[JANUARY CHALLENGE]

[Jingle]

I assumed it was Nightless. Like the setup it came from. It's basically a hydra 4p which is kinda cool in itself. (MOAR TINY SETUPS!)

[Jingle]

Isn't it better for the Poisoner simply not to act (except in an emergency)? Doing so would pretty much out them as scum, as it can't be hard to tell which Neighbourizer is which. (Strange though it looks for scum to have an extra kill and not use it.)

I don't think a Weak Neighbourizer is enough by itself to balance an 8:3 (although in an Open, there's always the risk of some sort of absurd claiming strategy). Note that scum will, if run up, claim to have been Neighbourized; any attempt by town to counterclaim this will lead to scum learning the identity of one of the confirmed townies (and if it happens D2, town can't counterclaim because they don't know whether the scum Neighbourizer acted, and thus no townie has enough information to know that the claim is false). If the scum Neighbourizer is forced to claim and survives the lynch for that night, they can poison someone overnight in the knowledge that they're doomed the next day anyway, so they may as well take someone with them.

It's a choice between an extra kill and presumably outing the IC for their own death if they act D1. Whether or not you should act D1 is kinda up in the air. Otherwise, it's pretty much a suicide bomber that also ends the day.

The scum could presumably dodge a lynch D2 based on a claim, but it would only save them for a day. I think you're right about this needing something else for town though. Perhaps a protective role?

[callforjudgement]

Adding power roles to Opens is always awkward because they can confirm themself via claiming.

If not for that effect, though, I'd suggest a protective role that only works on VTs (Simple Doctor). This wouldn't work against poison kills.

[Jingle]

Actually, I think JK might be right. I just realized if the scum neighborizer activates on N1 they probably get two kills out of it, so the extra town power is kind of necessary.

Updated submission:

Poisonous Neighborhoods

2 Mafia Goon
1 Mafia Neighborizer/Poisoner

1 Weak Neighborizer
1 Jailkeeper
6 VT

Poisoner poisons everyone he neighborizes, they die at the beginning of the next night.
JK doesn't stop Poison.
Neighbors add new players to the same neighborhood.

[Jingle]

Is there any reason the jester doesn't claim in XLO? Like, there's no reason not to lynch them if they claim, right?

oh man, you're right. They can even claim day 1. Anyway, I too missed the fact that the setup has to have 11 players.

I wonder how close to balanced it is if the Jester lynch is game ending and town only have to lynch the goons? You might be able to drop it to 11p with that.

[Not Known 15]

No, you are missing something. Two things: 1. Let's assume mislynch and miskill - you are at 5:3 correct... then mislynch would send the game to night 4:3. If the three selected people are townies(who circle-invite themselves to the bunker ONLY if it is a mislynch) then town will survive the night and the three Mafia get voted out(and they have to be Mafia because Mafia would have otherwise killed someone, and won)

a) Finding a three-player townbloc in a 4:3 setup is very hard.
b) It doesn't even help. Scum will just kill the uninvited townie, leading to a 3:3 setup which is a ascum win.

If it is a Mafia lynch Day 2 after mislynch and miskill then the bloc does not activate. You form a bloc of 2. Then you lynch. A Town lynch activates the bloc of 2 who protect each other, if they aren't both townies Mafia wins, otherwise mafia is outed.

So at this point, we have three dead townies and one dead scum going into Night 2: that's 5:2. If scum kills someone (which they will do if you persist with your strategy of "everyone protect the Conspirator"), we're at 4:2 going into Day 3. Assuming a town lynch (as you are above), we'll be at 4:2 or 3:2 going into Night 3. In either of these setups, forming a bloc of 2 (which presumably cross-protect, with nobody else protecting for fear of strengthening scum) is not enough to out scum, they'll just kill outside the bloc (reaching a lylo 3:2 or a winning 2:2 as appropriate).

Actually, I think I see the flaw in your reasoning: in the 3:2 ending, you seem to be assuming that the Conspirator nominates two townies to cross-protect, and

also

that the Conspirator themself is protected. But town only have two protections, and three players to use them on (the Conspirator isn't a Bunker Guard).

A Mafia lynch sends the game to 4:1. A death sends the game to 3:1. Now the Town wins when there is no kill, so the Conspirator now forms a bloc of 2 cross-protecting each other and then No Lynch happens.
If the bloc contains mafia, it's 1v1 at LYLO next day. If not, town wins.

