[OLD] Open Setup Ideas and Discussion

[saulres]

Anyone have a breaking strategy?

If everyone chooses vig, when does the day end?

I think it can be broken like Texas Justice if everyone just chooses vig.

If everyone chooses vig, Mafia wins by them controlling half the vote. Because half of zero is zero. So town has to be careful.

What? It's only one lynch, why would that lose town the game??

The scum win condition is: You win if at the beginning of any day, you have half or more of the votes in play, OR when all townies are dead.

[wgeurts]

No, scum win condition is when all town players are dead or nothing can prevent it, having equal votes usually means nothing can prevent it but there are exceptions.

[saulres]

Umm... I can make the scum win condition in my game whatever I want it to be. Especially when it's set up a certain way to prevent game-breaking strategies.

If it would make you happier, replace "town" with "Team A" and "scum" and "maifa" with "Team B".

[Honey bee]

I suppose it functionally works but it feels really awkward to uphold, especially since in your setup control of that day's lynch =/= control of the game.

Also I feel like most town players will always pick vote to prevent screwing it up, or at least I would as town. But idk, it's hard to predict how others would respond to that win condition.

[deathfisaro]

RE: Vote or Vig

I can see a breaking strategy assuming all towns are cooperative (scums don't have to cooperate as it only hurts them i.e. not cooperating means scumclaiming by game design)
Also I discounted the cases where the game ends with scum win at the end of pregame as that's the most trivial case. And there's a way to guarantee that never ever happens.

Breaking strategy:

At the beginning of every day, especially D1, check who can vote by forcing everyone to put a vote down to all different players. That will make it clear to see who's voteless. All town agree to not vig that night, agree to all choose to vote the next day (and every day).

Some factors determine whether town will 100% win or not. But even the "not" scenarios are very heavily town favoured. I can't even think of a scenario where the win rate is close to 50-50. I believe there is none. All possible cases are significantly advantageous to town.

Solution:

Mafia always have votes AND faction kill.

If scums have to choose between the two, making the factional kill hurts their win rate. The breaking strategy revolves around voteless being a necessary consequence of getting the faction kill.
There aren't many scenarios where utilising the NK doesn't outright lose them the game. And those scenarios are the ones where game potentially ended at the end of pregame as scum win.
There are some other patches I could think of but those more or less contain loopholes that practically nullify them. (Or the game becomes a bit bastard.)

I didn't explain the details because it would take a sizeable table to cover all cases, but there are too many town 100% win scenarios and only a tiny small chance of scum's best case scenario which is still a 6v2 NK-less game. And scum isn't in control of making that best case happen anyway, it's a combination of collective town blunder and perfect scum play.

The game can be absolutely broken in queue even before game begins by designating 4 people to vig (and if they draw scum they're free to do whatever they want). I don't know if that's against the rules but just saying.

P.S. If you don't get why that's a breaking strategy, PM me and I'll come here and explain better (I might need a video or a massive table to do that though =P)

[saulres]

check who can vote by forcing everyone to put a vote down to all different players. That will make it clear to see who's voteless

Except I don't plan on telling people who's voteless. I either won't do a vote count until a hammer is reached, or make it clear that the vote counts only reflect who placed votes where as a courtesy summary to players but does not reflect the actual vote count.

[deathfisaro]

Ah, so the bastardy approach it is.
Problem could still arise if town truthfully claims voter/vig. Takes a little bit more brainpower but true claims and VCA can only be off by 2 so it could still be telling enough whether scums also told the truth or lied.
If you're going to hide the votelessness, might as well go all the way and make the voting through PM, instead of in the thread. Players manually vote counting and such can weaken this patch.

[saulres]

No, the votes remain public so the scum has to do some strategizing on when/how/if to place them. So does town.

[Fromage]

Re: Vote or Vig

Let's assume all townies choose vote on day 1 and truthfully claim so. Let's further assume scum wants to nightkill and cannot vote during the first day. The lynch can be decided using FOS. As soon as the lynch is decided, the actual voting begins.

Four players vote for the lynchee.

If these four votes are sufficient to lynch, the four players who voted become conftown.

If these four votes don't lynch, scum is among them. They should unvote one after another and a fifth player should provide the fifth vote. If they achieve a lynch, one scum is found.

If there is still no lynch, a sixth player is needed. By testing all combinations, both scum can be found.

This strategy requires good cooperation but it's certainly workable.

Conclusion: Scum looses the game if they choose to have a nightkill. Hence, the setup effectively becomes a 7-2 nightless.

Solution: Let the scum independently decide whether they have a vote. They should always have a nightkill.

[Honey bee]

Yeah, I came up with a solution similar to that, except it involved 2 slots with wagons of 4 and the 9th player hammering both. You also need 18 different wagons to sufficiently test every combination making sure no scum combination could be on one wagon for day one (I think) which is pretty tedious especially with the "fake" vote counts and needs pregame talk.

[Fromage]

Yeah, the strategy works best if everyone agrees beforehand. However it might still work on the second day.

Actually the sixth person isn't necessary on the first day. It's enough to test 5 combinations. If these combinations don't lead to a lynch and the mafia nightkill, town knows that the scum are among the 5 players. At the same time two townies would be confirmed.

[saulres]

Let the scum independently decide whether they have a vote. They should always have a nightkill.

This isn't really a solution; the scum would

always

choose to have a vote if they always have a nightkill.

