[SETUP] Undertale Semi-Open

[popsofctown]

The most beautiful thing about the setup is the ability to dynamically choose whether to play find the town mafia or find the scum mafia on the fly. It's very very intriguing and appealing.

90% of your PRs detract from that beauty. It makes me sad panda. They all incentivize minmaxing the setup which might contradict whether the dayplay happened to produce townreads or scumreads.

Can't you make all the PRs work in all three routes? Or maybe make them all only work in the weakest route?


I was also kind of thinking, if the setup was inverted to scum path-contigent-PRs instead of town-path-contingent-PRs, you'd get the cute "chess mafia" effect which is kinda cool. Where you can try to read people putting the game on a path that is overall inferior. You don't get that with the town PRs, the guy that seemed to push the game into the path that triggers the PR is always also the one who claimed named townie and didn't get counterclaimed.
I don't actually think you should go in that direction actually I just wanted to point out that thought experiment.

[popsofctown]

Ok, here's an example.

Day 1 Alice townslips and the town decides to spare her.
Night 1 no one dies.
Day 2 Bob is really scummy but everyone spares soft townread Carol because they want Toriel to keep doccing.

[popsofctown]

In the same mold either I misread Undyne or you changed it, I understood her BP to be permanent.

The main other role I find gross is Papyrus. I get that he is powerful because the neutral route sucks. But an AoE investigate is such a big deal that localizing the pull towards that path to one player seems like not enough. It seems like flat out correct play to start voting to kill your townreads on day 3 and 4 if you've been sparing, AoE investigates is crazy powerful and you might be wrong about your townreads who knows. And then, it's kind of scummy to kill a townread, so, the mafia probably don't want to kill you. Probably they are obligated to because Papyrus is so powerful but that's not the kind of mafia I want to see, I'd want to see the mafia be able to use the NK to influence dayplay.

Asgore doesn't seem powerful enough to present that problem. Asgore seems about the power level where if you have a townread and a scumread you try to get people on board with killing you scumread instead of the alternative because you want your role to trigger. Papyrus seems like you go 3rd party for one day.

[popsofctown]

Yeah halving his investigates is probably enough to make papyrus interested in playing mafia as much as he's interested in playing Dethy. In particular if he's a regular even night cop he has a normal risk his targets can get NKed instead of having that unique mechanic of the people who are being investigated being quarantined from NKs.

It is very true that EV balance wise the original papyrus is ok for -EV- due to having to dodge so many NKs. But there's more to a setup than getting the EV percentages you want, and I had some concern about the subset of games where papyrus survives.

[popsofctown]

I guess it's not halved. 75%? Nerfed anyway.

[popsofctown]

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.

My setup philosophy is probably just different from most people..

Anyway I think Jingle's nitpicks about balancing the three paths is probably valid. I think everyone is worried about that, it's obviously tricky. But I would point out even if that's not perfect yet the setup is already beyond high quality runnable. If you ran the setup with "all players must pick path X" it is still good informed minority paranoid majority social deduction game.

[popsofctown]

Don't worry I don't allow myself to mod games for a reason

[popsofctown]

In genocide, the player with the most LOVE should become BP

[popsofctown]

Yeah I like that even better.

Permanent public BP does something, if it's a globally townread player (who was also on lots of wagons, tricky) the mafia are forced to make suboptimal kills. Also, if it's the PR, even if it's a pacifist PR, the scum can be forced to win a 50/50 3 man lylo instead of a 67/33.

But, I like yours even better.

[popsofctown]

Undertale Semi-open

2 Mafia Goons

8 Vanilla Townies

1 Town Character

Each day, town must vote to

Kill

one player (HURT: or VOTE: ) or

Spare

one player (HEAL: ). Votes are made to either Kill a specific player or Spare a specific player, and a player can only have one vote total across both options. Players may vote to spare themselves. (They may also vote to kill themselves.) This is mandatory so if no majority is reached on either option by deadline, plurality wins out. The mafia can kill a player each night. (This does not count as a capital-K Kill for any other mechanics.)

If a player is

Killed

, their role is revealed and they take no further part in the game.

If a player is

Spared

, their role is not revealed, and they are temporarily removed from the game and added to a separate Spared PT. However, they may possibly rejoin the game, when the

Core

is reached. If a mafia member is spared, they may continue to talk in the mafia chat in addition to the Spared PT.

If both mafia members are Killed, town immediately wins. If both mafia members are Spared before the

Core

, mafia immediately wins. Otherwise, the

Core

is reached immediately after the end of Day 4. At this point, one of three things will happen:

Pacifist Route:

If no players were Killed, the game enters the Pacifist Ending. There is no Night 4 kill. If all four Spared players were town, town immediately wins. Otherwise, all players still in the game must vote to Spare a fifth player, after which all the non-Spared players are immediately removed from the game without flipping, and the Spared players are returned to the game. The mafia kill one (Spared) player, and then the game then continues with only the remaining Spared players alive.

Neutral Route:

If at least one player was Spared and at least one player was Killed, the game enters the Neutral Ending. All Spared players rejoin the game, and the number of Spared mafia members (but not their identities) is revealed. The mafia get one kill on Night 4, plus one more if a mafia member was Spared. The game continues with the previous living players and the Spared players both alive.

