[REVIEW] Open Setup Reviews

[callforjudgement]

I'm fine. I was going to run it myself but am not sure I'll have the time, and someone else running it means that it gets run/tested and I don't even have to put in any work myself.

Based on discussion in this thread, I think you should make clear (in role PMs or flavour) that it's not a Jester game; each faction is trying to appear town, in the hope of being lynched.

I made a wiki page about the setup: Vote for Town Mafia. You can link that as your setup advertisement if you want.

[pisskop]

Neato. Ill add you to the dead thread

[PantherPunt]

Third time's the charm? I think I finally got to the right place....Although now that I read the OP in the Open queue, it seems that I'm not allowed to pick my own Open set-up to run. That stinks.

I've modded games elsewhere, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't count for anything here.

Hope this is the right place for this...

I've played in this setup. I'm interesting in running it. Have never modded on here and don't know what needs to be done ahead of that. I get some type of permissions added? I get approval to run the game? I get permission to post in the queue? Or a mod posts it in the queue? Help a new guy out

Considering running my first game on site here. It wouldn't run until at least 6/6.

I'd like to run this at 3d/1d. I'm unaware of the demand and not sure if shorter phase lengths are well-received here, so if the supply is lacking, I can lengthen, but won't go above 6d/1d.

I believe I have full discretion over who I let in the game, yes? I'd just like to check each /in (if I'm unfamiliar) for activity level / patterns of flake history.

Poisonous Mafia - 17er

1 Mafia Roleblocker
1 Mafia Poisoner
2 Vanilla Mafia

1 Town Variable Cop
1 Town Poisoner
1 Town Healer
10 Vanilla Townies

Role PMs:

Spoiler: Mafia Roleblocker

You're the Mafia Roleblocker. Starting N1, you may roleblock one player each night. The roleblocked player will not be able to perform their night action, if any. You will not receive any result for your action. The roleblocked player will not be explicitly informed that they were roleblocked.

You may choose to holster. If you do not submit a target your action will be lost.

Your team is:
X
X
X
X

Spoiler: Mafia Poisoner

You're the Mafia Poisoner. Starting N1, you may poison one player each night. The poisoned player will be announced to the thread at the start of the following day. If not healed, your target will die at the end of the day.

You may choose to holster. If you do not submit a target your action will be lost.

Your team is:
X
X
X
X

Spoiler: Vanilla Mafia

You're a Vanilla Mafia.

You are a villainous cretin; your vote is your weapon.

Your team is:
X
X
X
X

Spoiler: Town Variable Cop

You're the Town Variable Cop. On even nights, including Night 0, you may Affiliation Peek a player of your choosing. This will return [Town] or [Mafia].

On odd nights, you may Role Peek of a player of your choosing. This will return [Role] or [Vanilla], but not affiliation. For example: vanilla mafia and vanilla townies will both return [Vanilla]. The mafia poisoner and town poisoner will both return [Poisoner].

If you are roleblocked, your result will be [No Result].

If you do not submit an action your target will be randed among the remaining townies.

Spoiler: Town Poisoner

You're the Town Poisoner. Starting N1, you may poison one player each night. The poisoned player will be announced to the thread at the start of the following day. If not healed, your target will die at the end of the day.

You may choose to holster. If you do not submit a target your action will be lost.

Spoiler: Town Healer

You're the Town Healer. Starting D2, you may heal one player who was poisoned the night before. If you do not heal a poisoned player, they will die at the end of the day. You must submit your action by 1 hour before end of day. The healed player will be announced as soon as the moderator can process it.

This action is considered a Day action. You may choose to holster. If you do not submit a target your action will be lost.

Spoiler: Vanilla Townie

You're a Vanilla Townie.

You are the soul of the game; your vote is your weapon.

[BBmolla]

Variable Cop = Rolecop for site consistency sake.

Most effective strategy would be to direct the Town Poisoner I think

Do Mafia have a factional nightkill or is the poisoner their only nightkill?

[PantherPunt]

Variable Cop = Rolecop for site consistency sake.

Most effective strategy would be to direct the Town Poisoner I think

Do Mafia have a factional nightkill or is the poisoner their only nightkill?

Mafia do have a factional kill.

Variable cop is not a Rolecop strictly. It's an alignment cop on some nights and a Rolecop on other nights.

