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[UmbrageOfSnow]

So the setup Mail-mi originally wanted to use for M66 really intrigued me, but I didn't want to play because of balance concerns, and a lot of other people seemed to feel the same way, and/or dislike the posting restriction.

So I want to come up with a version that we all like that doesn't have a posting restriction and is more likely to be balanced.

I don't particularly want to run this myself when I one day step up to mod a game, but it seemed like a cool concept and I don't want to clog up Mail-mi's thread with talk about this.

Critiques and suggestions from everyone would be super helpful, and when we're collectively happy with this, I think anyone who wants to should run it.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

Proposed Power Voting Rules

1) 3 Mafia, 12 Town are rolled, Scum have time to chat on Night 0

2) Part-way through Day 1, or before the flip is revealed if a majority is reached before then, each player PMs the mod with
    a) The name of the PR they want.
    b) The name of a player they'd like to charge up (no self-voting.)

2.5 Additional Voting Rules for the Mafia:

• Mafia must vote for a town player
• Each Mafia Member submits the name of one target, all votes cast by town for the target will charge up the Mafia member instead.  Any votes cast by the mafia will still charge up the town player they voted for.
• Players voted for by Mafia members may not be night killed by the Mafia for 2 nights for each mafia member who voted for them.  i.e. if 3 players each receive one charge from one of the mafia, those 3 players are Night Kill-Immune on Night 1 and Night 2.  If 1 player receives votes from all 3 members of the mafia, that player is Night Kill-Immune for Nights 1 through 6.

3) Each player gets one charge (shot) for each Power Vote. The following rules are applied in THIS order:

– If a player gets no Power Votes, they remain Vanilla Townie or Mafia Goon (respectively).

– If two or more players chose the same Power Role, the one who gets fewer Power Votes gets the PR and the one who had more Power Votes becomes an X-shot Recharger, with X equal to the number of votes they received.

– If exactly two players have the same Power Role and the same amount of Power Votes, both of them will get the desired role.

– If three or more players have the same Power Role and the same amount of Power Votes, all of them become X-Shot Rechargers with X equal to the number of votes they received.

– If all 3 scum would receive a non-Recharger Power Role, the one who received the lowest number of votes (including stolen votes) becomes an X-shot Recharger with X equal to the number of votes they received.  Other players who chose the same PR are reconsidered as if the depowerd Mafia member did not exist.

– If none of the scumteam would receive a non-Recharger Power Role, the one who received the most votes (including stolen votes) becomes an X-shot power role of the role they chose, with X equal to the number of votes received.  Distribution of power roles among town is not reconsidered in this case.  If scum somehow received no votes at all after stealing, they each become a 1-shot of their chosen PR.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

Potential X-Shot Power Roles: Updated for the reduced list.

Scum players cannot perform the night kill on any night on which they use a power.

– Rolecop: On X nights of your choice you may target a player. You will receive a Private Message from the moderator containing their role name.  You do not learn how many charges they have or had.  Mafia Goons and Vanilla Townies will both trigger a result of "no power role".

– Tracker: On X nights of your choice you may target a player to discover who that player targeted in the same Night. You will receive a Private Message from the moderator containing the names of all players that were targeted or "Stayed Home".

– Watcher: On X nights of your choice you may target a player. You will receive a Private Message from the moderator containing the names of all players who visited your target that night. You will receive a Message containing "No Visitors" if no one visited your target.

– Jailkeeper: On X nights of your choice may target a player to protect them from being killed during that night; your target will be unable to perform any night actions that night. You will not be informed whether you protected the player from a kill or prevented any night actions.  Night actions can still target them, and they still receive charges if recharged.  You may not self-target.

– Redirector: On X nights of your choice you may target two players. Every Night Action performed on the first player you choose will be performed on the second player you choose.  No one will be informed that their actions have been redirected, but you appear to visit both targets. If your redirection fails, you will not be informed about it. You do redirect Nightkills.

– Midnight Mystic: On X nights of your choice may learn the total number of Night Actions performed that Night, regardless of their success or failure. The number you receive from the Mod includes Nightkills and your own action.  You also learn how many charges are remaining in the game once the night's actions are resolved.  Since you are not targeting any player, Tracker and Watcher do not see you.

– One-Night Neighborizer: On X nights of your choice, you may name a player.  A private QT will be set up for you and that player, to be closed at the end of the night.

---------
Special Role, may not be chosen:
– Recharger: On X nights of your choice, you may target a player to add an extra shot to their ability. If you target a player who has no special abilities (a Vanilla Townie or a Mafia Goon), your shot is lost. If you target a player who has used all their shots, they still get an extra shot.  If you are roleblocked (i.e. by the Jailkeeper) your shot is not consumed and you are notified by PM at the end of the night.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

So some of this is kind of good for scum, but it's in town's best interest to force a vote-claim on the first day.

Which means it's in scum's best interest to vote for townies rather than themselves, or vote for themselves and claim they voted for townies who were robbed.

Is it scumsided now?  Is it still too random?

Keep in mind that town can poach "scum" PRs as they are quite likely to get fewer votes.

[ashersky]

So basically...everyone confirms as "got my PM, I want to be Roleblocker, Charge up Voltaire."

The mod soft-assigns each chosen role to each player, adds up the charges.

If you have zero charges -- Vanilla.
If you have less charges than another player who has the same role -- Vanilla.
If you have exactly the same charges as other players with the same role -- Chosen PR.
If you have more charges than another player who has the same role -- Chosen PR.

Scum select a townie and steals all their charges.

Is that right?

[ashersky]

Can't all that be done on N0, so no posting is allowed anyway?  What's the posting restriction thing?

I think you have to allow claiming of the voting and all that on D1, that's a major part of theory discussion.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

Can't all that be done on N0, so no posting is allowed anyway?  What's the posting restriction thing?

I think you have to allow claiming of the voting and all that on D1, that's a major part of theory discussion.

There is no posting restriction, but in Mail-mi's original suggestion (taken from a mafiascum design contest thing) there was.  Everyone hated the posting restriction, so I'm trying to figure out a version without one.  It was there to prevent a vote-claim from solving the setup.

And yeah, this is all N0 at this point.

Discussion of votes after-the-fact is probably critical for town here.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

If you have less charges than another player who has the same role -- Vanilla.
If you have more charges than another player who has the same role -- Chosen PR.

You're reading it right except this part is backwards: if you have more charges than another player and the same PR, you become vanilla and the player with fewer charges becomes the PR.

This prevents everyone piling on one player, although with the addition of vote stealing, the way you originally read it could work now.  Maybe that's better?

[ashersky]

Like, make it simpler for argument's sake.

