[Setup] Load the Deck

[T-Bone]

Load the Deck is an open game for 13 players, created as an update to Stack the Deck. It uses modern role terminology and updates the roles list while maintaining the core pre-game selection mechanic.

Setup

2 Mafia Goon
1 Mafia Traitor
10 Townies

Mechanics

Day Start
Role Selections by Mafia
Role Modifications

Role Selection

During pre-game, the Mafia Goons, Mafia Traitor, and Vanilla Townie roles are distributed to the playerlist. The Mafia have 24 hours to select any of the follow modifications to be applied to the team (up to three) assigning which Goon or Traitor gets the additional abilities. For each modification the Mafia select, an additional modification is granted to the town (up to three). Town can then be randomly given new roles, two plus additional roles granted by mafia (up to three for a max of five).

Mafia Additional Abilities

- Roleblocker
- Role Cop
- Jack of All Trades (Alternating Strongman/Ninja)
- Encryptor
- Recruiter (killing Traitor recruits instead, can't go to traitor)

Town Additional Abilities

- Neopolitan
- Jailkeeper
- Follower
- Doctor
- Weak Hider
- Innocent Child (revealed start of Day 1)

[Gypyx]

some town roles are pretty swingy depending on the number of picks tbh

[T-Bone]

I'm okay with a little swing, but honestly if I were to replace something it would be tracker, I just don't know what to replace with.

[Cook]

Motion Detector?

[Gypyx]

nah, something more powerful

follower? could leave room for this being a mafia rolecop fake claim also

[T-Bone]

Yeah I think Follower may synergize better with potential fakeclaims. Officially made the change. Gives both the Rolecop and Roleblocker multiple plausible fakeclaims.

[T-Bone]

I'll probably queue it up in the open queue at some point to test the concept.

[T-Bone]

Made a change to role section after discussing it with Something_Smart. Mafia can now choose who gets what modification instead of it being assigned randomly.

[callforjudgement]

The original Stack the Deck is, I suspect, broken by scum choosing no modifiers.

I don't think this version fixes that problem, although I'm not sure; Traitor setups are hard to balance, and the odds of scum NKing the traitor by mistake may be high enough to balance it. (Scum can't fully fix this by picking "recruitable traitor", because recruiting the traitor still means that they're failing to kill a townie that night, something that really matters given the town roles.)

As a note, you probably need to ban the Traitor from being given the Strongman/Ninja role, due to issues with how the scum decide who does the nightkill in situations where they don't have communication.

Incidentally, I still maintain that picking Role Cop in the original Stack the Deck is almost always a mistake, and this doesn't seem to change that. Maybe you could use it to find one role; but if you didn't pick it at all, then that'd produce one role that didn't

need

to be found, because the player would be a VT instead. So the pick is pretty much purely disadvantage compared to not picking it.

[T-Bone]

Sorry, I realize that I still had the word 'random' in a different sentence and made the correction. Scum get to assign who gets what role and if they want to give the JOAT to the traitor I am fine with that choice even if it is sub-optimal.

Balance is interesting in no choices. I think that the traitor cannot be recruited in a goon game balances that, since you can win as town white flag style by eliminating the other two players (and they get two power roles to work with).

I disagree a bit on the role cop comment, since it would have synergy with the recruiter and roleblocker depending on how you'd want to use it. Maybe scum shouldn't pick the role cop by themselves, but that's up to them to decide.

[T-Bone]

I think maybe I want to replace the role cop with something else. I feel like the rest of the adjustments I made work. Bumping for ideas, as I plan to queue this soon.

Anyone got one of them hot new roles for scum?

[Something_Smart]

What was the reason for replacing the "recruit traitor" option with the recruiter? Does the traitor still take over the factional NK if all members of the main faction die?

[T-Bone]

Not unless they are recruited. If scum don't recruit them or don't give themselves the option, it becomes white flagish.

[Something_Smart]

I personally felt like the "recruit traitor" option from the original Stack the Deck would have been really interesting if it didn't have that rule, so if you're removing it then I would definitely favor keeping that option the same. Cfj raises a good point that missing a kill to recruit the traitor is still pretty bad for scum.

The thing is, it's hard to come up with perks that are always going to be useful. I would want to do some kind of ascetic/godfather, but those roles are only effective against certain town roles. Maybe some extra killing power, like vengeful? Probably a good idea to disable it in lylo, but it could work.

[T-Bone]

I didnt like getting the traitor as an automatic up/down option in the original set-up.

[RH9]

Jack of All Trades (Alternating Strongman/Ninja)

T-Bone, does Alternating Strongman/Ninja mean it alternates between One-Shot Strongman and One-Shot Ninja? Thanks.

[Something_Smart]

What do you mean, automatic up/down

[T-Bone]

Jack of All Trades (Alternating Strongman/Ninja)

T-Bone, does Alternating Strongman/Ninja mean it alternates between One-Shot Strongman and One-Shot Ninja? Thanks.

Yes

[T-Bone]

What do you mean, automatic up/down

As in it becomes a binary choice, either your scum team is 3 members or it isn't. I don't think that fits with the rest of the set-up. There's no trade off. This set-up is about trade offs, and so I value the trade off of having to recruit the traitor with a night action.

[Something_Smart]

What about letting them pick their traitor

that feels slightly bastardish but it's also really funny

(to be clear, the way this would work is you send 2 goon and 11 VT PM's, then if they choose to recruit someone they pick a third team member, otherwise a random VT becomes traitor like normal)

In all seriousness though, it is a binary choice, but I think the choice of which team member to give a PR to is fairly minor. (Encryptor for instance is the same way where it literally doesn't matter who gets it.) And the whole point of the setup is that every advantage they pick has the trade-off of giving town another PR. I don't think it needs

another

trade-off on top of that.

For what it's worth, I NK'd the traitor in the first run of the setup (though I do think this only happened because of some rules miscommunications), and I still think that if I had picked recruiter and given town another PR, I would have been worse off because the PR's are very strong against a solo scum.

[Not_Mafia]

Recruiter seems like a clunky way of handling an already clunky mechanic in Traitor. I definitely prefer the straight-up recruit traitor from the original, would probably turn Encryptor in to just giving scum daytalk. Encryptor's have fallen out of favour the last couple years.

[RH9]

I guess that Encryptor is like a way for Mafia to get temporary Daytalk. I would say that Encryptor makes the Mafia more careful because they could lose their Daytalk if the Encryptor dies.