Bay 12 Games Forum

oh yah, 1 anti-lynch and one anti-kill doc.

I was picturing that example of the suicidal townie: unless something is done, the person dies in x days. The 'something' being a doctor acts on them.  However:

"Their goal is to try to keep as many players alive until a certain day, where their win condition is fulfilled. Sort of a reverse survivor role."


reminds me of "You can't die yet.  You're an important sacrifice."

Doctors don't keep the Geriatrics alive past the final day.  They try to keep them alive UNTIL the final day by stopping the lynch/kill.  For example, 13 people, Day 4 deadline.  Normally, day 4 would end up with 7 people.  However, if the docs stop 2 deaths, thus leaving 7 people alive, and one doc survives as well, the ritual is complete, everyone is sacrificed and the Doctors win.  If both doctors die or they fail to stop two kills, then the ritual ends, any surviving doctors die and 5 remain for a normal lylo. 

The numbers are just an example, of course.

Well, I was assuming 2 scum.  probably a 10 player setup.  In the end, 4 days on 10 players mimics a normal mafia game with a 1 shot vig (vig kills 1, mafia kills 1 a night, 1 lynch a day = 4 day lylo if 1 mafia dies).  The 3 kills done by the mafia normally are instead 3 people the town doctor didn't choose.

As far as scumsided, note that those win conditions aren't combined.  If the doc picks 3 townies, town wins.  If the town lynches the scum, town wins.  They don't need to do both.  Finding 3 townies out of 9 people is technically much easier than finding 2 scum from the same group.  The scum also lose their ability to wipe out strong townies to weaken the day game.  I'd say it's slightly townsided in the end.  To even get a chance for scum to win lylo they have to not only act town but convince the Doc that they are MORE townie than anyone else.  Simply making others look worse isn't enough.  If both scum are simply 'meh perhaps' to the Doc, it's game over, town wins.

Probably the hardest part of the game is keeping the Doc safe.  Docs, by their nature, act scummy.  Given HOW Scummish the Doc role is (Lynch is more of a problem than a benefit, more powerful in night than day, MUST live to win) it'll be VERY hard for them to play town.  If they fail, though, the scum will 1-shot or the town will lynch the doc and it's game over.

Assuming the doc plays well, it's actually pretty townsided.  If scum cant' find the doc, they have to not only be picked but also either shoot another Treated (a 2 out of 5 chance) or win lylo. 

I have two ideas linked by one flavor concept:  The cure to the disease can only be given on the third night.  The doctor only has time to treat 3 people in that night.  Meanwhile, the Mafia stole ONE cure.

This does two things:

1. The doctor doesn't pre-cure. Instead they Choose who to Treat.  That means that they make the choice and act Night 3.  This is why Doc dying = town loss: everyone but 1 mafia dies.  This also means the doc is free to choose afte the third night, so no worries of picking someone Night 1 then the person being lynched day 2.

2. It eliminates the 'doc picks 3 townies and WIN'. I realize nwo that with this item in place the town's best bet is to just pick randomly and stay silent.  Chances are, they'll lynch 3 non-doc townies, the doc will pick 3 townies and the mafia's one-shot won't matter.  Going random will, chances are, result in 3 townies and a mafia with a 1-shot: basically a lylo (since mafia will NOT shoot before a lynch unless they are foolish ) and a nasty one for the town.  The town is best off scumhunting to try to kill the mafia early or, at least, giving the Treated few ammo to use in lylo. 

It also makes a very interesting mafiawin possiblity: Doc picks 2 townies and a mafia, the mafia self-cures the OTHER person.  2 townies, 2 mafia, mafia win.  For mafia to win this way:
1. They BOTH have to avoid being lynched for three days
2. They need the Doc to Treat one of them
3. They need to know who the Doc picked and, thus, self-treat the other

If they can pull that off then, imo, they win.  same for if they can get the Doc to Treat both mafia.

Which makes daytime scumhunting to kill at least ONE of the mafia, Very Important.