This is an example of the flaw in your reasoning. At 3:1, you have Conspirator, 2 Bunker Guards, 1 Goon. If the plan is for two players to cross-protect, scum will simply kill the Conspirator (who can't cross-protect due to not being able to protect). That takes the setup to a 2:1 where you've gained no information about whether or not scum was in the townbloc.

Note-this is the optimal strategy, but that doesn't mean that it has a very good win rate. It's just not very interesting to play that way.

I'm pretty sure that the optimal strategy is to try to block the scum from killing, thus giving you more time to lynch them (as opposed to your strategy, which gives the scum a kill basically every night). Even if you don't stop the kill, you can probably at least guide it away from the best scumhunters and most townish-looking players, forcing scum to make a suboptimal kill.

Ah yeah right I missed something. But then the setup is scumsided.

probably at least guide it away from the best scumhunters and most townish-looking players, forcing scum to make a suboptimal kill.

No. It actually doesn't force scum to do that. Only if they are the most scummy players and in that instance they would lose anyways!

[Not Known 15]

Updated submission(Edit:Updated again):

Swift Decisions(2)

1

Town Patrol(Watcher+Bodyguard)

1

Town Disloyal Ninja Roleblocker

1

Town Night 1-3 Commuter

5

Vanilla Townies

1

Mafia (Day 3 Suicidal) Traitor

Dies at the start of Day 3.
1

Mafia Strongman

1

Mafia (Ninja Psychologist)

(Removes Suicidal; Ninja only works on Psychologist - not on the nightkill)
Compulsive Mafia Nightkill.

[Not Known 15]

Actually, I think JK might be right. I just realized if the scum neighborizer activates on N1 they probably get two kills out of it, so the extra town power is kind of necessary.

Updated submission:

Poisonous Neighborhoods

2 Mafia Goon
1 Mafia Neighborizer/Poisoner

1 Weak Neighborizer
1 Jailkeeper
6 VT

Poisoner poisons everyone he neighborizes, they die at the beginning of the next night.
JK doesn't stop Poison.
Neighbors add new players to the same neighborhood.

This looks.... scumsided. Town has only one mislynch by default.

[Jingle]

That is a valid point (I don't like the potential scumwin N2) but the >25% for a stopped kill N1 kind of helps that, along with the presumable autoscumlynch D3 and potential autoscumlynch D2 if Weak Neighbor flips. It'll be a mess because of the number of variables, but I might try to calculate EV by hand tonight.

[Jingle]

2/3 chance of a townlynch D1.
7/9 chance of two successful kills if JK outed (optimal for scum).
5/6 Neighbor NOT poisoned (optimal for scum).

So there's a ~43% chance of an 8 person LYLO D2 with 2-3 confirmed town. 50% or greater chance to lynch scum, and either that gets rid of a kill or there's a confscum the next day.

Even if the neighbor dies and isn't the poisonee (1/3 of the previous) and it's a 7 person LYLO any scum lynch keeps the game going and there's a confirmed scum (Via poisoner, and also possibly the Neighbor target, depending on crumbing/claiming).

It's definitely a short setup, but I don't think it's scumsided. In fact, the fact that it hits LYLO/MYLO so early is probably necessary to prevent the potential clears from becoming townsiding.

Too many variables to keep track of to want to go through with an actual EV calculation though.

[BuJaber]

Toxic Neighborhood v2

1 Mafia Heavy Smoker

(Traitor + poisoner variation)

1 Mafia Poison Doctor
1 Mafia backup Poison Doctor

1 Town Neighborizer
1 Town Poison Doctor
1 Town Backup Poison Doctor
5 VTs

This is now an OPEN setup.

Flavor of poison doctor is a gas mask vendor (hands out masks that protect from the smoke).

Mafia have regular kills. If they nightkill the heavy smoker the smoker is recruited. The following night they will be part of the mafia PT and will poison them that night (and every night thereafter). Poisoned players are killed the night after they are poisoned. (So if smoker is recruited night 2 any other living mafia become poisoned day 3 and die day 4, unless the poison doctor protects them on day 3).

Heavy smoker knows the identity of the mafia but mafia do not know the identity of the heavy smoker.

Mafia do not have daychat.
MAFIA AND TOWN POISON DOCTORS CAN SELF-TARGET.
Mafia poison doctor cannot kill and protect at the same time.

Town and Mafia poison doctors only protect if they target someone the same night they are poisoned (not the night they are destined to die as the poison would already be in their system).

Neighborhood has day chat.

