[SETUP] Undertale Semi-Open

[Isis]

Undertale Menagerie

Alignments:

3 Mafia

9 Townie

Smalltown Roles:
3

Dogs

3

Amalgamates

3

Shopkeeps

3

Birds

Each day, players vote to spare or hurt a player, with heal or hurt tags, with one vote across each option. A majority on a particular type of choice and a player to receive that choice must be reached to end the day. Players who are hurt are killed completely. Players who are spared lose access to all game related threads except for the Spared PT and can't be targeted by the factional nightkill.
The mafia immediately wins if there are ever two spared mafia players at any time. The town immediately wins if there are ever four spared town players.

There is no night two, three, or four.

After day four, a route is chosen based on the choices that were made:

• If all days were spares : Pacifist : The town immediately spares an additional player. If the game still isn't over, the players in the spared PT vote on a spared player they believe is mafia, and the town wins if they guess correctly and loses if they guess incorrectly.
  
• If all days were hurts : Genocide : The alignments of all Shopkeeps are revealed. The mafia immediately kills a Shopkeeper and a nonShopkeeper.
  
• If it was a mixture : Neutral : All win conditions are removed and replaced with a new one. Mafia Birds who have been hurt are worth one point. Mafia Shopkeeps who are holding fruit are worth one point, even if they are dead. Town Amalgams with the ability to vend Fruit are worth one point, even if they are dead. For the rest of the game, the members of the town can summon a player from the spared PT and rejoin them to the game thread by raising a motion that reaches majority vote for doing so.
  The town wins when they have four points or such is impossible.

Role effects:

• Amalgamates - Amalgamates become nonconsecutive Fruit Vendors once they are spared. They target only unspared players and can act whether or not they are in the spared PT.
  
• Shopkeep - Shopkeeps are N1 Bulletproof
  
• Dogs - The dogs have a neighborhood.
  
• Birds - A bird's alignment flip is delayed until the end of Day 4.

[Isis]

Chara's folly

2 Mafia
1 Mafia Vengeful Chara

9 Town

Each day, players may vote to spare or fight each other. A player who is fought is flipped and killed, a player who is spared is moved to the Spared PT and loses access to the game thread (they can't be targeted by the factional nightkill). Town immediately wins if four town players are spared and no mafia is spared, and mafia immediately wins if two mafia or Chara are spared.
Chara has a bouquet of buttercups. If a townie is fought and there are no spared players, Chara will eat buttercups and die. In the alternative, once two players are spared, Chara will eat buttercups and die. Eating buttercups doesn't trigger vengeful.
After day four the town gets a "route" bonus based on the number of spared players, and the option to spare vanishes.

• Four : If town hasn't already won or lost, the town immediately spares another player, then all players in the game thread perish without flipping and the occupants of the Spared PT return to the game thread. Those players vote on one guess of the remaining mafia, and win or lose on its correctness.
  
• One to three : The mafia must choose an unspared player to be publicly investigated for each living mafia. Skip night 4. Return spared players to the game thread. If mafia was spared, the mafia immediately wins if two of its players survive the day 5 decision.
  
• Zero : The mafia must choose two players to be publicly investigated. If Chara was fought, the mafia must choose everyone. Skip night 4.

[Isis]

Looks fun flavour/mechwise. I'm struggling to understand why you ever go for 1-3 spares. I suppose you may switch into it from a 4 spare plan if the town is suddenly convinced they spared mafia earlier. You never intend to go for it from the start, right?

I forgot to write in the standard element of returning spared players from the game, but that was probably assumed.

If I'm counting correctly, bad play on 1 Spare and 3 Fights removes 6 players from the Charaless 11p, putting the game into 5p FiLo. Bad play on 4 fights removes 7 players from the Charaless 11p and immediately grants the mafia parity. So you get to play an additional phase. You've skipped a fight on the neutral route, but when you do your catch-up-fight from the game not being over, it is one informed by the investigations.

The genocide route on the other hand is more powerful if you eliminated one of the goons early on. You get both investigations, not just one.

I would have been perfectly content if the spare route was only useful when town "realizes" they have spared mafia, since Chara flips midgame even when townread in this setup, so it is reasonably likely for town to have epiphanies. That would be function enough. If that was like 10% route usage that'd be good, town has yet to seriously consider genocide in an live run of the setup


______________________________________________________________________________________________
You understand the Menagerie variant exactly right. It's deliberate that the neutral route sucks and that in the worst possible case the neutral route can be impossible to win at all. The idea is for it only to be undertaken if 2-3 points are already confirmed as of the time either stops killing mafia birds or stops sparing town amalgamates (since town amalgamates don't flip, that requires a certain kind of cockiness unless all three amalgamates are spared, which creates an NK WIFOM on the amalgamates.

Since the rand of how many birds and shopkeeps roll scum greatly affects the balance of neutral, you have to assume one of the most anti-scum rands when you balance it, and if that makes the route anti-town it's "okay" because the other two routes are available and don't depend on the rand. It makes the setup philosophically different from the original semiopen in a way (well, like, philosophically different in intent but the revision 1.0 of undertale semi-open is baroken imo and fails to provide genuine route diversity due to it.)

