New Experimental Concepts for Mafia Games

askaninjask

[FLAIL ARMS]
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
Double Alias mafia happened. A big drawback wound up being that once a user died in one forum, he was automatically cleaned in the second.
 
The concept needed some refinement, but I will say for it that it was a lot of fun. Given what aska said, dropping a fake PM on death was pretty powerful too. However the way the game played out (information mismanagement) skewed things a lot :/
 
I had an idea of sorts for a game. The way the idea went made it so that it would probably take a Big game to fulfill the concept.

The idea is for there to be your "standard" tactical game. Something like maybe:

Win Conditions (don't think of these as absolute, they are an example and could probably use refinement):
Village 1 needs Mafias 1 and 2 dead
Village 2 needs Mafias 3 and 4 dead
Mafia 1 needs Village 1, Mafia 2 and Mafia 4 dead
Mafia 2 needs Village 1, Mafia 1 and Mafia 3 dead
Mafia 3 needs Village 2, Mafia 2 and Mafia 4 dead
Mafia 4 needs Village 2, Mafia 1 and Mafia 3 dead

Now let us assume that this is Berlin and there's a wall separating the 1 game into 2 games. There could even be a lynch for each side of the wall. Below is a graphical representation of this:
V1 M1 M2 | V2 M3 M4

But the problem with this is that its just two games, and what happens if the mafia on the other side you need dead doesn't die? For the latter, I imagine that the wall would fall down at some point (I was thinking the elimination of a village faction or something). For the former, I was thinking that maybe factions would be able to trade roles (not players or aliases) with there counterpart village/mafia faction on the other side of the wall.

Also it would probably be a good idea to publicize from the start which aliases are on which side of the wall to make the game not suck.

Another, alternative, idea would be to have fewer factions, with some members of each faction on different sides of the wall.

I am putting this concept out there because I realize that it would take an experienced host to figure out a fun and fair distribution of roles etc., and I am not that host.
 

askaninjask

[FLAIL ARMS]
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
How about a game in which priority is randomized every night? There could be some roles that "weight" the randomization, like "raise <user>'s prio up two spots" or something.
 
General Spoon: Done. I did that with my experimental expert mafia, than my failure big mafia. But the failure came from the viva style more than anything else.

No idea how the players thought when they played it though.
 
aska, I've thought of something mildly related to that before. The real problem is that in any game where randomization plays such a big role, it essentially kills a big part of the strategy that is supposed to be in mafia. If you're going to do a game with massively shifting priorities, then it has to be a bit more structured (even if the players don't necessarily know the structure beforehand, forcing them to figure it out). You can still do things like have multiple prio-up/down roles/items, or even a full priority inversion (think 1-turn Trick Room, which is the idea I referred to at the start of this little rant XD).
 
Hey I was thinking today about the current problem we have with mafias running for a really long time, with people getting bored, not sending in updates and all the problems that that causes. I've come up with a game idea that might fix this somewhat. It's pretty much based off of giving players breaks and making them excited to play a game again while it's still going on.

This game would feature an even number of players, with one set being "active", and the other being "inactive". So, in a basic game of mafia vs. village, there would be say, 3 active mafia players, 3 inactive mafia players, vs 9 active village players, and 9 inactive village players.
The inactive players obviously wouldn't be actively playing in the game, but would have a unique role that isn't anything like their "active" players role. Each pair of active/ inactive players would not be informed of whom their counterpart is, or what their role is. Every 4 or so days, the players will automatically switch between being "active" and an "inactive" player, but would have the option of "switching" at any point and time.

There would be an "active player list" in each new update, and those players would be allowed to vote and use abilities, be targeted by abilities etc etc. For convenience it would probably use the whole cycle system thing. Of course if one half of the active/inactive players dies, the other needs to take over full time, which sort of defeats the point, but hey at least it's a start!

If someone has already posted this concept than my bad I guess
 
@Wickdaggler: An idea somewhat like that was proposed before in this topic. The problem is that players currently inactive just reading what is going on, waiting for their turn, could grow bored and stop participating before their active turn comes. It goes directly against what you'd hoped to achieve.


Anyway, I'm a pretty new user on Smogon but I've been reading The Smog's articles on Smogon mafia and I'm waiting for a chance to join some beginner game. In the meantime though, here's one idea I wanted to share with you guys. Maaaybe it'd decentralize the village leader's role if carried out correctly.

Basically there is a setup with a village and mafia but you cannot kill right away. Everybody's role PMs include one or more 'secrets' and everybody is capable of investigation to a limited extent. At Night, players target others to learn their secrets, and might have some ways to guard their own. Once you have learned a player's secret, then you gain the option of Night Killing that player (which again certain roles might prevent).

The Daily Lynch could also be something other than a kill, it could instead reveal a player's secret to everyone, and then they can be gotten at anytime but survive at least until the night. Since everybody is capable of investigation the Mafia cannot just focus fire on the inspect and gain the upper hand, and every player can play their part in figuring out the truth.

