Theme Test Market

[Cavebear with a toothache]

Last night in the shower, this idea occurred to me. It seems so simple that it seems it must've been done, but I couldn't find anything like it with a quick search (apart from Machiavellian-Mafia's post 1590 in this thread, Bidding War mafia, which seems to share some characteristics. Namely, the use of bidding.)

Highest Bidder Mafia

Normal distribution of alignments (3 mafia, 9 town or similar)
Each night is made up of two phases: The bidding phase and the action phase. Alternatively, bidding could be done in twilight.
Instead of each player being assigned a role, there are a set number of power roles. I was thinking the same as the number of players.

Example set of twelve roles

Doc
Jailkeeper (roleblock & protect from everything variant)
Roleblocker
Vigilante
Body Armour (NK immunity)
Tracker
Watcher
Cop
Bus driver
Double voter
Burglar (steal all monies from targetted player)
Researcher (check all bids made by targetted player on previous night(s))

- Each player starts with X monies, let's say 100, and gets an additional X at the beginning of each day.
- In the bidding phase, each player sends the mod a PM of which roles the player wants to bid for. This can be any number of roles. The highest bidder for each role gets that role for that night. The way I'm thinking it, if you get multiple roles, you can use them all in the same night. The mod announces the winning bid for each role, but not who made the bid. If a player bid on a role he/she didn't win, the player saves those monies. Only winning bids result in subtracted monies.
- In the action phase, people submit night actions as usual.
- When a player is NK:ed/lynched, that role (= the role he/she had the previous night in case of lynch) is removed from the game. (This could possibly be replaced by "the cheapest role each night is removed from the game at the beginning of the day", but I like the tension. )
- Mafia has a shared NK as usual, as well as any roles they win the bids for.

I kind of like this idea for a large game, but a mini would be fine too (and think of the statistics! An actual figure on how popular roles are!), but unless some roles are repeated or there are less power roles than players, getting a large enough number of roles could prove hard-ish. Depends on how unusual roles you include, I suppose.

So, has it been done?

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Ted's Sporting Goods Store: Nifty, but encourages spamming.

Dancing Dead mafia: Do I get this right; you can play the game as "town", "lynching" two scum, and then suddenly be told that you're the last remaining scum? The mafia isn't actually an informed minority? I don't know...

'The Night' Mafia Where Darkness Lies: I like the Hag. I don't like the not knowing alignments on death.

Timewolf: I love tinkering with time, but I'm afraid I don't understand this. Majority vote decides who goes in the QGC, correct? And the TAA can... undo this? The part I don't understand is how the removing of votes retro-actively would work. What if a hammer is removed; would that person be in the cage or not? Could the TAA operator, over time, shift the votes on e.g. day one so that someone else was supposedly in the TAA? And if that person was actually the brain in a jar and was changed to someone else, would the brain get his actions back retro-actively? What if it's the other way around; you can't undo the information he's been given, can you? Also, has this been done already? You refer to events as if you're describing a completed game.

[Cavebear with a toothache]

Re: Highest Bidder Mafia

Can you stagger how you use your roles? I'd like to be a Cop-first Vig-after please

On the same night? Hmm. I'm thinking no, if only for practical reasons. Wouldn't want nights that last forever, and with a set deadline, I wouldn't want the mod to have to be alert enough to be able to respond quickly enough to someone wanting to use lots of powers one after another in a 72 hour (or so) window. Something to consider though, it'd make certain combinations even better. (Also, I'd expect cop and Vig to be pretty expensive, so getting both at the same time might be hard.)

Another interesting feature is that the Mafia could bid for items they DON'T want in an effort to keep them out of Townie hands.

Yes. Precisely. There's no cop immunity... But there's the actual cop role. (Well, if the setup includes a cop, anyway.)

Also, the mafia has an advantage in that they can coordinate their bidding. Which makes me think a mason group might be nice in a larger game (a bit crowded in a mini), as it too would be more powerful than in a normal game.

It seems fun, but very swingy because of how the bidding system works. If you underestimate the competition for, say, the Vig slot, you could wind up dead regardless of how well you did in the topic.

Not sure I follow you. You mean that if you play really well, someone (scum) might spend all their monies on the vig role and kill you? Well yes, they could, but Mafia get a free kill at night as usual. That's always a risk. Better spend some monies trying to get that NK-immunity... Or did I misunderstand?

[Cavebear with a toothache]

Come to think about it, no, there would not be any waiting for results before using a second ability. At least not as long as there are roles that depends on other roles, like roleblocker and tracker etc.

[Cavebear with a toothache]

Zelda:OoT is up there with my favorites games ever, and I like time travel, so I'd definitely /in.

[Cavebear with a toothache]

It's probably already been suggested, but I came up with an interesting idea for a theme mechanic.

A game where the mod is actually really a player (as in, not DGB's role in ipick). Essentially, the set up would be closed, but the mod would know all the roles. What they WOULDN'T know is who had the roles (flavor, God has amnesia. Actual working, someone outside the game randomizes and hands out roles after getting the rolelist from the GM). I haven't set up any roles yet with it because that mechanic alone is something you want to find out if it's make or break before continuing the idea with roles. Also, the mod can be randomized with any role in addition to the knowledge they have. (So, the mod could end up a cop for interesting interactions with their knowledge of the set up). Do you think that mechanic would be playable?

EDIT: Wait...never mind, I think this has already been done . I recall some talking about another game where the mod was an SK :S.

Would the players know the mod plays? (I assume yes, but if not, does the mod have a vote?) What happens when the mod is lynched? Can the mod be scum? If so, wouldn't the mod just reveal the setup to the other scum? Who would the players send their night actions to? How would the mod be able to post lynch scenes if he/she doesn't know what role the lynched player has? (No reveal on death? If so, how would the mod know when either side has won?)

Wouldn't it be easier to have a role that simply knows the setup? That seems to be what you're after.

[Cavebear with a toothache]

A (somewhat inelegant) way to solve the problem of players leaking information you don't want them to leak is to specify something like:
"You're not allowed to share this information in the thread, not even hint about it. If anyone manages to guess this information and I so much as suspects that something you said is the cause of it, you will be modkilled and lose the game regardless of your other win conditions. This is your one and only warning."

Much less fun than giving anyone a post restriction, but also less likely to be frustrating and more likely to accomplish the goal (not spreading the information).

As for post restrictions, I don't think it's possible to make a PR a) lenient enough that the player be able to play the game in a meaningful way and still b) harsh enough that the player can't communicate something you don't want him/her to communicate.

If I were to make a role with knowledge of the setup, I'd probably want to make sure there's some incentive for him/her to stay alive so he/she wouldn't just blurt it out at start of day one. Either by making him/her a survivor or to leak the information one bit at a time (but without making the role a normal role cop.) This gave me an idea about a role, I'm gonna go post it in the Best Roles thread, see if it's been done already.