[OLD] Open Setup Ideas and Discussion

[greygnarl]

Well people hate cults.

[Leafsnail]

I like the game balance. It avoids the swinginess inherent in a regular cult setup fairly well.

But it is still a cult game. Being converted to the side you just did a bunch of damage to is very frustrating.

[AngryPidgeon]

Not sure if anyone has done anything like this before, but:

Banning Draft Mafia?

Concept:

The game starts in Night 0 and a pool of PRs is available. A randomly selected team captain from both teams takes turns banning/drafting from the pool. The thread should be open at this time for everyone to weigh in on the process as it happens (and recommend things to the town captain).

Setup:

10 Town (9 VT, 1 Captain)

3 Scum (2 Goons, 1 Captain)

The captain would also be an Innocent Child and could publicly mod-confirm himself as Team captain at any point in the game. The draft would result in 2 town PRs and 2 scum PRs getting picked as follows.

Public part of draft (all of these bans/picks would be posted publicly in thread N0 for everyone to comment on as they happen)
1. Scum ban 1
2. Town ban 2
3. Scum ban 1 and pick 1
4. Town pick 1
_______________

5. Town pick 1 more (privately)
6. Scum pick 1 more (privately, may be a duplicate from #5 since I want the last PRs picked to be secret - or possibly for balance only have 1 scum PR pick?)

PR Pool (10 total) (TENTATIVE):

Roleblocker
JailKeeper
Rolecop
Tracker
Watcher

Vigilante

/

Strongman

Doctor

/

Ninja

DoubleVoter (private, does not reflect in vote count)
JoaT {1x Track / 1x Watch / 1x

Vig

/

Strongman

}
JoaT {1x RoleBlock / 1x

Doc

/

Ninja

/ 1x BP}

End Result:

Innocent Child / 2 PRs / 7 VTs VS 1 goon / 2 PRs (Is this balanced? Would 1 mafia PR be more balanced? Or possibly let the town choose from a modifier for the public mafia PR during the private phase?

Questions:

1. Would this be interesting?
2. Would this be balanced?
3. Is this considered normal as far as open setups go?
4. What could make this better?

EDIT (Random Thoughts!):

1. The team captains would PM me their choices so they could remain hidden in the thread.
2. Scum team can divide their PRs as they choose. The 2 town PRs would be randomly distributed to the pool of 9 VTs.

[greygnarl]

1. I think so
2. too lazy to check
3. Don't think it matters
4. Balance checks

[AngryPidgeon]

Ya, trying to balance the game is the tricky part

I think the rolecop would get banned every time as its kinda op for either side.

I'd hope to a certain degree it could balance itself out with the banning/picking system although to keep it interesting the PRs would have to be relatively balanced in the pool. Not sure if 1 or 2 or 2(with 1 gimped) is the right number of mafia PRs for that.

[callforjudgement]

Town need an extra pick for this to have a reasonable chance of being balanced. 2 town PRs is balanced against 3 goons in a 10:3 only if they're both pretty powerful. With scum power, the town is going to need more power than that. (3 average-strength town PRs against 1 weakish scum PR is the usual way to balance a 10:3, although by far not the only one.)

[UberNinja]

What special power does the Mafia Captain have?

Why is the Captain randomly selected?

[Leafsnail]

There is a third town PR, an innocent child.

I can't see any reason the game would be unbalanced, but there might be some no-brainers in there which would undermine the setup. Like the town really needs to ban the Double Voter. The rolecop is also nearly strictly superior to watcher/tracker for the mafia as far as I can tell. Maybe it'd work if it told you whether someone had a role or not.

I guess you could test it by having mock runs with someone playing the town captain and someone playing the scum captain, and see if they inevitably end up choosing the same things every time.

[AngryPidgeon]

What special power does the Mafia Captain have?

Why is the Captain randomly selected?

Valid point. I thought about this and in hindsight there doesn't need to be one. The scum team can just decide that all in the QT. In fact its a little confusing from the rolecop perspective to even have one on the scum side.

