Abbreviated Role/Faction Summary

[Frank]

Nov 6, 2009 15:00:45 GMT -5 naf1138 said:

Nov 5, 2009 15:26:25 GMT -5 Frank said:

Spider Man might be a little too vanilla. What do you think?

I don't think so. Not everything can be fancy, and Spidey is going to have people gunning for him anyway. I like the role as is, but I am worried that town is becoming too hard to kill.

I don't know if that is good or bad yet, but it's something to keep an eye on. Lack of death means game stagnation in addition to making it very hard on scum.

You may be right. Penance has his powers, add in this Spidey thing, plus probably at least one of Goblin's toys and the possibility of Lady D having some protective element?

There are a few solutions. First, we could buff the Scum. Some sort of role-blocker/redirector type plus at least one extra kill or ability to avoid/subvert protections (I had been dreaming up a one-shot Scum role where if it targets a protected role, it kills the protector but not the target; if the target is unprotected, the kill fails altogether. Probably doesn't work, but you never know).

We could also cut out the Spidey Sense from this role. Or we could use it in a different way. Hm. Needs more thinking.

[Frank]

Well, OK. I am persuaded to allow some variation on an alignment cop. But it needs to be a variation. I have not enjoyed games where the Cop has just dominated the proceedings or leveraged an almost unavoidable win. Some kind of funky sanity thing, or maybe a requirement that he do something to earn investigations? I read about a role once that targeted two players and determined whether the two players share an alignment; that seems broken to me, though I'm not sure why. Again, needs more thinking.

What does everyone think of the Deathpool role? (Not necessarily the color, but the power)?

[naf1138]

Nov 4, 2009 14:48:35 GMT -5 Frank said:

Deadpool (Wade Wilson): Will know if a recruitment attempt has been made, and if it is successful. Following a successful recruitment attempt, becomes a "recruit Cop," able to investigate players to determine whether their alignment has changed during the game (will also turn up positive reads on Bullseye and/or the Green Goblin, if the alignment of either has changed by the time of the investigation).

Question.

Do Bullseye and GG count as recruitment in the above scenario as well as any recruitment the scum might have?

That is, will deadpool's powers activate if any of those three things happen or only if they scum attempt to use their recruitment?

[naf1138]

Nov 6, 2009 15:37:08 GMT -5 Frank said:

Well, OK. I am persuaded to allow some variation on an alignment cop. But it needs to be a variation. I have not enjoyed games where the Cop has just dominated the proceedings or leveraged an almost unavoidable win. Some kind of funky sanity thing, or maybe a requirement that he do something to earn investigations? I read about a role once that targeted two players and determined whether the two players share an alignment; that seems broken to me, though I'm not sure why. Again, needs more thinking.

Well, I am a fan of the P.I. role that we created for Alien Taste. It's a cop that has a delay on their results. So they investigate a player Night 0 they get the results Dawn of Day 2 instead of Day 1 etc. It's a little bit trickey for the mod because it means more moving parts to keep track of, but I think it weakens the cop role a bit. I have run that role twice and both times I would say that it was roughly half as useful as a regular cop because the investigation target has 2 chances to be killed and one to be lynched before the result is known. It also eliminates a lot of the quick confirming that a cop can do at endgame. We used it as a delayed tracker in Alien Taste, but I don't see why it couldn't be an alignment cop instead.

I am not a fan of messing with sanity myself, though I am not going to tell you not to. I had my fill of it with M2.

[sachertorte]

deadpool seems okay. I don't think the role is overpowered. The role is both very useful yet limited in power. Knowing when a recruitment occurs is useful information, but not overly so.

You need to be careful about the ramifications of recruiting a powerful Town player. Certain town powers are MUCH more powerful in the hands of scum. For example, a recruited vigilante would break the game.

[Frank]

Added The Black Widow. What think? I like the idea that both the Cop and the Doctor are charged by votes - it'll complicate any effort either of them makes to game the system. Should she require more votes? Maybe three?

---

Also, thought of a modest Bullseye problem. If I were Bullseye, I would wait until the Town had sure Scum on the block - either Spider-Man sees a kill or Widow finds Scum, and then claim as a one-shot Day Vig. The Town would say, "prove it!" I'd kill the outed Scum, becoming Scum. But the Town, knowing that I killed Scum out of the blue - surely something Scum would never do - would probably put me eternally into the Town column.

Now, if Deadpool's power applies to Bullseye, then Deadpool would know at Dusk of that Day that someone switched alignments, and if he's not stupid he'll immediately investigate Bullseye and out him. So maybe this isn't so much of a problem. Bullseye would have to wait out Deadpool AND wait for someone to out a Scum publicly, taking the risk of getting killed, and would still have no guarantee of victory.