That is true that the kill effectively turns it into a mafia/town situation, which makes the day game work.  However, it's effectively Day 1 (even if it's, say, the third day technically, teh first two days had everyone as 'town'.  This is the first day for the mafia/town dynamic and Day 1s are painful for the town to handle (it's power is in supplying the tells that get found out later on).  While this would work if the town had multiple days to handle it (removing the '1 day doomsday' effect, which would make a fun game in itself but I like the doomsday mechanic) the town really doesn't have the means to do a regular scumhunt once a kill is made.  As such, they are heavily dependent on the investigative skills.  The balance, then, is in there being a situation when the town is able to find the killer in most cases and there being a situation where the scum can slip by (with the leaning heavily on town due to Time being heavily anti-town here).

Analyzing.. note that I'm thinking as i'm writing here

There seems to generally be three stages to the game:

Early game: Larger number of players.  No patterns to try to figure out on the players.  That'll result in players randomly performing their actions.

Mid game: fewer players and now patterns and play styles are showing up.  actions are now directed as people are now having a plan in order to win (or at least, not lose)

Last Day: 3 player game at night.  Win is basically determined by how well you Trained in order to out block everyone or, if no outright winner there, a guessing game as to who to block and who to kill.

The Last Day is, to me, balanced thanks to the Training system.  I was foolish to throw that item out.  Just having 6 points (20 points in Train for three days) is more than enough to turn the tide into a full win in your favor.  BAH, if your opponents didn't train, ONE POINT is enough to guarantee the win.  As such, whoever trains more wins.  However, you sacrifice your early game, risking both losing to an earlier successful mafia or simply being NKed.  Thus you have to plan to fight for the end game here, opting to balance Blocks (to avoid dying), investigates/tracks (to keep others from winning) and Train (to help you win the end).  I can see a person try to do a 100 Train all game but that's similar to someone doing a 100 Kill day 1 and attempting to slip by.  In the end, I think I really like the risk and reward and the planning required to pull it off. 

So the question comes to how the other games work out:  To recap the original rules (officially throwing out my suggestions)

You can Kill with a balanace between keeping below the radar (lower points) and actually making the kill (higher points).  Think Price is Right

You can Track: Shows how much into Kill they used (thus both if they tried to kill and the chance they made the kill), or, if strong enough, their target as well

Block: Effectivey stop a person from killing

Investigate: Show all nonkill actions or, if strong enough, show everyone that tried to kill the person.

train: talked about earlier.


Ok, let's say you made a kill for 100 points on someone who no one else targetted, and won.  Anyone that tracks you will see that you went all out and  that you aimed at the victim: confirmed killer.  Anyone that investigates will know you are the only killer: confirmed

In fact, if someone decides to go with a high point Investigate, so long as you are the only target, you will be doomed.  At most, 2 people will target the same person, which can be figured out by deduction. 

My worry, though, comes in if a person kills another, and there isn't a 100-X track or Investigate

I just can't really see an example of a low-point Investigate doing anything.  Yes, you can see that, say, Litia did a Block on PlayerX, but what would that really gain?  Litia can still kill the same player so knowing that she blocked doesn't stop that.  As such, Investigate seems to be an 'go big or go home' skill.  It DOES make an odd situation, though: if you are killing, you will WANT to aim at someone who others will try to hit.  It's the only way to dodge Investigation.

Track is pretty useful in any form.  Chances are, you'll get to see if someone tries to kill and knowing the power used will give you an idea of whether they succeeded.  Meanwhile, if the kill is high enough it's an instant confirm (both in that you get to see the target and, chances are, they succeeded anyway). 


Thus I guess my fear is if the players didn't get the killer caught in a track.  Investigate right now, is either a direct Stop on any killer or giving information that doesn't lead to any killer at all.  Meanwhile, while I imagine there should be a big question of 'where di you use your points' there's really nothing to investigate THAT element.  If I, as the killer, say I was blocking X, Y, and Z, and a high level Investigate/track wasn't done on me, there's nothing to say that I'm lying and again, day 1 scumhunting isn't reliable yet by itself. It makes me think that a mechanic for seeing what someone did could feed into that "What did you do" concept.

