Theme Test Market

[callforjudgement]

You're missing any mechanism for ending the game, unless you just reskin it as a 'points' game where certain people are flagged as scum for when the bunker opens? Then it's like a No Reveal Nightless No Exit...

I've seen a reality TV show that worked along these lines; there was no scum, but it could be reworked for a game that included them. The way that it worked is that players voted for one player to become impossible to vote for for the rest of the game, and that the game ended when everyone agreed on the same player to win (or when the prize money reached 0; it was decreasing constantly over time). The Mafia version would go a bit like this:

• First, everyone gets to vote on a player who they think should win the game. Players can't vote for themselves. If the vote is unanimous (i.e. all but one player vote for that player), that player wins, as does everyone in their faction. (It's thus impossible for town to win unless all the possible players to vote for are town, at which point the scum should probably be endgamed instantly to avoid actually playing it all out.)
  
• Then, if that vote wasn't unanimous, everyone gets to vote on a player who they think shouldn't be the player to win the game. Whoever gets the most votes cannot be voted for for the rest of the game (although they can still win if another member of their faction wins the win vote). That player can still vote.
  
• Then go back to step 1, etc.

It's equivalent to regular nightless Mafia where dead players don't flip and can still vote, AFAICT. I suspect it's a rather town-sided mechanic, but that might be balanced with a largish scumteam. I'm not recommending it, though, because no-reveal mechanics tend not to be all that fun. (Incidentally, multiple scumteams would probably work really nicely with the mechanic.)

[callforjudgement]

For what it's worth, I've put some thought into the idea of running two games in parallel with the same player list, but with no rule against talking about one game in the other. That'd make significant changes by itself. (I suggest that players only win overall if they win in both games, so that outing your scumbuddy in either game goes against your wincon.)

[callforjudgement]

For what it's worth, I've put some thought into the idea of running two games in parallel with the same player list, but with no rule against talking about one game in the other. That'd make significant changes by itself. (I suggest that players only win overall if they win in both games, so that outing your scumbuddy in either game goes against your wincon.)

Then you have the awkward situation where both games are Scum wins, and nobody was scum in both. Game over, everyone loses.

I was planning to guarantee that the two scumteams had exactly one player in common. (Which would give a bunch of info to the town, as it would be public knowledge if I did that.)

[callforjudgement]

Working out a game mechanic, just want to see if anyone has heard or played of something similar?

Basic concept is a set of switches controlled by the players effect the power of the town or scumteam or both.

SMBM II had switches that basically enabled roles, and a Compulsive Switch Presser role responsible for pressing them. Might help give you some inspiration.

[callforjudgement]

It's worth mentioning that when the lovers version was run, it was broken twice, first via getting people to paraphrase their entire QT discussion (on the basis that town and scum discussion would look rather different, and the scum would have to fake something plausible at short notice), and later using QT timestamps. Mods could simply ban the second method of breaking the setup, but I'm not sure much can be done about the first.

[callforjudgement]

I enjoy breaking games, but typically I try to do it in Mafia Discussion rather than once the game's actually started. Saves a lot of time and annoyance that way :)

[callforjudgement]

Is the identity of the executioner public? (If not, this is just a standard NK with complex flavour, out of a set chosen by the town.)

[callforjudgement]

Slightly less say in the jury would be a minor penalty for scum to pay to guarantee their NK.

[callforjudgement]

Yes, it will

really

need a well-chosen playerlist to work. Other than that, it's interesting. (My first guess at optimal play is for the town to force the scummiest-looking player to shoot the second scummiest-looking, and probably not day 1. If they refuse, lynch them and save the bullet for tomorrow.)

Should probably be run as an open, in the open queue, rather than anywhere else.

[callforjudgement]

Ah, OK. I was thinking more in terms of the players you'd be likely to get. (The sort of people who think logically about when best to use the shot, rather than just playing emotionally and shooting day 1.)

[callforjudgement]

It's kind-of excessively kingmakery, although perhaps that was the point.

