Mafiascum.net

Originally made for the May Challenge. However, I like the concept of the setup and would rather have it be good than be valid for the challenge, so I'm willing to change it so that it doesn't conform to the requirements.

Undertale Semi-Open

2 Mafia Goons

8 Vanilla Townies

1 Town Character

(One randomly chosen out of six options that will be explained later)

Each day, town must vote to

Kill

one player (HURT: or VOTE: ) or

Spare

one player (HEAL: ). Votes are made to either Kill a specific player or Spare a specific player, and a player can only have one vote total across both options. Players may vote to spare themselves. (They may also vote to kill themselves, if you're into that sort of thing.) This is mandatory so if no majority is reached on either option by deadline, plurality wins out. The mafia can kill a player each night, prior to Night 4. (Obviously, this does not count as a capital-K Kill for any other mechanics.)

If a player is

Killed

, their role is revealed and they take no further part in the game.

If a player is

Spared

, their role is not revealed, and they are temporarily removed from the game and added to a separate Spared PT. However, they may possibly rejoin the game, if the

Core

is reached. If a mafia member is spared, they may continue to talk in the mafia chat in addition to the Spared PT.

If both mafia members are Killed, town immediately wins. If both mafia members are Spared, mafia immediately wins. Otherwise, the

Core

is reached immediately after the end of Day 4. At this point, one of three things will happen:

Pacifist Route:

If no players were Killed, the game enters the Pacifist Ending. There is no Night 4 kill. If all four Spared players were town, town immediately wins. Otherwise, all players still in the game are immediately removed from the game without flipping, and the Spared players are returned to the game. The game then continues with only the Spared players alive.

Neutral Route:

If at least one player was Spared and at least one player was Killed, the game enters the Neutral Ending. All Spared players rejoin the game, and the number of Spared mafia members (but not their identities) is revealed. The mafia get one kill on Night 4, plus one more if a mafia member was Spared. If this causes mafia to gain parity they win immediately, otherwise, the game continues with the previous living players and the Spared players both alive.

Genocide Route:

If no players were Spared, the game enters the Genocide Ending. There is no Night 4 kill. The game continues with no further change.

After the

Core

is reached, regardless of the ending, the game will continue as a normal game of mafia, with lynches and nightkills, and no-lynching allowed. Mafia win at parity, town win eliminating all mafia. (In the Pacifist Route lynching can be reflavored as

Saving

because, you know, Pacifist.)

The possible Town Characters are:

• Toriel: As long as no player has been Killed, Toriel can protect another player from a kill each night before the Core is reached.
  
• Alphys: If the
  Core
  is reached in a Pacifist Route and Alphys is still in the game, she can immediately choose another player still in the game to be Spared, causing the Pacifist Ending to be played out with five players instead of four. If the second mafia member is spared this way, it does not cause an immediate mafia win.
  
• Papyrus: On each even night, if at least one player has been Spared and at least one player has been Killed, Papyrus will learn the alignment of all Spared players.
  
• Asgore: If the
  Core
  is reached in a Neutral Route and Asgore is still in the game, he may jailkeep one player each night (starting Night 5).
  
• Undyne: On Night 2, if no player has been Spared, Undyne may choose any player, including herself, to be permanently bulletproof. They are not informed of this. This goes away if a player is ever Spared, or when the Core is reached.
  
• sans: If the
  Core
  is reached in a Genocide Route and Sans is still in the game, he can immediately kill one player.

Updates/Clarifications:
Alphys's spare cannot trigger double mafia spare win condition
Toriel and Undyne's powers do not work post-Core
Players may self-vote for either option at any time
Spared players have a PT to discuss in
Spared mafia members retain access to the mafia chat and can submit kills

A few setup notes:

Obviously, what I want from this setup is for all three routes to be potentially attractive options. They all have different benefits and drawbacks but I want the overall strength to be about the same.

I did EV calculations for Pacifist and Genocide without the PR. Pacifist was 46%, Genocide 35%. This is assuming that town no-lynches in post-Core MYLO, making the EV there 1/3.

I think the Pacifist numbers are good. The named townie aspect barely raises town EV (the only time it matters is if the PR is spared without claiming and they aren't killed no-lynching in the Core), and the Pacifist PR's are intentionally weak. Alphys got a buff since Jingle commented on her, but I do agree that she's still probably too weak to use, since you risk ruining a town win outright. I'm considering some mechanic where she's made more likely to spare a town (i.e. pick two people and one of them is spared, randomly if they're the same alignment but always town if they are different).