Genocide Route:

If no players were Spared, the game enters the Genocide Ending. The player with the most LOVE-- that is, the player who was on the most wagons that led to a Kill-- is determined, and the alignment of this player is publicly revealed. (For tiebreaks, see the footnote*) There is no Night 4 factional nightkill. The game continues with no further change.

After the

Core

is reached, regardless of the ending, the game will continue as a normal game of mafia, with lynches and nightkills, and no-lynching allowed. Mafia win at parity, town win by eliminating all mafia.

The possible Town Characters are:

• Toriel: As long as no player has been Killed, Toriel can protect another player from a kill each night before the
  Core
  is reached. If Toriel protects a player from a kill in this way, she can no longer use her ability.
  
• Asgore: If the
  Core
  is reached in a Neutral Route and Asgore is still in the game, he may jailkeep one player each night,
  starting Night 5
  . When a nightkill is prevented as a result of his night action, he is demoted to a doctor.
  
• Undyne: On Night 2, if no player has been Spared, Undyne may choose any player, including herself, to be permanently bulletproof. They are not informed of this. This goes away if a player is ever Spared, or when the
  Core
  is reached.

*LOVE tiebreaks between players on the same number of wagons are: Lowest sum of their positions on the wagons -> On the earliest lynch wagon -> On the earlier position on the earliest Kill wagon they are on. This should resolve all LOVE ties.

[popsofctown]

I think maybe I should use Sans instead of Undyne.
Undyne seems a little more powerful and I was trying to balance paths, but you were pointing out simplicity and digestibility and sans is so much more simple. And I don't think Sans is that bad at all. It's kind of cool that the vig appears in the path that has the most flips, so the vig has the best information.

[popsofctown]

After reading the Open Queue OP again I can't run it. Open Queue games are not allowed to have source material flavor lol. Therefore it has to be run as a theme game and I don't have a game of modding experience for theme games. I've modded once offsite but that doesn't count.

[popsofctown]

Oh wait, apparently there's a provision for offsite experience in the mini theme queue, maybe this can still happen.

The fact that a good setup would be moved out of the open queue is kind of exactly why there is a thread named "the open queue is dying please help" though; seems a stupid rule to me.

[popsofctown]

Would you like to pre-in chennisden?

[popsofctown]

It's in waitlist status in the minitheme queue, I am going to mod it. You are the second pre-in.

[popsofctown]

Necro

Although I'm interested in the smalltown version of the setup, I plan to queue it up simultaneously with the original setup as a player's choice. And I anticipate players selecting the simpler setup. So I need to work out what the optimal revisions are.

Revisions I'd want to make to the core setup:
1. Add a game system rule that the mafia can nightkill players in the main thread from the spare PT.
2. Remove the LOVE mechanic from genocide, at a minimum. There's a good case genocide is already pretty strong. It's a little different from 9-2 mountainous in that other options were available.
3. The way I'm counting it Sans and Undyne both generate an entire additional mislynch needed for the scum, correct me if I'm wrong. That might be a bit much. Sans at least, Undyne has to connect. Er, obviously I didn't have Sans the first time, I'm talking about the notion of introducing more of the PRs.
4. I still don't get Alphys.
5. Buff Pacifist by skipping the last nightkill, but telling the town they lose immediately if they do not select the mafia. This also puts LyLo on odds as a quality of life improvement.

[popsofctown]

No it does not.

[popsofctown]

Stupid not stupid idea: how about just informing the scum which power role is in the game? That allows the scum to try to push towards the route where the PR's power is ineffective. Which the town in turn can get a read on. Seems like more gameplay.

[popsofctown]

This setup as written had Sans losing during the fractional second before he fired his vig shot if Mafia had parity, because it's 4p at that point.

[popsofctown]

I think this is what I want for the three roles for the next run of the setup:

Toriel: No change besides systems change about the spare PT.
Papyrus: No change. I was apprehensive about the power of two clears but it's clear that going 1-1 the first two days is rare in practice, so this guy should be quite fine. It gives him an exciting rare case to lobby for.
Sans with a quality of life change + nerf + clearer interaction with the parity rule: On Night 3, if no player has been spared, Sans may poison a player. That player is unpoisoned if a player is spared or the mafia reach parity.

[popsofctown]

2 Mafia Goons

8 Vanilla Townies

1 Town Character

Each day, town must vote to

Fight

one player (HURT: ) or

Spare

one player (HEAL: ). Players may vote to spare themselves. (They may also vote to Fight themselves.) The mafia have a standard factional nightkill.

If a player is selected for

Fight

, they are essentially lynched.

If a player is

Spared

, their role is not revealed, and they are temporarily removed from the game (untargetable) and added to a separate Spared PT. They will rejoin the game when the

Core

is reached. If a mafia member is Spared, they may continue to talk in the mafia PT in addition to the Spared PT. Additionally, the mafia member can continue to perform kills.

Before and during all endings: if both mafia members die, town immediately wins. If both mafia members are

Spared

, mafia immediately wins.

The

Core

is reached immediately after the end of Day 4. At this point, one of three things will happen:

Pacifist Route:

If

Fight

was never used, the game enters the Pacifist Ending. If all four Spared players were town, town immediately wins. Otherwise, all players still in the game must vote to Spare a fifth player, after which all the non-Spared players are removed from the game without flipping, and the Spared players are returned to the game. Then all players in the game vote to decide who they think is mafia. If they vote correctly, they win, if they vote incorrectly, they immediately lose.

