Newbie Setup (Matrix6 implemented)

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I don't think JK9 would make a good Newbie set-up anyway - if newbscum blows up D1 and gets himself lynched, it's going to be painful and drawn out (or an easy romp through the park for the town if the remaining scum doesn't realize what he's dealing with).

I still like my previous suggestions (but I'll think some more about it):
2of3:
2 of {Cop + Mafia Rolecop, Jailkeeper + Godfather, VT + Goon}

Revised 2of3:
Town gets 2 of {Cop, Jailkeeper, Vanilla Townie} + 5 VTs.
If Town has 1 PR, then Scum gets 1 of {Rolecop, 1-Shot Strongman}; if Town has both PRs, then Scum also gets both PRs.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Roleblock/Neighborize/Bodyguard JoaT?

(With the neighborizing doubling as friendly neighbor by design.)

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

We've gathered enough data over the years to conclude that cops are definitely not overpowered.

(And it's a very useful role to use in designing 9p set-ups since its power doesn't depend on whether there's 1 scum left or not which makes roles like Tracker, Roleblocker and Jailkeeper so annoyingly swingy in 2 scum set-ups.)

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

But is EVERY newbie mod breaking the rules? No. It would probably be right to argue that MOST aren't. We do not need to implement a system based on paranoia.

If it's happening often enough that it's showing up in the data, it's a problem and it needs to be addressed.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Except the only setup that was significantly different from a .5 win perecentage was Doc/VT and even that wasn't as bad as you'd expect because if town wins the next Doc/VT game it wouldn't meet the typical threshold for statistical significance any more either (that's not to say it's balanced but that it's still a small sample size with a fair amount of volitility).

If it's statistically significant and it matches what is kind of an obvious conclusion to begin with, then small sample size is not big that an issue.

I think giving the townies as little power as Doc/VT to work with some proportion of the time is suboptimal for a whole host of reasons but the other issue with 2of4 is that the Doc/JK set-up occasionally turns awkward. I've played in 2of4s with 0 kills over 4 Nights and 1 kill over 6 Nights (with scum fake claiming doc instead of there being one in the latter) and that's not really a thing we want in Newbies.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

2 Town PRs in a 9 player game is a fairly representative, I think, so that's not something we'd be aiming to change. Pace is fairly variable although 2/3 day Days is not really something we go for; this does stress the importance of avoiding set-ups like Doc/JK that can get bogged down in PR interactions.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

22.86% is not nothing. Sure, it'll be hard but I don't see that as a lame duck scenario at all. Play well and victory is entirely possible. (One PR set-ups are certainly swingier than those with 2 PRs, but out of all the things that make up a good set-up, that's probably the one I care about least when talking Newbie set-ups.)

P.S. a set-up like Cop/JK is far more likely to get a real lame duck scenario - lynch scum D1 and the remaining scum is very unlikely to escape from under the mountain of PR info the Town's getting; another one would be one scum left that claimed Doctor with a Jailkeeper in the set-up.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

1 town PR vs 2 goons is scum-sided? Like, how scum-sided? Cause pick 1 PR from a hat seems way simpler than this list quadz is putting together. This is probably personal opinion but I think strongman and rolecop are sucky roles.

Only Cop and Jailkeeper are really strong enough to carry a town on its own.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I like Quilford's.

Doc/JK, beyond being townsided, also leads to annoyingly drawn out games.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I tried my hand at the matrix format. Rows and columns:

Town Jailkeeper	Vanilla Townie	Mafia Goon
Mafia Roleblocker	Town Cop	Town Doctor
Town Nonconsecutive Commuter	Mafia Goon	Town Tracker

There's a little less power generally which is good and we avoid the strongman. RB issues still exist (both in RB vs. JK and RBlynch being really bad for the scum in the Cop-Doc set-up) but are lessened (you don't need to decide on an order-based resolotion or NAT (what if the jailkeeper targets the roleblocker who targets someone else?) and the disastrous RBlynch only occurs in one of the two set-up). The commuter is admittedly a little inelegant.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Whoops. Had Cop somewhere that should've been jailkeeper.

No diagonals, HD.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I don't think it's nearly as well balanced as Quilford's, and I think the strongman is a much better role for newbies than a commuter. That's a personal preference thing, though.

If you match up the six set-ups as follows, I don't think any set-up becomes less balanced (first is Quilford's, second is mine):
Cop -> Cop
Jailkeeper, Mafia Rolecop -> Jailkeeper
Jailkeeper, Town Roleblocker, 1-shot Strongman -> Jailkeeper, Nonconsecutive Commuter, Mafia Roleblocker
Tracker, Doctor, Mafia Role Cop -> Tracker, Nonconsecutive Commuter
Cop, Doctor, 1-shot Strongman -> Cop, Doctor, Mafia Roleblocker
Town Roleblocker, Tracker -> Doctor, Tracker

I'm not particularly thrilled about Commuter either but it seems worth it if only to avoid Roleblocker+Tracker (any scum lynch turns both PRs into Cops?)