Neighborizer can add one person per night to their neighborhood. If the neighborizer targets the heavy smoker (recruited or not recruited), the heavy smoker joins the neighborhood and infects everyone in it the following night (and every night thereafter). The infected players will die the night after they are infected, unless the poison doctor protects them the same night they are infected.
(So if heavy smoker joins neighborhood start of day 3, they infect everyone in it on night 3, and those players will die night 4, unless poison doctor targetted them night 3).

I think this is now a much better setup. Recruiting the traitor now comes at a price to scum. On the other hand the traitor wants to be recruited by neighborizer.

Having the heavy smoker in your PT (neighborhood or scum PT) is a constant threat and the doctor is forced to choose only 1 person to protect, thus choosing to prolong their own life or protect someone else.

Because of this town poison doctor (and backup) want to avoid being neighborized for as long as possible.

[BuJaber]

Actually now that the 'hidden in smoke' aspect is no longer there heavy smoker doesn't really fit thematically, they are now simply diseased.. so plague spreader or patient zero or something like that is a better name.

[northsidegal]

voting time?

[Irrelephant11]

Ye sorry
Very busy IRL
tw made a Google poll which was nice of him: https://goo.gl/forms/DLt0aUerS8DUs1sB2

Voting starts now and goes until 72 hours from now!

[Irrelephant11]

Remember that setup-makers have to vote!!

[the worst]

damn you all for making such awesome setups this is a difficult vote

[Jingle]

I would suggest using darts.

[callforjudgement]

Ye sorry
Very busy IRL
tw made a Google poll which was nice of him: https://goo.gl/forms/DLt0aUerS8DUs1sB2

Voting starts now and goes until 72 hours from now!

The voting mechanism here is broken in several different ways (read the section I linked onwards in the Wikipedia page).

With the particular variant you're using, if I have three setups I like and one that I kind-of like, my only possible rating choices are 10, 9, 8, 0 and 10, 9, 8, 7. Both of those would be a big distortion. The voting mechanism therefore encourages giving points to setups you think have no chance of winning in order to allow you to give fewer points to others (e.g. giving 7 points to a setup you're sure will lose so that your fourth choice can gain 6 rather than 7, or voting for your own setup to use up a voting slot and thus giving fewer points to other setups); this encouragement has backfired in practice in the past and caused terrible candidates to win. It also makes it more likely that a setup will win if it's similar to several other submitted setups, regardless of its actual merits.

If you're willing to restart the votes, I'd recommend something simple like "rate each setup from 0-10, you can give the same rating to multiple setups if you wish, please rate your own setup as 10 (unless you don't like it) so that all the self-votes cancel each other out, highest average rating wins; using the entire range of ratings is recommended unless you have no strong preference". If not, we should move to something like that for next time.

Incidentally, I had Internet issues accessing the voting pages, so it's possible that my votes have been submitted twice. In such a case, either they'll be identical or one of the copies will be blank, so it should be obvious what my intended votes were.

damn you all for making such awesome setups this is a difficult vote

Could you tone back / retract the language there, please? I know you're joking, but those are strong words to aim at people who are only trying to help.

[the worst]

oh yeah, sorry. it was meant completely ironically, it's definitely a nice dilemma to have.

I aired some feedback on the voting system as well; I think a pretty open discussion is warranted after we've run through the January poll but I think Irrelephant borrowed it from another game format because he's a bit strapped for time..

[BuJaber]

Why not a regular vote for favorite setup, and if there is a tie another vote between the tied setups?

[Irrelephant11]

Yeah I started this contest without a second thought about the logistics & don’t really have time lately for logistics. There’s almost certainly better voting methods and maybe better rules regarding submission. They’re all open questions worth discussing and I’m not sure I want to be in charge of next month’s contest in any real way if someone else thinks they’d be great at it

That said, if all voters vote honestly I think the best setup is likely to win. Any voting system *could probably* be rigged by its participants, but I like to think no one here will so desperately need to win this small contest (especially since the prizes for winning are also free to have for anyone who mods &/or starts their own Open Setup threads) that they’d try to manipulate things around to that end

[BuJaber]

You're absolutely right, it just felt cruel to give less desirable setups a lower score, yet it was better than leaving it blank.

[Jingle]

Eh. There's 12 setups, so I just put them in order and didn't vote the 13p setup. (Or mine)

[BNL]

Sorry the voting method confuses me, I have to give my favourite setup 1 point and less favourite setups 10 points? I feel the use of "points" and "rank" confusing

[the worst]

Yup that's the crux of it.

A score of "1" on the vote card means you give the setup 12 points. A vote of "10" means you give it 1 point.

Sorry for the confusion; once we're through this round it'll be easier to all collab on an easier system I think.