Neutral Route:

If at least one player was Spared and at least one player was Fought, the game enters the Neutral Ending. All Spared players rejoin the game, and the number of Spared mafia members (but not their identities) is revealed. The mafia get one kill on Night 4, plus one more if a mafia member was Spared. The game continues with the previous living players and the Spared players both alive. If at least one spared player is alive, the spared PT becomes public.

Genocide Route:

If no players were Spared, the game enters the Genocide Ending. There is no Night 4 factional nightkill. The game continues with no further change.

The possible Town Characters are:

• Toriel: If
  Fight
  has not been used, Toriel can protect one other player each night. Toriel loses this ability if she is successful or if she is spared.
  
• Papyrus: If
  Fight
  and
  Spare
  have each been used and Papyrus is unspared, Papyrus is an Even Night Cop.
  
• Sans: On Night 3, if no player has been Spared, Sans may poison a player. The victim is not informed. The victim is unpoisoned if a player is
  Spared
  or the mafia reach parity.

[popsofctown]

Nah. Though the potential sparing might make it look like it's supposed to be about town agency, it's actually just a Quality of Life mechanic: since the mafia don't have a factional nightkill on night 4, the entire 48 hour night phase would be only for Sans, only for the 1/3rd chance he is in the game, and if people requested fast night, the entire reason Fast Night is being done is to protect the identity of a player who is going to actually immediately claim to better win LyLo/MyLo. He was previously a vig but I identified this as a desirable change.

[popsofctown]

Dating Game seems really random and weird in a way that would detract from the simplicity of the setup.

As for Double Barrel, I may be misunderstanding, but it seems like a step in the wrong direction, because spared scum have even less of an influence on who gets killed.

It's the difference between going to a Walmart with 100$ or going to Walmart with 150$ and a long grocery list, I guess. The investigation effect from the original setup funnels the factional nightkill onto certain targets, especially when a solo scum has been spared.

The RC-style popularity ranking EVs put Double Barrel in line with the Pacifist and Genocide routes, with a mafia member who is 5th most townread in the game paired with an obvscum player barely winning the game. The previous neutral route doesn't have this property, being the 3rd most townread player in the game doesn't ensure victory in old neutral.

I can see how compromising out to a 0-1 preferred NKs in a democratic process in the spared PT is less exciting than two full kills for the mafia.
But giving the mafia those kills, then spotlighting specifically the deepwolf that triggered the bonus kill with an investigative effect means it's less of a reward.

[popsofctown]

Kind of have to answer the questions backwards : as I have it now, the kill has to be a LAMIST vigging, because spared players cannot kill eachother, and since they cannot kill eachother and there is no N4 kill, it is guaranteed that both spared players will be able to post publically in the game thread and post who they killed, which PoEs responsibility for the other kill.

While that has a townsided impact on 2 player double barrel with spared scum needing to convince the town about a "misvig", 2 player Double Barrel is the most scumsided number of spared players, with mafia only needing a scum player to be 6th towniest in the game rather than 5th for all other routes and neutral subroutes.
I guess that's only 1 rank different from 5th, but it also puts the game on evens, and since I've mainly been the one running evens and I like to sadistically punish towns for failure to deadline compromise that should be another scumsided dynamic. So I think that's ok.

[popsofctown]

Wait, actually since it is already LyLo, you can lie about who you shot and do a flat 1v1 against the other spared player. If that's how you want to live your life.

That's pretty interesting actually.

If the clean spared player shot your partner and you truthfully claim your kill, the spared player is almost fullcleared and you can go for either of 2 viable lynches.
If the clean spared player shot your partner and you go into the game saying "I'm the one who shot <partner>" you set up a lynch-all-liars 1v1 and all of the unspared players are fullcleared.

[popsofctown]

Specifically in 2-2 neutral, or you don't think scum ever benefit from being spared?

I think towns are going to hardly ever go for 2-2 neutral so I think it's not a big problem if 2-2 neutral is the most poorly designed arm of the setup.

[popsofctown]

It is fundamentally difficult to reward the mafia for sparing mafia in neutral, because if the reward is public in any way then you cast the parity cop effect on the scum PT.

The "failed dating game" scenario illustrates how drastic and absurd it feels like you have to go with the reward in order for it to feel unambiguously positive that you got scum spared.

[popsofctown]

I definitely don't feel like I disagree, I just can't come up with something even better right now.

Double Barrel does remove some bizarre decision trees where it's possible scum gets checkmated BECAUSE scum got spared and I feel like that's reason enough to want to transition, even if I immediately would like to imagine something better than Double Barrel next.

One thing that crossed my mind was letting scum optionally hijack the 3p or 2p democratic kills if they would like, acknowledging it would cause the parity cop effect. I rejected it because complexity cost but that's probably way lower complexity cost than dating game et cetera??