[callforjudgement]

Setup is broken, assuming scum don't have a nightkill (there isn't one listed). The Roleblocker can't block the Healer, thus if the town massclaim and direct all actions then the scum will never have any ability to kill or lynch any town power role. Town forces an NL/NK cycle until everyone has been investigated. PEDIT: OK, I see you disclaimed this already; I was writing this post while you were writing yours.

Thus, I'm assuming you meant to give scum a nightkill. At 13:4 town would be relying a lot on their power roles to balance the game, either via claiming to confirm themself or more directly via stopping the scum poison. (Town are in huge trouble if they lose their Healer to an NK, or to a lesser extent, being roleblocked; before that point, directing the Poisoner makes it double day, but as soon as the scum get the ability to kill then town are behind.) Apart from the double day ability (which is genuinely powerful), Town pretty much have only the Variable Cop (who is an even-night-plus-confirmations Cop odd-night Rolecop) for power, with the other roles all cancelling each other out. That said, the Variable Cop is a very powerful role; the setup is clearly scumsided without it (as having any PRs revealed is devastating for town, so they can't really claim-to-confirm) but I'm not great at reviewing Larges and am not sure if this would balance it. The setup is at least clearly very highly swingy, possibly unacceptably so, because all three town PRs represent a major amount of power and the town will be set back a long way by losing any of them to factional nightkill or repeated roleblocks.

[BBmolla]

Making one of the Mafia a Traitor would make me more comfortable with the setup I think.

[PantherPunt]

Setup is broken, assuming scum don't have a nightkill (there isn't one listed). The Roleblocker can't block the Healer, thus if the town massclaim and direct all actions then the scum will never have any ability to kill or lynch any town power role. Town forces an NL/NK cycle until everyone has been investigated. PEDIT: OK, I see you disclaimed this already; I was writing this post while you were writing yours.

Thus, I'm assuming you meant to give scum a nightkill. At 13:4 town would be relying a lot on their power roles to balance the game, either via claiming to confirm themself or more directly via stopping the scum poison. (Town are in huge trouble if they lose their Healer to an NK, or to a lesser extent, being roleblocked; before that point, directing the Poisoner makes it double day, but as soon as the scum get the ability to kill then town are behind.) Apart from the double day ability (which is genuinely powerful), Town pretty much have only the Variable Cop (who is an even-night-plus-confirmations Cop odd-night Rolecop) for power, with the other roles all cancelling each other out. That said, the Variable Cop is a very powerful role; the setup is clearly scumsided without it (as having any PRs revealed is devastating for town, so they can't really claim-to-confirm) but I'm not great at reviewing Larges and am not sure if this would balance it. The setup is at least clearly very highly swingy, possibly unacceptably so, because all three town PRs represent a major amount of power and the town will be set back a long way by losing any of them to factional nightkill or repeated roleblocks.

I'm not a setup expert, but this game was designed by one.

"Town are in huge trouble in they lose their Healer to a NK" - how so? if they want to slow down the rate of death, they can just have the town poisoner holster. or is there another concern?

Cop has a n0 peek, so at game start there are actually 4 clears, or 3 clears and an outed maf (I personally prefer n0 checks to be randomized town checks, but w/e. not an expert).

It wasn't written in role PM, but maf roleblocker cannot target the same player on consecutive nights (I think that's generally not a thing here; but it is where I play).

I don't think it's that swingy, honestly. You're getting a minimum of 3 game days. (A vanilla 17er at 13:4 has a minimum of 4 game days).
Fastest possible wins:
Town: EOD3 (d1: mafia lynch, d2: mafia lynch and mafia poison, d3: mafia lynch)
Mafia: EOD4 (d1: ML, n1: NK, d2: ML/town poison, n2: NK, d3: ML/town poison, n3: NK, d4: ML and/or town poison)
^^hypothetically, this could actually go faster if healer holsters. or if healer dies and town poisoner keeps poisoning town resulting in 3 town deaths each EOD when there's a ML (this could make game end in mafia victory at EOD3/N3)

Also, you're assuming "ideal" play with town coming to a consensus on poison target. In my experience, you have individuals saying who they'd poison, and you have a poisoner who may just do whatever the f they want, because they trust their own reads over others'/consensus (paranoia that maf are influencing the target, and general hubris inherent in a good percentage of people playing this game).
It's rare that there are "true ideal team players" in a game to the point that ideal play can be employed.

