Baton Pass [Game Over!]

[OkaPoka]

Setup is theoretically scumsided but that's okay because town had lots of agency which makes it fun

[Ankamius]

I'd rather fix the parts of the setup that make it less fun than make it less scumsided

The site could really use more scumsided opens honestly

[northsidegal]

would anyone like to participate in my focus group for what game i run next

[Bitmap]

This setup favors those with strong personalities a bit too much.

[Kagami]

I'd rather fix the parts of the setup that make it less fun than make it less scumsided

The site could really use more scumsided opens honestly

I'm actually of the complete opposite persuasion!

I feel like games would be generally more fun if the site culture shifted toward setups where town would almost always win, and scum viewed their role more like cartoon villains who do some goofy/evil stuff but are ultimately overcome.

Winning/losing is already mostly irrelevant to many players, and unless they have a tremendous amount of time available to read and post, individual townies have little agency in a victory. The focus should be identifying types of player motivation (power-gamer, along-for-the-ride, rational detective, empathic reader, etc) and explicitly designing and advertising games that they will enjoy.

[Bitmap]

Where does "enabling RC to be a dictator" fall under?

[Tr1ckster]

Hiya Folks, I see the game is over. I haven't really read much of what happened during the game, but it looks like there are lots of interesting post-game things here. Thanks for running the game flawlessly, nsg, and I'm sorry that I wasn't able to fulfill my replacement responsibilities (in retrospect, I'd likely have had to bail in some capacity later even if things hadn't happened earlier than expected, but w/e).

Great job Volpe, by all accounts you played a great scum-game and that shouldn't be overshadowed by the shoshin rubbish.

I don't think the Shoshin thing is any more egregious than a lot of behavior that is largely considered par for the course. A lot of the anger in that direction seems to have shown up only ~after~ it was revealed that her slot is Mafia, which doesn't seem consistent with a principled stance on the transgression, and sounds more like sheer frustration at the loss. I personally think this and a great number of other common behaviors should be punished more severely, but that just isn't how the rules are enforced.

I would like to some things re: setup. In general, I'm very opinionated about setups and good game design; feel free to ignore the following.

Firstly, this is quite scum-sided, and I think it's pretty hard to argue otherwise. The EV is around 28% and would be ~42% even if the setup were 3v12. Generally, scum over-perform in mountainous, which makes this worse. On top of that, Town has to coordinate all baton passes (as they did) to even get those odds; failure to do so leans things more scum-ward. Normally, I think the balance of a setup is less of a problem than swinginess, but in this case, I feel like it's a bit extreme.

The central mechanic of the baton seems like it could use some adjustment, as three elements strike me as highly anti-fun.
1) It's clearly optimal to coordinate all the passes, which causes the passing phase itself to be a waste of time.
2) It will generally lead to contention between power-players who want to dictate all passes and other players who want to "have fun" or play the mechanic as intended.
3) It solidifies a "town leader" in a vanilla game, which will cause non-leaders to feel that they don't have much impact on the game's events.

Some setup ideas floating in my head that you might consider:
-3 mafia should be enough unless town becomes much, much stronger
-I feel like BP is just tacked on to make the baton vote more meaningful, not because it's expected to make the game better. Removing it resolves the permanent leader problem too.
-I'm not entirely sure there needs to be a baton vote at all, it seems somewhat inelegant. Maybe Day begins immediately with passing, starting with the NKed player and no pass on D1?
-The consequence for being left out is currently the same as being directly lynched, also seems inelegant. Maybe the pass decides gladiators who are then eligible for the lynch vote?
-If run like it currently is, I feel like there should be some way the mafia can muck with the pass (as I had mentioned in the maf PT).

I know I strongly contested Shoshins move regardless of alignment when it occurred and I believe several others did, too. At least in my case, and in others, too, I hope, the outrage towards shoshins move is unrelated to her alignment and whether we won or loss.

I also disagree that the optimal move for the entirety of the game is to coordinate passes, at least in the way we did, but I suspect this wasn't necessarily what you meant so I'll leave this be for now

[chennisden]

would anyone like to participate in my focus group for what game i run next

i volunteer as tribute

[Tr1ckster]

would anyone like to participate in my focus group for what game i run next

Yes. Please.