[popsofctown]

I'm counting that out on my fingers.
So far I think it looks like rank 5 ordinal EV with 3 spares

[popsofctown]

With 3 spares double voters is a good setup, with the desired rank 5 win condition and a meaningful benefit for spared scum: the double vote is actually what allows the setup to stay as good as rank 5 win condition even without the N4 nk
With 2 spares scum gains a rank 7 wincondition, creating a common pattern amongst neutral route designs that makes them very unattractive. If the spare/kill choice on N4 is going to be two sided an "except when" rule for 2 spares is likely to be necessary.
With 1 spares scum has rank 5 win condition. In addition to rank 5 win condition a rank 1 scum does not have to actually play out 3p LyLo due to the double vote, which means s/he's been conferred some advantage by the mechanic.

[popsofctown]

Double Voters seems strictly better than Double Barrel really. It is simpler.

Why don't you like Dating Game though
where is the love in your hearto

[popsofctown]

It's like my favorite setup
but also I've never played it lol

[popsofctown]

I've been thinking, almost all routes seem to not have a good incentive to consider sparing after three kills

[popsofctown]

After day 4, New Home is reached. The spare vote option is lost and these steps occur:
First, the town is awarded a

Mercy

bonus that gets stronger the more players that have been spared. Next, the spared players are

Return

ed to the game. Finally, there is a

Reckoning

if a mafia was spared. There is no night 4.

Mercy

bonuses:

• 1 players spared: The mafia must immediately kill two unspared players.
  
• 2 players spared: All players in the game become lover pairs for day 5's lynch. The spared players choose the lover pairings (spared seniority breaks voting ties).
  
• 3 players spared: All spared players become doublevoters.
  
• 4 players spared: If all spared players are townies, the moderator reveals both mafia. Then the town spares an additional player and grants that player bulletproof. All unspared players are removed from the game without flipping. All players become Beloved Princesses.

Return

:
In all cases, all spared players are returned to the game thread.

Reckoning

:
If any spared player was mafia, the mafia may perform two simultaneous kills. (

If the mafia skips the kills, it could become unclear that there was a reckoning.

)

Spoiler: previous rev

After day 4, New Home is reached. The spare vote option is lost and these steps occur:
First, the town is awarded a

Mercy

bonus that gets stronger the more players that have been spared. Next, the spared players are

Return

ed to the game. Finally, there is a

Reckoning

if a mafia was spared. There is no night 4.

Mercy

bonuses:

• 1 players spared: The mafia must immediately kill two unspared players.
  
• 2 players spared: All players in the game become lover pairs for day 5's lynch. The spared players choose the lover pairings (spared seniority breaks voting ties).
  
• 3 players spared: All spared players become doublevoters.
  
• 4 players spared: If all spared players are townies, the moderator reveals both mafia. Then the town spares an additional player and grants that player bulletproof. All unspared players are removed from the game without flipping. All players become Beloved Princesses.

Return

:
In all cases, all spared players are returned to the game thread.

Reckoning

:
If any spared player was mafia, the mafia may perform two kills, one after the other. (

If the mafia skips the kills, it could become unclear that there was a Reckoning.

)

[popsofctown]

I think exactly 2 spares has to be split off from odd number of spares because any mechanic is going to interact so differently with evens versus odds. At that point you want to present the information differently.

[popsofctown]

I measure setups primarily by what townread ranking from locked day1 reads a solo scum has to get to win the setup, with other considerations, for now I'm calling it RCV values after RC. For this setup 0 spares ("Genocide") is RCV6. 1 spare is RCV7. 2 spare: RCV6. 3 spare: RCV5. 4 spare: RCV5.

[popsofctown]

Even if you've lynched 3 days in a row, I think 0 spares and 1 spares should both look attractive in this setup (except when day 4 is LyLo, then you have to spare 0). If you can pick a player that you're never lynching this game anyway, truly truly, then sparing that player essentially forces the scum to shoot 2 people out of your 4 person PoE instead of shooting 1 as normal. However, if you need an additional day phase (and an additional flip) to draw a strong conclusion like betting the game on one player being town, then continuing to lynch is safer.
Sparing a player considered to be an asset early on and killing every other day looks viable too.

[popsofctown]

Loverizing with 2 spares comes out to a good expected value. There is some wiggle room for changing the balance on that one by picking different ways that lover pairs can be selected. My gut instinct is that rewarding the town for sparing two town is a good idea.
Actually an immediate revision I think I would want to make is for it not to be presented democratically at all, so that a senior-spared scum doesn't have to go through the chore of pretending to collaborate as s/he sets up harmful lover pairs. I think maybe it'd be better to lock the spared PT and give the senior member 48 hours to choose. Complexity cost is a valid criticism for loverizing being a distinct mechanic that comes up here, I just think it's necessary.

4 spares is almost identical to the 1.1 Pacifist route except mafia can shoot up to two players if they wish. It's a double edged sword because the victims are town control over the lynch, but also potential mislynch targets.

3 spares is the most complex one to evaluate for balance I think... oh, to the point it checkmates if one mafia is spared. Whoops. I have to rewrite it.
Since reckoning is based on players and winning is based on votes, you should almost all of the spared PT and control vote parity in 5p. You confscum the scum doublevoter then win.

Also I need to fix Reckoning putting lovers on odds.
Basically I need to fix Reckoning
Ok it should be fixed now, it's fewer kills.
Now Pacifist is even closer to old pacifist which is probably good.
EDIT:
Damnit.. even two kills is too many for Doublevoter.
I kind of wonder if I believe in double voter setups, given how unintuitive it seems.

