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Post by NAF1138 on Aug 22, 2007 14:22:46 GMT -5
So, I have been thinking. I know I know, I will hurt myself, but hear me out.
Kat and I are putting together the next game. It is going to be ambitious, but we want it to be fun for everyone too. I originally came on board to help her work out the mechanics of the game, but now it is getting to big for my limited knowledge, so I thought I would open up a thread on general discussion of mafia game mechanics. I already PM'd Idle and he said it was ok to start this topic.
Anything you want to talk about game mechanics wise is fair game. But I want to start the ball rolling with a discussion of Game Balance.
Personally, I think that Idle's game has ended up being fairly well balanced, though MHaye's role could have potentially broken the game. But game balance has been a problem for the last several games we have played. All of them have been fun, but many of them over reached and ended up favoring one side.
M3 did a little of this, I think that Pirates(m4) did as well (it put too much power in a single character). M5 we will have to see about, maybe Blaster will be willing to share some thoughts on the subject. What do you all think is the best way to balance a game? I have a system, but I don't know how well it works for these more complex games.
Also how do you think variables like open setup vs closed setup and Day Start vs Night Start vs Power Role Head Start effect the balance of a game?
I am hoping this can become just a discussion thread of sorts where people toss in ideas as well as eventually becoming a resource we can all refer back to when creating future games.
If any questions come up here that venture into solid game theory territory I will be more than happy to start a GQ thread so we can get some expert opinions.
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Post by NAF1138 on Aug 22, 2007 14:53:02 GMT -5
To further roll the ball on this topic, here is what I sent to both Mal and Blaster when they asked my advice on game balance.
The first thing you want to do is make sure that as close to 1/2 of your population is vanilla as possible.
The ratio I was told after this is, a doctor or similar type of character is worth 1 scum. A detective or similar is worth 2. A GF type character -1 scum (immune from detective). Add 1 scum for every 3 masons. Add 1 scum for every 6 vanilla. Vig and SK do not effect the scum count.
Total scum should not exceed 1/4 of the total players.
So with 20 players, if you have more then 5 (maybe 6) scum, your game is broken off the bat. This means that you can have 1 detective type, 2 role blocker types, and 2 night killer types.
This is just for ratio of scum to power role to vanilla and has nothing to do with individual power balancing. But it should give you a start.
The other advice I was given is think of the worst things that could happen in terms of pro town and pro scum gameplay. If you can still have the game going after day 5, your game is as balanced as you could hope for.
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Post by Death By Irony on Aug 22, 2007 15:21:00 GMT -5
The impression I get from reading other games is that open setups tend to benefit the town and closed setups tend to benefit the scum...but closed setups are fun to read as an outsider because you can get really weird claims like the Flying Pumpkin that Shoots Lasers Out of Its Ass. ;D
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Post by storyteller0910 on Aug 22, 2007 15:39:08 GMT -5
[wet blanket]
I'm not a fan of closed setups, secret roles, or roles with unknown alignments or win conditions. I think games like that tend to emphasize the value and play of the power roles. It certainly de-emphasizes the value of the vanilla townie. All the vanilla townie has to use in any game is reasoning ability. But in a game where there is no certain information, it is literally impossible to reason. You can't draw conclusions or puzzle anything out, you can't make even modest guesses at the motivations of players, you have nothing to go from and therefore nowhere to go. That was one of the reasons I got so discouraged by the introduction of the secret role in this game - there was literally no way for anyone involved in the game to puzzle out the truth of it. It came down to luck - to a collective, blind guess - and that means a crucial element of the game comes down to "pick a card, any card."