I very much appreciate you taking the time to give your feedback! And would gladly take suggestions for adaptations.

[PantherPunt]

Making one of the Mafia a Traitor would make me more comfortable with the setup I think.

I'm not very familiar with how traitors (lone wolf in my vernacular) help adjust balance of a game. I assume it makes the mafia faction weaker, but I'm not quite sure I understand how it does so to the point of being impactful to balance.

At surface level it just seems as though it's more difficult for mafia to influence thread narrative, as they are 3 voices who can coordinate together, rather than 4 voices who can coordinate together.
As a counter-point, I think it is a slight pro for the mafia if/when that traitor dies. Town cannot read their 'spew' for indications on who teammates are, because they didn't know who their teammates were. There is also the chance that they can incorrectly vote a partner that they don't know.

Any theory insight would be greatly appreciated.

[callforjudgement]

"Town are in huge trouble in they lose their Healer to a NK" - how so? if they want to slow down the rate of death, they can just have the town poisoner holster. or is there another concern?

It gives an extra scum-controlled kill. Town-controlled kills aren't really harmful, even if they hit townies, because they have a chance of hitting scum and are likely to hit mislynch bait even if they don't (maybe saving town a mislynch, because they can use the lynch they would have used on the kill target on someone else instead). Scum-controlled kills have a tendency to hit supertownish players who were never going to be mislynched. So they rapidly reduce the timetable town have to win by without giving any advantage.

It wasn't written in role PM, but maf roleblocker cannot target the same player on consecutive nights (I think that's generally not a thing here; but it is where I play).

Oh, that changes things a lot. The main purpose of a roleblocker in the Opens we play here (and even many of the Closed games, although ofc mods like doing weird stuff in closed games) is to allow the Mafia to neutralize a claimed power role, thus deterring the power roles from claiming. If you have a non-consecutive-targeting roleblocker than they can't do that, so the roleblocker becomes a lot less useful. (That said, there are no roles in this setup that block the scum nightkill, so they could just shoot the suspected PR instead.) Probably it reduces the swing a bit to have the non-consecutive targeting, as scum get fewer opportunities to deal with the town PRs.

I don't think it's that swingy, honestly. You're getting a minimum of 3 game days. (A vanilla 17er at 13:4 has a minimum of 4 game days).

When town's power is mostly concentrated in a few power roles, like happens here, the potential swing is comparing the situation where they die to the situation where they survive. If the Variable Cop dies day 1 or night 1, town aren't getting any more clears/guilties (and anyone who clears themself via announcing their role will just get NKed, thus claiming to save yourself on day 1 is pretty much equivalent to being mislynched). If the Healer dies day 1 or night 1, scum get two kills a day from then on. If the Poisoner dies day 1 or night 1, town only get to kill half as many players. In all these situations, Town is much better off if a VT dies D1 and N1, and better off still if they kill Mafia with their
D1 lynch or N1 poison (or both!).

It's not so much about how fast the game ends, but about how much the early-game actions can change each faction's victory chances.

Also, you're assuming "ideal" play with town coming to a consensus on poison target. In my experience, you have individuals saying who they'd poison, and you have a poisoner who may just do whatever the f they want, because they trust their own reads over others'/consensus (paranoia that maf are influencing the target, and general hubris inherent in a good percentage of people playing this game).
It's rare that there are "true ideal team players" in a game to the point that ideal play can be employed.

I normally balance Opens on the assumption that town play optimally; they normally do. Sometimes they screw up and don't try to break the setup, but this usually leads to a justified scum victory. At least here, the Open queue tends to attract the sort of player who's willing to go along with a breaking strategy. (This may work differently on sites which only have one game running at a time, or don't have separate queues; there definitely are players who don't follow this sort of strategy, but at least over here, there are plenty of non-Open games they can play.)

I've never been in a setup which is known to have a town-controlled kill where the players don't at least try to direct it, and the player who controls the kill normally does go along with town's choices. (It's a different matter if the presence of the kill isn't known; the player who controls it will normally lone-wolf it rather than ask for help.)

I very much appreciate you taking the time to give your feedback! And would gladly take suggestions for adaptations.

