[REVIEW] Open Setup Reviews

[Karnage]

Saw the mini-theme queue is looking for mods so I put together a quick game based on our current pandemic. I would appreciate any thoughts:

Pandemic Mafia

13 Players (1 Cult, 1 SK, 11 Townies)

1

Virus

(BP Cult Recruiter/Poisoner)
1

The Flu

(Serial Killer)
1

Town Vigiliante

5

Town Odd Night Hider

5

Town Even Night Hider

• Each day phase, players must choose a player to receive an experimental treatment. If they are town, they will be sent to the morque. If they are anti-town, they are "cured" and removed from the game.
  Lynching is compulsive
  (plurality voting, if there is a tie BOTH players are lynched)
  
• Virus
  -
  Bulletproof
  Can infect 1 player each night. (Infected join the "scum" team but will die the following night.)
  
• Virus wins when the majority of the town is infected or nothing can prevent that from happening.
  
• The Flu
  - Immune to being infected. Can target 1 player each night to kill
  
• The Flu wins when all other players have died or have been cured.
  
• Town Vigiliante
  - Immune to being infected. Can target 1 player each night to kill
  
• Town Odd/Even Night Hiders
  - Can social distance on their night to prevent becoming infected or killed.
  
• Town wins when all anti-town players have been "cured"

I think it might be skewed against the cult?

[Karnage]

Eh. Bp cult leader should be enough. Vig doesn’t really make sense thematically, imo, but it should be balanced enough.

the vig is supposed to be a dr that can give a player an experimental treatment at night. it "cures" anti-town and kills town.

Maybe I'll call the vig a "Quack Doctor" or something and the hiders "Patients"

[Karnage]

Some modifications, I originally used "hider" when I meant to us "Commuter"

Pandemic Mafia

13 Players (1 Cult, 1 SK, 11 Townies)

1

Virus

(BP Cult Recruiter/Poisoner)
1

The Flu

(Serial Killer)
1

Town Quack Doctor

5

Town Odd Night Commuter

5

Town Even Night Commuter

• Each day phase, players must choose a player to receive an experimental treatment. If they are town, they will be sent to the morgue/killed. If they are anti-town, they are "cured" and removed from the game.
  Lynching is compulsive
  (plurality voting, if there is a tie BOTH players are lynched)
  
• Virus
  -
  Bulletproof
  Can infect 1 player each night. (Infected join the "scum" team but will die the following day.)
  
• Virus wins when the majority of the town is infected or nothing can prevent that from happening.
  
• The Flu
  -
  Immune
  to being infected. Can target 1 player each night to try and kill
  
• The Flu wins when all other players have died or have been cured.
  
• Quack Doctor
  -
  Immune
  to being infected. Can target 1 player each night to receive the experimental treatment.
  
• Town Odd/Even Night Commuters
  - Can social distance on their night to prevent becoming infected or killed.
  
• Town wins when all anti-town players have been "cured"

[Karnage]

The flu is a type of virus, you could improve the flavor there.
Also this game is ten times more fascinating with the same EV balance if the Virus's target becomes the new "Virus" and it's the original one that dies.

Good point about flu/virus

the target surviving and the original dying is absolute genius!

[Karnage]

Further adjustments... I'm replacing "the flu" with "sepsis", the infected player inherits the virus role and the original player dies, and patients don't know if they are even/odd commuters. I'm also removing the bulletproof protection from the virus.

Pandemic Mafia

13 Players (1 Cult, 1 SK, 11 Townies)

1

Virus

(Cult Recruiter/Self-Poisoner)
1

Sepsis

(Serial Killer)
1

Town Quack Doctor

(Essentially a Vig)
5

Town Patient

(Odd Night Compulsive Commuter)
5

Town Patient

(Even Night CompulsiveCommuter)

• Each day phase, players must choose a player to receive an experimental treatment. If they are town, they will be killed. If they are anti-town, they are "cured" and removed from the game.
  Lynching is compulsive
  (plurality voting, if there is a tie BOTH players are lynched)
  
• Virus
  - Can infect 1 player each night. The Virus player dies at the end of the next day phase and the infected player inherits the Virus role. If the targeted player is also targeted by sepsis or quack, the infection fails. If the virus is targeted by sepsis or quack, the virus faction survives with an infected player.
  
• Virus wins when the majority of the town is infected or nothing can prevent that from happening.
  
• Sepsis
  -
  Immune
  to being infected. Can target 1 player each night to try and kill them.
  
• Sepsis wins when all other players have died or have been cured.
  
• Quack Doctor
  -
  Immune
  to being infected. Can target 1 player each night to receive the treatment. anti-town targets are cured, patients are killed
  
• Town Patients
  - Are not told if they are even/odd night compulsive commuters.
  
• Town wins when all anti-town players have been "cured"

I think the original "virus" role will receive an "infected" role PM pregame, they don't become the virus until the end of day 1. the "virus" role PM will be part of the virus PT

[Karnage]

I was surprised this didn't fill. I expected players to want something simple-ish during these "unprecedented times". I have a couple observations about trying to correct my own predictive thinking:
-Sitewide demand for games in general has been lower, as far as I can tell, during these "unprecedented times". I giggled at the people who thought it would be signficantly higher, but there was an even more dramatic dip than I expected.
-Publicly disclosing a third party seems like it might be a poison pill, with TemporalLich's setup also not doing well (and as an anecdotal thing, being the reason I queued for neither setup based on my personal preferences). It makes me wonder whether closed setup moderators ought to have a come-to-Jesus about whether it's a player-driven choice to use a third party as well. The last time I can remember Open 3p firing was Jingle firing a game with a lyncher nearly a year ago, and I'm pretty sure Jingle has a pretty strong site rep etc.
-Having guaranteed access to a certain kind of game twist seems to do better than having uncertain access to it, at least in the minitheme queue. I think the virus mechanic was interesting, but for those looking at the setup it maybe didn't look interesting enough for players who didn't roll it and instead rolled town to play against it.
I want to make a pointed note that making that speculation is not the same as the game filling, firing, and checking afterwards whether it was actually fun or not. I was part of a closed large with near-unanimous consensus that the SK in the setup made the game unfun. Its a bit disorienting to see an open setup not even fill potentially because a was present so soon afterwards, when this one is implemented far better imo.

I saw the queue needed mods, threw together a game I thought would be fun but oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don't think I have the street cred for modding that others do and I'm guessing that played a role in the game not filling.