[REVIEW] Open Setup Reviews

[Jingle]

Aren’t Open Games usually 13 Peeps

Yes but that’s more a facet of laziness than a desired feature. 13p is easier to balance because the people who balance opens have experience with it.

If you come up with a setup that balances better with a different number than that’s actually desirable.

Generally speaking, you want an odd number of players for the majority of the game if possible and you should avoid setups that are prohibitively large (20+ people would be a nightmare to fill regularly) but non 13p setups (and setups that start at evens if it makes sense to) are actually more desirable than 13p imo because they add options to choose from.

[Jingle]

Balance wise, there’s no reason to need to force air to start as town. Otherwise it seems fine. Scum doesn’t have a nk, but they potentially have access to three killing roles. It’s a very skill based setup, but it seems fair. I’d personally leave the neighborhoods open during the day because I don’t see a reason not to but that’s a personal choice thing.

I’m assuming factional pt is a “neighborhood” but you could just leave it as a factional pt and give everyone a randomly assigned neighborhood to cut down on room for misunderstandings, since the factional pt isn’t really a neighborhood.

Darkness will be a struggle to keep people active, I’d bet.

Does air remove the player’s previous neighborhood ala fogport? Doesn’t really change much, but it would make for some interesting analysis.

Worth noting that you have 3kpn, which is high swing. Not sure how much you care about that.

[DrDolittle]

Good Reads Club

1 Mafia Multitasking Roleblocker

1 Mafia Multitasking Backup Roleblocker

7 Random Cop

Let

T

and

M

be town and mafia left in the game, respectively.

• Random Cop
  gives town results with probability
  T/(T+M)
  .
  
• In addition to an investigation target,
  Cops
  submit a read list with players grouped into TOWN UNKNOWN MAFIA categories. This list is scored: For every correct placement of player aligned with town, the list gets
  +M
  points, and for every incorrect placement, the list gets
  -M
  points. For every correct placement of player aligned with mafia, the list gets
  +T
  points, and for every incorrect placement, the list gets
  -T
  points. UNKNOWN placements are worth
  0
  .
  
• The
  Random Cop
  with the top scoring list becomes
  1) Sane 2) Strongman 3) Bulletproof
  for the night.
  
• The
  Random Cop
  with the second and third scoring list becomes
  1) Sane
  for the night.
  
• Players are not informed whether their investigation is sane, no the points of their list.
  
• Mafia
  win when they equal or outnumber the
  Town
  .
  Town
  wins if all
  Mafia
  are dead.

[Jingle]

How are list ties resolved?

Could you clarify RC results probability? are they naive T/(T+M) amount of the time and sane the rest of the time? (That's how I parse it, but I think it's ambiguous enough that it should be clarified anyway.) I'm assuming it's not the traditional random cop where it just fails a certain percentage of the time, but sane/insane is probably less breakable than naive/sane.

[Kerset]

For every correct placement of player aligned with town, the list gets +M points

M points decrease odds to get correct result. It is non intuitive to punish player for correct assignment. Assuming mislynch:
6/(6+2) = 0.75
6/(6+3) = 0.67

The best tactic would be to just take 75% accuracy, which is really decent and check single player with 2 or 3 cops. You got 3 cops with 75% accuracy and 3 cops with 100% accuracy, one cop is being blocked. Two positive results on single person means IC here, two negative are confirmed scum. Even if scum try to give false results, i am pretty sure that this setup is townsided.
Especially that in case of correct lynch
7/(7+1) = 0.875
5/(5+1) = 0.83

its almost whiteflag


I would suggest P = number of players | M = number of mafia * 10
(M-P)/M

-1 P point for correct assignment and +1 P for incorrect and no extra reward for being the best.
I would also prevent players from placing everyone on MAFIA list, so they don't try to play as insane cop

[DrDolittle]

Oh sorry I wasn't very clear. I meant that Random Cop is literally randomized result in the sense no matter who is checked, the result is town T/(T+M) times, and scum M/(T+M) times. Thus, effectively the result is bogus. I prefer this over the "naive cop"/"paranoid cop" because I want people to internalize they could have bad reads conditional on flips of both alignments.

