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[Pandarsenic]

The midterms bit is depressingly true. I have one this Wednesday. -_-

[Bookthras]

A few questions for those mods who know about balance...

1) How should non-killing/non-converting 3rd parties be balanced? We know the standard 9-player game, 7-town, 2-scum setup... how about 10 players? Assuming no SK/cult, how different would a 6-3-1 setup be from a 7-2-1 or a 6-2-1-1? if non-cult/sk, how much does it matter which 3rd-parties are chosen?

In a recent 10-p game, there were two scum, no sk/cult, and one 3rd-party flipped brother-to-a-townie. At the time, I felt justified in the assumption that there would be another 3rd-party, since the brother-to-townie thing made it seem (to my scummy eyes) favourable to town... was this assumption justified? Is a brother-to-townie in this scenario a 7½-2-½? Would a survivor (instead-of or in-addition-to) make it more/less balanced or different? How about a lyncher-of-town or brother-to-scum?

Importantly: Would you choose/change these or their targets manually, or let the dice roll for them?

_{Note: I'm not bitching about that game. It was good, and fair, and great fun (and I look forward to the next one). I'm not challenging it or want to change history. Just looking for ways to understand balance myself, since I know it's not my strong point.}


2) Say there are 10-players, would your choice of 3rd-parties numbers/alignments change in a PMs-allowed game, like paranormal, as opposed to a no-PMs-allowed game like most others?

If I'm a brother to a player, regardless of alignment, I can't think of a good reason not to eventually send them a PM letting them know; even if they would be guarded against the chance of a fakeclaim, it'd have a strong effect on the day play, yes?


3) if no 3rd parties in a 10-p game, is 8-2 balanced? or 7-3?


4) How would these balance considerations change in a role-heavy game? (not Paranormal, where roles, SK/cult/Jester/others are distinct enough, but in general role-heavy or BYOR-types?)

[Bookthras]

...

[Leafsnail]

1) How should non-killing/non-converting 3rd parties be balanced? We know the standard 9-player game, 7-town, 2-scum setup... how about 10 players? Assuming no SK/cult, how different would a 6-3-1 setup be from a 7-2-1 or a 6-2-1-1? if non-cult/sk, how much does it matter which 3rd-parties are chosen?

I think the question to ask is what exactly the 3rd party is likely to do.  If it's the "do something and disappear" kind of 3rd party then it's kindof like just not having that person at all.  If it's "vote with scum at the end" then I tend to treat it something like having an additional half a mafia member (and one less townie, making it about 75% as bad as having another mafia member).  If the third party is a jester (don't use jesters) then basically just write off one of the town's lynches as wasted.

7-2-1 and 6-2-1-1 both sound fine providing the role powers balance.  If the first one had a survivor or other pro-mafia 3rd party the town would need a little bit more power than usual, and in the second I'd make one of the 3rd parties have a vaguely pro-town or at least neutral wincon ("find and eliminate a mafia member", "protect a townie", "identify a certain role" or whatever) because otherwise town could lose the majority on day 2.

In a recent 10-p game, there were two scum, no sk/cult, and one 3rd-party flipped brother-to-a-townie. At the time, I felt justified in the assumption that there would be another 3rd-party, since the brother-to-townie thing made it seem (to my scummy eyes) favourable to town... was this assumption justified? Is a brother-to-townie in this scenario a 7½-2-½? Would a survivor (instead-of or in-addition-to) make it more/less balanced or different? How about a lyncher-of-town or brother-to-scum?

I'd say it's pretty much balanced just looking at the numbers.  Disregarding roles town had 4 lynches in which to hit 2 mafia members, which is pretty standard, and had a guy who wasn't entirely sure if he was town as a distraction.  However, I understand that Roguelike Mafia has lots of powerroles flying around, which is virtually always bad for scum.  Maybe the setups should be a bit more scum inclined than normal to make up for that, an anti-town 3rd party might've helped since 3 scum would be overpowered.

Importantly: Would you choose/change these or their targets manually, or let the dice roll for them?

You mean with a lyncher or brother?  There's quite a big difference in terms of balance based on which way it goes so I'd first choose manually the alignment that they're going after then probably assign a random person on that team (although if you want them to go after a key role/ not key role then there's no problem with that).  You could also make it completely random and tweak the rest of the setup to compensate afterwards.

2) Say there are 10-players, would your choice of 3rd-parties numbers/alignments change in a PMs-allowed game, like paranormal, as opposed to a no-PMs-allowed game like most others?

For me, PMs are mostly useful for two things:
1) Talking to people you know are on your side due to inspections
2) 3rd party shenanigans.