[callforjudgement]

It seems fundamentally incredibly swingy, given that the town can win on any day with a correct lynch.

[callforjudgement]

Is it even theoretically possible for the town to kill the Drugger without using power roles? Just being able to dodge whichever room's being gassed seems broken. Also, the scum probably don't want to use their Chemist; confirming three players' alignments is not so massively useful for the scum.

[callforjudgement]

Are we allowed to call dibs on themes? I want to run a series of Micro games based loosely around the Percy Jackson series when I get through the Open Queue.

Technically, no, but if you say you're interested in a theme it's likely that other people will either do other things, or try to join forces if they're interested in it too. So it works in practice.

[callforjudgement]

That setup was broken. And needed more vigs.

[callforjudgement]

I remember the list mod setting a deadline for mykonian's 50-player game, and people rushing to fill it before the deadline.
A 100-player game would be unlikely to fill by a reasonable deadline, I think, based on what happened in that game.

As for the two-identical-setups idea, it's pretty interesting. You could go further and give the two games identical playerlists (and allow the two games to talk about each other). That'd have interesting effects like making scum in one game neighbours in the other (until they started dying), etc..

[callforjudgement]

Having 100 players is going to change the dynamic of a game somewhat. For instance, you're never going to get 51 votes on someone day 1 and yet have reasonable scumhunting going on at the same time, unless you have deadlines of around a year (by which time everyone would have got bored). So it's something you definitely have to account for in setup design.

[callforjudgement]

Recruiting multiple mods could work too.

FWIW, if people ever need an extra mod for something like this and they're not too busy…

(I'm actually wondering about chipping in for reviewing the setup, not because I think it will work, but because I want some idea of how much of a trainwreck it'll turn out to be. Who knows, it might be salvageable.)

[callforjudgement]

I'd setup review / co-mod it for you. (Advance Wars 1 specifically, or the series in general? I could do either.)

[callforjudgement]

Losing the info from the day flip is pretty bad for town.

Losing the info from the night flip isn't nearly as bad (except in multiball); if someone got NKed, and nobody claims the kill, they were probably town. (If the scum have a Coroner, though, it lets them construct much better fakeclaims.)

[callforjudgement]

That's called "Split Role/Alignment", not Smalltown.

[callforjudgement]

Mason should probably be named Neighbour if it has a chance of going to scum (that's the terminology that was introduced to reduce confusion, and it's been working well; the only difference is that Masons are modconfirmed to each other as town, and Neighbours have no alignment confirmation).

I notice that there are no protective roles in the setup, but think it's probably better that way. With random arrangements, you don't want the potential of the players working out that there's a broken interaction like Doctor/Cop, then using it.

Roleblocker might be worthwhile as something to add to the rotation, though; it's pretty useful for both scum and town.

[callforjudgement]

What's to prevent the townies massclaiming?

[callforjudgement]

7:2. 6:2:1 is almost impossible to balance; there are too many nightkills.

[callforjudgement]

I'm not quite sure how the town/scum breakdown would work for Bravely Default. Perhaps town would be asterisk-bearers, with scum as the main characters? That almost works neatly but the big plot twist (you know the one) really screws things up in a way that I can't translate to Mafia mechanics in a way that won't be blatantly obvious to the players from a distance.

[callforjudgement]

Have any games been done with a sanity mechanic? I'm toying around with something in my head, but not sure how well it would pan out.

Yes. There was a game where players lost sanity as a result of various actions, and each missing sanity point placed a restriction on that player. IIRC it was pretty well done. Unfortunately, it was a Large Theme from ages ago so I'm not sure if I could easily find it; I'll look for it but that doesn't necessarily mean I'll find it.

EDIT: Found it. As it's numbered 3, I assume it had a couple of prequels too.