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

The tracker/doc vs goons setup is prob somewhat overpowered to the town, and even if the tracker tracks a doc to a nightkill he knows that it's a doc (since commuter is self-targetting?) and just helps to confirm the doc?

You can't track a Commuter. Tracker tracking a doc confirms the doc generally, yes, and Doc-Tracker is admittedly a tad town-sided.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Commuters are untargettable when commuting. That would mean a cop would get the same result as if he were blocked if there were any cop-commuter set-ups, which there aren't.

Each of your matrices has at least 3 scum-sided set-ups and generally wildly varying balance. I don't think you want a Miller in an Open either.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Oh, I guess you could just replace the Commuter with a 1-shot BP. Not sure why I didn't think of that before.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Helps the column, hurts the row. And I prefer having a Goon in multiple set-ups informationwise.

Millers are considered semi-bastard by a lot of players. Putting them in newbie games isn't a good idea.

Millers aren't semi-bastard. You just claim it D1. That part is fairly awkward in a Newbie and Millers in Opens work even less like they're supposed to.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

If not every setup has a miller, it's a valid scumclaim.

But it's never just going to be "Is this dude town?". In your set-up specifically, Miller claims only make sense if the Mafia have a Godfather, in which case either the Goon claims Miller, Town Cop is neutered but Town gets the Goon for free if they lynch the GF OR GF claims Miller and can be found out through investigation - weird stuff.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

+ You can't claim to not be playing for reactions.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

In the #602 set-up, besides the staples (Cop vs. Goons, Cop+Doc vs. RB), three of the set-ups are scum-sided and the remaining one (Cop+Tracker vs. RB) seems generally icky.

P-edit: I don't think we want factional powers in our Newbie games (and I'm someone who likes factional powers in his set-ups.)

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Also, the BP combos bother me a bit, because of the possibility of confirming a BP if one scum is dead. In fact, wouldn't optimal play be for the BP to claim as soon as one scum dies? If no PR has flipped anyways. Then the PR would track/jailkeep the claimed BP, and would either catch scum, or confirm the BP.

Or the other town PR could be free to confirm someone else? It doesn't even work vs. a mafia RB.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

False tracker positives are generally going to be rare and unfun in such small games anyway. A weaker role like Reporter (Variant 1) does need false positives but I prefer Tracker without.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Unless the roleblocker gets lynched early and traps the last mafioso into nightkill paralysis.

Is that a big concern?

It's not that big an issue. If you fail to kill for any reason besides being jailkeeped, you might just out the jailkeeper and get a mislynch at the same time, so really it's just you vs. the jailkeeper for the most part and that's not too awful.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Bodyguards inherently work weird in Opens/semi-Opens because of the Named Townie effect.

GIF, every one of those scenarios can be avoided by the scum claiming Doctor and getting counterclaimed before getting lynched. I realize you can't always expect of newbiescum but let's not exaggerate the problems. You could make a similar point about the Jailkeeper/BP/Mafia RB set-up as you did about the Cop/Doc/RB set-up and yet the statistics suggest the former set-up is the most scum-sided of the six set-ups.

I also don't think particularly think this is an issue that can be avoided in Newbie games (we've generally had cop/doc/mafia RB, 2of3 had the dreadful Jailkeeper+Doctor set-up). But I've also told Mina previously that I'm willing to help trying to design a better set-up if she sets up a PT with some other smart set-up designers.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Also in this setup if scum claims doctor town doctor should counterclaim with "BP/doc" not just "doc".

If someone claimed BP/Doc, I would just shoot them anyway. And that scenario is only relevant in the Doctor/Tracker set-up.

But I'm also in favour of changing the 1-shot BP to Universal Back-up.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

But I've also told Mina previously that I'm willing to help trying to design a better set-up if she sets up a PT with some other smart set-up designers.

I'd wanted to do newbie surveys first, so as to confirm that people were getting confused by the set-up in real life and not just in my imagination. Otherwise, I was afraid of investing too much time into solving a problem we don't have and then confirmation-biasing ourselves.

Reminder #22566 that I need to do newbie surveys.

I have no issue starting this PT if people want it, though, as long as there's no guarantee we use whatever design it comes up with.

Fair enough!

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I would point out that it's not really a negative for the mafia to have shot the BP. It just puts the game to Evens and you might want to kill the BP at some point anyway. If I were scum and you tried your breaking strategy, I'd do the following: if my partner gets lynched D1, just take the risk of shooting the Tracker N1 (this is unquestionably a negative for the town); if a townie gets lynched, shoot the non-Tracker first which guarantees the Tracker only gets the pretty uninformative N1 result. Then you're mostly just dealing with 2 confirmed townies, which isn't town-sided as far as I know (the 7p set-up with 2 masons had a 8/9 scum win rate); certainly it's not uncommon for both PRs to go uncounterclaimed in a Matrix6 game anyway.