Genocide's a bit worrying. The named townie aspect definitely matters here, but probably only for 5-10% or so. The Genocide PR's, particularly Undyne (and the fact that Sans can WIFOM being Undyne to try to avoid dying), are meant to make up most of the rest of the gap. I'm fine with Genocide being lower EV than Pacifist, because Genocide is the highest info route and Pacifist is the lowest.

Neutral's a pain. There are a lot of moving parts, and this is the route that needs the most analysis. Quick breakdown of the different options:
1 kill (LV 1): Core will be 6 alive with 2 confirmed town (no scum spared) or 5 alive with one scum confirmed in a group of 3 (scum spared).

2 kills (LV 2): Sparing one scum and not killing the other is game over. Beyond that, one scum spared and one killed is 4 alive with a 1v1 (autowin if Asgore is outside of the 1v1), and otherwise game goes to 5 alive.

3 kills (LV 3): No killed scum is autoloss. Interestingly, if the one spared player is scum town autowins, making it a benefit to spare scum here. Otherwise, the one spared player will be confirmed town and will presumably die, leaving 4 alive and making this route functionally equivalent to Genocide. If town spares a single player and later decides they were probably scum, this route is beneficial.

The most beautiful thing about the setup is the ability to dynamically choose whether to play find the town mafia or find the scum mafia on the fly. It's very very intriguing and appealing.

90% of your PRs detract from that beauty. It makes me sad panda. They all incentivize minmaxing the setup which might contradict whether the dayplay happened to produce townreads or scumreads.

Can't you make all the PRs work in all three routes? Or maybe make them all only work in the weakest route?


I was also kind of thinking, if the setup was inverted to scum path-contigent-PRs instead of town-path-contingent-PRs, you'd get the cute "chess mafia" effect which is kinda cool. Where you can try to read people putting the game on a path that is overall inferior. You don't get that with the town PRs, the guy that seemed to push the game into the path that triggers the PR is always also the one who claimed named townie and didn't get counterclaimed.
I don't actually think you should go in that direction actually I just wanted to point out that thought experiment.

The idea with the PR's is that they kind of have to do exactly what you were saying you wanted scum to do-- push the town toward a particular route without being too obvious, since most of the PR's lose all their power if scum find out who they are.

With the setup as it is currently, what kind of minmaxing would you attempt to do as town? Are there any PR's that stand out as especially bad, and what makes you feel that way? (And by bad I don't really mean weak, I know Alphys is weak as shit. I want to know what you think kills the elegance.)

Ok, here's an example.

Day 1 Alice townslips and the town decides to spare her.
Night 1 no one dies.
Day 2 Bob is really scummy but everyone spares soft townread Carol because they want Toriel to keep doccing.

That's pretty much only an issue with Toriel, I guess. None of the other PR's can make their presence known like that without claiming, except for Undyne, who gets 100% of her utility out of stopping a single kill so what happens after doesn't matter anyway.

Personally, I definitely don't think the decision to remain on Pacifist in spite of an obvious lynch is that clear, and I think that the outside chance of stopping another kill (which is lower since scum now probably have a lot of info on who Toriel is) wouldn't necessarily be better than getting to know Bob's alignment now rather than in a few days.

If you still think it's too flat and mathematical, I could nerf Toriel to be disabled if she gets a save. That would probably make her as bad as Alphys, which I don't really mind because in Pacifist town hardly needs the PR help.

It would also, I think, alleviate your issue, because town has no way to know for sure what their PR is until the PR's used up all their power.

In the same mold either I misread Undyne or you changed it, I understood her BP to be permanent.

The main other role I find gross is Papyrus. I get that he is powerful because the neutral route sucks. But an AoE investigate is such a big deal that localizing the pull towards that path to one player seems like not enough. It seems like flat out correct play to start voting to kill your townreads on day 3 and 4 if you've been sparing, AoE investigates is crazy powerful and you might be wrong about your townreads who knows. And then, it's kind of scummy to kill a townread, so, the mafia probably don't want to kill you. Probably they are obligated to because Papyrus is so powerful but that's not the kind of mafia I want to see, I'd want to see the mafia be able to use the NK to influence dayplay.

Asgore doesn't seem powerful enough to present that problem. Asgore seems about the power level where if you have a townread and a scumread you try to get people on board with killing you scumread instead of the alternative because you want your role to trigger. Papyrus seems like you go 3rd party for one day.

I changed Undyne's BP to go away after the Core, yes. That was always the intention but I didn't document it well.

