The New Newbie Game Setup

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Post Post #90 (isolation #0) » Sat Sep 23, 2017 7:36 am

Post by callforjudgement »

I'm worried that this setup will lead to a lot of mod errors. My experience is that very few players and mods really understand NAR, and it's very relevant in some setups.

Here's an example (which I expect many people to get right but many to get wrong): scum RB kills town RB and blocks town JK, town RB blocks scum RB, town JK jailkeeps the scum RB. What happens?

Spoiler: What actually happens
Even though the scum RB takes precedence when there's an action loop, and there
is
an action loop here (the scum RB and town JK cross-blocking), there's also an action that isn't interfered with: nobody is trying to prevent the town RB's action (the kill attempt wouldn't count as stopping an action). So by NAR's Golden Rule, that triggers first, blocking all the scum RB's actions. The jailkeep on the scum RB also therefore succeeds, although it doesn't matter because the scum RB couldn't act anyway (it would matter if someone tried to vig the RB, as it'd cause that to fail).


EDIT: Based on discussion in this thread, a second example: scum RB kills and blocks town RB, town RB blocks town JK, town JK jailkeeps scum RB. What happens?

Spoiler: What actually happens
We now actually do have an action loop involving all the actions but the kill (and the kill is potentially blocked as part of the loop). So we pick the scum roleblock to automatically succeed (as it's the first action in tiebreak order). That works, blocking the town RB. As a result, nothing is blocking the town JK, so the scum RB is jailkept; their roleblock has already happened but their kill hasn't, and so the kill doesn't go through.



In other news, I agree that a clearer way to represent the setup is needed. What about this?: (it uses different die rolls but is mathematically equivalent, and makes the structure of the setup clear)

3d3Randomly select one role each from the following lists:
  • Mafia Roleblocker, Town Doctor, Town Rolecop
  • Mafia Rolecop, Town Tracker, Town Roleblocker
  • Mafia Goon, Town Cop, Town Jailkeeper
If
exactly one
Mafia role is selected this way, then add 1 Mafia Goon and 5 vanilla Townies to form a 9-player setup.
Otherwise, reroll the entire setup.
Last edited by callforjudgement on Sat Sep 23, 2017 7:45 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post Post #96 (isolation #1) » Mon Sep 25, 2017 10:11 am

Post by callforjudgement »

In post 95, Something_Smart wrote:Here's another possibility for a table. In this one, you simply pick one mafia role and then pick one town role from each adjacent box, adding a Mafia Goon and 5 VT's.
Mafia Roleblocker
Town Tracker

----OR----
Town Roleblocker
Town Cop

----OR----
Town Jailkeeper
Mafia Goon
Town Doctor

----OR----
Town Rolecop
Mafia Rolecop

I think this makes it even easier to quickly understand the possible setups, and it isn't as busy. It doesn't detail exactly how the setup is chosen like the others do, but the table is meant for players (and the moderator is given the setup to use by the listmod anyway).
I like this one. It's faster to read than mine is, and it shows the structure of the setup just as well.
It might look better as an image than as a table, though, so that it could be more symmetrical. Perhaps it could be more symmetrical with table markup, too:

Mafia
Roleblocker
Town Cop

or
Jailkeeper
Town Tracker

or
Roleblocker
Mafia
Rolecop
Mafia
Goon
Town Doctor

or
Rolecop


There's still annoying amounts of asymmetry here, though. Any ideas how to make all the columns the same width? Removing the borders on the "blank" cells would also be nice; you can do that in HTML but I'm not sure you can do it in BBcode.
scum
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town
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Post Post #101 (isolation #2) » Mon Sep 25, 2017 1:46 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Does 3. apply even if the Roleblocker isn't targeting the Jailkeeper? (If so, it violates NAR.)
Your case 2. also violates NAR (although in that case it's probably possible to fudge the tiebreak so that it works).
That said, I'm not at all sure we should be using NAR; despite being "natural", very few people really understand it, and it's frequently modded wrong in practice.
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Post Post #106 (isolation #3) » Mon Sep 25, 2017 2:45 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

In post 103, mhsmith0 wrote:#3 is irrelevant if not mutually targeting. Roleblocker doesn't override the protect side of jailkeeper (if they target same slot), and if they don't touch each other it doesn't really matter.
Not quite. In some action resolution methods (such as SNARF), {JK A blocks roleblocker B, roleblocker blocks goon C, goon C kills player D} will cause player D to survive. There are no mutual targets there. In NAR, player D will always die no matter how you do the tiebreaks, because the Golden Rule forces A's action to be processed first, and so B will always be blocked and C will never be blocked.
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Post Post #108 (isolation #4) » Mon Sep 25, 2017 2:58 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Even the main NAR page says "if the Golden Rule doesn't apply, use the list; if the list doesn't apply, use any fair tiebreak". Working out the tiebreaks in advance is fair (and that's what Normal NAR does).

Incidentally, in RAR (which effectively uses NAR's Golden Rule but has a different tiebreak), blocking cycles entirely cancel each other out; all the blocks in the cycle fail, and any other actions taken by players in the cycle (e.g. the protect half of a Jailkeeper action, a Mafia Roleblocker's kill) continue to function. That said, although I'm happy with RAR as a system, I'm not happy with the way I explained it on the wiki; there must surely be a simpler way to explain it.
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Post Post #116 (isolation #5) » Mon Sep 25, 2017 5:57 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

A d3 is normally a d6 with the same number on opposite sides.

It's possible to construct a fair dice which does have exactly three sides (basically you start with a triangular prism and then curve the sides to meet at a point at each end), but people rarely bother.
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Post Post #136 (isolation #6) » Tue Sep 26, 2017 10:20 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Right, my point about the three-way block interaction wasn't so much "are you sure this interaction works how you want?" as "are you sure that an interaction this complex, and very likely to be moderated incorrectly, has a place in newbie games?".

How does it change the balance of the setup to make one or more of the blockers unblockable? That would help simplify things a lot.
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Post Post #235 (isolation #7) » Fri Nov 03, 2017 7:41 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Scum can still survive that via fakeclaiming Neapolitan D2, although they might well not think of it (as I can't see any reason why they'd know the situation had happened).
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Post Post #251 (isolation #8) » Tue Nov 14, 2017 5:39 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Actually, last I checked Normals with a Mafia Encryptor tended to be close to balanced, meaning that that role is being judged correctly. (Roleblocker isn't, though; scum nearly always win a Normal if they have one of those.)
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Post Post #253 (isolation #9) » Tue Nov 14, 2017 6:33 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Hmm, maybe I misremembered the statistics or maybe they were really old.
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