[OLD] Open Setup Ideas and Discussion

[Siveure DtTrikyp]

Hmm, the simultaneous victory seems like an enormous problem with the setup.

Possibly, make it so that for a certain setup to win, the mod has to be alive.

[BBmolla]

Role from the original incarnation of C9++ (wolf equivalent is Shaman). He could seer a "Role Class" of any player; for example, if he investigated a Cop, he would get a C (or "Investigator") result, if he investigated a Doc, he would get a D (or "Protector") result, etc.. In this game I would also have him detect opposing scum, perhaps at some other price, pending the commentary of reviewers. Speaking of which...

Oh that's badass.

[LlamaFluff]

@LlamaFluff: How's the review going? Anything I could do to make it easier?

Sample roles since you are using a lot of terminology that I think I know what they are but need to be sure before I would say that it seems like a good idea.

Confirm following terms for me:

Wolf Master
Wolf Stealth
Wolf Shaman
Stalker
Strong Will

It looks like a beyond role madness setup... but still kinda interesting and less breakable than C9++ is for town.

[ChannelDelibird]

We designed and wrote up a deck for this at MANCHESSKID so I thought I'd share it here, should anyone find it of use (not sure I'd submit it for an actual Open game but didn't seem worthy of its own thread):

Love Letter Mafia

Themed from the card game. Plays up to 8. Alignments are determined separately based on the number of players (we played with 2:6) then each player draws a random role card from the deck of 16. You may use a role card and the mafia kill on the same night, if applicable.

1x Princess - If you are ever forced to discard this card, you die.
1x Countess - If a Prince or a King is targeted for a nightkill, you die in their place.
1x King - Reveal this card at Day to swap it with another player's role card. Only one player may use this card per Day.
2x Prince - Target a player at night (you may choose yourself). At the dawn of the next Day, they must discard their role card and draw a new one from the deck.
2x Handmaid - You

may

reveal this card at Day if targeted by a Day ability in order to block the ability's effect. While holding the Handmaid, you are immune from the mafia nightkill.
2x Baron - You may target a player each night. If their role card is a Priest or a Guard, they will die. If their role card is a Handmaid, Prince, King, Countess or Princess, you wil die. If their role card is the other Baron, nothing happens.
2x Priest - Reveal this card at Day to privately look at another player's role card.
5x Guard - Reveal this card at Day to target a player and guess which role card they have. If you are correct, they must discard it and draw a new one from the deck. Each of the five Guard cards may only be activated once per game.

Considering how quickly we wrote up the setup, we were surprised at how not-shit it seemed but we admittedly didn't playtest it heavily.

[Kaiveran]

@LlamaFluff: How's the review going? Anything I could do to make it easier?

Sample roles since you are using a lot of terminology that I think I know what they are but need to be sure before I would say that it seems like a good idea.

Confirm following terms for me:

Wolf Master
Wolf Stealth
Wolf Shaman
Stalker
Strong Will

It looks like a beyond role madness setup... but still kinda interesting and less breakable than C9++ is for town.

Master Wolf = Godfather
Stealth Wolf = Ninja
Wolf Shaman = aforementioned Spy role
Stalker = short for Wolfstalker, from two-fold C9, a Tracker who can only track wolves.
Strong Will makes a player immune to Roleblocking.

[LlamaFluff]

So tracker fails against wolf and stalker fails against mafia? Both are successful against town?

Also do they only fail against the kill or do they fail against a roleblocking role as well? Like if Wolf gets RB, blocks X and kills Y while being targeted by the tracker, what happens?

[Kaiveran]

So tracker fails against wolf and stalker fails against mafia? Both are successful against town?

Yes, following the Two-fold C9 model, both can track town.

Also do they only fail against the kill or do they fail against a roleblocking role as well? Like if Wolf gets RB, blocks X and kills Y while being targeted by the tracker, what happens?

On every other site I've been to with Mafia/TWG style games, I've only seen this kind of mechanic once, and in that game the factional Trackers failed against any action, so that's what I had in mind. This means that in your example, the Tracker wouldn't see his target go anywhere.

Either of these points can be tweaked for balance. I feel like it might be a good idea to have only the kills untraceable.

Also the main reason I wanna get rid of the universal powers is because of the possibility of Power Roles being Masons with eachother, which seems way OP to me. It would also help the "role madness" factor. If it is going to be kept though, Masons should probably go.

[LeMidget]

Is http://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?tit ... of_Command still a viable setup?

[LlamaFluff]

Is http://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?tit ... of_Command still a viable setup?

It was never an approved setup. If anyone wants to run it as a micro they can, but it is not guaranteed to be balanced, unable to be broken or anything like that.