I'll be thinking more on this, if I can refine the secrets system then I'd be looking to co-host a game with this feature with someone more experienced. For now, how does it sound to you? Neat, boring? Any problems you can spot right away? Let me know please.
 
Sounds like you need some way to control (limit) how many people die per night. Also, this sounds more like a free-for-all than a Village vs Mafia concept.
 
As I was perusing the NOC, an idea popped into my head. Feel free to take it.

A game with any number of initially vanilla roles. However, all of them have a line that reads: "When you cast the vote that causes majority to be reached, you gain the ability to <whatever>."

Or something along those lines. Basically, when that person hammers in the lynch, they gain whatever ability. To make it a bit more randomish, you could not tell them what the ability they would gain is, but I'm always reluctant to include really random elements.

While this would obviously be a way to make an initially weak village that would become stronger (in the case of a mislynch, there's a good chance someone gains a power role on the village) it could just as easily be applied to the mafia (though they should always have an ability to kill, ofc).

It's about 50/50 whether it would be better for NOC or not, but I think I'm slightly leaning toward NOC?
 
Sorry Daenym, I don't think you properly considered the implications of what that would do in a game, in terms of how bad/vulnerable it makes the village. Obviously there is the initial dropoff of village ability relative to norm, but in giving power to a role that must vote in a specific fashion, you are giving the mafia the information as to who exactly poses a threat on the other team, which is kinda silly.
 
It might work if it was known that some of the roles might be specifically made to be bad to night-kill or visit, like if certain vanillas turned into Bombs (kills whoever nightkills them), Paranoid Gun Owners (If anyone visits, they die instead, aka immune to mafia nightkill), or Oracles (sends a public message the next morning when nightkilled noting who visited).
 

Celever

i am town
is a Community Contributor
I had an idea:
Everyone, after on Night 1 (so after Day 1) will get information on another person's role.
For example, Team A moi, the inspector, gets Team A Blue_Tornado, the mayor, and on Night 1 moi gets the message "Blue_Tornado is the mayor".
Team A Daenym, the bodyguard, gets Team B Sukima, the safeguard, in his role PM and it says: "Sukima is the inspector". This is because Team A profiles will all be true, however Team B (standard village vs mafia setup) profiles will be incorrect.
This would not only be an effective way to weaken the village leader system, but it also ties two players together. A downside of it is that Team B will get Team A profiles, and as Team A can't lie about it Team B would essentially get 5-6 players where they know their roles. This could be helped with a 3 faction mafia - Team A, Team B and Team C where Team B could get Team Cs lying about their roles and vice versa with some true Team As mixed in. IDK it's just a concept what do you guys think?
 
Celever: meh, it could work but the problem with a setup like that is that the host is constantly lying to the players. IMO any game where the host lying to the players is an essential mechanic deserves the same or greater scrutiny then the host lying to just one or two players (like they do for non-sane inspectors, millers, and people who get inspections results for Dickens) would get.

I had an idea for a way to create solid randomized NOC setups to run for quickies if Circus ever runs into a drought of games again. It's based on the randomized Great Idea Mafia setup on mafiascum.com, where roles are randomly distributed to players based on a public list of roles. Once a setup is reached that is somewhat balanced (no less then 50% town, at least 2 or 3 mafia), role PMs are distributed and the game begins.

Obviously, we'd have to have responses to irregular role setups; after all some role combos like Mason/Twin with no partner are kinda weird and some (Mafia Reflexive Doctor I'm looking at you) are just downright unbalanced. But if we made our own list of roles for randomization this could end up being pretty fun.
 

askaninjask

[FLAIL ARMS]
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
I've been trying to balance a 2v1 game in which there are two "locations" in the game. Each day, everyone votes normally, but at night the playerlist is somehow split up (either by a player or by RNG) into these two locations and people can only target people in their own location. It would hopefully provide an interesting dynamic where the mafia has to think twice - if I kill tonight, will it make it obvious that I'm mafia?

I haven't found a good way to make the game not obviously broken for one side or another. I'm going to stop working on this for now but if someone else wants to try this, I would love to play.
 
Came up with an interesting NOC concept

Night 0 and Day 1 go along normally

On Night 1, players who are not dead vote on who they think should be the "Town Saviour" for the following day judging on what went on in the first day

This Town Saviour cannot post in the thread Day 2 but is the only member who can lynch during that day. The discussion will be the same as every NOC day 2 but nobody can vote for who they want to lynch. When the deadline ends, the Town Saviour looks at the arguments made in day 2, and chooses who to lynch. The next night a new town saviour is voted on, etc

thoughts?
 

vonFiedler

I Like Chopin
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnus
It's not a kingmaker, the game isn't being decided. You are just voting on one "clean" player rather than on who is guilty.

I think it's a cool idea, I've thought about it before but not in an NOC setting. Definitely has legs to stand on, especially since it could hopefully speed up the day stages.
 

zorbees

Chwa for no reason!
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
i'd assume that if the mafia kills the guy with the most votes, the second-most voted would be chosen?

Also, I'd probably make it so that the mafias do not have votes.
 

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