As I said, I'm not an expert in balancing setups of this size, and there isn't anything obviously broken about it. I just suspect that the early days will have a much greater influence on the result than the later days.

[BBmolla]

Making one of the Mafia a Traitor would make me more comfortable with the setup I think.

I'm not very familiar with how traitors (lone wolf in my vernacular) help adjust balance of a game. I assume it makes the mafia faction weaker, but I'm not quite sure I understand how it does so to the point of being impactful to balance.

At surface level it just seems as though it's more difficult for mafia to influence thread narrative, as they are 3 voices who can coordinate together, rather than 4 voices who can coordinate together.
As a counter-point, I think it is a slight pro for the mafia if/when that traitor dies. Town cannot read their 'spew' for indications on who teammates are, because they didn't know who their teammates were. There is also the chance that they can incorrectly vote a partner that they don't know.

Any theory insight would be greatly appreciated.

I was assuming a traitor by normal guidelines which is different than what you stated.

In general, a Traitor is a halfway point between 3 mafia and 4 mafia. In this case 3 is too weak and 4 seems a little strong. Also, the chance that the mafia could be night killing/poisoning the traitor will make them hesitate more with their decisions in both those regards which I think adds a nice layer.

Just my opinion though.

[BBmolla]

I'll put it this way: If the Poisoner didn't exist, the setup would be fine with 4 mafia. Having two potential kills is enormous.

To give some perspective, I ran this setup with the mafia having two kills. It was 2:12 and the mafia sweeped. A couple different factors with it being closed and only 2 members of the mafia, but I still think 4 mafia at 17p with 1 1/2 kills (whatever it works out to) is too much.

[Kmd4390]

So, I stopped modding games for quite a while, but recently took over a game where the Mod flaked and am enjoying it. I proposed a change to an old setup a while back hoping someone could run it because I loved playing it. I didn't get a ton of feedback, but none of what I got was negative. I'd kind of like to just mod it myself to try to bring it back and reading the OP in the queue, if I'm not mistaken, it looks like all I need is Llama's approval here.

So here's the setup:

I want to propose a setup from the old days that I loved. Back in 2009, we played Paris Mafia:
viewtopic.php?f=53&t=10489&hilit=paris+mafia

The old setup was:
5 VT
2 mafia goons
2 mimes (Jester team. Wins when both are lynched. Own a joint RB at night)
1 town watcher
1 town vig

The reason it was scrapped, if I'm not mistaken, was that it was scum sided and near impossible for mimes to win. It never got any attention, but postgame I suggested the following:
7 VT
2 mafia goons
2 mimes
1 town watcher
1 town vig

The town has an extra day to try catching the scum and the mimes have an extra day to try to get lynched. The extra day balances any concerns that scum may have too much of an advantage with the mime distraction or whatever else. I've always loved games with jesters and those who disagree can simply avoid this game with it being an open setup. The mime aspect just adds to the fun of jester games and it's not impossible. Even in the old setup, I got myself lynched as mime and having an extra day could help the second mime to get lynched as well. At the very least, I think it deserves one run.

[BBmolla]

Looks fine to me.

No lynching is disallowed correct?

[Kmd4390]

I actually don't think it needs to be. If scum aren't shooting mimes, no lynching hurts town and helps scum.

[Realeo]

Can I have this reviewed? =D

Chain Reaction

9 VT turned Kingmaker on lynch

3 Mafia Goons

It is a nightless Mafia. Daytalk is open from first quarter of dayphase until third quarter of day phase. In a dayphase with IRL 12 days deadline, the Daytalk is open when there is 9 ~ 3 Days remaining in Deadline.

This game employs Accelerated Start.

If a Mafia Goon is lynched, game goes to next dayphase.

However, if a VT is lynched, the game thread is locked. The VT, before dies, must lynch another player kingmaker style. By Kingmaker style, I mean that the lynched VT is the only one that can vote and his vote decides who is lynched after him.

If a VT is lynched and lynch another VT, the newly lynched VT now must lynch another player. This VT chain reaction lynch continues until a VT lynch a mafia or Town loses.

Town winning objective is to eliminate all mafia player.
Mafia winning objective is to have the number of

not lynched

mafia equal to the number of

not lynched

VT.

First faction to get their objective goal wins.

