[OLD] Open Setup Ideas and Discussion

[Ether]

...So if there's one goon left and one townie left everyone else is cult, and the cult recruits the last goon, the town wins and the cult loses?

A recruited goon is functionally worthless for the purposes of preventing other win conditions, but recruiting it is also bad for the cult?

The cult can only win when all living players are recruited, but the town wins when all living goons are recruited?

Those win conditions don't make any sense, and if they were anything approaching normal, then the town would stand no chance at all. It'd just be a scramble to get culted quickly instead of being lynched or nightkilled early for what is functionally an autoloss.

[saulres]

My idea was to force the cult to do some thinking on who is town and who is scum, because recruiting scum hurts them. They have to try to keep one scum alive. It's designed (at least I thought it was) to give town a chance against the cult, and make the cult work for their win.

...So if there's one goon left and one townie left everyone else is cult, and the cult recruits the last goon, the town wins and the cult loses?

As long as the goon doesn't kill the last townie. So both the cult and scum have to be careful with their actions.

A recruited goon is functionally worthless for the purposes of preventing other win conditions, but recruiting it is also bad for the cult?

A recruited goon can try to redirect the cult from recruiting the other goon, while also letting the other goon know who's town and who's cult so they can plan their kills. So if one of them's recruited, they have to work for their win too.

[Annadog40]

Here is a simple 7 player Micro set up. Is this game balanced?

VT

- 5

1 - shot bulletproof

- 1

Mafia Goon

- 1

[Ether]

I don't know about balance, but it sounds...really, really boring to play. Most 7-player setups are imbalanced, but at least associative tells exist.

[Annadog40]

I don't know about balance, but it sounds...really, really boring to play. Most 7-player setups are imbalanced, but at least associative tells exist.

It's from another forum where they are very newbie when it comes to mafia. I'll adapt and change that one till it is interesting enough for this site.


Here is a mini 11 player game

Amulet of the Beast

Vanilla Town

- 5

Survivor to Beast

- 1

Mafia Goon

- 5


No private chat for goons

Randomly distributed Amulet that controls the beast and they will kill one player if the amulet holder chooses to. The beast can have the amulet if they get it. If the Beast is lynched, then there is no more night.

Vanilla win when all Mafia are dead.
Mafia win when all Vanilla are dead.
Survivor to Beast win if they are alive when either mafia or vanilla reach their win condition.

[quadz08]

single mafioso is the biggest problem with those setups, imo

[Annadog40]

^ What do you mean?

[quadz08]

single mafia games tend to be unfun - difficult to catch mafia with no associative tells, and mafia have no one to plot and plan with. It removes a lot of the entertaining elements. A balanced 2:5 (which is tough but possible with some mechanics and/or PRs) is more likely to be entertaining for your players.

[Annadog40]

single mafia games tend to be unfun - difficult to catch mafia with no associative tells, and mafia have no one to plot and plan with. It removes a lot of the entertaining elements. A balanced 2:5 (which is tough but possible with some mechanics and/or PRs) is more likely to be entertaining for your players.

Ok. I'll edit that game. Thanks for the advice!

[The Fox]

Hello, I am new to the site and want to play mafia but the games I am seeing have very long Day Phases. Are there games here with 24 hour - 48 hour Day Phases and 24 Hour Night Phases?

[quadz08]

Only very rarely. The long day phases here are a well-established standard here. It allows for more people in more time zones to participate more effectively without spending 24 hours a day in front of their computer for a week.

[The Fox]

Only very rarely. The long day phases here are a well-established standard here. It allows for more people in more time zones to participate more effectively without spending 24 hours a day in front of their computer for a week.

Okay, I guess I need to get used to it.

[callforjudgement]

Here is a simple 7 player Micro set up. Is this game balanced?

VT

- 5

1 - shot bulletproof

- 1

Mafia Goon

- 1

This setup has the typical problem (for forum Mafia) of setups with a scumteam of 1, which is that scum have no real incentive to act differently from townies. They want to try a little harder than townies do to stay alive, but that's hardly going to have much of an effect, and mostly won't be observable. This specific problem doesn't apply so much in face-to-face Mafia (where you can use psychological tells to see if someone's lying based on their body language), although this setup would be even worse there for reasons explained below.

Also, just lynching randomly gives town a pretty good win rate in this setup! The bulletproof player doesn't affect anything about random lynching (town will no-lynch if it gets to evens, thus making the bulletproof pointless in the random-lynch scenario), so town have three shots to hit the scum at a 1/7, a 1/5 (× 6/7), and a 1/3 (× 6/7 × 4/5) chance; that's a 57/105 chance, better than 50:50, which is not normally where you want to be for completely random play.

Worse (from the balance point of view), town has a better strategy than lynching randomly; the bulletproof player can confirm themself by claiming. (It's not like scum can kill them unless they're either the D1 lynch candidate (and they save themselves by claiming), or the N1 kill attempt, a 2/7 chance. Note that it's actually to scum's benefit to shoot a BP player twice to kill them in this setup, which is another sign that something's gone wrong somewhere.) In an Open, every town power role is effectively an Innocent Child, and making that player bulletproof too is really awkward. The odds of town victory lynching randomly, with a BP player saving themselves by claiming, is a little under 1/6 + 1/4 (× 5/6) + 1/2 (× 5/6 × 3/4), or 33/48: this is better than 2/3 (i.e. 32/48). Note that the scum can't save themselves by fakeclaiming or counterclaiming BP; on day 1 or 2 this leads to a 1v1 which will be resolved by simply lynching both players in turn for a guaranteed town win, and on day 3 it changes the situation from a 1v1 to a different 1v1 (i.e. doesn't make a difference really).

