Plague Mafia

[condude1]

I've been tossing this idea around for a while, and finally wrote up a ruleset for it. It's more complicated than my other games, so I want to put it through review before putting it into signups. Any and all feedback is welcomed!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tDN ... sp=sharing

[Don Juan of Austria]

Neato! Though I have not played mafia online before, I find it interesting.

[condude1]

Hey Don Juan! If you want to join a game, we have two much simpler setups in signups right now, and I know Justified is just a few players short.

This one's in development, although I expect it to be run after Justified and Office Space are finished, unless someone finds a major flaw in the game design.

[Waterbox]

I play Mafia on a different site, so my opinion might be quite unadjusted to this site's customs- apologies in advance.
That said, it certainly looks interesting, but it seems like Town is rather weak in this setup. It seems like the numbers are high, but most of the town are ticking timebombs. I think a Doctor who can heal the Plague would be interesting-perhaps he cannot do anything on Night 1?

[condude1]

Hey Waterbox! The idea's definitely decent, and I tossed it about for a bit. In the end, I decided to go with an 8-2 setup, which is an extra townie compared to the usual 7-2, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it takes a while for the plague to ramp up its devastation, and in such a small game, that early game time means quite a bit. The town gets at minimum 2 lynches off before the plague kills start coming in, and probably at least 1 or 2 more, depending on how well they managed to avoid spreading the plague. Giving the town 3-4 mislynches to catch 2 mafia isn't unreasonable.

Secondly, the mafia are susceptible themselves to the plague, meaning that there's a chance they accidentally kill themselves off (Yes, I realize I do a lot of setups where this is possible, I find it makes it more fun when the nightkill is a bit more of an unknown), however, this is counterbalanced by the fact that the mafia can win while plagued.

However, I do see where you're coming from, and if other people agree, I can see two good solutions to balance it towards the town:

A doctor who can cure players with a dormant plague.
OR
Allow the town to get an extra lynch every day on players that are symptomatic.

The first option is good if we want the town to behave prophylactically and try to figure out who has the disease before it becomes symptomatic, whereas I think allowing the extra lynch will give a strong late game boost to towns that got very infected early.

Thanks for the advice, and you're definitely not far off in your analysis.

[shadowface]

This looks amazing! I'm no expert on balancing games, but I would favor including a doctor who can cure the dormant plague as a fun role. It's not even that much of a benefit to the town, as they could cure a mafia instead of a townie (and given the average scumhunting ability of most towns, this is totally possible ). That being said, I personally don't think the town needs much of a boost, so I see this as a positive.

[Crunkus_old]

I like it.

[Crunkus_old]

Neato! Though I have not played mafia online before, I find it interesting.

Welcome, this is the best place to do so. Diplomacy players do it with knives.

[sjg11]

Neato! Though I have not played mafia online before, I find it interesting.

Welcome, this is the best place to do so. Diplomacy players do it with knives.

Hey! We promised to stop telling potential new players about the knives... they find it off-putting.

[Keirador]

Dammit condude. I've been trying to come up with something both straightforward and unique for like a month, and everything ends either overwrought and unworkable, or repetitive. This is a really cool set-up and I'm mad at you for it.