[OkaPoka]

Waves hi

[Dannflor]

Ooh what does being in a focus group entail?

[northsidegal]

i might ask you a bunch of questions about what ideas sound interesting to you

[Jingle]

would anyone like to participate in my focus group for what game i run next

Kingmaker

[Mathdino]

Where does "enabling RC to be a dictator" fall under?

would anyone like to participate in my focus group for what game i run next

Kingmaker

[Nancy Drew 39]

would anyone like to participate in my focus group for what game i run next

/in

[Nancy Drew 39]

would anyone like to participate in my focus group for what game i run next

i volunteer as tribute

The correct play is always to lynch President Snow.

[Dannflor]

I'd be interested!

[Tr1ckster]

I'd rather fix the parts of the setup that make it less fun than make it less scumsided

The site could really use more scumsided opens honestly

I'm actually of the complete opposite persuasion!

I feel like games would be generally more fun if the site culture shifted toward setups where town would almost always win, and scum viewed their role more like cartoon villains who do some goofy/evil stuff but are ultimately overcome.

Winning/losing is already mostly irrelevant to many players, and unless they have a tremendous amount of time available to read and post, individual townies have little agency in a victory. The focus should be identifying types of player motivation (power-gamer, along-for-the-ride, rational detective, empathic reader, etc) and explicitly designing and advertising games that they will enjoy.

I now understand. It has all clicked for me.

It is now clear as day why I have such massive difficulty with certain players.

I understand that there isn't really the site population to support this, but if there was a separate queue for people who felt this way and people who felt the other, I feel there might be significantly less drama in games.

I don't think playing in a game mode where town victory was more likely than scum would make this game really enjoyable for me at all. In fact that sounds terrible to me, but I'm now so much more aware of how different my persuasion is from other's and it very much explains why certain players take moves that are so far from optimal, yet still flip green.

[Tr1ckster]

Rather I don't think that playing in a game where scum viewed the game as already lost and few players took the game seriously because the odds were that town would win sounds enjoyable at all.

[Ankamius]

Rather I don't think that playing in a game where scum viewed the game as already lost and few players took the game seriously because the odds were that town would win sounds enjoyable at all.

Having recently played scum in a very high swing game swung towards town, it really isn't

[Formerfish]

Rather I don't think that playing in a game where scum viewed the game as already lost and few players took the game seriously because the odds were that town would win sounds enjoyable at all.

I think I get what is being said.

For this game town had to play almost perfect to win at all, which is a bad thing because one small misstep and we lose.

If scum had to do more to win the game they wouldnt sit back as much and let town eat themselves alive by allowing them to do it. It would force scum to have to make moves to try and win, or they will just lose eventually.

It takes the impetus off town to play perfect, and it puts the sword at scums feet to not fuck up too much.

[Ankamius]

Rather I don't think that playing in a game where scum viewed the game as already lost and few players took the game seriously because the odds were that town would win sounds enjoyable at all.

I think I get what is being said.

For this game town had to play almost perfect to win at all, which is a bad thing because one small misstep and we lose.

If scum had to do more to win the game they wouldnt sit back as much and let town eat themselves alive by allowing them to do it. It would force scum to have to make moves to try and win, or they will just lose eventually.

It takes the impetus off town to play perfect, and it puts the sword at scums feet to not fuck up too much.

It goes the same way in the other direction too, except the majority of the people that play on the site are significantly worse at scum so the game is far more likely to be shut out really early on

[Tr1ckster]

I feel like if town recognizes the game is slightly more difficult in their direction they're more willing to work hard to achieve an end goal.
Scum having a slightly more difficult game just makes the game that much more unbearable because it's already really hard to play scum, and you don't really have to convince your buddy to work with you, they know you're their teammate

[chennisden]

Also this was a few pages ago but I see a lot of value nipping suspicion in the bud before it ever gets to grow and when I was a higher energy player this would be massively helpful as both alignments

[RadiantCowbells]

Rather I don't think that playing in a game where scum viewed the game as already lost and few players took the game seriously because the odds were that town would win sounds enjoyable at all.

Having recently played scum in a very high swing game swung towards town, it really isn't

tbh most of my favorite scum games of the past that stuck out to me and i've remembered were the batshit townsided ones like gameshow

but i guess that's because i actually felt like i had to use my abilities?