9 town players, only cop/doc/rb to chose.

A - cop
B - cop
C - cop
D - doc
E - doc
F - doc
G - rb
H - rb
I - rb
J - scum
K - scum
H - scum

If each of these players votes one player down on the list, all nine of them get 1-shot powers, except the three that got stolen, right?

If A got 3, D got 3, and G got 3, and scum stole from B, E, and H...town gets a 3-shot cop, 3-shot doc, and a 3-shot RB.

Is that all right?

[scott_pilgrim]

If you have less charges than another player who has the same role -- Vanilla.
If you have more charges than another player who has the same role -- Chosen PR.

You're reading it right except this part is backwards: if you have more charges than another player and the same PR, you become vanilla and the player with fewer charges becomes the PR.

This prevents everyone piling on one player, although with the addition of vote stealing, the way you originally read it could work now.  Maybe that's better?

Yeah, that would be much more intuitive and it should be kept in check by the vote stealing.  The way it is now, voting just seems like this really abstract thing.  You want good town players/people choosing good PR's to have exactly one vote; how does that help you decide who to vote for?  But if you do it the way ash interpreted it, you can just vote for the best player, except not necessarily because of WIFOM.  It's a lot simpler and more intuitive and you have a clearer objective with what you're trying to do.

I'm still kind of confused by why the power distribution rules are so weird though.  The powers are not intended to be balanced right?  Because I think Recharger is strictly worse than everything else.  But the idea is that you try to WIFOM the other players since it's bad to have the same power as someone else?  I guess what throws me off is the last two rules: if exactly two players choose the same power and get the same number of votes, they both get it, but if three or more choose it, no one gets it.  It seems like it should always be a bad thing to choose the same power as someone else (or neutral at best), but as it is, it could be a good thing.  I would suggest just cutting out the third rule and saying if two or more players choose the same power and tie for votes, no one gets the power.

Then there's a concern that the fourth rule (the one that's bolded #4, I realize now it's confusing what I'm talking about when I just call everything "rules") could reward players for all choosing the most powerful role, since they'll all get a shot of it anyway.  That's probably bad actually, but it's something to think about at least.


I think the vote stealing is good though, that should make you not need the posting restriction anymore.  I'd have to think about it some more to be 100% sure on that, but it seems like scum should be able to fake claim their voting reasonably with that.

[QuickSync]

I might suggest a limit to votes instead of measuring them up with one another. That would ensure there wouldn't be too many PR. Another possibility is to add a mechanic where people start with 10 points and x amount of players get a PR and are chosen based on how many points they assign to each PR compared to how other people delegate their points -the more points, the higher the chance that they get that role. The theory here is to prevent everyone from going after the best roles. Some people would choose to put more points into a less desired role in hopes that they would get a better chance of being one of the ones who gets a PR. It would also add balance because there is enough diversity to where everyone is not going to pick the same roles simply because people would have a preference for one role over the other. It would also give a lot more power to the individual on playing their luck on what role they will be. If everyone put all their points into one role then you could say the least popular X amount of PR chosen are the PR in the game. Those are my initial thoughts anyway.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

@QuickSync: Each player only gets one vote.

@Scott: Yeah, I agree now that you mention it.  Although that does make it harder for town to steal scum PRs.  I wonder if things like Redirector and Rolecop that are more useful to scum should be changed or replaced in that case, so scum don't have "obvious" PR choices?

And yeah, the weird power distribution was the core of the idea.  Some are definitely better than others, although I got rid of cop, for example, because it was too much better IMO.  The 2 players only get it if they're tied in votes, and that's so it's less likely to create a bunch of VTs.  The 3 or more thing is to ensure the optimal strategy isn't to all pile on the "best" PR.  If the optimal strategy were to be "choose at random", having 2 people pick the same PR would still be quite likely (birthday paradox), so it seems worth not punishing that too much.

I added the rule about adding new PR's to equal scum charges, not sure how much it helps, but without that I was worried it was too random.  But I hope it won't actually come up much.

Maybe I should ditch or change the 4th rule?

If it added charges to existing PRs, it would make town more vulnerable to a lucky NK or mislynch, which would make it worse for town if it got invoked than if it wasn't.  Thoughts?

[UmbrageOfSnow]

Like, make it simpler for argument's sake.

9 town players, only cop/doc/rb to chose.

A - cop
B - cop
C - cop
D - doc
E - doc
F - doc
G - rb
H - rb
I - rb
J - scum
K - scum
H - scum

If each of these players votes one player down on the list, all nine of them get 1-shot powers, except the three that got stolen, right?

If A got 3, D got 3, and G got 3, and scum stole from B, E, and H...town gets a 3-shot cop, 3-shot doc, and a 3-shot RB.

Is that all right?

In your example, each player gets 1 vote.  If we ignored how stealing votes changes things, then no one would get any PRs since they're all tied with at least 2 other people with the same PR, and the 4th rule I was just discussing (that I wanted to add for circumstances like this) would come into play and PRs would basically get randomized.  Which is why having more PRs is important to the concept.

I thought of that 4th bolded rule more for the case of adding an extra PR or two because town is underpowered, if town would end up in a situation with no powerroles normally, it'd be a disaster.  (Although I kind of think the bolded rule might make it a semi-balanced disaster?)  Anyway, it's pretty unlikely.

But yeah, if 3 players each get 3 votes and those votes aren't stolen, town has 3, 3-shot PRs.  (Which is why I was thinking cop is too strong.)

[UmbrageOfSnow]

It is still awfully random.

I think I should come up with a set of "rules" for how town and scum could vote at random, then role a couple example setups and we can evaluate how balanced they are.

Any thoughts on what those ruled voting strategies should be?

I think optimally, pure randomness isn't ideal, I suspect (and want to be the case) that town wants to vote for "middle" town the most, "stronger town" the second most, and "weaker town" third, while scum wants to steal from "stronger town" most, "middle town" next, and still steal from "weaker town" with some probability.

Basically a mass of WiFoM seems neat, and is the point I think,  but it would be neat if the optimal strategies approached something like that so the choices weren't really random and pre-game evaluation and outguessing (i.e. the scumteam know the player list and can try to outguess the town players) could come into it.

So yeah, I'll come back to this tomorrow with some examples, both with the current rules, and the proposed "more votes wins" rules.  Figure the player list should be broken into 3 "strong town", 3 "weak town" and 5 "average town" and 3 scum, because as we all know, if you have 3 strips of bacon, one is automatically bad.

I'll pull some numbers out of my ass and come up with example setups.

[Archetype]

The distribution of powers is just too random if shots are given out N0. Perhaps players name what power they want to have N0 and then have until the end of D1 to submit who they want to charge up?