The only thing about Papyrus is that he has to dodge a whole lot of kills to be useful, and maybe that's bad and should be changed. Aside from possibly learning a single spared player's alignment on N2, his power only activated N4 and it only matters if mafia are spared, meaning they get two kills that night in addition to the three they had throughout the game.

Maybe I should just make him a regular even-night cop, with the same Neutral condition. That assures that if he claims D3 scum can still eliminate him and his check before Core, but if he isn't forced to claim until D4 and scum didn't hit him or his check N3, they may be forced to let his check into the Core. This also interacts with the extra scum kill from getting spared and with the number of players surviving to the Core.

I agree that the AoE cop is kinda nasty. Do you think this would be better? It does have the capacity to break the game, but only if town plays very well in which case they deserve it.

Yeah halving his investigates is probably enough to make papyrus interested in playing mafia as much as he's interested in playing Dethy. In particular if he's a regular even night cop he has a normal risk his targets can get NKed instead of having that unique mechanic of the people who are being investigated being quarantined from NKs.

It is very true that EV balance wise the original papyrus is ok for -EV- due to having to dodge so many NKs. But there's more to a setup than getting the EV percentages you want, and I had some concern about the subset of games where papyrus survives.

I guess it's not halved. 75%? Nerfed anyway.

Have you considered switching the roles around so that instead of being 2 benefited from each path you have one for each path and one for NOT each path?

For example, Undyne is already potentially useful in Neutral. If you tweak it a little you could have a role that has utility when Core hits as long as it's not Pacifist (or either of the other two). As is I think it's pretty much always right to go the Pacifist route because outing your PR gets rid of their potential use, and no one else should have a preference over Pacifist.

As is, I think Asgore, Undyne and sans all need significant boosts to make their respective paths less crapshoot-y.

I could possibly do that. But if you want me to buff the Neutral and Genocide PR's more, when they're already way stronger than the Pacifist ones, maybe I need to just make Pacifist weaker.

Ideally, I want the routes to be close enough in strength that, without knowing what the PR is, all three routes might be attractive. I do think that if you proposed always going Pacifist there would be people who would push against it because you go the whole game with very little info and there's almost no recourse against a deepwolf.

But regardless, what makes you think Pacifist is better than the other two? Just the EV? I could disallow no-lynching after the Core, but that wouldn't help if the PR claims and is spared... can you think of any other ways I could reduce Pacifist EV?

Just that in my experience it's easier to find town than to find scum. I'd disagree that you have very little info in that route as well, since you still get the nightkill information regardless.

As far as tweaking things to make the Pacifist route less attractive, Alphys is already pretty bad, tbh, but you could make her addition compulsive. I'd say Toriel could be made unsavable as well. (She's still pretty decent in the Neutral path, and if she successfully saves they become the named townie that any other role would give to pacifist route) Additionally, you could put something with negative pacifist utility on a genocide PR. Potentially a rolecop everytime someone is saved? That way the town has a real threat if they don't pick the right path.

I don't really want there to be a "right path." Obviously which PR is chosen will make one path better, but other game factors can and should influence which path will work out the best in any given situation.

Therefore, to nerf the Pacifist route, I don't want to change the PR's to make them even less Pacifist-siding, since the PR that's in the game is information that's not available to most players and they can't use it to come to any definite conclusions about how the route will turn out.

The thing is, the setup is so elegant right now that almost any change would make it less so Maybe I could say that, after the Core is reached in Pacifist, the four living players must Spare a fifth player, then the reversal happens and the spared players survive but scum can kill one of them. That still leads to MYLO but it makes it a whole lot less likely that town wins outright by sparing only townies... though the problem is, if both scum are still alive by the Core, it's 2:2 (barring a Toriel save) and scum can block sparing anyone but scum.

Possibly I could have the fourth spared player choose a fifth, though THAT is really punishing if the fourth is scum, immediately adds their scumbuddy and kills a townie to win.

Maybe the best option here is to have the four spared players vote on a fifth living player to spare, and then if there's exactly one scum in the spared group, the scum kill into MYLO. That actually retains most of the elegance while nerfing the route significantly, and also making the "PR claims and is spared" strategy less effective (though it's still effective if the PR is spared without claiming). Alphys would have to be reworked, but that's less of an issue than making the actual route balanced so I can worry about it afterward.

Thoughts?