Your other strategy does sound promising. I've pulled out of modding this but may consider returning to it if I can figure out how to fix the broken strategy. Thanks for coming up with that.

[Fromage]

Let the scum independently decide whether they have a vote. They should always have a nightkill.

This isn't really a solution; the scum would

always

choose to have a vote if they always have a nightkill.

If the scum always have a vote, the vigs could be confirmed quite easily. It should be possible to fakeclaim vig without being called out because you have a vote.

[saulres]

Which gets right back to "you can prove you're town by having your vote not count" in later game. No, I need to figure out how to fix it but don't really feel like it at the current time.

[West9]

I was looking through old posts this thread, and came across the "Delphi" game. Thought that the Oracle role in that setup was an interesting idea. So, I came up with this. Don't know if it's interesting or balanced.

Confirmation

9 Players

5 Vanilla Townies
2 Two-Shot Oracles

1 Mafia One-Shot Oracle
1 Mafia One-Shot Roleblocker

• If an Oracle successfully targets a town player at night, that player is confirmed as town the next morning. If they target scum or are roleblocked, no such confirmation occurs.
  
• If more than one Oracle successfully targets a player, all Oracle actions fail, and all attempted Oracle actions use up a shot.
  
• Mafia can perform a power role action and kill at the same time.
  
• The Mafia Oracle can't investigate their partner or same person that the mafia kills.

[TierShift]

This looks interesting!
Just a few questions to think about:
Why is the mafia oracle only 1-shot and town oracles 2-shot? Doesn't make sense.
I think the roleblocker should be full RB, why is it 1-shot?

Why can't mafia oracle target partner or the person mafia kills? Seems like a needlessly complicating rule.

[Oversoul]

Kansas City

9 Vanilla Townies
1 Cop

3 Mafia Goons

Special mechanic

: Cop gets an investigation result on a random Vanilla Townie prior to the game starting.
Night-talk only.

[Aneninen]

(1) This looks interesting!
Just a few questions to think about:
(2) Why is the mafia oracle only 1-shot and town oracles 2-shot? Doesn't make sense.
(3) I think the roleblocker should be full RB, why is it 1-shot?
(4) Why can't mafia oracle target partner or the person mafia kills? Seems like a needlessly complicating rule.

(1) I agree.
(2) To screw everything up one shot is enough too. (Eg. if both Oracles claim on the same Day and they agree whom to target, one can be Nightkilled and the other's target can be targetted. Or the Oracle Roleblocked? WIFOM-goldmine, lol.) On the other hand, the Setup itself seems to be very townsided if the town manages to lynch a Mafia on Day1.
(3) Full Roleblocker would be better, see the note above! (At least the Mafia could try to derail the Roleblocker wagon and bus the Mafia Oracle.)
(4) I agree this. Without this rule there are more WIFOM.

[West9]

I wouldn't be opposed to making it a full roleblocker

I think the problem with 4 is that the mafia oracle is effectively a one-shot mass roleblocker if they can target someone who's already gonna die or their scumbuddy. If they target scumbuddy, then no confirmation occurs, and any other oracle action which occurs will cause all of them to end in no confirmation. Same with if they target a dead player (it would create a useless confirmation, or no confirmation)

If Mafia's gonna try to fuck up oracle shots using the oracle, they should have to risk confirming a town.

[BBmolla]

Kansas City

9 Vanilla Townies
1 Cop

3 Mafia Goons

Special mechanic

: Cop gets an investigation result on a random Vanilla Townie prior to the game starting.
Night-talk only.

Let Mafia select who the Cop gets the result on. Have them select two players so that if one is the cop the other one is confirmed town instead.

That'd be my advice, less randomness. A game with a confirmed town zMuffin is very different from a game with a confirmed town new player who doesn't know what they're doing.

[BBmolla]

Confirmation seems pretty damned broken imo. You could have two confirmed towns day 2, and four confirmed towns day 3. Ridic.

[JasonWazza]

Kansas City

9 Vanilla Townies
1 Cop

3 Mafia Goons

Special mechanic

: Cop gets an investigation result on a random Vanilla Townie prior to the game starting.
Night-talk only.

Let Mafia select who the Cop gets the result on. Have them select two players so that if one is the cop the

other one is confirmed town instead.

That'd be my advice, less randomness. A game with a confirmed town zMuffin is very different from a game with a confirmed town new player who doesn't know what they're doing.

That luck finding a cop though.

[BBmolla]

Kansas City

9 Vanilla Townies
1 Cop

3 Mafia Goons

Special mechanic

: Cop gets an investigation result on a random Vanilla Townie prior to the game starting.
Night-talk only.

Let Mafia select who the Cop gets the result on. Have them select two players so that if one is the cop the

other one is confirmed town instead.

That'd be my advice, less randomness. A game with a confirmed town zMuffin is very different from a game with a confirmed town new player who doesn't know what they're doing.

That luck finding a cop though.

Realistically it wouldn't affect anything. They wouldn't know the cop investigation till he claims anyway.

[BBmolla]

They would know the first person on their list is in some shape or form confirmed town whether they are the cop or the cop innocent.

[BBmolla]

Simple Nomination

12 Players

3 Mafia Goons

1 Bulletproof Serial Killer

1 Town 2-shot Bulletproof
7 Vanilla Townies

• Mafia have no night kill.
  
• On odd nights, Mafia select three players. Only these three players may be lynched the following day.
  
• If only one townie is left alive going into the day phase, they commit suicide.
  
• Must lynch every day.