[SETUP] Decisions By Election

[RH9]

Setup

Spoiler: Micro Version

7 Vanilla Townies

2 Mafia Goons

Spoiler: Mini Version

10 Vanilla Townies

3 Mafia Goons

Spoiler: Large Version

13 Vanilla Townies

4 Mafia Goons

Pregame

• The distribution table must be posted in the main game thread.
  
• The distribution table must contain at least 17 unique roles and modifiers, in two seperate columns.
  • Spoiler: Code For Distribution Table

    Code: Select all

    [table][row][header]Role[/header][header]Modifier[/header][/row]
    [row][cell][b][wiki]1[/wiki][/b][/cell][cell][b][wiki]1[/wiki][/b][/cell][/row]
    [row][cell][b][wiki]2[/wiki][/b][/cell][cell][b][wiki]2[/wiki][/b][/cell][/row]
    [row][cell][b][wiki]3[/wiki][/b][/cell][cell][b][wiki]3[/wiki][/b][/cell][/row]
    [row][cell][b][wiki]4[/wiki][/b][/cell][cell][b][wiki]4[/wiki][/b][/cell][/row]
    [row][cell][b][wiki]5[/wiki][/b][/cell][cell][b][wiki]5[/wiki][/b][/cell][/row]
    [row][cell][b][wiki]6[/wiki][/b][/cell][cell][b][wiki]6[/wiki][/b][/cell][/row]
    [row][cell][b][wiki]7[/wiki][/b][/cell][cell][b][wiki]7[/wiki][/b][/cell][/row]
    [row][cell][b][wiki]8[/wiki][/b][/cell][cell][b][wiki]8[/wiki][/b][/cell][/row]
    [row][cell][b][wiki]9[/wiki][/b][/cell][cell][b][wiki]9[/wiki][/b][/cell][/row]
    [row][cell][b][wiki]10[/wiki][/b][/cell][cell][b][wiki]10[/wiki][/b][/cell][/row]
    [row][cell][b][wiki]11[/wiki][/b][/cell][cell][b][wiki]11[/wiki][/b][/cell][/row]
    [row][cell][b][wiki]12[/wiki][/b][/cell][cell][b][wiki]12[/wiki][/b][/cell][/row]
    [row][cell][b][wiki]13[/wiki][/b][/cell][cell][b][wiki]13[/wiki][/b][/cell][/row]
    [row][cell][b][wiki]14[/wiki][/b][/cell][cell][b][wiki]14[/wiki][/b][/cell][/row]
    [row][cell][b][wiki]15[/wiki][/b][/cell][cell][b][wiki]15[/wiki][/b][/cell][/row]
    [row][cell][b][wiki]16[/wiki][/b][/cell][cell][b][wiki]16[/wiki][/b][/cell][/row]
    [row][cell][b][wiki]17[/wiki][/b][/cell][cell][b][wiki]17[/wiki][/b][/cell][/row]
    [/table]
    

Mechanics

• This setup uses slightly altered mechanics.
  
• During every Day phase, two players and two options are selected through a majority of votes.
  
• The moderator may choose extra options.
  
• It is recommended that votes for players and votes for options are placed in a way that can be differentiated.

Options

• Spoiler: Main
• Allocation
  : The players are each given a random Role and Modifier from the distribution table.
  
• Departure
  : The players exit the game and are flipped.
  
• Divulgence
  : The Alignments, Roles, and Modifiers of each of the players are mod-confirmed.

[northsidegal]

It seems like, if I'm understanding the setup correctly, it's almost always the correct choice to

Divulgence

a player. If you scumread a player, you of course want to either Departure them or Divulgence them. Between the two options, I think that Divulgence is almost always superior, for the same reasons that a Public Cop is so powerful – you're in some sense forcing the mafia NK. If the person that you Divulgence is indeed scum then it's true that you have to sort of waste another day phase actually eliminating that player, but if the person you choose is town then you eventually either force the mafia to NK that person, or allow that person to live to LyLo, where an IC changes the EV for town pretty significantly.

If you townread a player, it might seem like choosing Erudition or Supplement is a good idea, but it seems like whoever you give the power to just immediately gets killed by the Mafia. So you've wasted a day phase where you could otherwise be eliminating someone / revealing someone's alignment and instead allowed the most townread person to die – in essence, it seems identical to voting "no elim".

