[SETUP] Pick the Deck

[Something_Smart]

It's not like scum will want to jump into that mechanical PoE w/ a fakeclaim most of the time

Why not? It seems like a pretty standard play for scum to pick 5 town roles, randomly assign 3-5 of them, and claim the others.

[Irrelephant11]

Because town has to hit 20 points minimum.

So either:

1. Scum gives three very powerful TPRs and takes 0 counter-roles. Scum can fakeclaim easily but now town has three very powerful TPRs with 0 mafia counter-roles. Not that scumsided
2. Scum gives 5 very powerful TPRs and takes some counter-power, like a strongman shot or two. Scum has ways to counteract town's night actions, but can't fakeclaim very easily (because they'd get cc'd, since there can't be duplicates of things)

Yes, the fact that both of these are possibilities means you can't 100% trust when a TPR claims. But in a massclaim scenario, you've now got e.g. 5 strong roles, and there's no way that more than 2 of those are lies. Or you've got 5 weak claims and 2 strong claims, and it's extremely unlikely both strong claims are lies, etc. And then any future scum flips help narrow down how likely it is that the PR claims are town or not, based on the point values of things.

Like I said,

make

the "scumsided" setup. Then when you spend a little longer considering the open nature of that setup, I think the fears of scumsidedness melt away a significant amount.

[Ausuka]

I'm not that experienced with setup design but originally I was thinking like, a risk of counterclaiming the PRs is that over time the claim could become less credible - like, if you claim an insignificant role it doesn't change much for the calculations, and if you claim a significant role people will ask "why aren't they getting nightkilled".

I guess raising the points of strongman or eliminating backups could maybe be a potential solution. Like, I like the design freedom it gives but if it ruins balance the game really doesn't need backups. And strongman is undeniably much stronger in this format than in normal games.

I assumed people were thinking of lots of unbalanced ideas I wasn't seeing and if that's the case this probably won't work but like idk

[Ausuka]

Originally this game was significantly simpler. If this is a middle ground scenario where there are enough problems to the point where patching it up but the setup isn't too fundamentally broken, there's a lot of roles here that I don't think are strictly necessary but provide some design space. The setup doesn't really need watcher, ninja, psychologist, mailman, hider, alien... Etc. I think it's definitely more fun with those if it can be done but I'm not unwilling to trim out some of these roles if it could make this idea playable. I spent quite a bit of effort and was excited about it so I would like to make it work if it's possible at all.

[Irrelephant11]

If this gets run a million times, I'm sure some of the role choices will become obvious and it will need tweaks to stay interesting

But from where I'm sitting it's an interesting setup without obvious choices (partially by virtue of being complicated) meaning scum will have to experiment for at least the first few times it's run. I don't see huge flaws and I think anyone who signs up for this setup is likely to be the kind of person who would enjoy rolling scum and designing the setup

I'm sure lots of little tweaks could help, though (but also some of it probably just needs run to see how it actually ~works~). Maybe strongman should be 4/kill-stopping TPR?

[Enchant]

Does IC reveal at daystart?

If yes, then Friendly Neighbour is more powerful on my opinion.

[Ausuka]

IC was intended to be reveal at will, that's the version I'm familiar with. Sorry if unclear. I'll nerf strongman and also add that to the notes.

[Enchant]

If town have rolecop.
Can mafia add rolecop for self as well?

[Ausuka]

My intention was no although I could see an argument for allowing town and mafia to have one of each role. I think having no duplicates and making a ranking, such as Jailkeeper > Alien > Roleblocker (I think this is fair but would probably want to consult, like, a NRG member before adding it to the rules) would really help in avoiding uncomfortable action resolution. Like, if they're different roles, it can be obvious which one wins if there's somehow some sort of conflict.

[Ausuka]

No multitasking takes away most of those concerns but I guess I want to be safe in case there's any funky interactions, particularly with like jailkepeer and alien

[Enchant]

Backup of existing role and backup of non existing role are copies or difderent roles in that respect?

[Enchant]

1. Can one townie roll different roles? For example receive Cop AND Doctor?
2. Mafia decided to perform bruh and added more than 12 roles for townies. What happens?

[Ausuka]

I see backup as a different role, if I understand you correctly

No, there's no multitasking or combined, I think that would take the complexity too far to be manageable

They can't add more than 12 roles, thst's illegal. I guess I'll add that to the notes too although I don't think anyone will actually try and put 13 town roles in the game

[Enchant]

Will you consider adding more roles?

For example Miller.

[Ausuka]

Will you consider adding more roles?

For example Miller.

I'd consider adding more roles, but I think I'd prefer to cut roles right now, I like letting ppl be creative but I think the most important thing is to keep it playable. Something like this can never be consistently balanced, but I think keeping the complexity not too high is good. I don't think miller does anything positive for the setup honestly.