List ties --- probably just randomize who gets first second and third.

@Kerset see above. I meant for the bad-reads club cops to have no investigative power, while hiding from the players themselves who has the good reads and who has the bad reads.

[DrDolittle]

PS - the point system has the nice feature that if you place everyone in your list on MAFIA/TOWN/UNKNOWN, you point total is always 0.

[Jingle]

I feel like there might be strategy in massclaiming readlist submissions. If everyone picks a different mafia submission and puts the rest in unknown, then inaccurate flips can be used as pseudo clears.

[popsofctown]

I am trying to make a new setup which I am putting in the undertale opens setup thread but I want some feedback on it if I can please get any: https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.p ... #p11661807

[Karnage]

Saw the mini-theme queue is looking for mods so I put together a quick game based on our current pandemic. I would appreciate any thoughts:

Pandemic Mafia

13 Players (1 Cult, 1 SK, 11 Townies)

1

Virus

(BP Cult Recruiter/Poisoner)
1

The Flu

(Serial Killer)
1

Town Vigiliante

5

Town Odd Night Hider

5

Town Even Night Hider

• Each day phase, players must choose a player to receive an experimental treatment. If they are town, they will be sent to the morque. If they are anti-town, they are "cured" and removed from the game.
  Lynching is compulsive
  (plurality voting, if there is a tie BOTH players are lynched)
  
• Virus
  -
  Bulletproof
  Can infect 1 player each night. (Infected join the "scum" team but will die the following night.)
  
• Virus wins when the majority of the town is infected or nothing can prevent that from happening.
  
• The Flu
  - Immune to being infected. Can target 1 player each night to kill
  
• The Flu wins when all other players have died or have been cured.
  
• Town Vigiliante
  - Immune to being infected. Can target 1 player each night to kill
  
• Town Odd/Even Night Hiders
  - Can social distance on their night to prevent becoming infected or killed.
  
• Town wins when all anti-town players have been "cured"

I think it might be skewed against the cult?

[Jingle]

Eh. Bp cult leader should be enough. Vig doesn’t really make sense thematically, imo, but it should be balanced enough.

[Karnage]

Eh. Bp cult leader should be enough. Vig doesn’t really make sense thematically, imo, but it should be balanced enough.

the vig is supposed to be a dr that can give a player an experimental treatment at night. it "cures" anti-town and kills town.

Maybe I'll call the vig a "Quack Doctor" or something and the hiders "Patients"

[Karnage]

Some modifications, I originally used "hider" when I meant to us "Commuter"

Pandemic Mafia

13 Players (1 Cult, 1 SK, 11 Townies)

1

Virus

(BP Cult Recruiter/Poisoner)
1

The Flu

(Serial Killer)
1

Town Quack Doctor

5

Town Odd Night Commuter

5

Town Even Night Commuter

• Each day phase, players must choose a player to receive an experimental treatment. If they are town, they will be sent to the morgue/killed. If they are anti-town, they are "cured" and removed from the game.
  Lynching is compulsive
  (plurality voting, if there is a tie BOTH players are lynched)
  
• Virus
  -
  Bulletproof
  Can infect 1 player each night. (Infected join the "scum" team but will die the following day.)
  
• Virus wins when the majority of the town is infected or nothing can prevent that from happening.
  
• The Flu
  -
  Immune
  to being infected. Can target 1 player each night to try and kill
  
• The Flu wins when all other players have died or have been cured.
  
• Quack Doctor
  -
  Immune
  to being infected. Can target 1 player each night to receive the experimental treatment.
  
• Town Odd/Even Night Commuters
  - Can social distance on their night to prevent becoming infected or killed.
  
• Town wins when all anti-town players have been "cured"

[popsofctown]

The flu is a type of virus, you could improve the flavor there.
Also this game is ten times more fascinating with the same EV balance if the Virus's target becomes the new "Virus" and it's the original one that dies.

