hurt and then it always gets applied to toriel thing, btw. Gets rid of the unnecessary decision of do we vote toriel.

Also don’t think toriel is an unfun role. “You only have to care about the game for three phases” is pretty freeing tbh.

[Jingle]

I phrased that poorly with a double negative, but the meaning is that you always eliminate toriel. The other option of course being no elimination D3 which leads to evens, also known as a bad idea.

Toriel still has to convince town to spare them D3 (mercy route), unless the game is already autowin for town or sparing them would make it autowin for scum, in which case you might as well skip D3.

[Jingle]

Also, as I understand it Toriel is a D1 doublevoter d2 regular voter, so I’m not getting where your complaint of limited voting comes from.

[Jingle]

Fwiw, btw, Purgatory is an MS setup already, it just doesn’t get run often.

[Jingle]

I think it may be the literal part of my brain biting me in the butt.

It’s valid parsing, just not a very Isis like role design so unlikely. I assume it’s the variant of doublevoter where the player has two votes they can use on two separate players. Which is kind of a pain from a moderation perspective but in line with how Isis normally makes setups.

[Jingle]

As a special effect, if Toriel is town and the day 1 and day 2 eliminations were each mafia, Toriel becomes a 22 shot dayvig.

Hilariously, this doesn’t actually help the setup autowin for town happen faster. The autowin is by being unable to hit any mafia wincons before 4 townies get spared, and toriel dayvigging actually prevents that unless mafia doesn’t win at parity.

I do appreciate the tongue in cheek though.

[Jingle]

Scum can auto lose if two scum elimmed day one and two. Town votes for Mercy and scum can’t win.

I’d pointed this out and Isis said she’d consider 2scum->mercy to be endgame in 156, just not explicitly addressed in the setup.

That doesn’t seem egregious to me; if anything it’s less restrictive than White Flag.

Similarly, two town mercy would be an auto scum win, but town can just not pick mercy there.

[Jingle]

Similarly, two town mercy would be an auto scum win, but town can just not pick mercy there.

Could you explain this?

2 town eliminated and you go to spares, you're at 3v9.

Spare 1 town, 3v7
Spare 2 town 3v5
Spare 3 town 3v3
It is actually impossible to get the last spare on town, even if Toriel is town.

Scum forces the no spare, kills town and has thread control. Scum then spares scum twice in a row.

Of course, if town have eliminated two townies going into D3, they can just... Not vote mercy. At worst this leads into 3v7 mountainous, but scum have already earned two town eliminations and this relies on Toriel actually being town. So it's an autowin for scum only if town actively gamethrows. Consequently, this is the only situation in which it could even possibly be viable to not want to eliminate Toriel, although from a numbers perspective you still would and unless everyone in the game was 100% sure Toriel was town it would still be the objectively right play because information is better than no information and town gets no benefit from being on evens.

Edit: Just realized N3 is skipped as well, so this is wrong. But this was my reasoning.

[Jingle]

Skipping the N3 kill already works, I was misreading it as skipping kills until N3. NKs numbers are accurate.

It’s better numbers wise to fight if you have mislims and spare if you don’t, but that’s more a feature than a flaw.

[Jingle]

I mean, you only play by numbers with mafia in the cases where your reads are weak or it's genuinely the only viable option.

Otherwise subjective play wins out.