[AngryPidgeon]

but there might be some no-brainers in there which would undermine the setup. Like the town really needs to ban the Double Voter. The rolecop is also nearly strictly superior to watcher/tracker for the mafia as far as I can tell. Maybe it'd work if it told you whether someone had a role or not.

I like this too. The pool should be more or less independently balanced. I think like 1x Double voter (decide if you want to use it the night before) or your idea for the RC (just gets back PR or no) is more balanced.

[Shamrock]

the problem with the concept, which I think Leafsnail was getting at, is that most PRs are much more useful for one alignment than the other, e.g. watcher is clearly more powerful for town than scum and vice versa for double voter. so there aren't really any strategic decisions to the bans besides "ban the strongest roles for the other alignment". not sure how you can get around this.

[AngryPidgeon]

Hm. It might be possible to tweak that to more Town/Scum sides of one pick. Like Watcher/1xDV could be combined. That would perhaps need one less ban on each side to do that. Or a 9p game with 1 less role on each side.

[Shamrock]

I guess but then you have to balance them within the pairs AND balance the pairs against each other which seems like a pretty daunting/unlikely task.

[AngryPidgeon]

GO BACK TO BEING V/LA!

<3

True. Given the nature of the setup, I think it would simply take a lot of play testing to balance the individual roles against each other. But I think it would theoretically be balanced for a single game (just possibly some roles would always be banned or 100% avoided). To make a long term hash of the game 'balanced', stats on the roles picked most frequently would be needed.

[Ser Arthur Dayne]

How about creating a 2 PR pools for the separate teams, in a 3:10 ration for the scum:town?

Or that kills the whole idea?

[greygnarl]

I'd say use roles like Rolecop, Roleblocker, and Jailkeeper which can be used for both sides. And for town Rolecop doesn't get "vanilla" it gets VT or Goon.

[TeChNoWC]

Im worried about the Night 0 chat easily revealing who the town captain is before he/she wants that information known.

The town captain's only real option to avoid this would be to 'bluff' suggestions, but this leads to
a) voicing opinions he/she doesn't really want to
b) making he/she potentially look scummy for being inconsistent and lying.

[xyzzy]

Shot in the Dark

2 Mafia
6 Townies

Lynching each day is mandatory. As long as both Mafia are still alive, each Townie may submit what they believe to be the identities of the Mafia, and if any individual Townie accurately guesses both identities in the same night, the town wins. Once either member of the Mafia dies, they lose this ability.

--------

If the guesses resolve before the Mafia kill resolves (i.e. the guess of the person the Mafia kills is included), then based on random guessing the town has a 41% chance of winning; this is reduced to a 32% chance of the town winning if the kill resolves first. It's been way too long since I've played for me to be able to reasonably judge how powerful this ability is, and therefore which of these figures is more balanced, but I imagine one of those probably is pretty close to perfectly balanced when the normal town advantage is accounted for.

The mandatory lynching is obviously a necessity to prevent the town from just using their power every night 4 nights in a row.

[callforjudgement]

My attempt to break this: day 1, townies decide who the 2 scummiest people are; they lynch one, and for the other, the remaining players cycle-nominate them (i.e. with players A-H, A gets lynched, B is nominated as the next scummiest, then C claims BD, D claims BE, E claims BF, F claims BG, G claims BH, H claims BC.) If B is scum (and NK resolves after guesses, like it would in NAR), town wins. Otherwise, B gets nightkilled, because they'll be confirmed town on the next day. This technique leaves us as, effectively, 2:6 nightless which is white flag on every second day. And that's mathematically rather townsided.

If scum kill happens first, then if B/C are scum together, C can NK H to avoid automatically losing, and scumteams not involving B can also nightkill non-B for the WIFOM. This version's a bit harder to analyze.

[Leafsnail]

As far as I can tell it's optimal play for the mafia to try and get one of themselves lynched day one. Assuming both mafia players survive each day they have ~0.3 chance of losing night one and then a ~0.4 chance of losing night two. And that is assuming that the townies don't all discuss in advance who is going to pick which pair, and use those established pairs to eliminate possibilities for the following night (which they have no reason not to do). The mafia members will also be forced to abandon their own fake suspicions by being forced to pretend to choose them in the night, giving them another hit.