I think I'd find the proposed Firefly game incredibly frustrating, and not much fun for my particular taste. Even if I were a power role, it would be my powers that were emphasized, and not my ability to reason through various situations. Less fun. [/wet blanket]
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Post by NAF1138 on Aug 22, 2007 15:59:19 GMT -5
[wet blanket] I'm not a fan of closed setups, secret roles, or roles with unknown alignments or win conditions. I think games like that tend to emphasize the value and play of the power roles. It certainly de-emphasizes the value of the vanilla townie. All the vanilla townie has to use in any game is reasoning ability. But in a game where there is no certain information, it is literally impossible to reason. You can't draw conclusions or puzzle anything out, you can't make even modest guesses at the motivations of players, you have nothing to go from and therefore nowhere to go. That was one of the reasons I got so discouraged by the introduction of the secret role in this game - there was literally no way for anyone involved in the game to puzzle out the truth of it. It came down to luck - to a collective, blind guess - and that means a crucial element of the game comes down to "pick a card, any card." I think I'd find the proposed Firefly game incredibly frustrating, and not much fun for my particular taste. Even if I were a power role, it would be my powers that were emphasized, and not my ability to reason through various situations. Less fun. [/wet blanket] Ok, so follow up questions. What would you do differently? Totally open set up? I am starting to find personally that a 100% open set up gives a huge advantage to the town. What did you think about the setup for M2 where the possible roles were listed, but you were not told what roles would be involved? Would you prefer a closed setup if the game was a "no vanilla" game? Also, this shouldn't be just about the Firefly game that Kat and I are working up, I am hoping that the discussion opens up to more than just the questions I am posing. I am just putting this stuff out there to get a discussion started.
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Post by sachertorte on Aug 22, 2007 16:31:59 GMT -5
I agree with storyteller. To me the game is a game of deduction and reasoning. If the set up is totally closed, then there is nothing to reason about. No reasoning and you might as well just put the votes on random and automate the process.
I'm not sure I understand the assertion that open setups favor the town. Clearly, for a given open set up the same set up, but closed, would be much harder for town, but no one would balance a game that way. I'm a bit confused by the point.
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Post by NAF1138 on Aug 22, 2007 16:46:06 GMT -5
Well I disagree that a closed set up takes away all reasoning.
See the games at mafiascum.net. Most of them are closed setup games, and they become very highly logic driven. It just changes the strategy of the game, role claims become more important etc.
I feel that a totally open set up favors the town heavily for a few reasons, but I will post them in a bit. I have to get back to work.
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Post by Pleonast on Aug 22, 2007 17:04:42 GMT -5
Of course in my upcoming game (from my SDMD sig: Mafia VII: Conspiracy - Intro - Rules - Hints - Players), I've gone the opposite route: no vanilla Townies. That made balancing tricky, but I think I have. I won't go into specifics, but I can outline my approach. First, I split up powers as much as possible. The best example of this is my Three Witches. As a group, they can investigate and/or protect. They can do both if all three are alive, but only one thing if two are left. And a lone Witch has no powers. They share information, so a Night-killed Witch isn't a total loss to the Town, but it does reduce their power. It makes for a very powerful role, but is one scum can actively mitigate against. A good balance, I think. Sometimes it's a limitation of power. For example the Town-aligned Night-killer, the Vigilante has to commit suicide if he kills another Townie. Or the Scotsman or Magician, who can survive an attack and identify the attacker, once. I also try to put in mini-games. The Vicar vs the Undead, the Detective vs the Wolves, the Witches vs the Cabal. The roles are opposed to and counter each other. This gives fun and balance. Here's the framework I balanced on. There's 4 Sides in my game. This might seem like the Town needs a lot of people to have a chance. But having all-power roles helps. I gave every role a vanilla value and an anti-scum value. For example, the Scotsman can survive one attack and identify his attacker. So he's worth 2 vanilla and 1 anti-scum. The Witchdoctor (raises from the dead if he chose well) is worth 2 vanilla. The Detective (finds attackers) is worth 1 vanilla (no protection) and 1 anti-scum. And so on. The Town ends up with quite an arsenal. Since the Cabal needs to beat the Undead and Wolves to win, I added their number onto the Town, for balancing the Night-killers (Wolves and Vampires) against the others. The Necromancer has to be balanced by estimating the number of dead versus how much the Vicar can protect. The Cabal will be hardest to win, so I gave them unlimited secret communication and a blocking power. And for a final twist, I delay the reveal of information on the dead. That lets false claimers have a better chance of surviving in their lies, which balances out the information the power roles will collect. This hurts all sides too, since the scum won't immediately know if they've hit a power role. The hardest part about balancing is the interactions among the power roles and sides. The classic is an investigative role claiming early and getting the protection of an anonymous protector. It's especially bad if there's more than one protective role. This is probably the worst case for the scum. Make sure there's a counter strategy or some way top make the gambit risky. Well, enough of my rambling. I'll see if I can answer questions more specifically. Or, feel free to ask me about something.
