/me coughs.

I wouldn't mind being mentored, I kinda need it D8

 

There should be a t-shirt that reads "I survived DLPHunt (without even strangling Lungs)."

Lucky, I'm actually a bit apprehensive about playing in this setup. Do you want me to mentor you?

 

I'd really appreciate it, yeah.

 

I'm down for a game of Dresden!mafia. Count me in, Riley, if there is still room.

EDIT: Now that my comp isn't spazzing out and will let me load more than half a page at a time, I've read the thread and have a few reservations. Did you hash this out alone based upon the last design, Riley? It reminds me of my own attempts at a Lord of the Rings!mafia, too busy with roles and divisions and such.

Given how many people are wary about signing up I'd say you should probably take another look at the basic setup and revise things a bit more. Maybe cut out two separate Scum Courts and make it one slightly larger opposition?

 

I'm down for it too. Survivor should end soon anyway, and I'll have time to actually participate in this game.

In other news, I'm getting excited about the Survivor Finale. It should be interesting to see what the Wizengamot/Jury have to say to the Finalists...

 

Everyone should Reread the original post. Due to the fact that I want this to be an easy to play game I did a little bit of fixing to the original set up.

Edits include:

1) Reducing Scum to one single faction.
2) Removing a scum power for the sake of balance in a four man scum team
3) Changing the Human names to a mix grab bag. It's entirely possible 1 of the original 5 names will be in the mix but not likely.
4) Fixing a scum power to be easier to utilize and understand.

 

This looks a lot better, less cluster fucks about.

 

Yeah, this sounds far better going over it now.

 

I'd boost it to 6 humans Riley. 14's kind of an awkward number. Besides that IN.

 

It's run better if he removed a mafia member and ran it as a 10:3.

 

With the added piece I plan on putting in for balance, I'm leaving it at 11:4 for now, I'm waiting on a response before I make a decision.

 

Suggestions for rule language: Make the rules language as unthemed, concise and unambiguous as possible.

eg

to

 

Final changes in place I think. Looking for the remainder of the players.

Flavor will come with start of game, just fyi.

 

Late to the party! Some majorly glaring flaws in the game design still. Like. Majorly.

In short? Town can't win without getting real lucky, or unless scum is stupid as fuck.

So, your standard Alpha Werewolf/Godfather role... except with a nightly Night Kill. Which is problematic. I assume this Kill is in addition to the NK ability given to scum by default? (If it isn't, and is indeed the only nightly kill ability afforded to scum, then Red Court is fucking screwed if they lose Red King - they can't win without him.)

So this means that, in a game of 15 players, assuming the maximum number of deaths every day/night...

D1: x1 Lynch (mislynch) = 1 death.
N1: x1 NK + x1 Red King kill (RK) + x1 Red Thrall kill (RT) = 3 deaths.
D2: x1 Lynch (mislynch) = 1 death.
N2: x1 NK + x1 RK + x1 McCoy vigilante kill (McC) = 3 deaths.

So assuming mislynches, by the start of Day 3, we've already gone from 11 Town vs. 4 Scum (11+4=15), all the way down to 4 Town vs 3 Scum.

Which should be fairly indicative of how fucked Town is in this game. In order for Town to win, they MUST get at least 1 scum per Day/Night, and in order to SAFELY win the game, one of those scum players MUST be the Red King.

Anyway, the reason I'm assuming a Red Thrall kill on N1 will be outlined a bit further down.


EDIT: Let's analyze D3/N3 now...

Two scenarios: One where there's a successful Lynch on D3, and one where there isn't.

D3: x1 Lynch = 1 death.

Assuming mislynch, Town loses. Automatically. So that's... a 4/7 chance for Town to lose on D3 in this scenario.

3 Town vs 3 scum, and 2 Night Kills. Like. The only way D4 would be reached would be if the three remaining townies were Merlin, Morgan, and Elaine, and Elaine protected Morgan, and neither NK hit Elaine.

Yeah. That's likely to happen.

Assuming a successful Lynch, that's okay, we're at 4 Town vs 2 scum.

D3: x1 Lynch (successful) = 1 death.
N3: x1 NK + x1 RK = 2 deaths (max).

The only way for Town to win would still the best case scenario for Town where three of the surviving townies are Merlin, Morgan, and Elaine, with a similar setup to Elaine above. Which is unlikely.

Assuming the likely scenario where one of the NKs hits either Merlin or whoever Elaine protects... that still brings things down to 3 Town vs. 2 Scum.

Unless Town manages a successful Lynch, Scum autowin. Which unless Scum are retarded as all hell is more likely to happen than not.

So... you're basically publicly taking away agency from the player base. Which dissuades people from participating in the discussion (voteblocking is only fun either in fast-paced games, or when the person the vote has been taken from is left unaware that their vote is the one that's been removed - even then, it becomes pretty easy to figure out who's being targeted after a vote or two, and thus who the Duchess is). Unless you meant that you'd reveal the fact that the Duchess targeted a person but not who that person was.

As it is, the game is already stacked unfairly in favor of Red Court, so I feel this role is kind of superfluous.