[popsofctown]

snip

[popsofctown]

omg I think I had a stroke of genius
Neutral Route: There is no N4 kill. The spared players are returned to the game. The mafia chooses two players, choosing at least one mafia if no mafia was spared. Those two players leave the game without flipping.

No investigative effect because it's unclear whether a sacrifice was forced or the mafia was awarded two kills.

I'm not sure if this is better as a solution for 3 spares or as a unified process for resolving neutral no matter how many spares there were. Even though the sorting values comes out the same no matter how many spares there are, intuitively I'm expecting a prize that doesn't scale with the number of correct spares is not going to be a good idea. Old neutral parity copped more people the more spares you had.
Note: This can also be modded to janitor only 1 of the flips.

[popsofctown]

“At least one mafia” implies more than 2 mafia which every game so far you have not done? Or is this for the small town with 3 scum?

No, it's just technically if both scum are alive at that point, scum could gamethrow by removing both scum from the game. My mind works really mathematically and says, I have to force them to spare at least 1 mafia, I don't have to prohibit them from sparing two mafias because they won't.
It's probably a better way to write it to say "choosing a mafia player and a town player if mafia was not spared", but I haven't gotten to the "make it pretty" phase with this idea yet.

[popsofctown]

“At least one mafia” implies more than 2 mafia which every game so far you have not done? Or is this for the small town with 3 scum?

No, it's just technically if both scum are alive at that point, scum could gamethrow by removing both scum from the game. My mind works really mathematically and says, I have to force them to spare at least 1 mafia, I don't have to prohibit them from sparing two mafias because they won't.
It's probably a better way to write it to say "choosing a mafia player and a town player if mafia was not spared", but I haven't gotten to the "make it pretty" phase with this idea yet.

I have had a new idea for even spares also.

I'm going to try to write a pretty.
Wait, no, that evens idea doesn't work.
I'm so close.
Maybe.

[popsofctown]

After day 4, New Home is reached. The spare option is lost, Night 4 will be skipped.
Town is awarded a bonus that gets stronger the more players that were spared. Then all spared players are returned to the game.
Bonuses:

• 1 player spared: The spared player is granted lynchproof. The mafia must immediately kill two unspared players.
  
• 2 players spared: All players in the game become lover pairs. If one mafia is dead, the spared players choose a pairing, then the Mafiosi learns of it and chooses a pairing. If both mafia are alive, the pairings are: the spared players, the mafia, and the remaining two players. If all spared players are town, the lover pairings are public but otherwise they are a secret, even to the lovers.
  
• 3 players spared: The mafia immediately removes two players from the game without flipping them and must choose a Mafiosi if no mafia was spared.
  
• 4 players spared: If all spared players are townies, town wins immediately. Otherwise, the town spares an additional player then all unspared players are removed from the game without flipping. All players become Beloved Princesses.

I am pretty sure I am going to spend 999 months figuring out what I truly want
But I promise it will be glorious.

[popsofctown]

Spoiler: En Passant

After day 4, New Home is reached. The spare option is lost, Night 4 will be skipped.
Town is awarded a bonus that gets stronger the more players that were spared. Then all spared players are returned to the game.
Bonuses:

• 1 player spared: The spared player is granted lynchproof. The mafia must immediately kill two unspared players.
  
• 2 players spared: Once both Spare and Fight have each been used, the most recent factional nightkill victim is set aside in case this route is reached. That player has read-only access to the spared PT. If this route is reached, the mafia protect one Mafiosi if any scum was spared, then the set-aside player performs a kill that may target even spared players.
  
• 3 players spared: The mafia immediately removes two players from the game without flipping them and must choose a Mafiosi if no mafia was spared.
  
• 4 players spared: If all spared players are townies, town wins immediately. Otherwise, the town spares an additional player then all unspared players are removed from the game without flipping. All players become Beloved Princesses.

[popsofctown]

I tried to start thinking about route-incentive PRs to fit En Passant but.. I'm not sure I believe in that concept still. At the theory stage I agreed with it. But the first Undertale showed us that there's this huge 1/3rd chance the town accidentally picks the matching route with no input from the PR. And the second undertale showed us that someone can go HARD trying to get town onto the appropriate route... but in the end dayplay mechanics matter way more, with town refusing to go neutral when mastina practically softed Papyrus day 2 then randomly going neutral day3 because chemist was scumreading Nacho.

[popsofctown]

I kind of just want to put in a friendly neighbor and call it a day.

[popsofctown]

I would love some input on En Passant + friendly neighbor.

I think there is something cleverer than friendly neighbor but friendly neighbor works well enough and I think it's "good enough to run". I think some setups I've rejected from myself were possibly "good enough to run". Mulling over En Passant I really feel like it's "good enough to run".

[popsofctown]

Friendly Monster

Each night after a player is killed, if you are unspared, you may visit a player to confirm to that player that you are Town.

[popsofctown]

If a mafiosi is the single towniest person in the entire game, even if that decision was made in LyLo - 1 they likely "deserve to lose". Both 0 spares and 2 spares don't instant win the game for any one slot, so the town always has the option to pivot out of this characteristic and they'll kick themselves for not taking it if they don't.
I think it's fine.