[UmbrageOfSnow]

Oh, that's a really neat idea, Arch!

If players can plan who they are charging in-thread on Day 1 (before the flip I think) it allows planned voting strategies, but that reduces randomness for both sides and I'm worried about it being a bit scumsided anyway...

Makes the scum vote-stealing really critical though.  That should prevent any true breaking strategies.

I think that might be better with a smaller number of PRs to choose from?  (More than 3 though.)

[UmbrageOfSnow]

If it's chosen in-thread, scum's ability to lie is important.

I think scum need to be able to openly claim what roles they are picking to prevent some rolecop-centered breaking strategy, or rolecop needs to become a Vanilla/notVanilla cop.

What about this for a PR list for that variation:

– X-shot Rolecop
– X-shot Tracker
– X-shot Watcher
– X-shot Jailkeeper
– X-shot Redirector
– X-shot Recharger
– X-shot Midnight Mystic
– X-shot One-Night Neighborizer

I'm thinking this takes away the ones that are significantly more useful for town or scum, so scum can't be saddled with too many useless roles due to enforcing a random distribution and seeing who argues with it because they don't want to be a scum Midnight Desparado or Friendly Neighbor.

Only 8 PRs would make choosing entirely at random much more likely to produce collisions, which ups the Wifom and force town to discuss this...

[UmbrageOfSnow]

So here's a thought: instead of adding the 4th bolded rule, what about this:

3) Each player gets one charge (shot) for each Pre-Game Vote. The following rules are applied in THIS order:

– If a player gets no Pre-Game-Votes, they remain Vanilla Townie or Mafia Goon (respectively).

– If two or more players chose the same Power Role, the one who gets fewer Pre-Game Votes gets the PR and the one who had more Pre-Game Votes becomes an X-shot Recharger, with X equal to the number of votes they received.

– If exactly two players have the same Power Role and the same amount of Pre-Game Votes, both of them will get the desired role.

– If three or more players have the same Power Role and the same amount of Pre-Game Votes, all of them become X-Shot Rechargers with X equal to the number of votes they recieved.

Changes in bold.  This way there aren't any scenarios where town has a bunch of PRs zerod out, and any giant number of PRs for scum are town's own fault.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

Obviously Recharder is removed from the normal PR list if we go with that.

[scott_pilgrim]

That actually makes a lot of sense.  The main concern would be that with too many Rechargers, everyone will just be trading shots around looking for the actual PR's to give them to.  But I think it will be okay.

[QuickSync]

So here's a thought: instead of adding the 4th bolded rule, what about this:

3) Each player gets one charge (shot) for each Pre-Game Vote. The following rules are applied in THIS order:

– If a player gets no Pre-Game-Votes, they remain Vanilla Townie or Mafia Goon (respectively).

– If two or more players chose the same Power Role, the one who gets fewer Pre-Game Votes gets the PR and the one who had more Pre-Game Votes becomes an X-shot Recharger, with X equal to the number of votes they received.

– If exactly two players have the same Power Role and the same amount of Pre-Game Votes, both of them will get the desired role.

– If three or more players have the same Power Role and the same amount of Pre-Game Votes, all of them become X-Shot Rechargers with X equal to the number of votes they recieved.

Changes in bold.  This way there aren't any scenarios where town has a bunch of PRs zerod out, and any giant number of PRs for scum are town's own fault.

If it's chosen in-thread, scum's ability to lie is important.

I think scum need to be able to openly claim what roles they are picking to prevent some rolecop-centered breaking strategy, or rolecop needs to become a Vanilla/notVanilla cop.

What about this for a PR list for that variation:

– X-shot Rolecop
– X-shot Tracker
– X-shot Watcher
– X-shot Jailkeeper
– X-shot Redirector
– X-shot Recharger
– X-shot Midnight Mystic
– X-shot One-Night Neighborizer

I'm thinking this takes away the ones that are significantly more useful for town or scum, so scum can't be saddled with too many useless roles due to enforcing a random distribution and seeing who argues with it because they don't want to be a scum Midnight Desparado or Friendly Neighbor.

Only 8 PRs would make choosing entirely at random much more likely to produce collisions, which ups the Wifom and force town to discuss this...

I have to ask: votes are secret right? I mean they would have to be. Also, can you vote for yourself? It seems the people who get the most charges end up without a PR.

[ashersky]

Thoughts:

--I think you need less roles to choose from
--you need to incentivize distribution of charges (like, we all vote for Faust usually, so how do we make people not vote for Faust)
--you need yo maintain some semblance of balance

So, what's the real goal of any townie?  To get a mega-shot PR, right?  Like an 8-shot Cop or something.  But then, well, all the power is consolidated.  So maybe we want 4 2-shot Cops.

Each player has to think that stuff through on their own when selecting and voting.  It's tough.

[scott_pilgrim]

--you need to incentivize distribution of charges (like, we all vote for Faust usually, so how do we make people not vote for Faust)

I think that's the point of the stealing mechanic.

[Ghacob]

I (like I said in the original thread) would prefer to do away with the voting altogether, and instead have the process randomized

I think that the roles themselves would be all right left to choice, although I feel like pregame discussion could make that too strong in town's favor

[UmbrageOfSnow]

@Quick: Votes are secret and you can't vote for yourself and each player has one vote.  You only lose the PR if you pick the same role as someone else, and I'm thinking that should just be becoming a recharger instead of a VT anyway.

@Ash: What Scott said, scum can steal the votes from (currently 3) players, turning those players into PRs.  If everyone votes Faust and scum assumes that, scum wind up with a ton of power, and Faust ends up with none.  Of course, then everyone votes for you because you're the second favorite, etc.  So a more random distribution is important.

It's occurring to me that maybe either scum shouldn't get votes, just the stealing, or they should be forced to vote for town (to try to vote in the least-helpful way possible or something.)

I'm thinking if we go with voting on Day 1, power roles do need to be reduced, I agree.  Do you think the smaller list I made a few posts up is still too large?  Keeping in mind that these will wind up mostly 1-shot or 2-shot in practice?

I think the goal of town during voting should really be to ensure town has the maximum number of shots (one reason I'm advocating removing cop.)  So loading up on Faust is null, we want kind of an even spread with a bias toward the players who will use it better, but also a bias against letting scum steal too many votes.

@Ghacob: I'm 100% opposed to doing away with the voting, that's what intrigues me about the whole thing.  As I see it that's the point.  That's the idea.  There are random setups, and randomized setups can be fun.  But the voting metagame is basically the point of this.