If you're going to go the 5 spares route, I'd say go with the same people alive D4. So that the person with the most Spare votes and the person with the second most are both spared. On the other hand, an extra spare phase having deadlock isn't something I'd consider likely or bad. I'd just say town wins if they consecutively spare 4 town because holy shit that's some good townblocking. The 7 most townread players in a game all being town? Yeah, scum deserves that loss.

I think a big part of the reason that that route is better though is that it's the highest utility for an out of path PR. Like, Alphys in Genocide route is pretty much 0% useful. Sans in Pacifist route is just as useful as Alphys. If you drop the town utility of the others in specifically the pacifist route, I think it solves that issue.

Yeah, I like that idea as a compromise.

Regarding the out of path PR's, aren't they just a named townie either way? Like, if you model the gamestate in terms of an aggregated list of players from towny to scummy, the out of path PR jumps to the top of the list and nothing else.

I'm not sure if a confirmed town is better in a townhunting game than it is in a scumhunting game. Yeah it's someone you can auto-spare but it's also someone who will be auto-killed come Core. Whereas, the out of path PR's in Genocide take away a potential mislynch for scum.

I'm of the opinion that, with this Pacifist nerf, the Pacifist route is not significantly stronger than the others. I'd like to see how other people feel, I guess.

Also, with the new Pacifist rules there are only 3 living players at the end so Alphys would have at best a 50/50. Maybe I can say that Alphys can use her power if spared, and it happens concurrently with the Pacifist Core NK, and it fails if Alphys is killed.

Named townies bug me. If I ran this I would give everyone a character flavor but only have one player's PR work validly, secret miller style. You could still bias towards your PR in case you're the real slim shady.

My setup philosophy is probably just different from most people..

Anyway I think Jingle's nitpicks about balancing the three paths is probably valid. I think everyone is worried about that, it's obviously tricky. But I would point out even if that's not perfect yet the setup is already beyond high quality runnable. If you ran the setup with "all players must pick path X" it is still good informed minority paranoid majority social deduction game.

In post 16, popsofctown wrote:Named townies bug me. If I ran this I would give everyone a character flavor but only have one player's PR work validly, secret miller style. You could still bias towards your PR in case you're the real slim shady.

This would be an interesting open setup design, but a functionally unique one. Basically, you're suggesting a smalltown with 'dud' PRs. Very bastard, very hard to balance, but if you want to try it go ahead and I'll probably duck in and give my 2 cents.

That does make me wonder what a Undertale smalltown setup would look like.

Don't worry I don't allow myself to mod games for a reason

In post 15, Something_Smart wrote:I'm not sure if a confirmed town is better in a townhunting game than it is in a scumhunting game. Yeah it's someone you can auto-spare but it's also someone who will be auto-killed come Core. Whereas, the out of path PR's in Genocide take away a potential mislynch for scum.

?

In Genocide, a named townie is useful to town IF they live long enough under the radar to be an important lynch. Meaning they only really impact the game if they live til LYLO. If they claim in LYLO it changes the math from 1/3 to 1/2, which is good.

In Pacifist, a named townie is useful to town IF they don't get shot. Them having to claim early doesn't actually negate their use in MYLO. First, they reduce the number of chances scum has to infiltrate the Core by 1 meaning 2/3 slots need to be scum for autoloss instead of 2/4 (which is big) and second they bodyguard the most obvious town of the town pool. Yes, they are the obvious kill. But that means that the obvtown player that would've been shot instead isn't. It's not quite a 1/3 -> 1/2 jump, but it is a notable jump unless scum is otherwise likely to win the LYLO.

Yeah, you're right, I think.

Do you think I should make Genocide better?

Probably, but I don't really know how.

Mountainous is balanced-ish (except still pretty scumsided) at 11:2, and 5/6 times Genocide is basically mountainous.

In genocide, the player with the most LOVE should become BP

Hmm.

The player on the most lynch wagons?

That's interesting, actually. Although rather than BP which doesn't really mean much if it's public, what if, when the Core is reached, the alignment of the player with the most LOVE (i.e. on the most lynch wagons) is revealed?

That would be cool, because it would encourage the Genocide PR's to push Genocide but not actually be on the lynch wagons, because obviously the PR doesn't want to end up being Judged (as it would be flavored).

Yeah I like that even better.

Permanent public BP does something, if it's a globally townread player (who was also on lots of wagons, tricky) the mafia are forced to make suboptimal kills. Also, if it's the PR, even if it's a pacifist PR, the scum can be forced to win a 50/50 3 man lylo instead of a 67/33.

But, I like yours even better.