[popsofctown]

Undertale S Open

2 Mafia Goons

8 Vanilla Townies

1 Town Friendly Neighbor

Each day, town must vote to

Fight

one player (HURT: ) or

Spare

one player (HEAL: ). Selfvoting is allowed. Placing one vote on each option is allowed. The mafia have a standard factional nightkill.

If a player is selected for

Fight

, they are lynched.

If a player is

Spared

, their role is not revealed, and they are temporarily removed from the game thread and put into the Spared PT. They will rejoin the game thread later. Spared players cannot be targeted by the factional nightkill. Town aligned players lose any power roles they had when they are spared, but mafia aligned players maintain scum PT access and can still perform nightkills.

At all times: If both mafia members are

Spared

, mafia wins, and the standard win condition for mafia also applies (town wins when all mafia are eliminated, mafia wins when all town are eliminated).

After day 4,

New Home

is reached. The spare option is permanently lost. Night 4 will be skipped.
Town is awarded a bonus based on the number of players that were spared. All spared players are returned to the game thread after the bonus is resolved.

• 1 player spared: The spared player is granted lynchproof. The mafia must immediately kill two unspared players.
  
• 2 players spared: Once both Spare and Fight have each been used, the most recent factional nightkill victim is set aside in case this bonus is earned. That player has read-only access to the spared PT. If this bonus is earned, the mafia protect one player if mafia was spared, then the set-aside player performs a kill that may target even spared players.
  
• 3 players spared: The mafia immediately removes two players from the game without flipping them and must choose a mafiosi if no mafia was spared.
  
• 4 players spared: If all spared players are townies, town wins immediately. Otherwise, the town spares an additional player then all unspared players are removed from the game without flipping. All players become Beloved Princesses.

[popsofctown]

I almost made a new thread for this, but this is very spiritually similar to S_S's original setup, so it belongs here.
I am trying to scale the setup up to 12p so that an additional scum can be added, so that it's not possible to spare scum and have a 1:8 day 2. It has never happened in the first three runs, but still, that sounds like an unfun gamestate. It's not even like 11:2 mountainous where you can enter a gamestate like that, but you have a redflip.

Undertale Daylight

9 Vanilla Townies

3 Mafia Goons

Each day, town must vote to Fight one player (HURT: ) or Spare one player (HEAL: ). Selfvoting is allowed. Placing one vote on each option is allowed. The mafia have a standard factional nightkill.

If a player is selected for Fight, they are lynched.

If a player is Spared, their alignment is not revealed, and they are temporarily removed from the game thread and put into the Spared PT. They will rejoin the game thread later. Spared players cannot be targeted by the factional nightkill. Spared mafia lose scum PT access until they return to the game thread.

The game has the following win conditions: Town wins immediately if all mafia have left or died, or if there are four spared townies and no spared mafia. Scum wins immediately if two mafia are spared regardless of how many townies are also spared, or if they have eliminated all townies.

The first three players to be spared gain a day ability for the following day.

• 1st spared player: Submit a daykill during the first 50% of the deadline.
  
• 2nd spared player: Target an unspared player to become Monster Kid during the first 50% of the deadline. Monster Kid can't be selected for Spare or Fight, has a publicly revealed alignment, and has no activity requirement as mafia.
  
• 3rd spared player: If it is populated, the spared PT decides the day's lynch by voting in the spared PT while reading the game thread, and if there is no simple majority your vote overrides. You submit a public cop shot after the day's decision is achieved but before it flips.

After day 4, New Home is reached, and the game enters one of three routes based on whether players were spared, fought, or both. Night 4 is skipped. The spare option is removed.

• Pacifist route: if no players were fought, town spares a fifth player. Then all unspared players are removed from the game without flipping, and the spared players are returned to the game thread. All players become Beloved Princesses.
  
• Neutral route: If mafia was spared, each mafia member secretly gains MyLo/LyLo deathproof. Return the spared players to the game thread. A Mafiosi must escape the game.
  
• Genocide route: The game is White Flag. This immediately triggers a town victory if two mafia are already deceased.

[popsofctown]

pls reviews pls

[popsofctown]

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

[popsofctown]

Do you have suggestions for making genocide more interesting? It is a problem, no run of the setup has ever seen the town choose genocide, even when s_s had it using a fancy vote based public cop mechanic

[popsofctown]

nightless genocide: this sounds like an upgrade because it grants an immediate benefit instead of an abstract benefit and is more distinct from neutral and pacifist

no-lynch in pacifist: The setup doesn't say you can no lynch. My deadline policy has always been "scum secretly choose the day's outcome for you" because philosophically I think the onus to reach consensus should fall on town aligned players. 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 have wondered if I should go back to the old wording, the goal is to make the mental load and apparent complexity as low as possible, I think there is one other datum of evidence suggesting I should go back so I'll go back to the wording defining it as a special decision.

Neutral: I think you misread the setup and reread part of pacifist along with part of neutral or something. A mafia escapes in neutral, which is quasi EV equivalent to White Flag but actually much weaker since it will be an open wolf. There's no Beloved Princesses in neutral.

