[OLD] Open Setup Ideas and Discussion

[Rural Juror]

Cult Vengeful:

5 players

Setup:
- 1 One-shot Cult Recruiter
- 4 Vanilla Townies

Mechanics:
- Day Start
- On Day 1, if a Vanilla Townie is lynched, they get a vengeful shot.
- The vengeful shot resolves BEFORE the cult recruitment. If the cult recruiter is killed, for instance, their recruitment does not go through.

I ran the numbers on chances of winning in this setup and, discounting the possibility of a no lynch, there is a 53.333% chance of a cult recruiter win. I play-tested this setup on Skype with some Scummers, and it was well-received. Any questions, just ask.

So it's 4v1; town has two chances to hit the scum (one lynch and one vengekill), otherwise scum and one random townie win?

[Rob14]

Any questions, just ask.

Why one-shot?

(Or, to put it another way: does the recruiter win automatically if there is only one other player left alive? Because if the answer to that is "yes" then being one-shot doesn't seem to be a meaningful restriction (and if it's "no", then who does win?).

Cult recruiter wins if there is only one other player, but the 1-shot does come into play in the following scenario:

Day 1 No Lynch --> Someone is recruited (3 town, 2 cult)
Day 2 Lynch of the recruited person --> (3 town, 1 cult)
If there's another recruit from the cult leader --> (2 town, 2 cult) = cult win

If the cult leader could recruit again, then it would break the possibility of no lynching on the first day, because they would win even if town successfully lynched the recruited cult member. It would make no lynching always the worst choice for town, which I don't necessarily want to be the case.

Also, @Rural Juror, no that's not the case. Here's the breakdown of possibilities of things happening.

Spoiler: Boring Stuff

Game Start:
1/5 chance of lynching the cult recruiter (.20 chance of town win)
4/5 chance of lynching a VT (game continues)

If you lynch a VT Day 1:
1/4 chance that the cult recruiter dies (resolves first, so .20 chance of town win)
1/2 chance that the cult recruiter chooses someone to recruit that is NOT chosen to be venge-killed (.40 chance of scum win)
1/4 chance that the recruitment and the venge-kill fall on the same person (game continues)

If the recruitment and the venge-kill fall on the same person (3p LyLo with the original cult recruiter):
1/3 chance that the recruiter is lynched (.0667 chance of town win)
2/3 chance that a VT is lynched (.1333 chance of scum win)

Summing up all those probabilities from what is essentially a written out tree diagram:
Scum win: 53.333%
Town win: 46.667%

[Rob14]

My biggest concern with this is the possibility of a random townie winning when successfully recruited. I want to word win-cons in a way that only the cult recruiter wins in that situation, although I'm not sure how to do that. Should I bother being concerned about that?

[Plessiez]

If the cult leader could recruit again, then it would break the possibility of no lynching on the first day, because they would win even if town successfully lynched the recruited cult member. It would make no lynching always the worst choice for town, which I don't necessarily want to be the case.

Oh, right. I was assuming town would always lynch on day 1. Isn't that obviously best even when the recruiter is one-shot?

I guess that means I have another question: does town win if they lynch the cult recruiter and some cultists are still alive? Or does town need to lynch every living cult member?

Assuming the former: if you no lynch on day 1, then with random voting I think town has a 3/10 chance of winning.

Spoiler:

Day 2: 3 VTs vs. cult recruiter and one recruit
- 1/5 chance of lynching recruiter = TOWN WIN
- 3/5 chance of lynching VT = TOWN LOSS
- 1/5 chance of lynching recruit ...
Day 3: 3 VTs vs cult recruiter
- 1/4 chance of lynching recruiter = TOWN WIN
- 3/4 chance of lynching VT ...
Day 4: 2 VTs vs cult recruiter
- 1/3 chance of lynching recruiter = TOWN WIN
- 2/3 chance of lynching VT = TOWN LOSS

1/5 + 1/5*1/4 + 1/5*3/4*1/3 = 3/10

Assuming the latter: chances of a town win are even less. if you no lynch on day 1, then with random voting town has a 1/5 chance of voting.

Spoiler:

Day 2: 3 VTs vs. cult recruiter and one recruit
- 3/5 chance of lynching VT = TOWN LOSS
- 1/5 chance of lynching recruit [and then 1/2 chance of town win, as before]
- 1/5 chance of lynching recruiter [and then exactly the same calculation as above]

1/5 * 1/2 + 1/5 * 1/2 = 1/5

So I don't see why town would ever prefer not to lynch. (Did town choose not to lynch in any of the games you tried?) I mean, even ignoring the numbers, you're trading two chances to hit scum for ... what?

[Rob14]

Town didn't ever choose not to lynch in play-testing, but the idea was floated many times by players. It just never gained traction. You would have to lynch all cult members in the case of no lynching, not just the leader. That is intended to be a non-ideal style of play, but it's still a possibility that I don't want to make horribly broken if it were to occur. Players should be responsible for figuring out that this is not best for multiple reasons (especially losing their venge-shot).

[BBmolla]

My biggest complaint is it's not really Mafia. Huge part of Mafia is looking at relationships between people to find out if they're partners or not. Get rid of partners, it's not really mafia.

I still find this just a weaker setup than Vengeful 5p. And lyncher 5p.

Edit: Next time we're doing skype mafia, remind me to try We Need A Fifth:

WE NEED A FIFTH

2 Townies
2 Mafia

Daystart, nightless. If a townie is lynched, he does not get lynched and is instead given a one-shot dayvig. This only occurs once.