A few ideas:

What would happen if all blocks and tracks informed the other person.  i.e. (person blocked you).  No power level, all skills work the same.  Without power levels, you couldn't use it alone to track anyone, but it would present a check and balance.  For example, if I kill someone and Track you, I could claim I was JUST tracking you.  Note that if you did a kill (that didn't succeed) I would have to balance the amount of Track I claim so that it would match the amount of kill you applied (If kill attempt for 50, I couldn't claim a Track of 50 since I'd need to know your target).  This would match with another item

You MUST use all of your points.  You can't claim that you just didn't use 20 points.

If you investigate, it becomes public knowledge.  NOT the result, just that you did it.  That way you can't just claim 70 points in investigate after someone else told what happened. 

(note you CAN claim that you put all your points in Train, but, honestly, if I knew someone was dumping more Train points than me, I would try to win early and aim a kill at them since I wouldn't have a chance at winning at End Game)


All that with the skills left as is.  Low level investigate keeps people from just claiming that they did passive things to dead players and high level investigate ensures that you CAN'T just fling 100 points in kill and hope no one notices.  Track and Block are your defensive tools (only for end game? Meh, you can fling small bits of block around and really ruin quite a few killers.  It also helps your kill.  Instead of doing 30, you can do 20 and fling 10 block.  A killer doing 40 would not only lose to you but would also look worse to investigations).  Train is if you want to do end game stuff.  Meanwhile, you're hoping SOMEONE did an investigate each night.

(yes, the public report of investigate means that if no one did it the killer knows, but.. honestly, that sounds neat in a "OMG EVERYONE PANIC" sort of way.  Besides, it feels meh to have an entire plan set up only for someon to say "100 Investigate.  Lynch HIM!")

True my 'test' didn't have a true day game in it. However, it does lead to a question of how we can tell who did the kill if everyone is trying to Kill for themselves.  Since they aren't really a mafia, there's no natural scumhunting to do.  As such, I assumed that the town is meant to accumulate the blocks, tracks, and investigates to narrow down the choices, then use the partial information from that, player meta, and a bit of 'spot the lie 'to find who to lynch. 

As such, I actually can imagine that any night where the majority of the group tries to kill will, essentually lead to the final day as there would be too many 'kill' false positives, far too few investigations/tracks/blocks to sort them, and it would be easy to act like a "killer who's kill failed" right along side everyone else.

Personally, I'd spend the first few nights track/block/investigating like crazy and lynching them down, then trying for the kill later on. 

Btw, I think I see how Train comes into play.  If the last 3 players don't train at all, in order to win, they'd have to do 91 kill/ 5 block, 4 block, effectively picking one person to fully block (100-(2*5)=90) and one person to miss.  If they trained, though, they can effectively block both players and ensure a win. 

True, it's 'it breaks lylo but does nothing else' but does it really need to do anything else?  If you plan to win early, you try to target someone with JUST enough points to get a kill in and hope to slip through.  If you plan to win midgame you do so by the group forgetting you and realizing too late they didn't watch you.  If you plan to win late game, you train up and try to catch the killers so that you effectively will win at the 3-person.  Sort of a risk-reward thing.

All for letting people see the points used.

To be fully honest, what I'd like to see is this game in action to see how it'll roll.  It's hard to tell just what information everyone will need until we see how the day game works.  There's already a call in another thread for Experimental games that may be broken and this one very much looks interesting.

Stupidcrazy rolls without worrying over balance?

Please, that's the easy part. 

---

A game where you pick a TV trope and a power is created based on that trope.

A game where Name, Role, and alignment swap each Dawn (and not all to the same place.  I'm a Mafia Roleblocker named Brunhild. At Dawn Litia is now named Brunhild, Vector is now a Roleblocker, and Dariush is the Mafia.  The items swap randomly)

A fixed version of Parallel Mafia

Or just grab some of the ideas of THAT game as separate game types.  A mafia game involving Portal guns?  A game where everyone has their own win condition that involves someone else's loss (if you're thinking "People will just team up to win?" YESSSS they will ).  Boadmurdered mafia?

Seriously, the trick to making sure a Crazy bastard game isn't dull is to keep the rules that the player needs to figure out/learn small (YOUR mechanics can be insane.. but most should be stuff they don't have to figure out to win/enjoy) and make sure everyone is of similar power level (if one person is overpowered, EVERYONE should be).