@Kav - If tracker fails against any wolf, and stalker fails against mafia I have a problem with the setup because those roles are suddenly exceedingly powerful. Lets say tracker gets "Targeted X" from their result. They basically have a "confirmed not wolf" result at that point. They become more of factional specific cops than anything else.

I could maybe see a "tracker is unable to track wolf kill, stalker is unable to track mafia kill" but I more like them being both "trackers" but named differently so town can piece together what was rolled, which is one of the strongest powers the town has in C9++, figuring out the setup so they can catch fakeclaims.

[BBmolla]

Assassins in the Mafia

7 Players

2 Mafia Goons

1 Town Witness
2 Town Masons
2 Vanilla Townies

• Witness is told at the start of the game who the mafia are.
  
• If the last mafia member is lynched, the mafia must submit who they believe the Witness to be. If they guess correctly, they win.

Stolen from the Resistance variant, Avalon. I'm unsure of masons as power roles, the setup needs to be townsided so that Mafia don't have a huge chance to win from the base setup, but I wanted to avoid investigative roles so Mafia could hunt who seemed to know who they were.

Is there a breaking strategy I'm ignoring?

[ChannelDelibird]

Is there a breaking strategy I'm ignoring?

Nightkilling the Witness?

[Faraday]

Can't think how it could be broken. But uh, unlike the resistance it suffers from the game being over if the witness is ever forced to claim?


er: that also @ cdb's

[BBmolla]

Oh derp.

Uh

Make it so only alignment flips?

Edit: Yeah never mind, I have to clarify what happens when Witness is lynched and such. Bleh.

[BBmolla]

-Witness can be lynched or night killed, but will flip Vanilla Town.

Is that too broken/stupid?

Edit: -Game doesn't end if Witness is dead.

Rename it to "Witness Stand" or something.

[Cabd]

So scum has to guess from all players, living OR dead, and can't POE with night kills at all?

[BBmolla]

Witness won't be a Mason.

I mean I'm really up for suggestions, but I don't know how else to fix it besides making it nightless.

[Cabd]

I guess that would work?

[Kaiveran]

Ka

i

v - If tracker fails against any wolf, and stalker fails against mafia I have a problem with the setup because those roles are suddenly exceedingly powerful. Lets say tracker gets "Targeted X" from their result. They basically have a "confirmed not wolf" result at that point. They become more of factional specific cops than anything else.

I could maybe see a "tracker is unable to track wolf kill, stalker is unable to track mafia kill" but I more like them being both "trackers" but named differently so town can piece together what was rolled, which is one of the strongest powers the town has in C9++, figuring out the setup so they can catch fakeclaims.

Thanks for pointing this out. I personally do like the idea of them only failing against kills but I want to trust your judgement.

[TierShift]

So scum actually have only 3 people to choose from to be witness? I think you can expect any half-decent scum to figure out the masons and then have just a small witness pool, from which they will choose the one with the most awkward reads.

Witness will play like scum, knowing who the scum is, but needing to make fake cases on town and thus is likely to either get figured out by scum or be lynched (and be figured out afterwards by scum).

2:7 mountainous is really scumsided and I don't think putting in masons outweighs the extreme anti-town utility that is the witness.

If you wanna use witness, you will have to put in more town power.

[BBmolla]

Suggestions?

I originally had 2 cops instead of masons, would that be better?

[callforjudgement]

Vote For Town Mafia

• 5 Vanilla Townie
  
• 2 Mafia Goons (no nightkill)
  
• Nightless
  
• The win conditions are reversed from normal; each faction is trying to lynch its own members.
  
• Town wins when 4 townies are lynched
  
• Mafia wins when 2 Mafia are lynched

The main thing that's bothering me about this is the 2 town : 2 Mafia situation. Much of the time, Mafia will end up getting 3 votes on them "naturally", but when they don't (i.e. both townies refuse to lynch either Mafia), some means is needed for the game to continue. Plurality lynch and random both suck in that situation. Mafia-chooses would work, but might be a bit scumsided; another option is to let the most recently lynched townie break the tie.

Apart from that, the setup seems pretty balanced. (For people who care about the EV, I calculated it as 10/21 or around 47.6%.)

[JasonWazza]

I think if it's gotten to a 2:2 scenario, it's time to call it a town win.

[JasonWazza]

Question, do you flip people at all?

[callforjudgement]

I was planning to flip as normal; I can't see a good reason not to (although would be interested to hear of one if you have one).

[JasonWazza]

Given the mechanic, i feel like VCA might be more worthwhile nearing end game (3:2/3:1) and that the giving of flips makes things all that much more difficult for the scum.