[REVIEW] Open Setup Reviews

[Gypyx]

Is this just nightless mountanious or was there supposed to be more stuff to the setup?

[Dunnstral]

I think a game with all survivors will run into some issues. First, whoever you eliminate can no longer win the game at all, so this type of game especially can lead to some hard feelings.

[DragonEater70]

I will note that aside from the survivor issue, the way you phrased wincons, if town is eliminated in f3 the game becomes a stalemate as neither faction can achieve its wincondition.

[usesPython]

Is this just nightless mountanious or was there supposed to be more stuff to the setup?

It's nightless mafia except getting hard bussed goes against wincon so that changes ev to make the game more townsided and also makes the game a bit swingier due to encouraging hardcore powerwolfing

We basically just wanted the numbers checked

I will note that aside from the survivor issue, the way you phrased wincons, if town is eliminated in f3 the game becomes a stalemate as neither faction can achieve its wincondition.

The perils of copy pasting wincon without proofreading, yeah that should be 50% parity for maf to win

[Gypyx]

i mean, getting hard bussed goes against your wincon, but it doesn't go against the busser's wincon, i agree that it could create toxic game patterns

[Jingle]

We basically just wanted the numbers checked

Nightless EV is calculated by (Number of Townies - Number of Mafia)/(Number of Townies + Number of Mafia) so factional EV is about 33% town. Individual scum EV isn't something I'd know how to calculate without doing it iteratively off the top of my head. Town tends to massively outperform EV in practice in Nightless, especially with larger games. Nightless games with 12 people also tend to be a nightmare for replacements. 8:4 nightless has an observed town win rate of 87.5%. Nightless already heavily incentivizes not bussing (every scum lim adds two mislims to the clock).

If you absolutely want to run this setup, I'd suggest running it as a micro at least. 6:3 gives you the same balance point with less investment, 5:3 is probably closer to fair to scum.

[TemporalLich]

possible update to IC Basic?

IC Basic (Treestump variant)

9 players

1 Mafia Role Cop

1 Mafia Goon

1 Town IC

1 Town Mason

5 Vanilla Townies

During signups, you must pick whether you want to be the IC or don't want to be the IC. The Town IC role will be given to a random player who wanted to be the IC, and then the other 8 roles will be randomized among the other players.

The Mason shares a Private Topic with the IC.

The IC becomes a treestump when dead - they may post in the game thread and Mason PT but not vote while dead.

[TemporalLich]

another variant of IC Basic I want feedback on

IC Basic (One Day Treestump variant)

9 players

1 Mafia Role Cop

1 Mafia Goon

1 Town IC

1 Town Mason

1 Town 1-shot Messenger

4 Vanilla Townies

During signups, you must pick whether you want to be the IC or don't want to be the IC. The Town IC role will be given to a random player who wanted to be the IC, and then the other 8 roles will be randomized among the other players.

The Mason shares a Private Topic with the IC.

The IC may post in the game thread and Mason PT the Day after they die, and may post in the Mason PT the Night after they are eliminated.

another potential change to IC Basic signups - players must PM the moderator if they want to be the IC and must not post their decision publically in the queue thread.

[Gypyx]

isn't the 1-shot messenger quite a lot of conftowning power? Don't see how it's necessary

[TemporalLich]

isn't the 1-shot messenger quite a lot of conftowning power? Don't see how it's necessary

actually yeah this is a fully open setup so it's a FN in disguise

just pretend it's another VT

[Gypyx]

if you want it, you could have it assigned to a random player for funsies (town or scum), it would be a bit of swing but not too much since like, messenger isn't too strong to begin with lol

[Jingle]

the Night after they are eliminated.

Presumably this should never happen, fwiw. Seems fine though.

[Skygazer]

just a thought, mentioned it on discord yesterday:

friends d4

9 players

2 town power roles
5 town vanillas

2 mafia goons

setup generation

roll a four-sided die. the outcome will determine the town power roles, using this table.

# rolled	roles
1	mason / mason
2	friendly neighbor / friendly neighbor
3	activated innocent child / activated innocent child
4	friendly neighbor / activated innocent child

friends d7

13 players

3 town power roles
7 town vanillas

3 mafia goons

setup generation

roll a seven-sided die. the outcome will determine the town power roles, using this table.

# rolled	roles
1	mason / mason / mason
2	mason / mason / friendly neighbor
3	mason / mason / activated innocent child
4	friendly neighbor / friendly neighbor / activated innocent child
5	activated innocent child / activated innocent child / friendly neighbor
6	friendly neighbor / friendly neighbor / friendly neighbor
7	activated innocent child / activated innocent child / activated innocent child

all variations should have roughly the same balance. there's pluses and minuses for each: masons have communication but have to worry about associative tells; friendly neighbors have a little more behind-the-scenes sway in terms of strategically clearing themselves to individuals of their choice, but could out themselves to scum and also have some slight associate worries; activated innocent children have absolutely no uncertainty as they're mod-confirmed, and don't have to worry about associatives, but are in terms of game-sway are reliant on their voice alone until they decide to out.

i feel like the randomization process could be a little more elegant idk. i also feel like if you're in the mood for friends and enemies you could just play friends and enemies so this feels maybe pointless, but that won't stop my obsession with using the setup as a decent base for fun designs

[DragonEater70]

I'd probably play this once

[Jingle]

I think you should replace the goons with Ninjas.

