Mafia Sign-Up List and Voting

[Submachine]

There is a possible concept that might help, but it is untested. Would any 3 people volunteer for testing a 3-man mafia? Anyone can host it.

Spoiler for Rough details:

1 host, 3 players.

15 characters.

Each player controls 5 characters: 1 detective, 1 doctor, 1 virus, 2 without ability.

All characters would have unique, generated names to avoid confusion.

The players can talk through the host, but that is slower than talking themselves.

All teams have 1 kill each night. During the day, players can make their characters vote on anyone through the host, or by themselves (but that reveals where a character belongs to).

If the experiment succeeds, future hosts can tune the rules to their styles.

[UTAlan]

Not sure how this will work, but I'll volunteer.

[Submachine]

Will this be rebooted? If yes, I might be interested in preparing something for the game after the next one.

[Ginyu]

I am interested in hosting.

[Linkcat]

For those who have expressed an interest in hosting, Mobian, dd, Sub, and Ginyu, or anyone else interested, you have a few options.

1) Host another game with the current standard ruleset.

2) Host a game with a modified version of the standard ruleset.

3) Host a game with an original ruleset.

1 and 2 don't require much preparation. If you go with 3, you should start soon so that we have time to make sure it's balanced. All rulesets must be approved by me before being ran.

Here are some general guidelines when creating a ruleset:

• No voting power roles. The person with the most votes at the end of the day should be lynched always. Arguably even Arctic Squid is too much.
• No roles that save someone from a lynch.
• No roles that change someone's primary role.
• No false information.
• Limited or no RNG.
• Third parties are usually a bad idea.
• Town's power should not be concentrated in a single role. Give town multiple ways to find mafia and make reads using roles, without any of them being broken if they live to the end or crippling if they die early.
• Avoid mass roleclaims.
• A max of 1-2 secondary roles should be tied to primary roles, preferably for town only.

The next game will be determined by a poll or by me, depending on what options we have.

[Espithel]

I'll go dredge up Mafia 46: Actually Playable Edition. I've always wanted to host that.

[Ginyu]

Where should we post our rulesets?

[Linkcat]

You can post in this thread or PM me.

[Ginyu]

Mafia setup is up for debate. Flavor will be added upon officially posting.
Looking forward to hear constructive criticism!

Spoiler for Game-specific rules:

• Only mafia players are allowed to talk outside of the topic (which also bans the chat), except for the Friendly Neighbour and his "Greet" target. All mafia players will be provided an Etherpad by the host.
• Players are allowed to post during the Night Phase.
• Encrypting messages in order to circumvent the PN ban is not allowed. Straying breadcrumbs available to all players is allowed.
• Players may only use one ability per night.
• If the lynch is tied, no lynch occurs.
• Players are allowed to vote for "No Lynch".
• The Day will not end until both the timer has ended and 5 minutes have passed since the last vote. If any sort of endless voting loop occurs that affects the lynch, there will be No Lynch. The day will be ended at the host's discretion if there is any vote swapping trolling/juggling. In any way, 30 minutes past the regular deadline will always be final.
  
• Declaring your intent to vote without using the proper format is a valid way to vote.
• If a player does not post for three consecutive phases, they are modkilled.
• The game will start on Night 0.
• Abilities cannot be used on self, unless otherwise specified.
• At the start of every Day Phase, the names of all players who made noise will be made public (but no roles or abilities).

Spoiler for Roles:

The Whisperers (Mafia)

The Whisperers will perform a Nightkill every night. This is factional, does not count as an ability and cannot be tracked or blocked, unless the target is protected from it. Each night, one Whisperer may use the following ability instead of another one. If there is only one Whisperer alive, they may use both this and another ability. Haunt (ER): Target up to two players and guess their secondary roles. If you are right with all of those, they have their secondary roles removed permanently. If you guess wrong for at least one of those players, this ability as well as the nightkill will fail. This ability can't be blocked and can only be tracked by a Paranormal Scientist, but the Whisperer using it makes noise.

Investigative Roles

Officer

Observe (ER): Target a player. You learn their secondary role. Investigate (ER): Target a player. You learn their primary role. You must have observed them before. Raid (1U): Target a player. You learn their primary role. Makes noise. Note: There will be exactly one Officer, who will always be a Civilian.