So, this setup is broken. There's no outright guaranteed win strategy for town, but they can get over 2/3 chance, and will pretty much have to given the absence of other information. In face-to-face Mafia, they also have the chance of finding scum via scumhunting, which will drive it even higher.

Normally the recommended way to design a 7p setup is to place two scum in there, then try to give the town sufficiently large buffs that they stand a fighting chance (5:2 is /not/ easy numbers for town to survive, but you can mitigate that with power roles). It's hard to do this in a way that eliminates all the problems with setups of that size, though. (It's not too hard to come up with relatively

balanced

setups like Original Newbie, but that's considered broken because the entire gameplay of the setup revolves around both scum and town knowing the breaking strategies and how to counter them and thus needs very aggressive fakeclaims/counterclaims from scum in order to avoid the game being a town blowout. Likewise, 2:5 nightless is probably close to balanced, but has the typical problems of being a nightless, such as the positive feedback when town get a kill.)

As for the 11p game, a 5:5:1 setup where both the Mafia and Town are vanilla and the Town have no compensating advantages can't possibly be balanced. The setup is symmetrical between scum and town, except that scum have more information (I'm assuming no nightkill (because they'd have no way to arrange a target) and no daytalk, but they still know each other's identities, and importantly, can still immediately chain-vote out all other players if they gain a majority). I think a setup a little like this can be balanced, but the randomly distributed (day?)vig is not an element that's at all easy to balance in a setup (it should probably unconditionally go to town), and the numbers are off. (It's also going to be very hard to make it work at 11p. The correct number of scum is probably 3 with an NK+private topic or 4 without the NK, but I find it hard to see how to make up enough town power to compensate in either case; 2 and 3 would be much too weak for the scumteam.) That said, "survivor who causes everyone else to lose if they win" is a role that I've wanted to see worked into a balanced setup for a while (assuming that it's Open, or at least that the presence of the role is known by everyone all game).

[Annadog40]

^ In the second game, scum are uninformed so it is more like town1 vs town2.

As for the first game, it is from a forum that doesn't know how to play mafia. I am in the processes of adding more roles and a second mafia to it. It will have at least two mafia and two VT.

[Annadog40]

I was wondering, would this game be aloud in normal?

Survivor/Rainbow Goo/Lightning rod/Bulletproof – 1
Mafia Goon – 1
Mafia Roleblocker – 2
Town Doctor – 1
Town Tracker – 1
Town Cop – 1
Town Vigilantie – 1
Vanilla Town – 1

If two players are Lightning rods, then they will target the player closes to them on the initial player list. If their is an even amount of space, then it will be randomly chosen.

[Cheery Dog]

Lightning Rods at least are blacklisted from normal games.
I think rainbow goo probably is as well, and possibly even survivor.

[Bulbazoor]

4x VT

1

Bomb

2

Mafia Goons

Completely relying on scumhunting.

[Annadog40]

Lightning Rods at least are blacklisted from normal games.
I think rainbow goo probably is as well, and possibly even survivor.

Ok, I'll save that for a non normal game.

[chamber]

I was wondering, would this game be aloud in normal?

Survivor/Rainbow Goo/Lightning rod/Bulletproof – 1
Mafia Goon – 1
Mafia Roleblocker – 2
Town Doctor – 1
Town Tracker – 1
Town Cop – 1
Town Vigilantie – 1
Vanilla Town – 1

If two players are Lightning rods, then they will target the player closes to them on the initial player list. If their is an even amount of space, then it will be randomly chosen.

This setup has 3 mafia and a survivor, it only has 9 players. What the fuck.

[Annadog40]

I was wondering, would this game be aloud in normal?

Survivor/Rainbow Goo/Lightning rod/Bulletproof – 1
Mafia Goon – 1
Mafia Roleblocker – 2
Town Doctor – 1
Town Tracker – 1
Town Cop – 1
Town Vigilantie – 1
Vanilla Town – 1

If two players are Lightning rods, then they will target the player closes to them on the initial player list. If their is an even amount of space, then it will be randomly chosen.

This setup has 3 mafia and a survivor, it only has 9 players. What the fuck.

Is that too many mafia? Cause I can remove a mafia or as a town.

[chamber]

My expectation for a 9 player setup would be 7 town and 2 mafia. 5 town, 3 mafia and a survivor is insane. What if they try and lynch the vig day 1? Town loses almost gauranteed.

[Flubbernugget]

I've been trying to think of a way to make jesters fun

2 compulsive fruit vending jesters
2 mafia goons
7 vt's
1 tracker
1 doc

Jesters only win if both of them are killed before another wincon is reached. If jesters win, game ends and both townies and mafia lose. Townies win if all goons are dead. Mafia win if their numbers equal that of the vt's.

Thoughts?

[Annadog40]

My expectation for a 9 player setup would be 7 town and 2 mafia. 5 town, 3 mafia and a survivor is insane. What if they try and lynch the vig day 1? Town loses almost gauranteed.

If they try to lynch vig, the lightning rod will drag them all to the rainbow goo.

I'll remove a mafia RB.

[chamber]

Ah, I'm sorry. I was thinking nexus I think. The lightning rod is on constantly? This setup is probably worse now not better because the rainbow goo element will actually happen.

[Annadog40]

Ah, I'm sorry. I was thinking nexus I think. The lightning rod is on constantly? This setup is probably worse now not better because the rainbow goo element will actually happen.

The lightning rod is always on