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Post by Idle Thoughts on Aug 22, 2007 18:23:54 GMT -5
To quote the scarecrow...I think it's gonna get darker before it gets lighter.
Or: Man, these games seem to be getting more and more confusing as they go on. And I thought BM's was tough.
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Post by NAF1138 on Aug 22, 2007 18:38:14 GMT -5
To quote the scarecrow...I think it's gonna get darker before it gets lighter. Or: Man, these games seem to be getting more and more confusing as they go on. And I thought BM's was tough. Well I have already decided that my next game on the Dope is going to be a traditional set up with no more than 15 players. But the Day will only end when majority is reached (or I may make the Day very long and if no majority is reached there is no lynch, I am going back and forth.) So that wil be nice and simple.
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Post by Pleonast on Aug 22, 2007 18:44:39 GMT -5
To quote the scarecrow...I think it's gonna get darker before it gets lighter. Or: Man, these games seem to be getting more and more confusing as they go on. And I thought BM's was tough. Well I have already decided that my next game on the Dope is going to be a traditional set up with no more than 15 players. But the Day will only end when majority is reached (or I may make the Day very long and if no majority is reached there is no lynch, I am going back and forth.) So that wil be nice and simple. Interesting. I'm keep my Days and Nights on a fixed schedule. If there's a tie, then there's no lynch. Make sure that stalemates can't happen.
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Post by RoOsh on Aug 22, 2007 19:17:06 GMT -5
Something to look at for EXTREMELY stripped down versions of this game: Apparently on Facebook (yes, i know I'm one of the younger generation who likes it, but hey, apparently my graduating year was called the Facebook generation -2007), it has an application for a VERY simplified game of a Mafia. It's very addicting for me, but its completely a 180 from playing on these boards, as the games are played with 3 minute turns to vote and 2 min. for night kills (with sizes of 10 people, 16 people, or massive 24 person games)(up to days that last 12 hours) after playing a few of those you get a feel for what "basically" works in mafia games and what doesn't really work. It's fun and an easy way to kill 2 hours. But i warn you, expect almost MINIMAL logic from the high schoolers and such who play that game. It becomes more of waiting for the cop to reveal themselves and then just hoping a doctor will protect him. apps.facebook.com/themafia//hijack
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Post by zuma on Aug 22, 2007 20:15:21 GMT -5
I'm worried that these games are getting more and more out of whack regarding town power roles. I don't see how a game can possibly be balanced when such a huge number of townies have power roles, much less ALL of them, which is what seems to be being discussed and what has been the progression of games on the dope.
I've been arguing on the scum board for M5 for days now that the game was unwinnable almost from the start (probably to the point that BM is sick of my bitching) simply due to the huge number of town power roles and claimable roles. With no vanillas, where are scum supposed to hide out?
A game with no vanillas isn't really mafia anymore. I'd favor a semi-open set up, with a list of possible roles. I do think we need to be very careful regarding game balance going forward. Sure, it's fun for everyone to have some sort of power role, but I think at some point it becomes game-breaking.
JSexton seems to have a lot of experience at these things, can we get his opinions on this?
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Post by capybara on Aug 22, 2007 20:22:51 GMT -5
Ah, that was cathartic. I finally got to smite Zuma. Been wanting that for a couple of months. Where's Gadarene?