Since the Red Baron is the only role in the game able to block alignment checks directly (the only other possibility is for the Merlin's roleblock to target Dresden's check target, which implies friendly fire and thus narrows down who the Merlin is while marginally decreasing the likelihood of a successful Scum check vis-a-vis accidentally replacing the intended target with someone Dresden has already checked), it becomes pretty obvious who the Red Court members are in the event that Dresden somehow manages to check someone being protected by the Baron.

There's literally no built-in mechanic to provide incentive to the Baron to not assign his roleblock to fellow Court members - the Duchess or the Thrall, since the King already has inherent protection from Dresden. Or himself, since the rules don't specify him being unable to indefinitely stay protected.

Anyway, on N1, the likelihood that Dresden hits a Court member with his check is 4/13, assuming a failed D1 lynch, 3/13 assuming a successful D1 lynch, and 4/14 assuming a no-lynch (it's not out of 15 because Dresden doesn't need to check himself, if that wasn't obvious to you). Unless scum is horrendously bad at their jobs and are incredibly suspicious, a failed D1 lynch is the most likely outcome.

4/15 scum on D1, so balance of probability means there's a 60%+ chance that town mislynches.

So, a 4/13 chance of Dresden checking a scum player. Since Red King doesn't need to be protected and Red Baron shouldn't be able to target himself, that means the default target is Red Duchess, because there's literally no reason for Red Thrall to keep playing longer than a day. In fact, since Red Thrall's optimal strategy is to die N1 and kill a townie, it's best for them to be suspicious enough to warrant a check but not so much that they get lynched D1.

So, Duchess would seem to be guaranteed to be protected from check - although this is counterproductive in reality. This is because, as I said in the first bit of the Red Baron section, he's the ONLY ROLE THAT CAN ROLEBLOCK SPECIFICALLY AGAINST DRESDEN. If someone's been 'protected' from Dresden's check, this indicates to Dresden that: 1) the Red Baron is still alive, and 2) the target is likely Town, since there's no point in targeting scum players with a Dresden-specific roleblock. IT LITERALLY INDICATES TO DRESDEN THAT THE PROTECTED PLAYER IS LIKELY TO BE SCUM.

So the optimal play for Baron is to keep targeting bothersome Town players with their ability in an effort to get them Lynched if Dresden roleclaims - it's more helpful for scum as a faction to sow discord in Town with this ability, which makes the whole point of the ability kind of moot. The only way to make this role viable is to add or alter a Town aligned roleblocker to specifically do a similar thing - but the only other roleblocker in the game is the Merlin, who for some reason is kill-protected as long as Morgan is alive.

The game would be rather more well-balanced if the Merlin's target-swap ability could redirect Night Kills and assorted other kill abilities, by the by. But since you don't specify that, I'll assume it doesn't.

So as I said earlier, the Red Thrall's optimal strategy is to die N1 and kill a Town member. One, dying N1 decreases the likelihood of scum members being Checked or Lynched on N2/D2 respectively (Assuming no scum deaths on D1, N1, or D2... the likelihood of a scum Dresden check on N2 is 4/9 [11total-1Dresden-1N1check=9 potential targets] with the Thrall living, as opposed to 3/7 [9 total-1Dresden-1N1check] with the Red Thrall having spent their Kill on N1 and NOT hitting Merlin ; The likelihood of scum being Lynched on D2 is 4/12 with Thrall not having spent their kill on N1, versus 3/11 if they have.)

So... Red Thrall's going to be out of the game at D2 regardless, since this is the best play they can make. That's rather shitty, if the best way for them to contribute to victory is to... die on N1 and either A) kill a townie, of B) hit a protected player and thus allow scum a 50% chance of knowing who the Merlin is (due to Elaine's kill block).

So the Thrall's not going to have very much fun.



Anyway, TL;DR:

Town's not likely to win without getting lucky. For Town to win, they MUST, by Day 3:

1. Successfully Lynch a scum player on D1/D2, or both.
2. Get lucky and have the Merlin direct a Night Kill intended for a town target to hit a scum target instead.
Or 3. Have Dresden successfully check a scum player within the first two nights, and THEN manage a successful Lynch on Day 3 - this is barring successful fakeclaims by scum.

Yeah. Sorry to rip stuff apart like that. But now you can make the game winnable for both sides!

 

@Lutris: If I'm remembering past games right Red King goes to do his, one and only, NK. If he should die the ability to kill gets passed onto the Scum player next highest on the faction list.

 

...then the ability is kind of pointless, isn't it? Why not just make the NK a faction ability and save the players the ambiguity?

 

This is still being updated, just fyi. I will be playing this game after I've fixed things.

 

Honestly I think its a holdover from a visitation ability/when WC Seduction was a priority kill when used on RC.

 

yeah I think scum only have 1 kill plus the thrall's 1-shot. It would make more sense for it to be a standard plurality kill vote, though.

It looks like Redirection does protect against kills except the Thrall's 1-shot.

Warden only saves Merlin once.

Are you just saying the thrall should use his power n1 because of the numbers? Because I can think of several reasons why it would be a very bad idea to use that power too early.

 

You know, when I said this, I didn't have this as the end result in mind

When? Can this be used during the day?

@ Lutris: I'm pretty sure the rules language is just stupid and the Red King kill is intended to be the faction nk.