[SETUP] In Another's Hands

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[SETUP] In Another's Hands

Post Post #0 (ISO) » Fri Jan 06, 2017 3:35 pm

Post by implosion »

3 mafia goons, 6 vanilla townies. Oh boy, a vanilla variant!

At setup creation, the player list is randomly partitioned into three groups, each with two VTs and one goon. Call the groups A, B, and C.

There are two phases, the second of which may not occur at all. In the first phase, there is a day in which each group has a member lynched; however, each group's lynchee will be voted on by a different group. Members of group A get to vote on who to lynch in group B, B->C, and C->A. Each group will have 3 active votes, so each group will take 2 votes to lynch. All three lynches will be flipped simultaneously, upon which:

-if no mafia members were lynched, the mafia wins.
-if 2-3 mafia members were lynched, the town wins.
-if 1 mafia member was lynched, proceed to the second phase.

Note that some lynch in all 3 groups would be required, so you'd have to do first-to-plurality lynching at deadline.

In the second phase, one group will contain two confirmed townies. The other two groups will contain one mafia each. Each of the two confirmed townies gets a guess at the scumteam, which must be made publicly in-thread (either one can go first). After the first guess, the mod will respond with either "correct" (in which case the game ends and town wins) or incorrect. If it was incorrect, the mod doesn't flip anyone's alignment yet, and the other townie gets their guess, which decides the game (if they're correct town wins, if they're wrong scum wins).

Spoiler: EV calculation
EV is 13/27 for the town.
Assuming each group has a 1/3 chance of lynching scum, then the odds are 8/27 that scum win in phase 1, 7/27 that town win in phase 1 (1/27 that they lynch all 3 scum + 6/27 that they lynch 2), and 12/27 that the game proceeds to phase 2. Phase 2 is a 50/50, as the town gets to guess 2 out of 4 possible scum teams.


I think this setup might be hilariously more scumsided than the EV would indicate because one could argue that asking a group of 3 people (one of whom is scum) to lynch correctly within a different group of 3 people requires two townies to both successfully guess the scum out of that group of 3, giving odds of 1/9 per group. But it's of course not that simple because bussing etc. I have a lot of variations in mind as well that would change it without changing the EV. Among them:

Spoiler: variations
-Groups lynch within themselves, instead of within other groups. I don't really like this because it turns the game into 3 subgames that needn't interact with each other at all, but it would fix the probable scumsided-ness.

-Each person gets two votes, one for each of the two groups that they aren't in. This might solve the scumsidedness in a sense because it would probably encourage bussing a bit more. It would complicate things, though.

-Remove the restrictions on who can vote for whom, and everyone gets three votes. Also works but becomes a bit unruly I think.

-Instead of phase 1 being a single day, it's split over 3 (nightless) days. Either each day could have a designated group to lynch in, or, better IMO, all groups would be available to lynch on the first day, and subsequent days would allow lynching in any group that hasn't been lynched in yet. This could be combined with any of the previous ideas; in particular, you could simply remove the restrictions on voting and everyone has one vote per day and it takes majority to lynch, but you simply can't vote for anyone in a group that's already had someone lynched.


I'm not really sure how interesting this would be. I think the variation-less dynamic could be interesting; as town, you have your group that you're a part of, you have the group that you're trying to pin the scum in, and you have the group that you're trying to plead to, and it would be a challenge to figure out where to focus. As scum, you have considerations of whether to distance from the scumbuddy in the group you're voting for by bussing, or distance from the buddy who can vote for you, etc. Bussing could potentially pay off if the game reaches phase 2 because obviously a scum will be flipped and the town will be using that info, but it could jeopardize phase 1.
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Post Post #1 (ISO) » Tue Jan 10, 2017 10:35 pm

Post by TierShift »

Are you familiar with the triplicate setup? link
Even if people have to vote within their own group, as mafia, it is ridiculously easy to convince people not to vote you, as there is absolutely no information to go off. It will become a lot easier for scum if you let others decide for the group. In practice, most games will be over after phase 1 with a mafia win. A phase 1 town win is going to be super rare. In the final day, scumbuddies probably might be able to distance. Bussing in phase 1 is suboptimal.

I also don't see the fun factor increase from triplicate, where there is always room to analyse previous days' wrongdoings.
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Post Post #2 (ISO) » Tue Jan 10, 2017 10:46 pm

Post by TierShift »

Like, you will be stuck in perpetual day 1 without anything to analyse, most likely. Would you like to play in that game?
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