The first is the more likely gamebreaker, I'd say, and would have a large effect on the setup.  It can make the scum suddenly unable to lie or turn a cop into a kind of mason recruiter.

The second I'd say is only pro-certain 3rd parties - specifically, ones who are potentially beneficial to some players but who wouldn't want to reveal that to everyone.  Being able to contact the mafia via PM is useful for a survivor or something like the Xeno from Paranormal.  Most of these are lategame developments, though, and not too important to balance, however, for things like brother or guardian angels it completely changes the mechanics of the role.

If I'm a brother to a player, regardless of alignment, I can't think of a good reason not to eventually send them a PM letting them know; even if they would be guarded against the chance of a fakeclaim, it'd have a strong effect on the day play, yes?

I'd send them a PM immediately.  I would make it clear I do not expect them to trust me in any way, and that I will not ask of them anything, but I'd claim my full role and say that they can instruct me to do whatever they wish (as long as it isn't stupid).  This way you know for certain that you're helping the right team, and the person you're brother too has nothing to lose in telling you what to do even if they don't trust you.  The only potential issue is someone being confused as to why you're doing it and raising the alarm in the main thread to try and get you lynched, but if you explain what you're doing well enough that shouldn't happen.

This does completely change how the role works - it's now basically an extra mafia member or townie (and if it's a townie they have a one-way mason link).  That makes it a lot stronger.

3) if no 3rd parties in a 10-p game, is 8-2 balanced? or 7-3?

8-2 is still 4 lynches for 2 mafia members.  The difference is there'll be an extra night... so as long as that extra night isn't going to cripple the mafia with inspections it should be fine.  One key difference I guess is that the town only needs to stop one kill in order to get an extra lynch, so you'd want to be more careful in handing out kill blockers.  Equally vigilantes can get effectively a free shot (IE they can shoot someone without taking away town lynches) so they'll be stronger too.

7-3 would have to be a very town friendly gametype.  The town can only lynch incorrectly once, and they need to hit 3 mafia members.

4) How would these balance considerations change in a role-heavy game? (not Paranormal, where roles, SK/cult/Jester/others are distinct enough, but in general role-heavy or BYOR-types?)

Role heavy games are anti-scum unless you give the scum serious trickster powers.  In that case you'd probably want to err on the side of pro-scum (9-3-1 for town-mafia-anti-town 3rd party seems to have emerged as a pretty good balance for BYORs).

[Phantom of The Library]

I have a general question:
How much experience should one have before they attempt to mod/create set-ups or IC for BMs?

[GlyphGryph]

I'd recommend playing at least one beginners game and one other game before giving a go at hosting, and I'd try to make your first game pretty vanilla (if you can attract the people), just to keep the workload easy on yourself. But it really depends on how confident you are in your modding ability.

Hosting a BM early in your modding career is generally a good mood - they are vanilla games where you can really focus on flavour and the basics of hosting.

[Toaster]

Book:  Since you're talking RM4, let me weigh in with the thought process behind it.

10 players is hard to balance. 9's great, because 7-2 is a well balanced setup.  The one extra player makes things hard.  Another mafioso makes things far too good for scum, so that's out.  Another townie is playable, but potentially swingy in favor of town.  I was considering either a lyncher, survivor, or brother-to-a-townie as the 10th man.  Lyncher would be an anti-town role that potentially changes into a townie or eats a NK for the town.  Survivor just wants to not die, which generally favors the mafia (especially in a LYLO situation)

I went with brother to a townie (specifically to town) for a couple reasons.  As far as his alignment, he is town in everything but name, since he won with the town.  The big difference was that he inspected as third party, which means he'd have to have a convincing claim if inspected.  Additionally, he didn't know the alignment of his brother, which meant a guessing game for him.

To answer the last question, Jack was picked at random from amongst the townies.

10 and 11 are my least favorite numbers to set up gametypes for.   Anything larger is reasonably balanced out with third parties, but those two are annoying.



Hapah:  I agree that hosting a BM is a good foot-in-the-door for modding- it's an extremely structured gametype so there are zero balancing/role creation concerns.  All you have to do is maintain a vote count, manage PMs, and end the day/night in a timely fashion and you've done well- which teaches good modding manners.

If you want to sign up to mod a BM, I'd say go for it.

[GlyphGryph]

Hapah?

[GlyphGryph]

10 and 11 are my least favorite numbers to set up gametypes for.   Anything larger is reasonably balanced out with third parties, but those two are annoying.

Oddly enough, those are actually my favorite sized games. Then again, I'm a weird host.