What do you think of the new, reduced roles list?  Pretend you're town, what plan would you proposed to bend it in your favor?

[UmbrageOfSnow]

If anyone sees a breaking strategy as the rules evolve, please mention it.  Or just the crack that could lead to one, which is what I was seeing with Rolecop if we vote during Day 1 and have the larger role list with the obviously better for scum or better for town roles.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

Rules posts updated with the current proposed changes.

[QuickSync]

I have couple questions like how many players are in this game and how many mafia and what are the mafia roles?

I think forcing mafia to charge town only makes sense. I also think that if mafia end up getting the most votes there has to be a mechanic to account for that like the recharge option.

One thing that could possibly be a crack is that people will probably just charge the most popular players or best players. Someone like me who is a complete unknown is probably not going to have any shot at getting a PR.

As I understand it, the reason to limit the amount of PR is so there are not as many PR in the game. That could work, however, that force more people to choose the same role's and like it was already discussed, some PR are much more desirable than other. This means you should prolly add a mechanic so people would be more likely to chose a role that others are not as likely to choose. But again, this puts most of the decisions on people who are most likely to get the most charges.

I might suggest a mechanic that allows all players a better chance to get a PR. For example, everyone has a pool of 2-3 people who they want to vote for and everyone is in the same amount of pools. Then, you could pick the people who have the most votes to get the PR they want. With the 2-3 people per pool you could make sure that at least 1 mafia member in each pool. With this idea, having day 1 where people can discuss who mafia is, scum hunt, what have you, could allow people to see who from their pool they want to charge. Still doesn't address what roles mafia get, but its an idea.

[ashersky]

I think mafia vote just like town, and they can get the PR.

[scott_pilgrim]

One thing that could possibly be a crack is that people will probably just charge the most popular players or best players. Someone like me who is a complete unknown is probably not going to have any shot at getting a PR.

Again, I think this is fixed by the vote stealing mechanic.  There will probably be a bias toward stronger players, but optimal play for town will lead to some votes for weaker players too, so that scum doesn't just steal all the votes from strong players.  There might still be a concern that the weakest players don't have a chance at getting a PR.

As I understand it, the reason to limit the amount of PR is so there are not as many PR in the game. That could work, however, that force more people to choose the same role's and like it was already discussed, some PR are much more desirable than other. This means you should prolly add a mechanic so people would be more likely to chose a role that others are not as likely to choose. But again, this puts most of the decisions on people who are most likely to get the most charges.

There is already a big drawback to choosing the same power as other players (you're less likely to get it since you don't get it if they have more votes and you get Recharger on a tie).  So there's an incentive to pick less powerful roles, even though you'll still want to be biased toward stronger roles.  I think the idea with reducing the total number of powers was so that people would overlap more and get into trouble from picking the same powers as other people.

I might suggest a mechanic that allows all players a better chance to get a PR.

You could very well be right that there won't be enough PR's; it's hard to predict.  I think UoS should generate some example set-ups to see what they'd end up looking like (not sure how to simulate the voting though).

[UmbrageOfSnow]

@QuickSync

Wow, I don't know what I'm doing up this late.  This is why I shouldn't have internet after 6 PM.

1) There are 3 Mafia and 11 Town, for a total of 14 players.  Although 3/10 or 3/12 would be better now that I think about it, since I've removed the possibility for a killing role.  Mafia have the same PRs as town, obtained in the same way except for the vote stealing.

2) I've added a clause that if all 3 Mafia would have a non-recharger PR, one loses theirs (so they aren't denying as many PRs to town.  Because of the vote stealing, I expect the average mafioso to wind up with more charges than the average townie, but they should probably wind up with under half of the charges on average.  If town all gang up and decide to vote Mafia all their PRs, I'm not sure that's a design flaw so much as stupid town, especially now that we're voting after discussion.

3) A complete unknown would still get a PR if they are scum, and as a means to avoid having all the charges stolen by being too predictable.  And also from the scum votes on town.  But yes, it's in town's interest to try to give as many charges to the known-to-be-strong players as they think they can get away with.

4) The main reason I reduced the PR list to 7 was to eliminate PRs that were useless to either town or scum so that a mass-claim enforced by a rolecop who had a bunch of charges or something wouldn't be able to find scum or obvious town.  It will also have the side effect of making the setup more predictable and less random since most of them will appear most of the time.

The fact that Rolecop is much better than Midnight Mystic (and other inequalities in the power role list) isn't a problem to my thinking.  If all the choices are equal, randomness would prevail.  But both scum and town will be more invested in having Rolecop, Jailkeeper, or Redirector,  while Neighborizer or Midnight Mystic will be less valuable, but also less likely to lead to you winding up as a Recharger.  The decision is in the hands of the players and that's the point.

EDIT: And what Scott said, reducing the roles makes collisions more likely, which forces more interaction with the weirdness of the setup.

5) This isn't a Role Madness setup, there are going to be a reasonable number of VTs, and there are only 14 shots of power roles in the game.  I am debating adding a few extra shots somehow, but that's a balance concern.  28 shots is probably too many I think.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

Yeah, I'm gonna generate some example setups tomorrow, but just wanted to make these rules changes that we've been discussing first.

I've come around to really liking the Recharger-as-consolation-prize concept.

The number of charges could be an issue, and scum will have a reason to bias themselves toward Rolecop, Redirecter, Jailkeeper, as the strongest and most useful for scum roles.

That definitely needs some thought overnight.

[ashersky]

But town will want the strong scum roles to keep them from scum, too.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

But town will want the strong scum roles to keep them from scum, too.

Exactly.  And now that Redirecter can redirect the NK, they're all useful roles to town too.

[QuickSync]

I feel like this setup really compounds how little Town really knows and how much more Mafia knows.

I feel like I missed the stealing discussion. Did that happen in another thread? I have a question about it actually. Say a strong town player ends up with a ton of charges simply because town is sooo in the dark on who to give their charges to. If a mafia member steals them away from them, does that actually take away all the shots that town player would otherwise get? If so, Mafia knows sooo much more about what to do pregame that its not even funny.

[ashersky]

What if...

--scum player must choose a town player; he gets all charges that player receives and all charges the scum player receives goes to that town player.

That way, if Faust is scum, the scum team doesn't get all the charges.  It also adds some complexity to scum's decision-making.

[QuickSync]

What if...

--scum player must choose a town player; he gets all charges that player receives and all charges the scum player receives goes to that town player.

That way, if Faust is scum, the scum team doesn't get all the charges.  It also adds some complexity to scum's decision-making.

LOL, I see what you did there. I do have a question though. What if Faust is Town?

[ashersky]

What if...

