[REVIEW] Open Setup Reviews

[Ether]

I like SCIENCE--I mean, I like small games, I like masons and I love daytalking--but I might be biased.

I'm bringing over Chosen to the discussion for approval too, given it is a popular open setup that has been run before.

To clarify a couple of things; mafia select one townie to be immune from being chosen. Chosen Townies flip Chosen Townie.

Mafia might someday win in the variants with multiple Chosen, I guess. (To my knowledge, four games have been run with only one and one has been run with two. So far, town has never lost.) Kind of hard to say more. I think there's a lot of dumb luck behind who gets lynched in any given day, and replacements muck it up a lot in versions where the mafia are reliant on vetoes. Which they aren't in this version, so I guess that's all right?

The self-vote as two votes thing isn't necessary in any game where there's the same or more Chosen Ones as mafiates. It prevents a situation where there are equal numbers of town and mafia, but a non-chosen townie needs to die to kick the endgaming clause into effect.

[Ether]

That was actually my original plan to run the game, back when I thought scum had it easy. Now I'm not really wild about adding that element, though. I kind of think scaring townies out of lynching bad players is unhealthy for the game and makes it less fun to play, plus replacements mess with it anyway.

I'd see if scum are consistently unable to handle double chosens before trying anything else.

[Ether]

Why is the old version of Pick Your Poison still in the queue? When would scum ever choose to add a cop into the game? The novelty never becomes relevant.

Patrick's made alternative versions, though I don't know if they're normal. I'm still nostalgic over PYP2.

[Ether]

Are we assuming that more experienced players would fare exactly the same as a horde of flaky newbies?

[Ether]

It's more accurate to say that I think inexperienced players are worse at playing town than scum. The very very basics are harder to pick up.

[Ether]

All of the town power roles are pretty weak; I think a setup combining any of them would work fine with three goons. So my first inclination is to downgrade the other two roles, even though I know that doesn't really fit in with the "poison" theme.

[Ether]

You should post new setups in this thread, not here. They get taken here if there's interest in them.

With that said, that's kind of all over the place. What's the point of the mafia inventor, especially given that its boon is completely random? Why does a 10-player game need a town power role that can be used as a vig, let alone both that and a serial killer? Is there a reason for the name "Two-Faced?" I...guess it's kind of interesting that there's a motion detector in a game where over half of the game have night actions, but in general there just isn't a lot of rhyme or reason to the roles in this setup.

I had comments on the micros and larges back in the contest thread, which I can repost if people care.

[Ether]

Forest Fire:
Maybe! It'll be kind of weirdly long for a micro, between the tree stumps and the fact that mafia won't be killing most nights. If you hate how you always die in mafia games and you have to stop talking, this is the game for you. This might be townsided, but it's hard to say, because as we've just established, towns are kind of dumb.

Modern Trio:
Eh, seems all right. (Gaolers aren't really modern, though. They've been around for a long, long time. That doesn't make them any less classy.)

Grey Flag Nightless:
I do like setups that force scum to behave differently. At nine players and only one nightkill across the game, it's a large enough game that I'd kind of expect those EVs to mean it's a bit townsided in practice. I'm probably overestimating town, though.

09:12:
I think the clock format is interesting, but the roles themselves just seem haphazardly thrown in. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to what obscure roles got added (why do you need both a follower and a rolecop?), or what got paired up with what. (Do the babysitter and the mafia roleblocker really need to be together? Can't you just let the poor thing have its vengekill?) I guess at least the strongman was sandwiched between two protective roles

(what happens when a jailer and a doctor target each other? This needs to be determined beforehand)

, so there's that. I say all this, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's fun to play.

Kill All Townies:
Huh. Maybe? It's hard to think about how a game of this would actually go. But I kind of like the idea of keeping town lynches up when they're often drowned out in multiball games, and it's an interesting strategy element for scum. I'm not sold on giving the town a vig, though...and at the same time, this setup still faces the standard multiball issue that town can lose the majority entirely while the game still lurches on.

Elemental Large:
The whole schtick seems completely arbitrary. Is there any strategy to which kill to use? Then eventually you kill two doctors, and the other two become completely useless except as named townies, because even if a scumbag dies, its teammates will pick up its element anyway. The serial killer makes this swingier, but it can be outed at any point by the tracker--there isn't a ton of concern for its wellbeing, and honestly just not that much reason for it to exist. I think a large game with scum themed as elements could be interesting, but this isn't the way to do it.

I kind of want to design a semiopen template based on that asymmetrical Elemental premise. Semiopen templates don't get enough love on this site.

I posted Watcher Multiball years ago. I usually dislike town watchers, at least in closed setups...but they're pretty cool scum roles in multiball games, forcing the scum to outguess each other and giving them incentives to get into fights. So yeah, 11 PM's interesting. I just hope the scum don't consistently wipe each other out.

Sharing is Caring...kind of interesting. I don't think it's optimal for the vig to ever use its power, meaning the mafia doctor's not much use either, but since the vig is an individual player who might

really

want to kill someone, that's a matter of restraint and it's not a bad thing.

Law, Order and Shallow Relationships is swingy and random and WIFOM-soaked and it is not my thing. But it's someone else's, so I guess there's that.

[Ether]

Trying to get extra opinions for a game I'm about to run!

The Odds

(10 players)
2 mafia

vs.

7 vanilla townies
1 doctor

Normally that would give each player a 20% chance of being scum, but in The Odds, different people have different chances ranging from 5% to 35%, and their chances are on public display on the front page. (If who gets what percentage is decided nonrandomly, I don't think that detracts from the game at all. Some people like a certain alignment more, or like the danger of having higher odds, and will find the game more fun if they have a say in it.) The doctor is weighted the same way, so a player with a higher percentage is much more likely to be scum or the doctor.

To figure out the scum, I'll roll two numbers between 1 and 40. Each percentage corresponds to different numbers:

• 5% - 1
  10% - 2-3
  15% - 4-6
  15% - 7-9
  20% - 10-13
  20% - 14-17
  25% - 18-22
  25% - 23-27
  30% - 28-33
  35% - 34-40

(Note that even the player most likely to be scum still has about 2 out of 3 odds of being town.)

That was the version the last time I posted it! (Although now I'm leaning toward not tying the town power role to the odds.) But I'm not sure it's enough for the town.

The current version has a town gaoler, and gives the mafia daytalk and a 1-shot factional roleblock to snipe the gaoler if it claims. People I've spoken to seem to like that one fine, but I'm worried now that that would be a pretty balanced 10-player setup even without the odds mechanic.

[Ether]

I don't know anything about Kill All Townies, but giving the Hope+1 scumteam a one-shot watch makes sense to me.

[Ether]

What happened to Hard Boiled?