[Karnage]

The flu is a type of virus, you could improve the flavor there.
Also this game is ten times more fascinating with the same EV balance if the Virus's target becomes the new "Virus" and it's the original one that dies.

Good point about flu/virus

the target surviving and the original dying is absolute genius!

[popsofctown]

That setup looks really favorable to town if you're telling Commuters what kind of Commuter they are. The day one massclaim doesn't degenerate the game to a single point with 5 duplicates of each, but it degenerates it a lot, and people don't usually want to play games that are day1 massclaims.

[popsofctown]

in the context of an open there's not really a downside to making a commuter compulsive and even or odd and refusing to tell the commuter what kind of commuter it is. In a closed "i'm gonna stop commuting so you can check me" is the fanciness but that's not possible here so you're just removing an element people usually don't like that much.

[popsofctown]

you would get this cute dynamic where the virus might guess a player's evenness or oddness based on where they expected the flu to shoot after a shot fails even though the victim doesn't know their own evenness or oddness

[popsofctown]

https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.p ... #p11702993

[Karnage]

Further adjustments... I'm replacing "the flu" with "sepsis", the infected player inherits the virus role and the original player dies, and patients don't know if they are even/odd commuters. I'm also removing the bulletproof protection from the virus.

Pandemic Mafia

13 Players (1 Cult, 1 SK, 11 Townies)

1

Virus

(Cult Recruiter/Self-Poisoner)
1

Sepsis

(Serial Killer)
1

Town Quack Doctor

(Essentially a Vig)
5

Town Patient

(Odd Night Compulsive Commuter)
5

Town Patient

(Even Night CompulsiveCommuter)

• Each day phase, players must choose a player to receive an experimental treatment. If they are town, they will be killed. If they are anti-town, they are "cured" and removed from the game.
  Lynching is compulsive
  (plurality voting, if there is a tie BOTH players are lynched)
  
• Virus
  - Can infect 1 player each night. The Virus player dies at the end of the next day phase and the infected player inherits the Virus role. If the targeted player is also targeted by sepsis or quack, the infection fails. If the virus is targeted by sepsis or quack, the virus faction survives with an infected player.
  
• Virus wins when the majority of the town is infected or nothing can prevent that from happening.
  
• Sepsis
  -
  Immune
  to being infected. Can target 1 player each night to try and kill them.
  
• Sepsis wins when all other players have died or have been cured.
  
• Quack Doctor
  -
  Immune
  to being infected. Can target 1 player each night to receive the treatment. anti-town targets are cured, patients are killed
  
• Town Patients
  - Are not told if they are even/odd night compulsive commuters.
  
• Town wins when all anti-town players have been "cured"

I think the original "virus" role will receive an "infected" role PM pregame, they don't become the virus until the end of day 1. the "virus" role PM will be part of the virus PT

[popsofctown]

https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.p ... #p11742110

[Knightmare491]

https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?ti ... _With_Guns

In the above setup, what is stopping the town from asking everyone to post BOMB:Player name(bolded) to out the suicide bomber?

[Kerset]

If player would ask me in PM to ignore his bolded request before he posted it then i would respect it.

[Blatant Scum]

Mod might require PM for the bomb attack to work.

[Isis]

Looks like the setup has actually been run with this oversight. I think if you ran a slightly flawed setup like this, and one townie figured out that exploit midgame and pressured the suicide mafia about doing it in a time sensitive way, I would pragmatically accept Kerset's approach as a way of handling what has happened.

I think the cleanest answer is to specify in the suicide bomber role PM that only bombings submitted by PM are valid, and to post all role PMs in the OP.

There might be some fancy convoluted redesign you could do that converts the Vanilla townies to Loyal Suicide Bombers and pulls the strategy into some sort of range where it can be useful but isn't gamebreaking, but Kids With Guns isn't interesting enough to me for me to want to figure out how exactly I'd turn those knobs.