Also what happened to KotM?  I see it went through 3 iterations so I guess it wasn't as much a Fail as I thought it was.

#*)$# I want to run one of these.  *sigh*  If there's ever room on the board and one of my current or future ideas has enough support, I'll run it.  ON THE CONDITION that I have a co-mod.  I've gone from an ex-student in between jobs to a father of 2 back in college and a possible job on the way.  I'd feel much better if I knew my games were still running smoothly even though I was too busy to oversee it (i.e. spending 4 hours of the night feeding a child.  Seriously how did we survive as a species if our newborns spend 4 HOURS to eat one meal!?)

I'm also more than willing to hash out ideas for others to run as well.  I can fix up some of the old stuff, come up with something new, or just look over someone else's idea.  I liked playing and loved modding, but I lived for game creation.

@leafsnail

Just ran a test run of 2 rounds with 11 players making  random.org choices(random choice of targets, random action, random points used with a goal of all points eventually used each night)  didn't bother letting them train since, honestly, I don't think we really need a 'train' option.  It showing to be rather complicated and doesn't really add anything.  100 points for everyone is fine.

First off, wow, I thought that Block would be too tricky to use but,jeesh, even with 11 people  4 out of the 6 kill attempts were blocked.  That was with me messing up and only doing 1Y blocking power, though that was more than enough to effectively stop someone (the only kills that went through were people not targetted by blocks)

What was hard to make useful, though, is track.  I ended up with a lot of people who saw folks who made kill attempts but without knowing who they targetted.  Include the fact that everyone missed the actual killer, it would guarantee a mislynch. 

OTOH, In both of the rounds, someone ended up doing a high action Invesigate and flat out found out who made the kill. 

As such, with my horribly set up testing ground, I state this:

Kill and block are overall well set up.  I was wondering why wouldn't everyone just dump 1-5 points in a kill until I saw 3 kill attempts and realized the 'largest points pass' rule.  Turns the thing into a sort of Price is Right game.

Track seems under powered.  Either you push it HARD and hope you hit the right person or you get what is sure to be a false positive.  Perhaps have it so that, for every skill they do that's 100-3X you get to see the target but not the action (i.e. if I 30 tracked litia, 21 killed dakarian, and 5 blocked Vector and you Tracked me for 7, you will see that I went to Litia and Dakarian's place).  100-X = you also see the action. If you did something to someone twice, you see it twice (went to Litia's house ten went back again)

Investigate: The 3X version (see non-kill actions) is too weak as is, but can be useful with the Tracking change, since if you saw I went to Litia's place and Litai died, the Investigator can find out that I did a non-kill action on Litia.  The X version too strong as it's basically a "Kill that guy, NOW" button.  You have the day game but that's essentually trying to WIFOM vs a Cop result.  Perhaps have it so that, regardless of if someone dies, you see every person who killed with a 100-A or more point kill (you invesigate for 50, I tried to kill for 30, Litia used 70 points, Vector used 50 points and we all failed, you see that Litia and vector had made kill attempts). 

That turns Investigate into both a tool to weed out suspects on the weaker versoin and find new suspects in the stronger version.  An Investigate+track would be needed to make a sure fire spot on a killer

and again, don't think Train is needed at all.  Already enough in the game to make it interesting without it.

Overall, looks very crazy-go-fun.

Quote from: dakarian on July 02, 2013, 05:13:58 pm

It would be an odd game, though, that REQUIRES you to be 'nice' to your opponent.  Sort of a 1984 style.  That might be super plus plus good.

I believe you mean "doubleplusgood."  Big Brother is watching you.

wow.. been a long time since I read that book.  I'll need to get back to that.

Why would it have no deadlines?  As it is, the game just sounds like a regular mafia game with post restrictions.

Meanwhile, just looked up JK9++ 

That.. kind of rocks. 

It does make sense to have a ..not MOUNTAINOUS build but a more basic running game for those past BM stage but aren't looking for crazy.  meanwhile the two styles offer something interesting.