I would imagine that the fact that it's always optimal to divulgence until you hit scum (at which you depart them) probably runs contrary to your vision of how this setup should play out. So maybe it would be interesting if you could choose any number of the options in a single day, from one to all four. Of course, doing all four might make it too townsided, so perhaps the more options that you choose in a day, the more powers that scum get to counterbalance it. Might be an interesting direction to go in.

[RH9]

Yes,

Divulgence

is optimal. However, it is a double-edged sword. A good scumhunting Town block can win in 4 days. However, scum doesn't want this. However, if

Divulgence

is used on a Town member, scum might NK them, or least that player will become a pseudo-IC.

Scum needs to try to break up the Town through super sneaky ways. I edited the original post so that the election mechanic is also used for the Mafia factional ability. This means that they can now purposefully give themselves extra PRs. Not that this will defeat a good scumhunting Town block still. This should fix the balance a bit.

Let me know what you think.

[northsidegal]

Sure, but the thing with scum nightkilling a divulged townie is that it's a good thing for town. In fact, it's a great thing for town, because it

essentially

reduces the game to Vengeful mafia. If the mafia is spending nights nightkilling townies that were suspected enough to be pseudo-elimmed, they're not spending their nights killing the towniest townies or the ones with the best solves. It's only days where the Divulge lands on scum that they get a chance to kill someone they want to kill, which makes it sort of like Vengeful (although still worse for town because they then have to spend another day actually elimming that scum and then scum gets another free nightkill).

The mafia getting the option to give themselves roles or modifiers is interesting, but is probably never the right choice. The mafia nightkill is

really

powerful, and it's not worth it to skip a night for almost any power role, especially none of the ones you've got on the distribution table though.

Despite what I said before about Divulgence being better for town than just regular elims (which is still true), I still think this setup is probably scumsided. Best case scenario for town of Divulgence-ing someone every night reduces the game to Vengeful Mafia but with an extra day to actually elim scum after divulging them, which I

think

is still slightly scumsided? It's not so scumsided as to be in the realm of unplayable, but also there's still the fact that the optimal way to play the setup is still probably not in the direction you want the setup to go in.

[RH9]

Added an extra option,

Conclave

, as well as reverting the Mafia factional ability to the usual NK. I also changed the number of players 'elected' to two. This means that there is more diversity now.

Will this make it more or less scumsided, though?

Because

Divulgence

is still the best option. Though now they need to perform an action on two people at once. Mod-confirm both. Eliminate both.

Do you think that plurality and unvoting rules would impact the setup, though?

[Cook]

this somewhat reminds me of an open theme i made, Pick Your Policy

i like the backbone of this

[RH9]

this somewhat reminds me of an open theme i made, Pick Your Policy

i like the backbone of this

It was very partially inspired by Pick Your Policy which I remember glimpsing in the Open Setup Discussion subforum and thought was cool.
(I thought the idea of the motions was cool but that it would be cooler if everybody could decide what to do instead of a smaller group of people like the Council.)

[Jingle]

Is the random role distribution independent? By which I mean, is it possible for the same role to come up multiple times in one granting of abilities and is it possible for a player to get the same ability multiple times?

[RH9]

Is the random role distribution independent? By which I mean, is it possible for the same role to come up multiple times in one granting of abilities and is it possible for a player to get the same ability multiple times?

The random role distribution is decided when the

Erudition

option is selected through majority. It is possible. Thus, it is independent to the alignment assignment because it is only distributed when needed. This means if

Erudition

is never chosen, the setup will remain

Mountainous

.

[Jingle]

Not at all what I was asking.

To make it more clear, say we choose erudition is the random distribution

Player A

Original Roll String: 1d13

1 13-Sided Dice: (6) = 6

Player B

Original Roll String: 1d13

1 13-Sided Dice: (8) = 8

or does, say, Player A rolling UB prevent B from rolling UB?

Secondly, if we choose Erudition D1 and I get UB, can I get UB again D2 if we choose erudition again?

It's not really a big point, since 10/13 roles are functionally useless and 1 is mostly useless, so the odds of getting useful power out of erudition is crazy low. Similarly, there exist 0 worlds in which supplement or conclave are the right choice because you're no elimming in return for a 0 utility return.