Gunsmith

Check (EoR): Target a player. You learn whether they carry a weapon. Players with weapons are Whisperers, all investigative roles, Vigilants and Policemen who haven't lost their abilities yet.

Agent

Follow (ER): Target a player. Learn who they targeted this night. Hide (ER): Target a player. Learn who targeted them this night.

Paranormal Scientist

Research (EoR): Target a player. Learn whether they used Haunt this night.

Offensive Roles

Vigilante

Assassinate (EoR, 2U): Target a player and a method of killing them: Strangle: Kill target player without making noise. If your ability fails, your secondary role is revealed to the public. Shoot: Kill target player. Makes noise.

Mechanical Engineer

Motion Sensor (ER): Learn the names of all players who targeted you tonight. You do not learn which abilities were used. Experimental Trap (ER, 2U): Target a player. If that player targeted another player this night, their ability fails and they make noise. If not, but another player targets them, their ability will fail and they will make noise. A trap will only work once, and in the latter case only on the ability with the highest priority (below Experimental Trap), but may hit multiple players if they share the same priority.

Policeman

Patrol (ER): Target a player. If they made noise, disable all of their abilities for the following night. You will learn whether your ability worked.

Drug Dealer

Red Pill (EoR): Target a player. They make noise. Blue Pill (EoR): Target a player. Their abilities do not make noise for this night.

Protective Roles

Doctor

Heal (ER): Target any player including yourself. They are protected from the Nightkill and the Vigilant's abilities. Fails if the target was healed or given Strange Pills the last night.

Paranoid Doctor

Strange Pills (EoR, 2U): Target a player including yourself. They are protected from the nightkill, but the Vigilant can still kill them. If any other players target them and make noise, they will die.

Security Guard

Guard (ER): Target a player. Their ability fails and they cannot be targeted by other player's abilities.

Special Roles

Friendly Neighbour

Greeting (ER): Target a player. You may communicate with them via PM for the following Day Phase. Cannot target the same player twice in a row. Your target will be informed that you greeted them.

Undertaker

Dig up (ER): Use any ability (except Haunt) of any player who died during the last night or day. If you use the ability of an investigative role, Vigilant or Policeman, you are considered to have a weapon for this night.

Grave Robber

Steal (1U): Target a dead player. You receive their secondary role permanently. If you target an investigative role, Vigilant or Policeman, you are considered to own a weapon from this night onwards.

Musician

Sing (ER): Makes noise. Cheer (EoR): Target a player. If they made noise, they will also make noise the following night.

Spoiler for Priority order:

• Last night's Patrol
• Haunt
• Guard
• Experimental Trap
• Red and Blue Pill
• Heal
• Strange Pills
• Nightkill
• Assassinate
• All abilities not listed here
• This night's Patrol

Spoiler for Notes:

• Follow, Hide and Motion Sensor will learn the names of all abilities except Haunt, unless their ability was blocked or their target guarded.
• Security Guards targeting each other will cause both of their abilities to fail. Security Guards targeting the same third person will guard said person. If Guard 1 blocks Guard 2 who was about to target someone else, Guard 1 will block Guard 2. Same for Mechanical Engineers (targeting each other will consume a use and cause noise for both, however).
• If one player receives both a red and a blue pill, these pills cancel each other. Multiples of the same pill on a player have no effect.
• One player either makes noise, or not. Multiple sources of creating noise are not additive, and the player's name will still only be told once. A blue pill cancels all noise a player would make.
• Weapons are no actual items, and are only related to the Gunsmith's ability.
• The causes of all deaths are named, e. g. "Player was shot by a Vigilant!" The cause of a failed ability, however, will not be revealed.

[Ginyu]

Made a change to Paranormal Scientist to make him useful, and to nerf Haunt a bit.

Is this ruleset ready to go?

[kaempfer13]

I've been thinking about a copless setup that still gives town plenty of ways to get AI mechanical info:

A quarter of the players (rounded down) is mafia. Each mafiamember also has a secondary role, one of which will be Nymph Queen.

Each townmember also has a secondary role from the start.

If you have multiple secondary roles you may use all of them at the same night.