--scum player must choose a town player; he gets all charges that player receives and all charges the scum player receives goes to that town player.

That way, if Faust is scum, the scum team doesn't get all the charges.  It also adds some complexity to scum's decision-making.

LOL, I see what you did there. I do have a question though. What if Faust is Town?

Then scum probably stole his charges.

[QuickSync]

What if...

--scum player must choose a town player; he gets all charges that player receives and all charges the scum player receives goes to that town player.

That way, if Faust is scum, the scum team doesn't get all the charges.  It also adds some complexity to scum's decision-making.

LOL, I see what you did there. I do have a question though. What if Faust is Town?

Then scum probably stole his charges.

That would put a ton of importance on who rolls what, like, more than usual.

[ashersky]

What if...

--scum player must choose a town player; he gets all charges that player receives and all charges the scum player receives goes to that town player.

That way, if Faust is scum, the scum team doesn't get all the charges.  It also adds some complexity to scum's decision-making.

LOL, I see what you did there. I do have a question though. What if Faust is Town?

Then scum probably stole his charges.

That would put a ton of importance on who rolls what, like, more than usual.

That's the point.

You can't just default to Faust, or whomever is the consensus strongest player in the game.

[QuickSync]

What if...

--scum player must choose a town player; he gets all charges that player receives and all charges the scum player receives goes to that town player.

That way, if Faust is scum, the scum team doesn't get all the charges.  It also adds some complexity to scum's decision-making.

LOL, I see what you did there. I do have a question though. What if Faust is Town?

Then scum probably stole his charges.

That would put a ton of importance on who rolls what, like, more than usual.

That's the point.

You can't just default to Faust, or whomever is the consensus strongest player in the game.

Isn't it kinda like a blind test tho? I mean town has no way of knowing if they are even in the ballpark for who to charge. I will say this, it will end up being pretty unpredictable who ends up with the most shots.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

By voting after in-thread conversation, town can bring their reads into it.

Sadly, I can't model that, so here's what I did.  (Ran the voting and scumteam setup 5 times, adjudicated each one 3 times, using 3 different rules sets.)  I'll post them for comparison in the next post.

Method:

• Assume a 15-player game with the following players, broken into groups by "skill level".
  Alice, Anya, Amy, Astrid, Annabel Lee, Bob, Bill, Bruce, Biff, Boromir, Charlie, Charles, Chuck, Chaz, Chip
• 3 scum are rolled at random
• Each town member picks a power role at random with equal distribution.  (It may end up being better to favor the stronger roles, but I'm not sure how much, and I figure this approximates it well enough for now.)
• The mafia members take Rolecop, Jailkeeper, and Redirecter, 1 each but ordered randomly. (Again, some odds of other roles is probably best, but this approximates my best guess at strategy.
• Each town member votes for another player, chosen at random with equal distribution from among the A and B groups.  (I'm guessing here based on the idea of Nash Equilibrium, I'm guessing that biasing more toward one group or the other is countered by a similar bias from scum, and that this is where it winds up.  Of course real life players won't be so clearly grouped.)
• Each mafia member votes for a town player, chosen at random with equal distribution from among the C group.
• Each mafia member selects a player to steal votes from, even distribution among the A and B groups, and never choosing a player another mafia member has already stolen from.
• I resolve the role distribution with the rules as currently written, with the "Scott Variation" (most votes wins a conflict, fewer votes becomes Recharger instead) and with the "Ashersky Variation" (Stealing becomes vote-exchanging.)  It is possible that the method of choosing stealing targets should be different with the Ash Variation, but I'm not really sure how, especially if town are voting the way I have them, I can't see any true improvement that won't be based on an actual sorting of player skill (which is possible in practice, but I think beyond the scope of me doing trial runs here.)

[UmbrageOfSnow]

Setup #1

Current Rules	Scott	Ash
Mafia 1-Shot Jailkeeper (Chuck)	Mafia 1-Shot Recharger	Mafia 1-Shot Recharger
Mafia 1-Shot Rolecop (Charlie)
Mafia 3-Shot Recharger (Anya)	Mafia 3-Shot Redirector	Mafia 1-Shot Redirector
5 VTs	5 VTs	4 VTs
		2-Shot Recharger (Bruce)
2-Shot Recharger (Charles)	2-Shot Jailkeeper	2-Shot Recharger
1-Shot Redirecter (Chaz)	1-Shot Recharger	1-Shot Redirector
1-Shot Jailkeeper (Amy)
2-Shot Tracker (Boromir)
1-Shot 1-Night Neighborizer (Alice)
1-Shot Watcher (Annabel Lee)
2-Shot Midnight Mystic (Biff)

[UmbrageOfSnow]

So I'll post the others in a bit, but a comment on formatting: The roles in the leftmost column exist in all the setups unless changed.  Roles that only exist in the third column are only for that variation.

Without having analyzed these much yet, my feeling in calculating them out was that Scott's rule generally favors Mafia more than the current rules, while Ash's rule generally favors Town more than the current rules.

[QuickSync]

By voting after in-thread conversation, town can bring their reads into it.

Sadly, I can't model that, so here's what I did.  (Ran the voting and scumteam setup 5 times, adjudicated each one 3 times, using 3 different rules sets.)  I'll post them for comparison in the next post.

Method:

• Assume a 15-player game with the following players, broken into groups by "skill level".
  Alice, Anya, Amy, Astrid, Annabel Lee, Bob, Bill, Bruce, Biff, Boromir, Charlie, Charles, Chuck, Chaz, Chip
• 3 scum are rolled at random
• Each town member picks a power role at random with equal distribution.  (It may end up being better to favor the stronger roles, but I'm not sure how much, and I figure this approximates it well enough for now.)
• The mafia members take Rolecop, Jailkeeper, and Redirecter, 1 each but ordered randomly. (Again, some odds of other roles is probably best, but this approximates my best guess at strategy.
• Each town member votes for another player, chosen at random with equal distribution from among the A and B groups.  (I'm guessing here based on the idea of Nash Equilibrium, I'm guessing that biasing more toward one group or the other is countered by a similar bias from scum, and that this is where it winds up.  Of course real life players won't be so clearly grouped.)
• Each mafia member votes for a town player, chosen at random with equal distribution from among the C group.
• Each mafia member selects a player to steal votes from, even distribution among the A and B groups, and never choosing a player another mafia member has already stolen from.
• I resolve the role distribution with the rules as currently written, with the "Scott Variation" (most votes wins a conflict, fewer votes becomes Recharger instead) and with the "Ashersky Variation" (Stealing becomes vote-exchanging.)  It is possible that the method of choosing stealing targets should be different with the Ash Variation, but I'm not really sure how, especially if town are voting the way I have them, I can't see any true improvement that won't be based on an actual sorting of player skill (which is possible in practice, but I think beyond the scope of me doing trial runs here.)