[RH9]

Not at all what I was asking.

To make it more clear, say we choose erudition is the random distribution

Player A

Original Roll String: 1d13 (STATIC)

1 13-Sided Dice: (4) = 4

Player B

Original Roll String: 1d13 (STATIC)

1 13-Sided Dice: (13) = 13

or does, say, Player A rolling UB prevent B from rolling UB?

Secondly, if we choose Erudition D1 and I get UB, can I get UB again D2 if we choose erudition again?

It's not really a big point, since 10/13 roles are functionally useless and 1 is mostly useless, so the odds of getting useful power out of erudition is crazy low. Similarly, there exist 0 worlds in which supplement or conclave are the right choice because you're no elimming in return for a 0 utility return.

It doesn't stop them both being UB. If you get UB twice, then you'll probably end up staying as UB but if you get UB than Visitor, you become

Universal Backup Visitor

. And the distribution table is a sample.

[Jingle]

It doesn't stop them both being UB. If you get UB twice, then you'll probably end up staying as UB but if you get UB than Visitor, you become Universal Backup Visitor. And the distribution table is a sample.

I mean... you can't balance the setup without knowing the distribution table, but it seems unlikely that there will be a case where you ever choose erudition over public cop unless there's a critical mass of powerful PRs, in which case there's never a situation in which you pick public cop. There is not a single modifier I would wager a chance at getting for a guaranteed loss of elimination. And neighborhoods are inherently 0 value.

Still though, nsg is correct that on the face of it this is comparable to a vengeball setup EV wise. It's nightless with vengescum, except that the venge shot happens before the scum elim and you have a more complicated voting phase.

[RH9]

I changed it so that two options need to be selected. This makes things harder with

Conclave

being the most harmless option.

What do you think of things now? There will likely end up with a lot of pseudo-Masons, though.

[Jingle]

I would definitely make it so that they can't pick both Divulge and Departure (That's just straight follow the cop, but without the doc being killable), but one in those two and one in the other three does make it more interesting as a choice.

Distro and Modifier tables would have to be balanced before each running, but that seems to be a goal of the setup anyway. It's probably townsided assuming a decent amount of power in the potential pool and inherently high swing.

I would consider adding factional scum abilities based on the balance of the roles in the distribution.
I'd also consider making a divulged player ineligible for any of the other three options.

It seems likely to turn into a very grindy game, though, and I don't think you'd ever want to run it as a 17p in a forum setting. Potentially as a F2F it would work better, there's just a very slow rate of deaths which tends to kill larges through replacement attrition.

[RH9]

I would definitely make it so that they can't pick both Divulge and Departure (That's just straight follow the cop, but without the doc being killable), but one in those two and one in the other three does make it more interesting as a choice.

Distro and Modifier tables would have to be balanced before each running, but that seems to be a goal of the setup anyway. It's probably townsided assuming a decent amount of power in the potential pool and inherently high swing.

I would consider adding factional scum abilities based on the balance of the roles in the distribution.
I'd also consider making a divulged player ineligible for any of the other three options.

It seems likely to turn into a very grindy game, though, and I don't think you'd ever want to run it as a 17p in a forum setting. Potentially as a F2F it would work better, there's just a very slow rate of deaths which tends to kill larges through replacement attrition.

Does this fix the Follow The Cop problem?

[Jingle]

Depending on PRs and factional abilities it feasibly could, but no, probably not.

Likely to fix the follow the cop option you're going to have to do something along the lines of making Divulge nonconsecutive or giving a direct benefit to scum for its use. That's assuming you don't want the game to be a game that runs similarly to vengescum nightless, which isn't necessarily a given. Vengescum can be a fun game.

[RH9]

Is this slightly better or is it scumsided now?

[Jingle]

First of all, when editing the setup it's a good idea to leave the old setup intact and make a new post so anyone who wanders in has a frame of reference for the early discussion.

Second of all, without having a set distribution list the mechanic can't be fully analyzed for balance. At best you can ask if the mechanic is scumsiding or townsiding.