The following secondary roles have a predetermined quantity:

Firefly (ER): Name 4 players. The list of players you named as well as the primary role of a random player among them will be published by the moderator on the next day. There will be 1 firefly in the game and they are always town.

Council Member (passive): Every Councilmember is confirmed town, knows the other councilmembers and has access to a shared pad with the other councilmembers in which they can communicate freely until they die (in which case posting there is not allowed anymore). The number of councilmembers at the start of the game is equal to mafias membercount-1.

Nymph queen(ER): Target nonnymph player gains a random unlimited secondary role in addition to their current one and gain the nymphstatus, which makes future uses of this ability on them fail. Nymph queen is also a nymph. There are exactly 2 Nymph Queens in the game, 1 town, 1 mafia.

The following roles can appear in any quantity in the game and are called unlimited roles:

Psion(ER): Target a player. Any secondary abilities they have are revealed to you.

Vulture (passive): Whenever a player with an active ability (not passive) dies, you store a single use of those abilities, which you can use during any night.

Otyugh (OU): Target player dies and your secondary role is revealed.

Mind Flayer (ER): Target a player. They cannot use their ability this Night.

Guardian Angel (ER): Target any player including yourself. They are protected from the Nightkill and any further Offensive Roles. This ability fails if the target was protected by a Guardian Angel on the previous Night.

Maxwell's demon (ER): Give the moderator a list of 5 alive players. If exactly one of them is a mafia member, learn the secondary roles of one of those players (you can choose which one).

Firefly Queen (ER): Generate a firefly (not to be confused with the secondary role) that follows target player. Starting the following night you will learn all active secondaries used by and on target player (but you dont learn who they belong to). If none are witnessed, the firefly will be caught (and unable to report any further) and the target notified.

Fate Egg (Passive)
Hatch - Activates automatically at the start of each Night Phase. You receive a random unlimited role other than Fate Egg, and you are disguised as that role if investigated or revealed. You can use your received role. The roles given by Fate Egg are replaced every night. If you gain the vulture ability you get to store a single use of the active abilities of whoever died on the day before and that night for later use.


I hope this spreads the power around a bit more evenly and makes the game a bit less swingy. There are also some AI clues to gain from learning certain secondary roles (as a less obvious one nymph queen has a 50% chance of being mafia). Overall i feel that these specific powerroles help town more than they usually do, which is why I notably increased the amount of mafiamembers.

[Ginyu]

I completely missed this post somehow, so sorry for the late reply!
I like your concept of splitting the power into multiple roles, and it looks well thoughtout overall. Things that I would consider changing are:

Maxwell's Demon: This role can potentially confirm 4 players every night per Demon in play, if there is one mafia known or soon to be known. Players could even exploit that by keeping one mafioso alive as a target for this ability. As an ER ability that can easily be given multiple players (as Nymph's ability is ER, too), this is prone to snowball really hard to victory and is almost impossible to check for the mafia team.
Now, this is only one of two roles to directly check for mafia players, and Firefly is rather weak (to make sure: will it be known whose role is given out of the 4?), so taking that part out seems like a poor choice. You can add some restrictions like making it EoR and/or making it 1U or 2U. We can discuss other options if you are up to that.

Nymph Queen: Likely the core of your setup, and sounds fun to play with. I would simply cut a few roles to never be given out by it, like Council Member and Guardian Angel. Just be sure that some strong additional roles early on might make for a big swing, which you intend to avoid.

Mass Roleclaims: This goes up and down whether PMs will be allowed. If they are, a mass roleclaim will happen sooner than later and lead to a rather boring game. Having hosted a mafia with and without PMs, I generally recommend banning them. As you have no direct way to punish mass roleclaims as a mafia player this game, it is especially important to keep them in check.

Number of mafia players: Making a quarter of the players mafia is the common rule of thumb for mafias on this forum. I checked through a lot of older setups to get a good feeling for my setup. If you want more players to be mafia than usually, you should bump that up a bit. However, depending on how this setup evolves before it goes live, check closely how many ways town has to actually find mafia, and how powerful mafia is with the ability to grant additional roles with their Nymph (but also the risk of getting caught).

Are you up to host soon when the rules are finished?

Note: Linkcat is pretty busy right now and I'm just taking the initiative to keep it going. You will still have to talk to him about the set and when it goes live.