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Post by zuma on Aug 22, 2007 20:25:59 GMT -5
capy! I've missed you! I was up to my usual scummy ways over in the other game...
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Post by Pleonast on Aug 22, 2007 20:28:48 GMT -5
In my game at least, the scum survive by making false claims and the delayed death reveals makes that much easier. Imagine if in M5, Idle's alignment wasn't revealed until the next dunk?
And not all power roles are created equal. Some, like the Coroner just get a little more info. And the Freemasons don't know their own number and have to search for themselves. Those roles are little better than vanilla Townies, but more fun to play, I think.
My game will also many more scum than is typical.
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Post by zuma on Aug 22, 2007 20:36:03 GMT -5
Hrm. Well, I only gave your game a brief read-through, Pleo. You can put me on the list for it
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Post by RoOsh on Aug 22, 2007 20:42:19 GMT -5
Ah. I can't play your game Pleonast, unless its held here. I just dislike Googlegroups and the straightdope... well. Shrug.
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Post by zuma on Aug 22, 2007 21:07:20 GMT -5
I agree regarding google groups. That was a painful experience.
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Post by Gir! on Aug 22, 2007 21:24:30 GMT -5
I could never keep the reply options straight and kept clicking the one that would send it directly to the other poster. I usually caught it and went back to click the right "reply" option, but at least once, I screwed up and sent it.
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Post by storyteller0910 on Aug 22, 2007 23:27:37 GMT -5
Ok, so follow up questions. What would you do differently? Totally open set up? I am starting to find personally that a 100% open set up gives a huge advantage to the town. Well, no one seems to be paying attention to my obscenely long sequence of posts in the game thread, so I'm going to play in here for a while instead. I should start by saying - I don't think that the fact that I wouldn't enjoy the proposed closed set up means that others wouldn't, or that anything should be done differently. Different strokes etc. But in the interest of continuing the discussion: I think one reason that the 100% open setup favors the town is that it's much harder as a relatively inexperienced player to play scum than to play town. I think the open setups wouldn't favor anyone if everyone was a grizzled veteran. But the thing is - the scum lost in M1, won in M2. They lost in M3, but it couldn't possibly have been a closer thing. M4 was a rare game in which everything that could possibly go right for the town, did. Also, it benefitted from two or three absolutely tremendous plays by the town power roles. M5 is still up in the air - I know some folks seem to think that the scum had no chance, as Idle mentions, but I really can't see why; I think they were at 60% to win the game outright before the sachertorte modkill, and now I think it's nigh on hopeless for the town. I have no idea how things are going to turn out in M6, but it seems to be coming down to the wire. What makes you feel that either side has, in general, had any advantage at all? Thought it rocked, actually. The thing was, the uncertainty it introduced was defined uncertainty. It left room for interesting gambits - not knowing how many of each role was definitely interesting, and the fact that you left out only one of the possible roles (I had assumed you've leave out two) was a game-altering surprise from my perspective. But there was nothing you couldn't figure out if you just set your head to it. With a closed set-up, you can't figure out anything because there's nothing to figure - if anything is possible, nothing can ever be determined with any reasonable degree of confidence. I don't know. I am trying to decide how Pleonast's game will work out. I think it will be utterly unlike any of the games we now have. If you took that game, and closed up all the roles, it would be utter madness. The one danger I see in a "no vanilla" game is that in my admittedly limited experience it is often (though not always) the vanillas who generate the most activity. With no cannon fodder, I'm afraid you might see a very cautious game.