Third, I don't think the current iteration is feasible at all. You don't have follow the cop as the issue anymore, but instead scum can't kill so long as town eliminates everyday. This setup is functionally Nightless DoubleDay (you only get flips after two elims), which is theoretically balanced at 3T:1M but is in practice townsided at those numbers, with numbers that are further townsiding.

I don't think taking away the scum nightkill if town eliminates leads to any sort of playable game.

I think what you want in a setup (although I could be wrong, certainly) is something closer to this:

X Scum
Y Town

Each day, the players may choose Divulgence or Departure and a player by popular vote.

If town chooses Divulgence the player's alignment is publicly revealed.
If town chooses Departure the player is eliminated from the game.

Additionally, each day the town must choose another player to receive a power at random from the following list:

• Each night scum must kill a player.

This way, your power assignment function will actually see use. I don't think splitting active powers and modifiers is a good idea because there will always be a clear option between the two. Either the powers will be worth granting or they won't. If they're not, then aiming scummy and hoping to hit something like Complex to force scum to be unable to NK vanilla players is probably better. Similarly, Conclave could easily just be a neighborizer power, although leaving it as a separate option isn't really a bad thing if you prefer that.

Alternatively, you could remove the Divulgence option and make the choice (Grant Power or Elim) in which case the issues you need to resolve are scum killing whoever gets the power and making the powers strong enough to outweigh the loss of an elimination.

For now, I'd recommend focusing on what you want the play to actually look like over the balance, because balance is something you fine tune after you have a core setup that's going to work the way you want it to.

[RH9]

First of all, when editing the setup it's a good idea to leave the old setup intact and make a new post so anyone who wanders in has a frame of reference for the early discussion.

Second of all, without having a set distribution list the mechanic can't be fully analyzed for balance. At best you can ask if the mechanic is scumsiding or townsiding.

Third, I don't think the current iteration is feasible at all. You don't have follow the cop as the issue anymore, but instead scum can't kill so long as town eliminates everyday. This setup is functionally Nightless DoubleDay (you only get flips after two elims), which is theoretically balanced at 3T:1M but is in practice townsided at those numbers, with numbers that are further townsiding.

I don't think taking away the scum nightkill if town eliminates leads to any sort of playable game.

I think what you want in a setup (although I could be wrong, certainly) is something closer to this:

X Scum
Y Town

Each day, the players may choose Divulgence or Departure and a player by popular vote.

If town chooses Divulgence the player's alignment is publicly revealed.
If town chooses Departure the player is eliminated from the game.

Additionally, each day the town must choose another player to receive a power at random from the following list:

• Each night scum must kill a player.

This way, your power assignment function will actually see use. I don't think splitting active powers and modifiers is a good idea because there will always be a clear option between the two. Either the powers will be worth granting or they won't. If they're not, then aiming scummy and hoping to hit something like Complex to force scum to be unable to NK vanilla players is probably better. Similarly, Conclave could easily just be a neighborizer power, although leaving it as a separate option isn't really a bad thing if you prefer that.

Alternatively, you could remove the Divulgence option and make the choice (Grant Power or Elim) in which case the issues you need to resolve are scum killing whoever gets the power and making the powers strong enough to outweigh the loss of an elimination.

For now, I'd recommend focusing on what you want the play to actually look like over the balance, because balance is something you fine tune after you have a core setup that's going to work the way you want it to.

Yes. You got kind of what I was intending.

[Something_Smart]

Allocation: The players are each given a random Role and Modifier from the distribution table.
Departure: The players exit the game and are flipped.
Divulgence: The Alignments, Roles, and Modifiers of each of the players are mod-confirmed.

So two out of these three are chosen every day? If Departure is chosen does it matter what other option is also chosen?

[RH9]

Allocation: The players are each given a random Role and Modifier from the distribution table.
Departure: The players exit the game and are flipped.
Divulgence: The Alignments, Roles, and Modifiers of each of the players are mod-confirmed.

So two out of these three are chosen every day? If Departure is chosen does it matter what other option is also chosen?

Yes, for the original setup, two players and two of those options were selected through majority. It didn't matter if Departure was selected or not. However, this proved to be not such a good idea.
Based on my interpretation of Jingle's suggestion in 17, you chose between confirming the alignment of a player or eliminating that player. In addition to that, another player was allocated a power (which is either a Role, a Modifier, or a combination of both) from a list.