[popsofctown]

I go back and forth on compulsive nightkill, sometimes I worry there is some weird odds vs. evens type exploit hiding somewhere in the setup that I didn't think of, but on the other hand this is a high complexity setup and adding the word "compulsive" if it's not necessary is an additional bit of complexity. No scumteam has even briefly considered no killing in the setup so far

[popsofctown]

Oh, about going neutral after a D1 kill: 1-2 players in the third run mounted a strong argument that day 1 should be a spare if any spares were to be had at all, because a greater proportion of the town is town at that point, which is true, because townies keep getting shot each night. So far there's never been a day one kill at all. Since "spare X times, then lynch X" times on its own has lots more axes of decisions than a more vanilla setup, I think it's better not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good and give up on keeping kill->spare routes highly attractive to put as much focus on making all three routes as routes attractive (so, for example, your unleash-the-missing-kills idea seems to make kill-> spare pretty unattractive as far as I can tell, but I don't care about that, I'm giving up on it anyway, so I don't count that dynamic as a knock against it)

[popsofctown]

If three town are spared and the daykill hit town, then day 4 (9-3-3-1):(3) so scum control the game thread 3:2, and day 4 is before the spared players get returned to the game. So that's why I put in the Purgatory trick that continues to ensure town controls the decision. (it is possible to let scum control the decision and let the spared players return and vengelynch them for doing that in a scummy way, but that's kind of Wild).

I like the pacifist rewording.

I'm mulling over the idea of a mechanic where the town gets some kind of bonus if the first fight of the game hits scum, no matter which dayphase that occurs. I'm thinking that could be a good way to incentivize neutral.

[popsofctown]

Ok, I'll try it then!

That surely makes neutral require even more buffing, but maybe setting it back some gives me room to pop in something dramatic.

[popsofctown]

Stampede

3 Mafia Goon

10 Vanilla Town

Spoiler: quasistandard mechanics

Each day, town must vote to Fight one player (HURT: ) or Spare one player (HEAL: ). Selfvoting is allowed. Placing one vote on each option is allowed. The mafia have a standard factional nightkill.

If a player is selected for Fight, they are lynched.

If a player is Spared, their alignment is not revealed, and they are temporarily removed from the game thread and put into the Spared PT. They will rejoin the game thread later. Spared players cannot be targeted by the factional nightkill. Spared mafia lose scum PT access until they return to the game thread.

The game has the following win conditions: Town wins immediately if all mafia have left or died, or if there are four spared townies

and no spared mafia

. Scum wins immediately if two mafia are spared regardless of how many townies are also spared, or if they have eliminated all townies.

Nightkills and day decisions are compulsive.
When the first Fight of the game occurs, "Stampede" happens. The spare option is lost. Each player in the spared PT is returned to the game as a multitasking compulsive one-shot doctor vigilante who can't target previously spared players that night. After all these kills and protections resolve (along with the factional nightkill that happened that night anyway), if either the trigging lynch or one of the vigilante shots eliminated mafia, the game becomes White Flag.

If there are five players spared when the Stampede is triggered, the return of players to the game thread is not simultaneous (the order is significant for the alternate town win condition). The players in the spared PT vote to decide who will leave first.

[popsofctown]

This is not exactly good but I think maybe it can be cleaned up into something good

[popsofctown]

It could happen if mafia is spared in the first 1-4 spares and the town spares a 5th player who is town. The mafia would win, as written (they would spare one of their own). That's potentially a harsh punishment for sparing one Mafiosi and remaining confident you haven't done so.

[popsofctown]

Like I said, I don't think I am finished with it, but pointing this out is useful feedback, changes that eloquently remove oddities like this as a side effect have good chance to be desirable for other reasons

[popsofctown]

This is very true, it is superfluous.
I think maybe this setup should give town the win for any 4 spared players, not just a 4 spared players, it is after all a 10:3 without the conftown the 9:2 has. That resolves the issue.

[popsofctown]

Hectic's rusty knife game sounds fun. It needs an overall setup where it fits well and I'm not sure it matches my more recent revisions as well as some others

[popsofctown]

Hour of Need

3 Mafia Goon

10 Vanilla Town

Spoiler: quasistandard mechanics

Each day, town must vote to Fight one player (HURT: ) or Spare one player (HEAL: ). Selfvoting is allowed. Placing one vote on each option is allowed. The mafia have a standard factional nightkill.

If a player is selected for Fight, they are lynched.

If a player is Spared, their alignment is not revealed, and they are temporarily removed from the game thread and put into the Spared PT. They will rejoin the game thread later. Spared players cannot be targeted by the factional nightkill. Spared mafia lose scum PT access until they return to the game thread.

The game has the following win conditions: Town wins immediately if all mafia have left or died, or if there are four spared townies

and no spared mafia

. Scum wins immediately if two mafia are spared regardless of how many townies are also spared, or if they have eliminated all townies.

Nightkills and day decisions are compulsive.
On day 4, players VOTE: for a player instead of Fighting or Sparing. If sparing that player would win the game for any faction, that player is Spared. Otherwise, that player is fought.
When the first fight of the game occurs, remove the spare option, return all spared players to the game, and grant a bonus based on the number of players returning:
3: Skip night 4.
2: The mafia loverizes a pair of unspared players. The remaining pair of unspared players also become lovers. Then the spared players become lovers. The game is nightless. Lovers have PTs. The mafia win at parity.
1: Reveal the number of mafia who voted to spare the spared player. Then the spared player immediately performs a kill.
0: Randomly grant players in the game an even night Vigilante, Jailkeeper, Cop, and Motion Detector. If it was mafia that was fought, do it again for odd. Players will not receive the same role twice, multiple even or odd roles. Role ownership is not revealed on death.