I think I would be ill advised to run menagerie rather than Folly. Folly is at least tied with how long I've thought about a new revision without deciding I hate it and must return to the drawing board posthaste

[Isis]

The day 5 clause is intended to provide some kind of reward to the mafia for getting mafia spared, as in S_S's original design. That does seem like an incidental positive. There would be 2 ICs and returning spared players on day five, so it would be guaranteed that one of the remaining never-spared players is mafia. If the town misses that 50/50, after townreading a mafia enough to spare them, that seems like a fair loss.

I think I'll run Chara's Folly, if I get another favorable review and become no longer living in 1-2 games

[Isis]

I do currently have a kill in there, a bit of miscounting in my head but not a miscounting that kills the setup, since a 3p eLo with a confirmed town has the same EV as a 4p eLo with a confirmed town, just the strategic benefit of selecting a voice to remove.

So, if I don't change that, currently, if there's 1 maf left the 0 spare gamestate is
IC
Unconfirmed town
Scum

and the 1 spare gamestate is
IC
Previously spared unconfirmed town
2 Unconfirmed town
Scum

There's an entire additional pair of players alive, but it is a town that is 1 exile behind schedule, so that makes sense. It also makes sense that they would be able to perform an exile here and not lose compared to genocide, that's the one they haven't made yet because they are behind on schedule. The next one, that gets them back onto schedule, loses the game like the other route.

That does seem a little bit stronger than genocide, so maybe leaving both IC voices alive in Genocide would be a good idea

[Isis]

The lack of genocide route makes it seem more like a The Coalition variant than a variant of S_S's setup, but Undertale is good flavor for townhunting setups and those numbers might be good.

I do plan to revisit this but want a few months to refresh my approach.

[Isis]

Some kind of design where "it becomes good to switch routes when certain slots are towny/scummy" is the most promising which was some of the idea of the Menagerie idea. There is maybe something simpler I could come up with at some point.

It's really hard. If you make a design where a triggering circumstance makes it trivially correct to switch to neutral route, you maybe haven't done that much better.

[Isis]

A far saner version of menagerie. Maybe not really an undertale though:

[Isis]

Toriel's Patience

3 Mafia
11 Town
Nights 1-3 are skipped.
One player is randomly, publicly Toriel at game start. Toriel has two votes day one, a single vote day two, and no votes thereafter. Toriel can't be voted before day 3 and is the only player who can be voted on day 3.
Between day two and day three, players choose Mercy or Fight. If Mercy is chosen, for there rest of the game eliminations are flavored as sparings and town wins if town spares four townies and loses if it spares two mafia.
If Fight is chosen, those effects are simply not applied.

[Isis]

someone review this please

[Isis]

Toriel's Patience

3 Mafia
11 Town
Nights 1-3 are skipped.
One player is randomly, publicly Toriel at game start. Toriel is a doublevoter day one, has a single vote day two, and no votes thereafter. Players can't vote for Toriel, except for on day there where every post must contain a vote for Toriel. (Enforced by mod edits and a warning).
Between day two and day three, players choose Mercy or Fight. If Mercy is chosen, for there rest of the game subsequent eliminations are flavored as sparings and town wins if town spares four townies and loses if it spares two mafia.
If Fight is chosen, those effects are simply not applied.

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.

[Isis]

If the meme doesn't work I will probably just leave the checkmate out of the description and enforce it anyway.

Yeah path is a public vote

[Isis]

Day one and day two have a regular elimination. Day 2.5 has a mercy or fight choice. Day 3 is voting for toriel

[Isis]

Toriel's Patience

3 Mafia
11 Town
Nights 1-3 are skipped.
One player is randomly, publicly Toriel at game start. Toriel is a doublevoter on day one. Players can't vote for Toriel, except for on day 3 in which every post must contain a vote for Toriel. (Enforced by mod edits and a warning).
Between day two and day three, players choose Mercy or Fight. If Mercy is chosen, for the rest of the game subsequent eliminations are flavored as sparings and town wins if town spares four townies and loses if it spares two mafia.
If Fight is chosen, those effects are simply not applied.

[Isis]

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

Could you explain this?

[Isis]

I follow. Would a purgatory judgment day style mechanic for Mercy endgames be fair there to keep both paths in consideration? It seems that dynamic emerges due to the victorious path actively removing townies from play, similar to purgatory

[Isis]

It'd a little sad if it overshadows the question of Toriel's alignment but that might be me designing for myself instead of designing for the players.

Yeah, it is a little weird that on d2.5 genocide, day three eliminate toriel, "we got rid of all the special mechanics and we are left with regular mafia now right?" It's like uh no we are skipping night 3. But I came up with the core mechanic then then tried to think about the number of mafia and I wanted and the number of townies I wanted and the number of virtual townies I wanted, where a virtual townies is a word I just came up with right this second to express the extra persistent one from a skipped night kill, and it was 11 3 3, and then I decided I want the skips at the beginning (which I like here but may not always be best, FakeGods dance intermission has been fascinating)

[Isis]

Toriel's Patience

3 Mafia
11 Town
Nights 1-3 are skipped.
One player is randomly, publicly Toriel at game start. Toriel is a doublevoter on day one. Players cannot vote for Toriel.
On Day 2.5, players vote to choose Mercy or Fight. If Mercy is chosen, for the rest of the game subsequent eliminations are flavored as sparings and town wins if town spares four townies and loses if it spares two mafia.
If Fight is chosen, those effects are simply not applied.
Day 3 lasts one prod timer and voting is disabled. The day 3 elimination is Toriel.