Are you doing this test with more weight on A and C or simply linear?

[UmbrageOfSnow]

Setup #2: Probability Strikes Back (This is the weirdest one I rolled I think.)

Current Rules	Scott	Ash
Mafia 1-Shot Recharger (Charlie)	Mafia 1-Shot Recharger	Goon
Mafia 1-Shot Redirecter (Bruce)
Mafia 7-Shot Recharger (Bob)	Mafia 7-Shot Rolecop	Mafia 4-Shot Recharger
7 VTs	7 VTs	5 VTs
		1-Shot Midnight Mystic (Alice)
		3-Shot Tracker (Anya)
1-Shot Rolecop (Annabel Lee)	1-Shot Recharger	1-Shot Rolecop
1-Shot Recharger (Chuck)
1-Shot Recharger (Chaz)
1-Shot Watcher (Bill)
2-Shot 1-Night Neighborizer (Amy)

[UmbrageOfSnow]

I'm assuming town never vote for players in group C and that scum always vote for players in group C.

I'm assuming that Scum always steal from and Town always vote for players in groups A and B.  And I'm assuming they distribute between groups A and B evenly under the assumption that a bias in favor of group A would lead to an equal scum bias in favor of stealing from group A, which would lead to a town bias in favor of preferring group B instead, etc.

I'm assuming this will settle into an even split among the top 2/3 of the playerlist.  This may not be a great assumption, but I don't think it's unreasonable.  I haven't done any math to back it up though.

I mean, 3 groups is obviously a simplification anyway, but I don't think a real playerlist would ever agree on an ordering enough to make it worthwhile trying to test this in a far more complicated way where we order the players from 1st to 15th best.

[QuickSync]

What if A is the top 15-20%, C is the bottom 10% and B is everything in between?

[UmbrageOfSnow]

Setup #3

Current Rules	Scott	Ash
Mafia 1-Shot Redirecter (Chip)
Mafia 2-Shot Recharger (Charles)	Mafia 2-Shot Rolecop	Mafia 2-shot Recharger
Mafia 1-Shot Recharger (Boromir)	Mafia 1-Shot Recharger	Mafia Goon
3 VTs	3 VTs	2 VTs
		1-Shot Watcher (Astrid)
2-Shot Recharger (Amy)	2-Shot Rolecop	2-Shot Recharger
2-Shot Watcher (Bob)	2-Shot Watcher	2-Shot Recharger
1-Shot Rolecop (Alice)	1-Shot Recharger	1-Shot Rolecop
1-Shot Rolecop (Chuck)	1-Shot Recharger	1-Shot Rolecop
1-Shot Redirecter (Charlie)
1-Shot Midnight Mystic (Bruce)
2-Shot Midnight Mystic (Anya)
1-Shot Recharger (Chaz)
1-Shot Recharger (Annabel Lee)

[UmbrageOfSnow]

What if A is the top 15-20%, C is the bottom 10% and B is everything in between?

Out of a 15 player list, of which 3 players at random are mafia (and thus won't steal from or vote for each other) is there a reason you'd expect this change to produce significantly different results, enough that the voting strategy I'm giving Mafia and Town is unreasonable?

Remember, the goal of this is to get some idea at the power levels on both sides of the setup.  It's not going to be possible to find an optimal general purpose solution this way for a million different reasons, but that's also not the goal.

The goal is to figure out if town have too much power, or not enough power.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

Setup #4

Current Rules	Scott	Ash
Mafia Goon (Bob)
Mafia 2-Shot Recharger (Anya)	Mafia 2-Shot Jailkeeper	Mafia 2-shot Jailkeeper
Mafia 4-Shot Redirecter (Boromir)	Mafia 4-Shot Redirecter	Mafia Goon
6 VTs	6 VTs	5 VTs
		4-Shot Rolecop (Alice)
1-Shot Redirecter (Chip)	1-Shot Recharger	1-Shot Redirecter
1-Shot Jailkeeper (Chuck)	1-Shot Recharger	1-Shot Jailkeeper
4-Shot Watcher (Bill)
1-Shot Recharger (Amy)
1-Shot Recharger (Astrid)
1-Shot Recharger (Chaz)

[UmbrageOfSnow]

Setup #5 (Last one I did, although I could do more later with different rules if we think we need them.)

Current Rules	Scott	Ash
Mafia 2-Shot Redirecter (Amy)	Mafia 2-Shot Redirecter	Mafia 1-Shot Redirecter
Mafia 1-Shot Jailkeeper (Bruce)	Mafia 1-Shot Jailkeeper	Mafia Goon
Mafia 3-Shot Recharger (Anya)	Mafia 3-Shot Rolecop	Mafia 2-Shot Recharger
5 VTs	5 VTs	2 VTs
		1-Shot Jailkeeper (Annabel Lee)
		1-Shot Redirecter (Boromir)
		1-Shot Tracker (Bob)
2-Shot Recharger (Alice)	2-Shot Tracker	2-Shot Recharger
2-Shot Redirecter (Biff)	2-Shot Redirecter	2-Shot Recharger
1-Shot Rolecop (Charles)	1-Shot Recharger	1-Shot Rolecop
1-Shot Tracker (Astrid)	1-Shot Recharger	1-Shot Tracker
1-Shot Watcher (Bill)
1-Shot 1-Night Neighborizer (Charlie)
1-Shot 1-Night Neighborizer (Chip)

[UmbrageOfSnow]

Anyway, I'd love it if anyone wants to comment on the balance of these 5 (or 15 depending on how you look at it) setups.

Of course it's hard to judge without playing, scum doesn't have a lot of power to disrupt town most of the time, but I think I like the Ash version best.

I was also considering some other way to add power to the game, maybe "When all Town's shots are used up, everyone recharges to their original levels" or something like that?

I don't know, and at this point my brain is burned out on this.  I'll look at these setups again myself tomorrow.

[QuickSync]

I really do admire this forum for putting this kind of effort into their setups. My understanding and a valuable lesson I leaned from a very good player before they advocated for my lynch day 1 is that a lot of the time the best way to get things going is to do something. You people here are doing an awful lot with how seriously you take setups. The fact that here people are so open about talking about setups and renditions of setups is something I really do like about this place.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

Also maybe just something simple like Tracker and Watcher starting with double charges, or receiving twice as many when recharged or something like that.

