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[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.