[callforjudgement]

I just read the rules for that game and it looks freaking AWESOME

Arguably it was, but town managed to break it. So the rules would need some modification for future use. (In particular, players were forced to demonstrate that they didn't have any unclaimed Insanities every day via doing things that would violate them, which was both a lot of faffing around and make the mechanic hard to use. As such, the list would need to be modified to be less observable.)

EDIT: Another problem is that if you look at the setup through a really complex, distorted lens, it looks like a Texas Justice variant (after all, every townie has the potential to vig…) This makes it semi-broken for much the same reasons.

[callforjudgement]

I think I'll take that up as a project. design a nonbroken version of that game.

I've had thoughts along those lines too. Willing to let me help codesign?

[callforjudgement]

There was a rather complex/mind-screwy theme game a while back where you could jump to the future as well as the past, and had an "established timeline" of lynches and nightkills (determining who would be alive) that both scum and town could change with some effort, and which would determine what happened after a jump in time. IIRC, the game's mechanics didn't actually work so there wouldn't be much point in copying them directly,

but

you could probably make a fun game off the same basic principle.

[callforjudgement]

I'm afraid not.

[callforjudgement]

It wasn't recent, at least. (I wasn't a player, and used to have much more time to read games I'm not involved in than I do nowadays.) I can't even remember if it was Mini or Large.

You might want to try searching on "paradox" or "paradoxes", IIRC they played a major part in the game (or at least, it was set up like they would when actually they wouldn't).

[callforjudgement]

That was a different game, but it's also interesting. It kind-of reminds me of Achron (in that the game itself doesn't travel in time, but allows you to perform actions proactively or retroactively).

[callforjudgement]

16 is not an easy number to fit a near-mountainous game around, although there's probably some way to do it.

Would breaking a restriction be a death or a modkill? If it's a death, townies would do it intentionally if they were about to be lynched in order to save town the mislynch. This means that you'd probably need fairly long deadlines.

[callforjudgement]

I think that flavoring the lynch mechanic as a 'Liberation' mechanic would reflect this theme pretty well, but in order for that to work right, it'd have to be set up such that when all the scum are lynched/liberated, town loses.
Is this something that could work, mechanically?
Have there been other setups built around AVOIDING lynching the informed minority/scum?

The hilarious thing is that you posted this

while there was a game ongoing that worked like that

. It tore me up, because I couldn't mention it because ongoing game rules.

The game has now ended, though, so feel free to go look at it and/or discuss it. (It's an Open; the setup is called Vote for Town Mafia.)

The setup as linked there is one of the simplest possible versions of the idea, but it would probably work in something more complex. Note that making a faction bigger is a disadvantage for that faction, though, so it's hard to make the numbers work if the town has positive utility power roles.

[callforjudgement]

Would there be any interest in playing a series of games that are 5p LYLO with 3 town, 2 scum?

I was considering this the other night--I really enjoy when games are in LYLO and I want to run some smaller setups.
The idea would be that 5 players would sign up and play in a series of 5p LYLO games, each with its own theme. Players would play until everyone has had a chance at being scum or once 5 total games have been played.
I could even do multiple of these simultaneously and privately, so it could be three of them going at once, with the same rotation of themes.
Another consideration I had would be not outting player's alignments/roles after the game had ended, as to keep subsequent games more interesting and less game-solvey.
I was thinking I could knock out a lot of smaller theme ideas by running a 'procedurally generated' sort of game where I make a new theme game for each new game run.

What do ya'll think?

I think this would work better using a setup with an EV higher than 2/15. As it is, it wouldn't surprise me if scum won every 5p lylo there was; it's a very hard setup for town to win.

3:2 lylos in real games normally have information that was obtained on prior days through night actions and/or claims. You could improve the EV to 1/6 by making one of the townies Named (which would simulate this), but it's still rather low.

[callforjudgement]

Wouldn't this have the obvious problem that when the scumteams become imbalanced as a result of asymmetrical nightkills or lynching, town have a strong incentive to spam/lurk in order to give an advantage to the smaller team? Town typically want scumteams in a multiball game to be balanced with each other.