[gkrieg13]

It looks like it's worse for town if all of the Cs are on the town team.  Like that the mafia team gets even more help the better it is.  Maybe that is just these random ones.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

Setup #1

Current Rules	Scott	Ash
Mafia 1-Shot Jailkeeper (Chuck)	Mafia 1-Shot Recharger	Mafia 1-Shot Recharger
Mafia 1-Shot Rolecop (Charlie)
Mafia 3-Shot Recharger (Anya)	Mafia 3-Shot Redirector	Mafia 1-Shot Redirector
5 VTs	5 VTs	4 VTs
		2-Shot Recharger (Bruce)
2-Shot Recharger (Charles)	2-Shot Jailkeeper	2-Shot Recharger
1-Shot Redirecter (Chaz)	1-Shot Recharger	1-Shot Redirector
1-Shot Jailkeeper (Amy)
2-Shot Tracker (Boromir)
1-Shot 1-Night Neighborizer (Alice)
1-Shot Watcher (Annabel Lee)
2-Shot Midnight Mystic (Biff)

For this setup, I think the current rules produce the best result.  The setup looks balanced to me.  Not a lot of power on either side, but it's still much more interesting than Mountainous I think.  I think swapping makes scum a little weaker than is ideal here, but is also fine.  Actually I think this one looks okay with all 3 rulesets.

Anyone disagree?

[UmbrageOfSnow]

Setup #2: Probability Strikes Back (This is the weirdest one I rolled I think.)

Current Rules	Scott	Ash
Mafia 1-Shot Recharger (Charlie)	Mafia 1-Shot Recharger	Goon
Mafia 1-Shot Redirecter (Bruce)
Mafia 7-Shot Recharger (Bob)	Mafia 7-Shot Rolecop	Mafia 4-Shot Recharger
7 VTs	7 VTs	5 VTs
		1-Shot Midnight Mystic (Alice)
		3-Shot Tracker (Anya)
1-Shot Rolecop (Annabel Lee)	1-Shot Recharger	1-Shot Rolecop
1-Shot Recharger (Chuck)
1-Shot Recharger (Chaz)
1-Shot Watcher (Bill)
2-Shot 1-Night Neighborizer (Amy)

This kind of setup is the strongest argument for exchanging rather than outright stealing votes by far.  Scum being able to redirect every night is pretty good.  It also really sways be against "Most votes wins the PR" since then scum could basically Rolecop AND Redirect every night.

Town's 1-Shot Rolecop, 1-Shot Watcher, and 2-Shot Neighborizer really don't amount to a lot of power, but they aren't disrupted much by being redirected.  With the default powers, I think it more-or-less boils down to 3 Scum vs. 12 Town with no power roles, which is scumsided as long as scum don't bus too much I think.  If scum bus as much as some people like, it probably winds up being balanced, but that's a terrible assumption to balance on.

Scum having 4 fewer shots and town getting a 3-shot tracker and a 1-Shot of Midnight Mystic definitely makes it more interesting and fair.  (Also, I miscalculated the Vote-Swap ruleset, but I've fixed it in bold in the quote above and in the original post now.)

Makes me want to adopt the vote swap, but let's look at the others.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

Setup #3

Current Rules	Scott	Ash
Mafia 1-Shot Redirecter (Chip)
Mafia 2-Shot Recharger (Charles)	Mafia 2-Shot Rolecop	Mafia 2-shot Recharger
Mafia 1-Shot Recharger (Boromir)	Mafia 1-Shot Recharger	Mafia Goon
3 VTs	3 VTs	2 VTs
		1-Shot Watcher (Astrid)
2-Shot Recharger (Amy)	2-Shot Rolecop	2-Shot Recharger
2-Shot Watcher (Bob)	2-Shot Watcher	2-Shot Recharger
1-Shot Rolecop (Alice)	1-Shot Recharger	1-Shot Rolecop
1-Shot Rolecop (Chuck)	1-Shot Recharger	1-Shot Rolecop
1-Shot Redirecter (Charlie)
1-Shot Midnight Mystic (Bruce)
2-Shot Midnight Mystic (Anya)
1-Shot Recharger (Chaz)
1-Shot Recharger (Annabel Lee)

Last one for today, more tomorrow.

Town gets an extra 1-Shot Watcher and Scum loses a shot of Redirecter, that's the only difference with vote-swapping here.

Scum could be a bit underpowered in this setup, but maybe not as much as it first appears, 4 of town's shots are recharges which can easily miss or help scum, and 3 shots of Watcher and 2 shots of Rolecop isn't exactly game breaking.

Something I'm noticing with a lot of these is that there's a good amount going on without much actual power at either side's disposal.  That's why I like non-Role Madness games, so that is appealing to me, but this is quite a bit less power than some people like I think.

The way the power is spread out does make town less susceptible to lucky NKs or mislynches, and I'm thinking it might be viable for town (and scum!) to claim they are out of shots to better direct the rechargers.

Anyway, I think I like the balance overall with the vote-swap rules, but I'm curious for opinions.  I'll look at the other 2 setups I rolled tomorrow.

[ashersky]

Can you make a new post with proposed setup rules to compare?

[UmbrageOfSnow]

Sorry I got distracted from this!  I really do want to make this setup work.

Ash, the "Scott Variation" setup rules were the same ones in the 2nd/3rd posts with the change that if two players picked the same rule, the player with more votes gets the PR rather than the player with fewer votes as it is now.  It's the more intuitive rule, but in the example setups I ran, it makes things too scumsided IMO.

The "Ash Variation" was the change that scum choose a player to trade vote numbers with, rather than to steal votes from.  This seems to make things more townsided, which I like.

Something I also want to keep in mind, I was reading all the threads I could find on mafiascum about setup balance, and it seems that people tend to instinctively balance setups to be scumsided.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

If people popcorn claim their votes after announcing how many charges they got, and after voting (claiming before voting allows absurd amounts of scum manipulation either way, so I'm pretty sure that's bad), does that allow town to catch scum in a forced lie?

That looks like a likely breakpoint of this.  Come to think of it, that could be a problem with vote-stealing or vote-swapping if town has any shots of rolecop at all.

Any thoughts on how to fix this?

[liopoil]

Something I also want to keep in mind, I was reading all the threads I could find on mafiascum about setup balance, and it seems that people tend to instinctively balance setups to be scumsided.

100% agree with this. It happens here too.

[ashersky]

I've been thinking here...

I think you have to do the voting during N0, when the thread is locked.

But the bigger issue is...I don't think this game is about charges and such...it's actually about wifoming who can get PRs and shots.

It strikes me as best play for middling and new players to definitely choose crap roles and charge up good players.  That's not fun.

And depending on what you decide for scum, they just target the good players to block.