Compared to that a 5v1 mandatory lynch looks a lot better for the mafia.

[callforjudgement]

Scum can't claim, though. If either scum is known town autowins the next night. In other words, you effectively have Jesters in the game.

[UberNinja]

GO BACK TO BEING V/LA!

<3

True. Given the nature of the setup, I think it would simply take a lot of play testing to balance the individual roles against each other. But I think it would theoretically be balanced for a single game (just possibly some roles would always be banned or 100% avoided). To make a long term hash of the game 'balanced', stats on the roles picked most frequently would be needed.

How about two separate pools, one for town roles, one for scum roles.

Banning or Picking order goes:

Town (Ban only)
Scum (Ban only)
Town (Ban only)
Scum (Ban OR Pick)
Town (Ban OR Pick)
Scum (Ban OR Pick)
Town (Ban OR Pick)
Scum (Pick, if applicable)
Town (Pick, if applicable)

Town tries to ban the popular scum roles, Scum tries to ban the popular town roles.
Town gets to ban more, and sooner, scum gets first chance to pick (or they can ban another for town).

Each gets X picks, but Town gets slightly more control, which they can give up if they wish.
Scum can also choose to re-give up that control if they feel it is in their advantage to do so.

And then the game starts once each team has picked 2 power roles or whatever the number is.

[CF Riot]

Woah, a xyzzy sighting. That shit cray.

[callforjudgement]

KILL EVERYONE MAFIA

• 4 Town Vigilantes (
  not
  one-shot!)
• 3 Mafia Goons

Day start.

Not

nightless (doing this nightless is mindboggingly townsided with correct strategy, incidentally).
No-lynching is allowed.
Scum can NK each other if they want to.
Scum win if all players die simultaneously.
The game only ends when one faction has no chance of victory; merely equalling the town's numbers is not enough for scum to win.
I recommend using Open Night, so that town can coordinate nightkills if the entire scumteam decides to pile onto a quicklynch.

People say that Texas Justice is broken, and they're right. So I decided to tweak the numbers to take the brokenness into account, and, um, ended up with 3 scum in a 7 player game.

If scum outnumber town at any point, mathematically they win, so you can call the game there. 1:1 is a scum win, as usual; however, 2:2 and 3:3 are both undecided situations. The strategy: 2:2 is a town win 66% of the time; divide the players into two pairs and have them cross-shoot, town wins unless the scum are paired together. 3:3 is rather scumsided, though (any lynches on town that day, or town kills on town that night, lead to a town loss, and also the town need to land at least one shot; their best option is to no-lynch, nominate the towniest player to shoot their top scumread, and hope to get into day 2 as a 2:2). 2:1 with a confirmed townie is a 100% town win; 2:1 with no confirmed townie is 66% a town win (in both cases, the towniest player doesn't shoot, the other two cross-shoot). Town may well want to no-lynch day 1, and probably should no-lynch on future days; I think the best day 1 strategy is to no-lynch, then overnight have the second-scummiest player shoot at the scummiest, which leads to:

• If both nominated players are scum: scumteam's choice of 4:2 with no confirmed players, or 3:3 with one confirmed scum;
  
• If the town was right only about the scummiest: scumteam's choice of 3:2 with one confirmed town, or 4:2 with no confirmed players;
  
• If the town was right only about the second-scummiest: 3:3 with no confirmed players;
  
• If the town was wrong about both players: instant scum win

Town have truly excellent chances in 4:2 (well over 66%); 3:3 with one confirmed scum simplifies to 2:2 the next day (66% town win); 3:2 with a confirmed townie is at least 66% by using the same strategy as for 2:2; 3:3 with no confirmed players is quite bad for town, but not unwinnable. As such, the day 1 accuracy, especially on the scummiest player, makes quite a big difference, which is exactly what you'd expect for a 7 player game.

[Leafsnail]

That does sound like a reasonably interesting setup. The analysis seems solid other than at 3:3 - I think the optimal strategy there would be to identify the scummiest player and just get everyone to shoot them (if you nominate the towniest player that just adds a risk of that player being scum).