[popsofctown]

Janitoring the first flip for "0:" is indeed fascinating, but site populace is strongly enough against flipless games that I'm worried it wouldn't appeal broadly.

The vote seize is only supposed to make LyLo happen one point sooner in 99% of cases. It will be shown in votecounts immediately. The reason I described PMing the moderator instead of posting it in thread is to make it so there's no race-to-the-thread if a voting bloc wants to try to hammer something before the votesteal can happen in the morning. But now I'm realizing the same subsetup is nightless, so there is no morning, oops. Hm.

I rewrote 0 to what I meant, that the second set of roles would be odd since the first one is even. I'm not sure if 0 needs a buff and the normal queue people would maybe be helpful on that. The intention is definitely for the game to feel townsided on a 0: lynch and scumsided on a 0: mislynch

[popsofctown]

Hour of Need2

3 Mafia Goon

10 Vanilla Town

Spoiler: quasistandard mechanics

Each day, town must vote to Fight one player (HURT: ) or Spare one player (HEAL: ). Selfvoting is allowed. Placing one vote on each option is allowed. The mafia have a standard factional nightkill.

If a player is selected for Fight, they are lynched.

If a player is Spared, their alignment is not revealed, and they are temporarily removed from the game thread and put into the Spared PT. They will rejoin the game thread later. Spared players cannot be targeted by the factional nightkill. Spared mafia lose scum PT access until they return to the game thread.

The game has the following win conditions: Town wins immediately if all mafia have died, or if there are four spared townies. Scum wins immediately if two mafia are spared, or if they have eliminated all townies.

Nightkills and day decisions are compulsive.
On day 4, players VOTE: for a player instead of Fighting or Sparing. If sparing that player would win the game for any faction, that player is Spared. Otherwise, that player is fought.
When the first fight of the game occurs, remove the spare option, return all spared players to the game, and grant a bonus based on the number of players returning:
3: Skip night 4.
2: All unspared townies (including fight victim) become Vengeful, the spared players get permanent immunity to vengekills. Night 3, each of the spared players targets another player, and day 3 the moderator publishes the results that would occur had those players been check by a Parity Cop.
1: Reveal the number of mafia who voted to spare the spared player. Then the spared player immediately performs a kill.
0: Randomly grant players in the game an even night Vigilante, Jailkeeper, Cop, and Motion Detector. If it was mafia that was fought, do it again for odd. Players will not receive the same role twice, multiple even or odd roles. Role ownership is not revealed on death.

[popsofctown]

Undertale T Open

2 Mafia Goons

9 Vanilla Townies

Each day, town must vote to

Fight

one player (HURT: ) or

Spare

one player (HEAL: ). Selfvoting is allowed. Placing one vote on each option is allowed. The mafia have a standard factional nightkill.

If a player is selected for

Fight

, they are lynched.

If a player is

Spared

, their role is not revealed, and they are temporarily removed from the game thread and put into the Spared PT. They will rejoin the game thread later. Spared players cannot be targeted by the factional nightkill. Town aligned players lose any power roles they had when they are spared, but mafia aligned players maintain scum PT access and can still perform nightkills.

At all times: If both mafia members are

Spared

, mafia wins, and the standard win condition for mafia also applies (town wins when all mafia are eliminated, mafia wins when all town are eliminated).

After day 4,

New Home

is reached. The spare option is permanently lost. Night 4 will be skipped.
Town is awarded a bonus based on the number of players that were spared. All spared players are returned to the game thread after the bonus is resolved.

1 player spared: The spared player is a multi-acting publishing cop, doctor, and (not weak) hider night five.

2 players spared: Once both Spare and Fight have each been used, the most recent factional nightkill victim is set aside in case this bonus is earned. That player has read-only access to the spared PT. If this bonus is earned, the set-aside player performs a kill that can target even spared players. If mafia wasn't spared, the set-aside player learns the scumteam after this kill and PMs the mod during day 5 to grant a player bulletproof and inform the mafia who gained it.

3 players spared: The mafia immediately removes two players from the game without flipping them and must choose a mafiosi if no mafia was spared.

4 players spared: If all spared players are townies, town wins immediately. Otherwise, the town spares an additional player then all unspared players are removed from the game without flipping. Town loses the game if the day 5 Fight isn't mafia.

[popsofctown]

Which setup is better?
Which one is more balanced? I feel like they're both scumsided, but Hour of Need is less scumsided?

[popsofctown]

Are these better than the daylight fork S_S maligned? I think so.

[popsofctown]

If mafia wasn't spared, the set-aside player joins the scum PT after this kill and bolds a post day 5 in the scum PT to permanently grant any townie bulletproof.

why does it work in such strange way?

As I was brainstorming, I was thinking it would happen during N5, and the mafia would say "I nightkill Something_Smart", and the set-aside player would say, "I veto".

I did lots of backspace and type it, backspace and type it, in the current form it's probably better to say it's by PM, since I moved it to the day phase.

Good feedback.