[OLD] Open Setup Ideas and Discussion

[callforjudgement]

If not by some weird coincidence all of the players sharing a hydra need replacing then there will be no discontinuity because there will still be someone to represent that slot even while the mod is looking for replacements

I predict that around half the hydras would have all three players flake simultaneously at some point (because most of the time, there'd only be one head active in each).

For whatever reason, hydras seem more prone to flaking than single players.

[Faraday]

For whatever reason, hydras seem more prone to flaking than single players.

I don't think so? I don't know, I don't think I've ever had a hydra flake from a game of mine. A lot depends on who's in the hydra, of course.

[Leafsnail]

No. It's nothing like that, at all. What are the penalties if they break the rule? You can't remove the posibilities of people revealing their "real account" via typing style, there'll always be subtle things that drop through.

I think the best means of enforcement would be to give the mafia some kind of ability whereby they can daykill someone if they know their username.

Here are some setups I've been developing on paper when I was bored. Have fun.

Pick Your Poison

3 Mafia Goons
1 Cop
1 Doc
1 JK
7 VTs

Every day, mafia chooses whether the cop or both doc and JK will be active the next night. An inactive cop will get a random result, an inactive doc's/JK's action fails silently.

This is quite interesting. Although I think the cop's inspections would go untrusted the vast majority of the time.

[callforjudgement]

@Leafsnail: I've considered a mechanic along the lines of "At any time in the game, you may send the mod the name of a player slot and a player you think is in the slot. If you're correct

and

that player isn't in your faction, they die. Otherwise (if you guessed wrong

or

the player is in your faction), you lose this ability for the rest of the game (and won't learn whether you guessed wrong about the player or the faction)."

[LlamaFluff]

Pick Your Poison

3 Mafia Goons
1 Cop
1 Doc
1 JK
7 VTs

Every day, mafia chooses whether the cop or both doc and JK will be active the next night. An inactive cop will get a random result, an inactive doc's/JK's action fails silently.

1) "Random" result is pretty bastard.
2) What happens if a PR dies? No more making roles inactive?

Pick Your Copoison

3 Mafia Goons
2 Cops
8 VTs

Every day, mafia chooses whether Cop A or Cop B will be active. An inactive cop will get a random result.

Same questions

1) Why the bastard result?
2) Does scum know who the cops are?
3) What if a cop dies?

Join Or Die

2 Mafia A Godfathers
2 Mafia B Godfathers
1 JK
1 Cop
7 VTs

If both mafia groups send in a "join request", they'll be joined and treated as one group (common wincon, common QT). However, they lose their nightkill and become Goons (i.e. can be found by the Cop).

This game suffers from scum joining up being massively unbalanced. Its against your win condition to not join as scum.

[Empking]

Join Or Die

2 Mafia A Godfathers
2 Mafia B Godfathers
1 JK
1 Cop
7 VTs

If both mafia groups send in a "join request", they'll be joined and treated as one group (common wincon, common QT). However, they lose their nightkill and become Goons (i.e. can be found by the Cop).

This game suffers from scum joining up being massively unbalanced. Its against your win condition to not join as scum.

Did you notice that they lose their kill if they join?

I think it's balanced but I don't think the gimmick enhances funness.

[Loranthaceae]

I'd prefer keeping anonymity enforced without interference in the mechanics, to see how the 'addon' effects balance by statistically comparing faction win/loose rate to that of the vanilla setup - assuming it becomes popular.

[quadz08]

I'd prefer keeping anonymity enforced without interference in the mechanics, to see how the 'addon' effects balance by statistically comparing faction win/loose rate to that of the vanilla setup - assuming it becomes popular.

Anonymity is almost literally impossible. See Author Mafia for an example; everyone was forced into an alt where they were intended to post as someone in a completely different style from their typical posting, and several players still managed to work out who was who.

[Loranthaceae]

Well then people don't even have to know who is signing up for the game. It can be done via PM

[Leafsnail]

For Join or Die you better disallow no-lynching, otherwise joining is a death sentence with the cop still alive.

[LlamaFluff]

For Join or Die you better disallow no-lynching, otherwise joining is a death sentence with the cop still alive.

Yeah thats correct, I did miss what Emp said but basically scum taking a passive alliance of both "hunt the cop" until the cop is dead followed by allying is all they need to do for a quick win.

[IceGuy]

1) "Random" result is pretty bastard.

That's intended.

2) What happens if a PR dies? No more making roles inactive?

Nothing happens when the role in question should be made inactive.

2) Does scum know who the cops are?

No. They only knew there's a Cop A and a Cop B. Cops flip Cop without the letter.

3) What if a cop dies?

As above.

This game suffers from scum joining up being massively unbalanced. Its against your win condition to not join as scum.

Making you lose your NK and become vulnerable to cop investigations.

[chkflip]

input pl0x - might run them as opens soon and want to know if they're "fair and balanced" as you may say.