[DArby]

Distrust Fall

Twelve players are locked in a room with no escape. Each is equipped with two halves of a gun and the knowledge that two of them are scum.

The idea is that each player, regardless of alignment, is a 2-shot half day vig in a nightless game. What does this mean? It means that in order to eliminate someone, two different people would need to vote to eliminate that player. (E.g. player x and y would vote for player z. Player z would be eliminated and role would be flipped). This is essentially creating a “complete vig”. Each player can do this twice. Scum cannot shoot together.

Town wins when all threats to the town have been eliminated. Scum wins if they have the majority of players who are alive or there are no possible shots for town to make while there is still scum alive.

The idea is 12 players with 2 scum but it’ll probably change if I can get it tested.

[DragonEater70]

First of all, the idea sounds really fun. There are several problems though:

1. Numbers wise, this is extremely townsided, as it's basically a 2:10 nightless for EV purposes. I'd change it to 3:9 or even 4:8. Actually 4:8 would make the "mafia can't cooperate with mafia" aspect a lot more interesting for association analysis.

2. The 2-shot limit is a problem (though unlimited shots might also be a problem). How about changing it so that after you make a dayvig offer and it's accepted, you cannot make another offer before someone else's offer is accepted? (though you can still accept their offer)

[DArby]

Thanks for finding the idea fun! Would a 3/13 work? Or a 2/9?

And the idea of the two-shot limit was to make a more group involvement of what shots should be given out to whom. That way it could add an extra layer of association. Not to mention if in later game someone vigs someone with their two shots still intact, that could be seen as a scum indicative move, as it could hurt the towns chance of catching scum. What problem do you see with it?

I’m absolutely willing to come up with an alternative if it is unbalanced.

[DragonEater70]

And the idea of the two-shot limit was to make a more group involvement of what shots should be given out to whom

Yeah, I get that, but imagine a scenario like this:
Players A, B, C, D and E are town. Players F and G are mafia.

Players A and B shoot players D and E in succession, and both flip town. Now the living players are A, B, C, F and G. But town cannot shoot mafia anymore even though there are more town than mafia. It's a problematic scenario, isn't it?

[Jingle]

I see two solutions to the shot limit question:

Timed reset of shot limits or scum wins when town runs out of shots.

Optimal play is probably to force the second and third scummiest players to shoot the scummiest player and prove they're not both scum and make a bunch of "Can't be partners" pairs. Conftown in a nightless are disproportionately powerful and you have a high potential for conftown if one of those players then flips scum which is massively townsiding. I wouldn't consider running this as is with less than 2m=t ratio. With that said, I think this has a lot of potential as a marathon, F2F or blitz game specifically, potentially with lots of memeing. It's also notably going to be incredibly easy to mod.

[DArby]

Oh hey I’m back at this 3 weeks later, and I wanna try to make this a functional Sandbox game.

I’m thinking of making a sliding scale for the game and adding a specific role:

Mafia Cooperative Gunslinger: You have one shot you can shoot with a mafia partner, after that you become a normal mafia half vig.

7-8 players: 3 mafia half vigs
9-11: 2 mafia half vigs + 1 Co-Op Gunslinger
10-13: Either 3 mafia half vigs + 1 Co-Op Gunslinger OR 2 mafia half vigs + 2 Co-Op Gunslinger.

Hopefully that can address a lot of auto conf town.

I’m also thinking for the limited bullets problem some solutions could be:

1) instead of physically restricting the number of bullets, each (or some) town player will receive an [arch nemesis] that can either be town or scum. Scum will also receive the names of “arch nemesis” as well. You and your AN cannot shoot together. In <10 players, the AN can be pairs with one person potentially receiving a “no nemesis” role. And it could be a round robin approach in 10 or greater. (A is AN with B, and B is AN with C, so on until J who is AN with A). This means A cannot shoot with B or J. Balancing to the number of AN is not my area of expertise (yet!) but I think that could be a fun counter instead of limited bullets.

2) Town has a limited pool of bullets. Each time a T/S pair shoots, .5 bullets will be shot. Each time T/T shoot, 1 bullet will be shot. If S/S shoot then 0 bullets will be shot. After X number of paired shots happened (to only be 1-3 times a game), the number will be revealed. If town reaches 0 shots before catching scum, then town auto loses.