EV speaking, that's 50%. One of the weakness of nightless is that you cannot lynch the obvtown. This is compensated by punishing bad play of town. Town can rack up early town loss or lynch a obvtown in the VT chain reaction

[Realeo]

I actually don't think it needs to be. If scum aren't shooting mimes, no lynching hurts town and helps scum.

What happesn if the 1st mime is killed and the 2nd mime is still alive? I think the 2nd mime should exit the game (ie. endgamed) if the 1st mime is dead.

[Kmd4390]

I actually don't think it needs to be. If scum aren't shooting mimes, no lynching hurts town and helps scum.

What happesn if the 1st mime is killed and the 2nd mime is still alive? I think the 2nd mime should exit the game (ie. endgamed) if the 1st mime is dead.

I need to research it from the first games, but I think you're right.

Edit: You're right. It happened in the screwed up version when one mime was modkilled. The other mime is listed as "died day 1".

[Realeo]

I think your setup is good, as long as you endgamed 1 mime v 1 town v 1 mafia for Mime-Mafia joint win.

[boring]

I don't know this would be allowed, or if it's even new, but I was struck with this idea:

Everything would be ordinary (with no individual PR's) except that the players would have a collective healer ability. While voting for their lynch, the players also openly vote someone to be protected that night from a NK. They'd have until the point of lynch to pick. The player would have to be chosen by the same level of majority (i.e. 5/9), or there'd be no save that night.

[callforjudgement]

I'm pretty sure that's allowed. I'm not sure if there are any numbers where it works offhand, though (although if pressed, I'd start it at 2:9 in the understanding that it's likely going to be somewhat scumsided).

[Creature]

If someone could take a look there, that'd be nice:

Spoiler:

Rolelist

Town Cop
Town Miller Gunsmith
Town Miller Vanilla Cop
Vanilla Town
Vanilla Town
Vanilla Town
Vanilla Town
Vanilla Town
Vanilla Town
Vanilla Town

Mafia Godfather
Mafia Doctor
Mafia Goon

Notes

• Town Cop
  gets "
  Mafia
  " result on
  Town Miller Gunsmith
  ,
  Town Miller Vanilla Cop
  ,
  Mafia Doctor
  and
  Mafia Goon
  , and "
  Town
  " result on any
  Vanilla Town
  and
  Mafia Godfather
  .
  
• Town Miller Gunsmith
  gets "positive" result on
  Town Cop
  ,
  Town Miller Vanilla Cop
  ,
  Mafia Godfather
  and
  Mafia Goon
  , and "negative" result on any
  Vanilla Town
  and
  Mafia Doctor
  .
  
• Town Miller Vanilla Cop
  gets "negative" result on
  Town Cop
  ,
  Town Miller Gunsmith
  ,
  Mafia Godfather
  and
  Mafia Doctor
  , and "positive" result on any
  Vanilla Town
  and
  Mafia Goon
  .

[boring]

I'm pretty sure that's allowed. I'm not sure if there are any numbers where it works offhand, though (although if pressed, I'd start it at 2:9 in the understanding that it's likely going to be somewhat scumsided).

What would make it scum-sided?

[mhsmith0]

@boring: Town can collectively vote on one person to be saved, but scum still has an enormous number of options, which means that the "PR" is pretty low utility.

Note, for instance, that semi-nightless
http://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?tit ... -Nightless
is 9v2 with two nights scum outright can't kill (way more pro town than suggested setup) and that's considered about balanced

FWIW, a more expansive version of your proposed setup has been run a few times on a different site
http://www.playdiplomacy.com/forum/view ... 07&t=37791

Immunity Idol Mafia
9v4
Day 1: Highest 6 support votes (probably just go HEAL: boring or the like) get idols and can't be killed
Day 2: Highest 5
Day 3: Highest 4
...
Day 7+: No idols

My guess is for MS something like that would need to be more like 10v3, though maybe to balance it you cut the idol count down by 1 or 2 as well (that way you still are guaranteed to have at least one townie available for NK every night for a while, but scum are stymied from getting to kill the players they likely most want to kill for quite a while)

[boring]

That's actually another question I've had. It seems like "balanced" games are all a bit town-sided in setup, yet scum appears to win a little more often than town. Is it the long games? Do they make it harder for town to figure things out?