MICRO 102

1x Cult Leader
1x Serial Killer
1x Town Alarmist
1x Town Cop
1x Town JOAT (Nurse/Deputy, 1-shot tracker, 1-shot fisherman)
4x Town Vanilla

MICRO 123

1x Cult Leader
1x Wolf goon
1x Town Poisoner
1x Town 3-shot Day Lie Detector
1x Town Alarmist
1x Town Ruffian
1x Town Friendly Neighbor
2x Town Vanilla

Spoiler: ruffian role

ROLE:

Town Ruffian
- You must choose one player to do a possibility of things to. Simply reply in this thread with ROUGH: PLAYERNAME to do whatever it is you'll do to said player.
There is a 20% chance you will silence them from a (real-time) week.
There is a 20% chance you will immobilize them, stopping them from going out.
There is a 20% chance you will roleblock your target, stopping them from doing anything.
There is a 40% chance you will do absolutely nothing.

You will be told what you did when the sun rises.

WIN:

You win when there are no more threats to town.

EXTRA:

You may not communicate with players outside of the game thread.

Please reply with "/confirm rolename" to help open the game thread.

Just curious... are these "fair" setups?

[Mr. Flay]

I'd prefer keeping anonymity enforced without interference in the mechanics, to see how the 'addon' effects balance by statistically comparing faction win/loose rate to that of the vanilla setup - assuming it becomes popular.

Anonymity is almost literally impossible. See Author Mafia for an example; everyone was forced into an alt where they were intended to post as someone in a completely different style from their typical posting, and several players still managed to work out who was who.

This. Anonymity doesn't work in long-form games like MafiaScum has. You can sort of get away with it in rapidfire games with shorter posts.

[callforjudgement]

This is pretty much why I thought "staying anonymous" would make an interesting mechanic. It's very difficult/close to impossible, so you'd expect a lot of anonymity slips, and thus a lot of interaction with the mechanics.

[Mr. Flay]

Yeah, but if you 'break' it without announcing in thread that you've broken it, there's literally no enforcement mechanism.

[callforjudgement]

The enforcement mechanism would be punisher-style; "if the opposite faction guess who you are, they get to kill you". As usual in setups built around trying to prevent the reveal of information. (It's the only method that works, because it's objective and because it doesn't have the problems that mass modkills have.)

[Mr. Flay]

With sufficient restrictions, it might make for a good game. But I think it's a rather perverse enforcement method, and distorts the actual core of the mechanic (again, IMO).

[LlamaFluff]

Okay with the "we need more mid-large open setups" call basically being ignored...

I put Popcorn Mafia in the queue because it was discussed recently.

I would like to hear some additional discussion on Double Tap from a couple pages ago. Again like Popcorn I see this as just doing well as a fun setup in the current site meta.

Additionally im going to pull this one up

Town (10)

1x Cop or Doctor
1x Deputy or Nurse
8x Vanilla

Mafia (2)

1x Gunsmith (positive on Cop and Deputy) or Pharmacist (positive on Doctor or Nurse)
1x Goon

[Empking]

Nominate Tread Carefully.

3-1-8

3 Mafia Goons - No Night Kill unless the SK dies

1 Serial Killer

1 FBI Agent
7 Vanilla Townies

[callforjudgement]

That looks biased against town to me. If they correctly lynch the SK day 1, it's as if they'd mislynched day 1 of a 3:9 with a named townie (which is definitely a very scumsided setup). Their best chance is probably to repeatedly no-lynch and hope the SK takes out scum.

Also, if the SK is caught, their best option is to claim, let the town direct them, and hope that it ends up in a 1:1:1 despite the town directing them, which is entirely possible; this leads to an SK win in that situation with best strategy from all sides, if my 1:1:1 analysis isn't badly off. The result is that the groupscum are mostly helpless; their only real weapon is the vote, and there's an NK actively seeking them out. It may be balanced with respect to the groupscum (although I doubt it), but it probably wouldn't be much fun for them.

[N]

I put Popcorn Mafia in the queue because it was discussed recently.

I would like to hear some additional discussion on Double Tap from a couple pages ago. Again like Popcorn I see this as just doing well as a fun setup in the current site meta.

If you want another variation on Popcorn, you could try the everybody's vengeful setup I used for a marathon. I don't know what numbers would be best for that, though; I'm just throwing it out there. (Day 1 was a lynch as usual, then whoever got killed got to kill someone, including if you were vengekilled.)

Link to the marathon: http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=24841

[LlamaFluff]

Thats actually pretty different... also its too small of a game since im trying to increase the amount that are more than nine player (open queue instead of micro queue).

Also what CFJ said for Emp's setup. Town lynching SK early is basically turning the game into mountainous +1 scum. SK who is caught just claims SK and trys to force a 1:1:1 (and stops killing if there is one scum left).

[N]

You can add more people.

[LlamaFluff]

You can add more people.

Vengeful scum starts falling apart pretty quickly.

I could see something along the lines of a variable

1-3 Vengeful Townie
7-9 Vanilla Townie

3x Goon

Working though. Venge-town enmasse would probably just result in a lot of anti-town play so the venge shot can be used. Overstocking with certain roles has already been tried a few times (Texas Justice) and tends to not work too well without some way to limit things.

Its the theory behind the Double Tap from last page. It basically takes the broken Texas Justice and retools it a bit to limit the "chain shoot" breaking call as that results in dead town and no one knowing who scum is in Double Tap.