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Post by storyteller0910 on Aug 22, 2007 23:43:22 GMT -5
Interesting. I'm keep my Days and Nights on a fixed schedule. If there's a tie, then there's no lynch. Make sure that stalemates can't happen. Hey, can I float one of my ideas for my Blade Runner game here? The stalemate thing has driven me nuts for a while. I hate random.org, I'm not a fan of the runoff voting, or the no-lynch thing - they all just seem so inorganic. Here's my idea: In my game there will be a power role called the Governor. The Governor will be intrinsically neither pro-town nor pro-scum, because he or she will not be assigned by me. At the beginning of the first Day, there will be a 12-hour period in which the town will not be allowed to vote on a lynch - they will instead elect a player to be Governor. This could be anyone, elected for any reason - scum or town. The Governor will have the power to resolve any tie vote; if a vote is tied at the end of the Day, the Governor chooses one of the two tied candidates for lynching. Not a huge deal, but potentially quite powerful. The Governor can be killed at night like any other player, but can only be removed from the post by lynching. If the Governor dies, the following Day will commence with a new 12-hour election. I think the election periods will generate some interesting discussion, and perhaps some interesting evidence for later game lynching decisions. Players who backed a candidate who turned out to be scum, for example, might look bad. Or might not. What think?
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Post by NAF1138 on Aug 23, 2007 0:45:49 GMT -5
Interesting. I'm keep my Days and Nights on a fixed schedule. If there's a tie, then there's no lynch. Make sure that stalemates can't happen. Hey, can I float one of my ideas for my Blade Runner game here? The stalemate thing has driven me nuts for a while. I hate random.org, I'm not a fan of the runoff voting, or the no-lynch thing - they all just seem so inorganic. Here's my idea: In my game there will be a power role called the Governor. The Governor will be intrinsically neither pro-town nor pro-scum, because he or she will not be assigned by me. At the beginning of the first Day, there will be a 12-hour period in which the town will not be allowed to vote on a lynch - they will instead elect a player to be Governor. This could be anyone, elected for any reason - scum or town. The Governor will have the power to resolve any tie vote; if a vote is tied at the end of the Day, the Governor chooses one of the two tied candidates for lynching. Not a huge deal, but potentially quite powerful. The Governor can be killed at night like any other player, but can only be removed from the post by lynching. If the Governor dies, the following Day will commence with a new 12-hour election. I think the election periods will generate some interesting discussion, and perhaps some interesting evidence for later game lynching decisions. Players who backed a candidate who turned out to be scum, for example, might look bad. Or might not. What think? I have always liked the governor (town leader) role, and when I was putting together my Bastard Mod game, it was one of the things I had planned on using. I am currently abandoning the bastard mod game, for now, since I am no longer sure how welcome it would be. I might feel differently after Pleo's and the Firefly game run. I do want to do my next game after Firefly as a very stripped down normal game. I would also be interested in running some speed mafia games like Roosh suggested. 10 players 2 hours start to finish. And possibly a mini mafia game. 3 players 1 is mafia. If you mislynch the game is over. Those both have always seemed like fun, but I figured they would never work on the Dope.
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Post by sachertorte on Aug 23, 2007 9:28:05 GMT -5
To quote the scarecrow...I think it's gonna get darker before it gets lighter. Or: Man, these games seem to be getting more and more confusing as they go on. And I thought BM's was tough. Well I have already decided that my next game on the Dope is going to be a traditional set up with no more than 15 players. But the Day will only end when majority is reached (or I may make the Day very long and if no majority is reached there is no lynch, I am going back and forth.) So that wil be nice and simple. I like this very much. Sometimes I like a nice plain cheesecake made very well rather than a fancy one with all the fixings. It will be interesting how forcing a consensus will work out. And the Freemasons don't know their own number and have to search for themselves. I like your take on the masons. Much more fun. It also makes it harder for scum to find masons since there won't be a glaring who hasn't voted for who since early in the game masons might vote for each other before they know the truth. I also agree with zuma, but slightly differently. I don't think that so many powerroles is necessarily unbalancing to the town, but it will clearly be hard to balance. But, if Pleonast is successful, the variance should be lower. In other words, a lucky first lynch or a lucky first nightkill won't throw the game immediately out of whack. But that's assuming a balanced initial set-up which may be hard to achieve without actual play testing. One thing I read on the mafia site I linked to regarding Pleonast's claim of Martyr mentioned something to the effect of "Mafia can't talk at night" meaning they have to coordinate during the day and vote individually at night. If they don't achieve a majority, then no kill happens. Obviously this is harder for scum and would have to be balanced out, but I think the idea is intriguing. I think the site mentioned that scum was allowed to plot out the first three kills before the game starts somehow, for better balance. Governor idea: I think storyteller's Governor idea is a good one. Ideally, the governor role would not have to make any decisions, but if the game required one, there is a mechanism for it that is not too much of a big deal.