Maybe this isn't a problem. What think?

[Frank]

Also -

How do you guys feel about non-random role assignment? I certainly wouldn't tell them all that the roles are assigned non-randomly, but it might be kind of fun to see how certain players would play certain roles. I'd love to stick Pleonast with Bullseye, and someone like Roosh or peeker would make a fun Green Goblin.

[naf1138]

Nov 7, 2009 17:23:03 GMT -5 Frank said:

Also -

How do you guys feel about non-random role assignment? I certainly wouldn't tell them all that the roles are assigned non-randomly, but it might be kind of fun to see how certain players would play certain roles. I'd love to stick Pleonast with Bullseye, and someone like Roosh or peeker would make a fun Green Goblin.

I have no problems with the occasional non random role assignment.

I think that the Bullseye problem isn't really much of a problem for the reasons you mentioned. Also if scum don't know that he joins their team (that's what we are saying right, they don't know he joins?) then he also paints a huge target on his back if he does something like that. So no real worry there I don't think.

[naf1138]

Nov 7, 2009 17:14:54 GMT -5 Frank said:

Added The Black Widow. What think? I like the idea that both the Cop and the Doctor are charged by votes - it'll complicate any effort either of them makes to game the system. Should she require more votes? Maybe three?

I think three is too high if she doesn't start with a free investigation. If she starts with a free one then I would say make her have three votes. Her semi miller nature also makes the role interesting. I like it.

[sachertorte]

Nov 7, 2009 17:14:54 GMT -5 Frank said:

Also, thought of a modest Bullseye problem. If I were Bullseye, I would wait until the Town had sure Scum on the block - either Spider-Man sees a kill or Widow finds Scum, and then claim as a one-shot Day Vig. The Town would say, "prove it!" I'd kill the outed Scum, becoming Scum. But the Town, knowing that I killed Scum out of the blue - surely something Scum would never do - would probably put me eternally into the Town column.

I would be very surprised if Town accepted the player as confirmed Town under these circumstances. The scenario you describe looks transparently like bussing to me. You have a scum that is going down anyway. All that Bullseye has done is use his 'one-shot' to make it happen faster. I can easily assign scum motivation to these events.

One might argue the plausibility of giving scum a one-shot day kill power (and I think we should), but that is an entirely different reasoning. *As a separate discussion, we should consider which roles can confirm their power and whether or not this confirmation can confirm alignment.*

Scum killing outed scum is not new or surprising in any way.

[sachertorte]

Nov 7, 2009 17:23:03 GMT -5 Frank said:

Also -

How do you guys feel about non-random role assignment? I certainly wouldn't tell them all that the roles are assigned non-randomly, but it might be kind of fun to see how certain players would play certain roles. I'd love to stick Pleonast with Bullseye, and someone like Roosh or peeker would make a fun Green Goblin.

I don't think you are required to choose randomly. However, you must be prepared to answer the question as to whether or not you assign roles randomly. Furthermore, I'd lean towards stating outright that roles were not assigned randomly. It is not hugely misleading, but I prefer minimizing misleads whenever possible. I don't think announcing the truth will negatively impact the game.

[Frank]

I've started to write out a few Town PMs based on the roles we've more or less established; take a look and see what you think.

Meanwhile, we're up to nine pro-Town roles. I am trying to figure balance with recruiting included, which is very tough. 13 Town vs. 4 Scum seems fairly balanced to me leaving out all powers; it gives the Town five mislynches. Actually, that may be a lot. A successful recruitment on Night One (not possible unless Iron Man is somehow killed Day One, but bear with me here), assuming that the recruitment replaces the kill, would cut the number of required mislynches to four. Actually, even if the Scum get to kill and recruit at the same time, the Town would still get four mislynches.

So if we can successfully balance out the powers, do you folks think 13 Town and 4 Scum to start - plus Bullseye, who should be neutral in terms of the balance - is reasonable? Would it be better to add one more Townie? The Town does have the potential to lose the Goblin to PFK-dom.

Settling an optimal number of Town will be critical in rounding out the rest of the roster, I think.

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In other news, I'm changing Reed Richards to Bishop. This is purely a color change, but having Reed be Goblin's controller would, I think, result in the Town treating Reed as a near-Mason, and I DON'T want Reed to be confirmable on the basis of his control over Goblin. Reed was second only to Iron Man is his strong association with the Pro-Reg cause. We may want to consider him as a cover role for one of the Scum, or leave him out of the game altogether.

I'm also stripping away the backup lynch threshold-setter from this role. Do you think a pro-Town role with only that power would be OK? Like, She-Hulk (Jennifer Walters), gains the ability to set the lynch threshold if Iron Man is killed. The end? Kind of weak, but there it is.