On this subject I just realised gunsmith and a bunch of backups of roles with guns not in the game is maybe broken and I think removing backups of roles not in the game is a fine solution to that

[Something_Smart]

Like I said, make the "scumsided" setup. Then when you spend a little longer considering the open nature of that setup, I think the fears of scumsidedness melt away a significant amount.

Okay, sure, I can go through the procedure I had in mind.

We start with 5 possible roles: Doctor, Rolestopper, Jailkeeper, Alien, Roleblocker. Add 10 Vanillas and distribute them randomly to alignments, as if you were randing a setup as a mod.

I did this, and rolled 2 Vanillas and JK for scum. That means town gets doc, rolestopper, alien, and RB, and scum will fakeclaim JK. The only time you'd need to reroll this is if scum gets 3 PR's, so PR claims are ever so slightly above average to be town, at least before any scum flip.

Doc + rolestopper + alien + RB = 28 points, so scum have 8 points for counters. There's a few ways to assign counters, but 1-shot strongman and 2-shot JK seem to work pretty well off the top of my head. Scum really aren't in trouble unless they get down to one member, and even then, two of them have the ability to false-clear themselves if that happens. It's basically impossible to setup spec anyone town, and a blocked kill gains back half a mislim, sure, but it provides 0 info.

And, probably more importantly, this setup would be

miserable

to play as town.

[Ausuka]

I mean, as written, scum can't do 1 shot strongman. I agree that's counterintuitive but I think it sort of prevents that kind of abuse.

[Ausuka]

Like, the whole point of making it scale with protectives is that scum really can't afford a strongman with that many killstopoing roles, it is not possible to do. Of course if you allow strongman to be 1 shot then that is unbalanced.

I guess I could just remove strongman and ninja. Like, if they're going to cause that much of a problem, they aren't really necessary.

[Ausuka]

Also like, scum are sentient beings. They can simply not design a setup that is miserable to play? Like, yes theoretically they could make a terrible setup, but if we can identify and remove things that strongly incentivise them to do so like strongman abuse I think the mafia would rather have fun with the setup, right?

[Something_Smart]

Oh, well that doesn't make any sense, strongman isn't passive.

And I mean miserable for town, not necessarily for scum.

[Ausuka]

Oh, well that doesn't make any sense, strongman isn't passive.

And I mean miserable for town, not necessarily for scum.

I guess I can change the name of the category if that's important. I don't want modifiers to be able to apply to strongman, because although it's counterintuitive, stuff like 1x strongman is indeed broken in a game like this

All I can say on the second point is that I would rather play a setup with a ton of killstopping roles as town than scum and from what I've read of reviews, it's a pretty common viewpoint that scum find not being able to kill people frustrating and it's bad to use to many killstopping roles for that reason?

[Ausuka]

Or I could just, uh, remove Strongman. I think that addresses most of the concerns that have been raised so far and I don't think it's important to have?

[Something_Smart]

Yeah I think that. Full strongman is a pretty silly role in general.

And I feel like a lot of the time the frustration from not being able to kill someone is tied to having someone you want to kill? With no investigative PR's, that's less of a big deal. Idk I'm not saying every scumteam will pick it, but some might, and then the game won't be fun.

[Ausuka]

Strongman and ninja are gone

I feel like scum will probably not want to expose themselves to the risk of tons of kills getting stopped, and worst case scenario doctor and rolestopper protecting each other. I think even if there are no investigative PRs scum will definitely still be annoyed by kills not going through? Like, I imagine it would be frustrating to eliminate town after town yet the game is extended because you put a ton of protectives in the game and now your kills keep not going through.

In particular I imagine in order to reduce this risk scum will have to kill the killstopping roles so they will still have targets

If this is an actual problem in practice I feel like you could just regulate that there can be no more than 1 protective and 1 roleblocking role on the town side, or something like that

[Enchant]

I created setup. Please rate. (I tried to make it terrible as possible, but i find it's still playable)

1. Gunsmith - 10
2. Odd-Night Detective - 4?
3. Neapolitan - 0
4. 1-Shot Rolecop - 1
5. Vengeful - 3
6. 1-Shot Vigilante - 3
7. Innocent Child - 5
8. Backup of Neapolitan - 0
9. NotExistingBackup of Traffic Analyst - -1
10. Universal Backup - 3
11. Town Neighbour - 0
12. Town Neighbour - 0
13. Mafia Neighbour - 0
14. Mafia Neighbour - 0
15. Mafia Traitor Neighbour - 2

Points: 30


I called this GUNPHORIA.

While it doesh't make sense to make EXACT this setup (especially if town knows it), it opens room to replace any of town PRs with Town Neighbour and instead let Mafia claim it, including all three.