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Post by sachertorte on Aug 23, 2007 9:35:52 GMT -5
I was thinking about the 'mafia can't talk at night' thing and I realized that it could not work on a message board setting. The site I was reading was for live mafia. In a message board, the history of posts would reveal scum too easily.
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Post by JSexton on Aug 23, 2007 13:06:03 GMT -5
To further roll the ball on this topic, here is what I sent to both Mal and Blaster when they asked my advice on game balance. The first thing you want to do is make sure that as close to 1/2 of your population is vanilla as possible. The ratio I was told after this is, a doctor or similar type of character is worth 1 scum. A detective or similar is worth 2. A GF type character -1 scum (immune from detective). Add 1 scum for every 3 masons. Add 1 scum for every 6 vanilla. Vig and SK do not effect the scum count. Total scum should not exceed 1/4 of the total players. So with 20 players, if you have more then 5 (maybe 6) scum, your game is broken off the bat. This means that you can have 1 detective type, 2 role blocker types, and 2 night killer types. This is just for ratio of scum to power role to vanilla and has nothing to do with individual power balancing. But it should give you a start. The other advice I was given is think of the worst things that could happen in terms of pro town and pro scum gameplay. If you can still have the game going after day 5, your game is as balanced as you could hope for. I actually have a fairly involved pointing scheme for balancing games, although it applies only to closed setups. The thing about power roles is that they get exponentially more powerful, especially in certain combinations. Example: a lone cop has some power, but is dead the moment they reveal results. A lone doc has to rely on some extremely good guesses to ever have an actual effect on the game. However, together they're like a machine gun, as the scum HAVE to find the doc before they can do anything about the cop, who can now openly claim and post results. That's an obvious interaction, but there are more. The reason that it only applies to closed setups is simple: with open setups, you provide methods to confirm townies with every single role you hand out. Open setups don't need masons, by the way, because the primary purpose of a mason is to be confirmed. In this game, several pro-town roles are confirmable. The cupid, for instance, was a one-man masonry. Anyway, one player on my main site proposed the Trees theory of mafia design: You have to provide enough trees for the mafia to hide behind. Trees, in this case, are non-confirmable townies. If too many townies can confirm themselves with a claim, then it becomes trivial to lynch the remainder until you win. Boring and broken.
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Post by JSexton on Aug 23, 2007 13:07:56 GMT -5
I'm not a fan of closed setups, secret roles, or roles with unknown alignments or win conditions. I think games like that tend to emphasize the value and play of the power roles. It certainly de-emphasizes the value of the vanilla townie. All the vanilla townie has to use in any game is reasoning ability. But in a game where there is no certain information, it is literally impossible to reason. You can't draw conclusions or puzzle anything out, you can't make even modest guesses at the motivations of players, you have nothing to go from and therefore nowhere to go. I think you're very, very wrong. Have you read through any closed games on mafiascum or misetings? They are extremely skill-intensive for both town and scum. I admit that it can place a higher premium on power roles, but you can (and should) design around that.
