Crime Family Mafia -- Feedback Welcomed

[UpsideDownChuck]

Technically I think your math is a little off. You assign the first scum into one family, since there are six families of two, that means 11 open slots one of which is paired with the first scum. So 10/11 chance of assigning second scum to a different family. So once we've got two scum in separate families there are ten open spots, 2 of which are paired with other scum. So 8/10 chance of picking into a different family. (8/10)*(10/11)=8/11 chance of having no doubled up scum, 3/11 chance of having doubled up scum. I think. I guess it depends on how the GM does the randomization. Also there usually isn't a night zero kill unless stated explicitly in the rules. FInally, welcome to the community, hope you enjoy your stay here.

[Rolan A Doobie]

The game would start on Night Zero, but there would be no kills. That phase would just be used for the scum team and each of the 2-person families to talk with each other before in-thread play begins on Day One.



As for the numbers....I might need to run a handful of randomizations just to see how they shake out for myself.

I will point out one part in particular that seems off....

N0: scum kill not-townie1 (townie2) - certain
D1: town mislynch not-townie1/3 (townie4) - 6/11 (raw odds only - haven't got the time right now for anything more complex looking at town strategies to deal with voting and the like, adjust depending on how highly you rat day1 scum hunting)
F1 = s1s2, F2 = s3t1, F3 = t3, F4 = t5, F5 = t6t7, F6 = t8t9
N1: scum kill not-townie1/3/5 (townie6) - certain
F1 = s1s2, F2 = s3t1, F3 = t3, F4 = t5, F5 = t7, F6 = t8t9
D2: town max voting power = 8, scum max/min voting power = 8/5

I don't see how the second kill would be certain to hit a paired townie. I would think the night-kill could just as easily hit t3 or t5, since all the actual voting is done through private message rather than in-thread.

I'm sure that taking a concrete voting record away from the town will be a detriment their scumhunting ability, especially as the game goes on....but it will help to protect their family identities, which will give their votes more weight as the game goes on. I think that how well those balance out the other will depend in large part on how effective each person is at the latter.

[Rolan A Doobie]

I guess it depends on how the GM does the randomization.

I'll do the main randomization in pretty much the same way I always do -- matching up 2 strings of random numbers.

For example....in a nine-player game, it looks like this.



So Player A would get Scum Role B.....Player B would get Town Role A....and so on.

[UpsideDownChuck]

Ok yeah then assuming you just do this twice, once to assign family affiliation and once for scum vs town then my math holds, I think.

[Micro98]

Ah, good point, I ignored that there's a maximum of 2 per family - checking my work never was my strong suit. In that case I think it's 1/11 + 2/10 = 16/55 that you have a scum family pairing.

As for the second kill that's a bit more complicated but you're right not to say it's certain. Assuming a random kill where the scum have no information except from who townie1 is then it is still 2/3 that they hit right though.

So now it's 16/55 * 2/3 * 6/11 = 192/1815 = 64/605 which is roughly equal to 10.5% and I would suggest it's higher than that as in my opinion the scum, knowing this, are probably going to push considerably harder for early mis-lynches at the expense of late game positioning on the basis that there won't be a late game if they pull it off.

What has occurred to me though is that even in the best case scenario the town are a maximum of 2 mis lynches from lynch right or lose at all times regardless of whether it starts with a night kill or not and all they have to help them mechanics wise is a slightly different voting system, so essentially this game will boil down to a low information best of 5 lynches which I can't see the town winning very often. This suggests to me that whilst the worst case scenarios get pretty nasty for the town the best case scenarios aren't great either, I would think that an appropriate fix would be to either change up the player ratios, remove the night kill (or limit it in some way such as only on odd numbered nights) or a mixture of the two - 6:3 with no night kill seems fairer to me as this way whilst the town can't get away with 3 mis-lynches in a row right off the start they can have a third and fourth mis-lynch should they keep catching scum.

[Rolan A Doobie]

What has occurred to me though is that even in the best case scenario the town are a maximum of 2 mis lynches from lynch right or lose at all times

You say that as though it's a bad thing.

If the town lynches incorrectly on 3 straight days in a game of 12 players....then yeah, they should lose. Are you suggesting otherwise?

[Micro98]

What has occurred to me though is that even in the best case scenario the town are a maximum of 2 mis lynches from lynch right or lose at all times

You say that as though it's a bad thing.

If the town lynches incorrectly on 3 straight days in a game of 12 players....then yeah, they should lose. Are you suggesting otherwise?

But it's not 3 straight day, it's three overall days - I don't think the town should have to kill 3 mafia with only 2 mislynches all game long but I agree with you that they should have to kill a mafia before having killed three of their own which is why I suggested 6:3 no night kills, they can't kill 3 of their own straight off but they can kill 3 of their own if they've already caught scum.

[Rolan A Doobie]

I wonder if you've missed the part of the game in which players are put into different 2-member families that can speak privately with each other at any time....because a 6:3 game means 9 players, and as an odd number, that would kinda destroy that entire element.

[Micro98]

I wonder if you've missed the part of the game in which players are put into different 2-member families that can speak privately with each other at any time....because a 6:3 game means 9 players, and as an odd number, that would kinda destroy that entire element.

I must admit I completely forgot about that. Upon reconsidering it seems to me that one of two problems ofter arises: the town is too close/too far away from losing as a result of repeated mislynches; or the town have too many/few mis-lynches to catch all the scum.

Taking 9:3 as an example with night kills the town are 3 mis lynches from losing at all times and have 3 scum to catch, I don't think it's reasonable to ask a town to catch a three strong scum team just off of the information from two lynches albeit that these lynches will contain more information than usual.

Right now, in my opinion, 8:2 w/ night kills is fairest - 3 mis lynches from losing, 2 scum to catch. This seems fairer to me, the town have to 'draw' to win (kill 2 townies and 2 scum) instead of out-killing the scum but they can't get away with 3 mis lynches in a row.

[Rolan A Doobie]

Taking 9:3 as an example with night kills the town are 3 mis lynches from losing at all times and have 3 scum to catch, I don't think it's reasonable to ask a town to catch a three strong scum team just off of the information from two lynches albeit that these lynches will contain more information than usual.

But that's not all the information they have, is it?

Each town-sided player has one other person they can privately communicate with at any time. Those communications can either provide a ton of information, or very little, or anywhere in between. That will all depend on the activity/participation of the players involved.

It seems to me that an active and engaged town should have a fairly good chance to win this, while an inactive and silent town will be destroyed.....which is true for damn near every game.




And having thought about it a bit more, I'm definitely going to need to set up some disposable forums elsewhere for players to use for this game, simply because of the possibility of needing to bring in a replacement player. It will be much easier for everyone if a new player can simply read all the private communications instead doing of a bunch of copy/pasting in the PM system here.