If he shoots the other townie, town loses.
If he shoots mafia, it goes into a normal 1v2 game.

This should be 50% EV.

Edit:

WE NEED A FIFTH

2 Townies
2 Mafia

Daystart, nightless. If a townie is lynched, he does not get lynched and is instead given a one-shot dayvig. This only occurs once.

If he shoots the other townie, town loses.
If he shoots mafia, it goes into a normal 1v2 game.

If a mafia member is lynched, he has to confirm one of the town players as town.

This should be 50% EV.

[Cheery Dog]

Do mafia know who each other are in that setup?

[quadz08]

I actually quite like We Need a Fifth.

[nickthename]

Yay! I'm back!

Treezies

1 Scum
2 VT
X Tree Stumps

2 to Lynch

Scum tries to kill VTs, VTs try to kill scum. Ballots are secret.

What is the goal of the treestumps? Fuck around?

Sounds pretty fun, we should try that in skype. Are there mafia aligned stumps?

[Rob14]

Tree stumps are traditionally town-aligned. This is actually quite similar to an idea I had in MafiaChat a long time ago to incorporate non-players into a game in a "peanut gallery," where they can contribute however they want. You just did it better, since you figured out the solution to the problem of getting non-players involved in the setup (answer: make them sign up just like normal players). The only issue I see is that you may encounter situations where the stumps spam the thread and make it harder for the actual players to keep up with conversation. You might want to cap the number of tree stumps in a game - for instance X≤5.

[IceGuy]

Re: We Need A Fifth, what happens if there is no lynch?

[IceGuy]

Three Chances

3 Mafia Goons
4 Night Clerks

Every night, the scum has to send out one scum player to intimidate a town player. The intimidation has no effects. If scum doesn't send in an action, it'll be randomized. They have no kill.

A Night Clerk can investigate a player and will receive "Yes" if they were either the target or the instigator of an intimidation, and "No" otherwise. They are not able to investigate themselves.

The first town player that gets lynched stays alive as confirmed town. A second mislynch means instawin for scum. If the first mislynch occurs on D1, the "lynched" player gets a vengekill. If they hit town, they confirm a second town player; if they hit scum, they kill them.

Credit goes to Does Bo Know for the vengekill idea.

[Does Bo Know]

Re: We Need A Fifth, what happens if there is no lynch?

Just make lynches mandatory, I guess. If no one votes, random player is chosen to be lynched. And no one really has fun when that happens.

I like We Need a Fifth as well.

PEdit YAY I GET CREDIT <3

[Does Bo Know]

Except Three Chances kinda loses its good name when it's possible there could only be 2 mislynches.

Dirty Harry reference in the name, maybe? If only it wouldn't be a mouthful to say.

[saulres]

I actually quite like We Need a Fifth.

Does that mean you'd make an exception and let BBMolla (or someone else if he doesn't want to, I volunteer) run it in the Micro Queue?

[chkflip]

2 confirmed town / 1 confirmed town who shot scum is kind of chicken shit, IMO.

PEDIT: I like "Do You Feel Lucky?" for a name.

[saulres]

Oh and I guess the dayvig shot is intended to be compulsive?

[chkflip]

What I mean is it gives town a 60% chance to lynch scum with two conf-towns.

I take back the second half since it'd only be a 40% lynch chance if the conf-town actually shot scum.

[Does Bo Know]

2 confirmed town / 1 confirmed town who shot scum is kind of chicken shit, IMO.

PEDIT: I like "Do You Feel Lucky?" for a name.

Meh. The vengekill is only if the D1 lynch is a mislynch. Otherwise it plays as normal: first mislynch confirms town, second one town loses.

It also throws in the theory of whether or not Mafia want to risk trying to mislynch on Day 1 or not, because they'd be confirming 2 town or having one of their own shot in the process. Unless, of course, they can't talk until Night 1.

IceGuy, are you letting scum have daytalk this time or not? Or at least pre-game talk?

[Does Bo Know]

What I mean is it gives town a 60% chance to lynch scum with two conf-towns.

I take back the second half since it'd only be a 40% lynch chance if the conf-town actually shot scum.

60%? With investigations? Okay, that does seem a bit unfair. Maybe no investigations if there is a vengekiller N1?

But by then we're making the setup fairly complicated, aren't we? Maybe instead we can just give the vengeful the option to no-kill, and then he would normally kill a townie if he picks a townie.

[chkflip]

Well, you're taking two town out of the lynch pool making it 3:2 to lynch from.

Killing the townie would end the game, so that's not really a viable option either.

[Does Bo Know]

I knew it would be a high percentage to lynch scum, but I totally forgot investigations would be happening too, and with confirmed townies, that limits who to intimidate even more.

Right now we just seem to be looking for some way to even the playing field, since so far it seems scum have the advantage in the old "Two Chances" setup.

[quadz08]

I actually quite like We Need a Fifth.

Does that mean you'd make an exception and let BBMolla (or someone else if he doesn't want to, I volunteer) run it in the Micro Queue?

Yes, actually.

[IceGuy]

IceGuy, are you letting scum have daytalk this time or not? Or at least pre-game talk?

Neither.

Will be doing the EV for the vengekill variant later.

[callforjudgement]

Isn't it in town's interest to lynch a suspected townie day 1 in We Need A Fifth? (Preferably the second-towniest of the 4.) That gives them a confirmed townie going into day 2 if the vengekill hits (which it probably will), and if they mess up and lynch scum instead, that isn't exactly a problem.

I'm a bit wary of setups where aiming to lynch town is better than aiming to lynch scum…