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Post by JSexton on Aug 23, 2007 13:12:09 GMT -5
I'm worried that these games are getting more and more out of whack regarding town power roles. I don't see how a game can possibly be balanced when such a huge number of townies have power roles, much less ALL of them, which is what seems to be being discussed and what has been the progression of games on the dope. I've been arguing on the scum board for M5 for days now that the game was unwinnable almost from the start (probably to the point that BM is sick of my bitching) simply due to the huge number of town power roles and claimable roles. With no vanillas, where are scum supposed to hide out? A game with no vanillas isn't really mafia anymore. I'd favor a semi-open set up, with a list of possible roles. I do think we need to be very careful regarding game balance going forward. Sure, it's fun for everyone to have some sort of power role, but I think at some point it becomes game-breaking. JSexton seems to have a lot of experience at these things, can we get his opinions on this? Agreed whole-heartedly. There's been some games designed that are meant to be non-serious chaos games, kinda like playing DOOM on god mode, where everyone is powered up. Fun, but not real mafia. I don't think there'd be a way to run a serious game with a power level that high and still have it be interesting from an anlysis perspective.
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Post by storyteller0910 on Aug 23, 2007 13:13:51 GMT -5
I'm not a fan of closed setups, secret roles, or roles with unknown alignments or win conditions. I think games like that tend to emphasize the value and play of the power roles. It certainly de-emphasizes the value of the vanilla townie. All the vanilla townie has to use in any game is reasoning ability. But in a game where there is no certain information, it is literally impossible to reason. You can't draw conclusions or puzzle anything out, you can't make even modest guesses at the motivations of players, you have nothing to go from and therefore nowhere to go. I think you're very, very wrong. Have you read through any closed games on mafiascum or misetings? They are extremely skill-intensive for both town and scum. I admit that it can place a higher premium on power roles, but you can (and should) design around that. I'm willing to accept this, but I'd like to hear more on why and how (I haven't read any games apart from the Dope games and the ones here - I think if I devoted even a single additional minute of my life to these games, my wife would kill me in my sleep). To me a completely closed setup sounds a bit like the card game Mao, except no one knows the rules. How do you reason anything when anything is possible? I just can't grasp it, I guess. It sounds frustrating, and I definitely don't want to dedicate hours of my life to frustrating activities apart from my actual job.
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Post by JSexton on Aug 23, 2007 13:19:10 GMT -5
Ok, so follow up questions. What would you do differently? Totally open set up? I am starting to find personally that a 100% open set up gives a huge advantage to the town. Well, no one seems to be paying attention to my obscenely long sequence of posts in the game thread, so I'm going to play in here for a while instead. I should start by saying - I don't think that the fact that I wouldn't enjoy the proposed closed set up means that others wouldn't, or that anything should be done differently. Different strokes etc. But in the interest of continuing the discussion: I think one reason that the 100% open setup favors the town is that it's much harder as a relatively inexperienced player to play scum than to play town. I think the open setups wouldn't favor anyone if everyone was a grizzled veteran. But the thing is - the scum lost in M1, won in M2. They lost in M3, but it couldn't possibly have been a closer thing. M4 was a rare game in which everything that could possibly go right for the town, did. Also, it benefitted from two or three absolutely tremendous plays by the town power roles. M5 is still up in the air - I know some folks seem to think that the scum had no chance, as Idle mentions, but I really can't see why; I think they were at 60% to win the game outright before the sachertorte modkill, and now I think it's nigh on hopeless for the town. I have no idea how things are going to turn out in M6, but it seems to be coming down to the wire. What makes you feel that either side has, in general, had any advantage at all? Information. The core of the game is an informed minority versus and uninformed majority. Announcing the makeup of power roles is a tremendous amount of public, known-good information for the town, and you absolutely must take that into account when balancing a game. Further, it removes a huge weapon from the scum: false-claiming. In an open setup, the only time scum can reasonably claim anything other than vanilla is at lynch-or-lose, in a desperation move. I promise you that isn't true. For any given roleclaim, you can examine a players history, vote record, and interactions. You can also compare it to other known or claimed roles. For instance, if someone claims on day three to have an investigative role and claims their targets each night, go back and see if those targets match the person they were voting for or voiced suspicion of. How many other claimed investigators are there? Any dead ones? If you believe them for now, re-examine them tomorrow. Did they survive the night? Why? Who did they target last night? It's difficult, but possible, for scum to fake claim major roles, and that kind of risk makes the game a BLAST.
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