This is a lot like the draft game from way back, or the one where we submitted numbers and lowest got to pick first, but makes it political/personal.

Even if this was all done before alignment was rolled...maybe people try to get roles for themselves instead of powering up each other, maybe.

A different way to do this would be to choose PRs, randomly assign as normal, and develop a charging mechanism only.  So, someone is a 0-shot RB and needs charges.  You could have a list of roles, players have a finite number of votes, etc.  mafia might have negative charges to counter town's positive ones.

That's my two cents.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

I think you have to do the voting during N0, when the thread is locked.

Why?  That was the original setup, but consensus seemed to be that it was more fun if you could bring your reads into it.  Any popcorn claiming strategy is equally viable either way.  Doing it N0 seemed to make it more personal/political than doing it during D1 I thougt.

It strikes me as best play for middling and new players to definitely choose crap roles and charge up good players.  That's not fun.

100% agree that this isn't fun.  I don't consider a game where everyone has to vote you or Faust to be fun, so if that's optimal strategy I'm not happy.  But do you think this is the case with the rule that the player with fewer votes gets the power and the more votes is a recharger?  Because that's how I've been thinking about this.  Tried the other way in the middle column of the sample setups and didn't like the results.

And depending on what you decide for scum, they just target the good players to block.

I think scum need some way to disrupt votes, so the claimed votes don't solve the setup or catch scum in a lie.  But again, doesn't that make targetting Faust for all the votes sub-optimal?

Even if this was all done before alignment was rolled...maybe people try to get roles for themselves instead of powering up each other, maybe.

I saw some setups like this, they looked kind of gross to me honestly.  Like voting before alignment is rolled seems like it'd really make things personal/political.

A different way to do this would be to choose PRs, randomly assign as normal, and develop a charging mechanism only.  So, someone is a 0-shot RB and needs charges.  You could have a list of roles, players have a finite number of votes, etc.  mafia might have negative charges to counter town's positive ones.

This is also something that could work, maybe each player picks a PR, and everyone has some number of charges they can't use on themselves.  If they have 2-3 charges each or something it puts more charges in the control of town, so should make the game less scum-sided baring really bad town play, which is a time it's okay for the game to get scum-sided IMO.

I like the concept of Mafia trying to get charges from town though.  Like trying to convince people to charge them up.

I sort of liked Recharger as a PR, but this could work too.  I guess just having no limit on how many people could be a given PR would be best with that set of rules.  In that case would need to put more time into making most of the roles close to equivalent in power level.  Or have the weakest ones be goofy and fun anyway....

Thanks for talking with me about this by the way, I really appreciate it.

[ashersky]

I think you have to do the voting during N0, when the thread is locked.

Why?  That was the original setup, but consensus seemed to be that it was more fun if you could bring your reads into it.  Any popcorn claiming strategy is equally viable either way.  Doing it N0 seemed to make it more personal/political than doing it during D1 I thougt.

I think if you do it while everyone is talking, it's much easier to force mafia into something less than ideal for themselves, or even catch them in a lie.  If you do it during N0 and mafia gets some sort of information, they will be better equipped to lie correctly.

It strikes me as best play for middling and new players to definitely choose crap roles and charge up good players.  That's not fun.

100% agree that this isn't fun.  I don't consider a game where everyone has to vote you or Faust to be fun, so if that's optimal strategy I'm not happy.  But do you think this is the case with the rule that the player with fewer votes gets the power and the more votes is a recharger?  Because that's how I've been thinking about this.  Tried the other way in the middle column of the sample setups and didn't like the results.

In the end, the powers are still going to a few players that the rest of us think will play them the best.  It's not like anyone's going to vote for Newbie1 because hey, maybe we'll psych out scum...because no other town is doing that and it's a waste.

And depending on what you decide for scum, they just target the good players to block.

I think scum need some way to disrupt votes, so the claimed votes don't solve the setup or catch scum in a lie.  But again, doesn't that make targetting Faust for all the votes sub-optimal?

They need something for sure, but I think it's got to be more information.  Like, tell them which powers got chosen, or something.  Stealing votes is cool, too.

Even if this was all done before alignment was rolled...maybe people try to get roles for themselves instead of powering up each other, maybe.

I saw some setups like this, they looked kind of gross to me honestly.  Like voting before alignment is rolled seems like it'd really make things personal/political.

Some of them work.  Like the draft one.  But any setup that works like this works because it has nothing to do with choosing other players, just trying to get roles for yourself.

A different way to do this would be to choose PRs, randomly assign as normal, and develop a charging mechanism only.  So, someone is a 0-shot RB and needs charges.  You could have a list of roles, players have a finite number of votes, etc.  mafia might have negative charges to counter town's positive ones.

This is also something that could work, maybe each player picks a PR, and everyone has some number of charges they can't use on themselves.  If they have 2-3 charges each or something it puts more charges in the control of town, so should make the game less scum-sided baring really bad town play, which is a time it's okay for the game to get scum-sided IMO.

I like the concept of Mafia trying to get charges from town though.  Like trying to convince people to charge them up.

I sort of liked Recharger as a PR, but this could work too.  I guess just having no limit on how many people could be a given PR would be best with that set of rules.  In that case would need to put more time into making most of the roles close to equivalent in power level.  Or have the weakest ones be goofy and fun anyway....

Thanks for talking with me about this by the way, I really appreciate it.

I think you have like 5 PRs, 3 goons, 5 VTs.  You roll them normally.  Then you take 10 or 12 or some optimal number of shots and randomly give them to everyone, including scum.  Scum can't choose partners, must charge town.  Each night, people choose to charge someone, or not.  If scum gets 2+ charges (or something), they gain a power, maybe.  It would be cumulative.  Something like this could work.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

I think if you do it while everyone is talking, it's much easier to force mafia into something less than ideal for themselves, or even catch them in a lie.  If you do it during N0 and mafia gets some sort of information, they will be better equipped to lie correctly.

I'll address other stuff later, but this seems like a really big difference in ways the setup could play out and needs a separate discussion I think.  I agree with you that doing the voting while talking makes it more possible for people to force scum into voting a certain way or something.  I think that if that doesn't hurt scum too much and leads to a balanced game, I'm actually okay with that, but if it breaks the game definitely not.

I can think of 2 changes that I think help the information problem, and make it easier for scum to lie.

1. The Midnight Mystic role also learns what PRs are still alive in the game, on top of how many shots are left and how many shots were used that night.  This would give scum more reason to take it, but it's also even better for town that way, maybe closing the usefulness gap somewhat.

2. Scum are informed of how many votes they'd have received from town after voting, instead of just how many they end up with after the vote stealing/swapping mechanism.