Also: I had thought about doing only name and alignment reveals at death. Both sides would then need ways to investigate the powers of the dead (ie, more power roles, similar to Pleonast's Coroner but somewhat less potent).

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So in summary, if we need five more pro-Town roles (assuming we go to 14 Town - 4 Scum - 1 third-party), we could have:

1. Backup Lynch-Threshold-Setter
2. Pseudo-Coroner

And...? I don't want to have a full-time Town roleblocker, but someone with a one-shot roleblock (maybe a one-shot ability to block two roles at once?) might work. I kind of hate the bus driver/redirector roles, because they create moderatorial confusion.

I had thought of a role that targets another role, and renders the target immune to role-blocking. So in other words, Player X targets Player Y, and then Player Y can no longer be role-blocked.

For Skrull Planet we played around with a role that would target another role and bind to it. This resulted in an augmentation of the target's powers (we set up specific augmentation for each potential target) but if either party involved were targeted for a kill, both would die. I thought the role had a lot of potential, but it was so confusing with all the powers... it probably still is, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

Other ideas?

[sachertorte]

Nov 10, 2009 9:06:31 GMT -5 Frank said:

I've started to write out a few Town PMs based on the roles we've more or less established; take a look and see what you think.

Meanwhile, we're up to nine pro-Town roles. I am trying to figure balance with recruiting included, which is very tough. 13 Town vs. 4 Scum seems fairly balanced to me leaving out all powers; it gives the Town five mislynches. Actually, that may be a lot. A successful recruitment on Night One (not possible unless Iron Man is somehow killed Day One, but bear with me here), assuming that the recruitment replaces the kill, would cut the number of required mislynches to four. Actually, even if the Scum get to kill and recruit at the same time, the Town would still get four mislynches.

I think you are over-counting the mislynches available. With 4 mislynches and standard play (no SK or Vig kills or protections) that leaves 5 Town to 4 scum. At this point scum control the lynch as they can meet the lynch threshold (n/2 - 1). Therefore, at this point, scum can lynch at will and win the game. Of course this assumes a dead threshold setter, but I think such an assumption is reasonable.

Bizarre side thought: What is the scum win condition? Typically we say something to the effect of scum being half the living population, but that is a consequence of the larger goal of eliminating Town. In other words, because scum control both NK and lynch when they reach a majority we use the short notation. In THIS game, the lynch conditions are very different. Scum do not necessarily control the lynch when at 50% and could control the lynch with less than 50%.

Case 1 - Scum at or above 50% living players and Iron Man is alive:
Theoretically, Iron man could set the lynch threshold to 1 and immediately cast the deciding vote at Dawn. Scum probably will control the lynch, but don't necessarily.

Case 2 - Scum is one less than number of Town and Iron Man is dead:
Scum have not achieved 50% of the living players, yet they have sufficient numbers to create a lynch and direct the lynch wherever they want. I believe the plan is to explicitly state the lynch threshold at the beginning of the day, so scum should be able to game it to win.

[sachertorte]

Nov 10, 2009 9:06:31 GMT -5 Frank said:

Also: I had thought about doing only name and alignment reveals at death. Both sides would then need ways to investigate the powers of the dead (ie, more power roles, similar to Pleonast's Coroner but somewhat less potent).

I think obscuring role information is fine. It is actually slightly pro-Town to do so since Town don't really need to know what the dead could or could not do, only what their alignment is. It does make for shaky claims though.

I would discourage a mechanism where scum could investigate these dead roles in secret. Allowing scum access to information not available to Town would be game-breakingly bad. i.e. Town role investigator dies but the scum one still lives. Bad bad bad.

If you have such a role, I would make the power reveal the results publicly. You can even make this a scum role since it is really more pro-scum than pro-town. Not that anyone else would think that way.

[sachertorte]

Nov 10, 2009 9:06:31 GMT -5 Frank said:

And...? I don't want to have a full-time Town roleblocker, but someone with a one-shot roleblock (maybe a one-shot ability to block two roles at once?) might work. I kind of hate the bus driver/redirector roles, because they create moderatorial confusion.

Town Roleblocker is a weak role. It is more likely to harm Town than help it, especially with recruitment! Scum roleblockers are extremely powerful.

I had thought of a role that targets another role, and renders the target immune to role-blocking. So in other words, Player X targets Player Y, and then Player Y can no longer be role-blocked.

Interesting. The whole point of a scum roleblocker is to break up the Hidden Doc/ Out Detective combo. Putting in a role-block blocker kind of messes that up. But maybe that is the point.