[Phantom of The Library]

I'm going to assume you meant me Toaster 

Thanks to both of you, I think that I'll do that, but I'll wait until it rolls around to be sure I'll have the time when it begins though.

[Toaster]

Right, sorry.

GG:  You also usually host cybrid (3 teams throws standard balance right out the window) or bastard games.

[Bookthras]

Leafsnail: Thank you for your detailed thoughts about these. Many things there are insightful and I should have thought about them earlier... Good stuff. I'll learn about balance one of these days. Reading it, I wish more games allowed PMs, but that's a hard commitment for a mod with regards to balance & effort.


Toaster:

Since you're talking RM4, let me weigh in with the thought process behind it. 10 players is hard to balance.[...] The one extra player makes things hard.

Thanks for explaining your thinking process. Reading it though, it seems to me that you looked for the best way to balance that one leftover player, rather than balance the game as a whole including him. I still think my scummy hunch of there being a survivor in addition to the brother was a justified assumption... I really thought there ought to have been a flip side to the brother coin.

... as in 7-2 is balanced; add another player, give him a "somewhat pro-town" alignment, then there should be a "somewhat anti-town" thing to balance him, yes? Especially since games with lots of town powers flying around are hard for scum. (but again, I'm not bitching about that game, I'm rather trying to understand, if I'm again in that position, which assumptions should I make regarding 7-2-1 vs. 6-2-1-1 or others)



But how about 11 players? In a Roguelike (role-heavy, swingy), and again assuming no cult/sk,  would 7-3-1 or 7-2-1-1 or 6-3-1-1 be better? Which roles would apply?


Yeah, 10-p & 11-p are probably the hardest to balance (except for GG's games); but hard questions are the most fun to ask.


But the questions about 3-team games are also interesting (not that there are any coming up...); GG, how do you balance default imperial/rebel/cybrid teams? Do you change it depending on the cybrid role? What impact does the Imperial Commander/Overseer have in your balance decisions? (I suppose we can have this conversation either before or after CM4 starts, but not during, so now is a good time).



In general, how do mods balance cult/SK roles in a 9-12 player game? My earlier questions were about non-sk/cult games, but now let's say there's a 10-p game with a cultist; is 7-2-1 the right thing, or are there other options? How about a smaller game: say 8p, can 5-2-1 work? or 6-1-1?

[GlyphGryph]

GG, how do you balance default imperial/rebel/cybrid teams? Do you change it depending on the cybrid role? What impact does the Imperial Commander/Overseer have in your balance decisions? (I suppose we can have this conversation either before or after CM4 starts, but not during, so now is a good time).

Nah, it's fine. Like I've mentioned before, standard cybrid isn't a closed setup - it's got it's stuff now, and I don't mind people knowing how it runs. (Though I DO like putting a twist into each game to discourage people from using the mechanics.

First, balance in cybrid is both more complicated and less important than in most other games. It's less important because of the number of opportunities for communication and deception and changing of sides and the fact that despite severe unbalance, no group starts in a position that leaves them more powerful than both other groups combined (hypothetically) - ultimately, a single good player on a "weak" team can easily turn things to their advantage. This is especially because the teams both have a "leader", something that doesn't really exist in a normal game

Cybrid is interesting to balance, because compared to most mafia games, the players have more ability to change the balance as they play - and since there are three factions, the most important thing is to insure no group is more powerful than the others combined, and it's important to consider the balance over time. So the basic desired progression of the game is Imperials being strong -> Cybrids being strong, with rebels occupying the space in between.

The Imperials have the most information at the beginning, and power roles built around gaining information. They've got the most reliable communication. But the more time passes, the less they can be sure of anything they learn. If Imperials want to win, they need to win early, so they need to have enough people/power roles to pull this off.  Taking an 11-player game, this usually means (4 or 5) Imperials - the majority of players aren't Imperial, but they hold more power than either of the other factions. They also have their reported investigates to give them a good chance of making a strong opening on day 2. But a single cybrid convert can do a lot of damage with misinformation.

The rebels, however, are significantly more likely to have a persuader, a blocker, and kill rolls, have guaranteed roles on top of it (like organizer) and their more diffuse structure makes them less amenable to a cybrid getting lucky, hitting their leader, and manipulating them to death. They will also tend to have more roles than Imperials, be more likely to have traits like healthy or weak, and they have an additional way to confirm rebels are still loyal through the Organizer's ability. Their numbers may be less (3 or 4 in a normal 11 player game), but their in a good position to stay strong through the entire game even if they lose a couple people. They need to be weak enough, however, that they can't prevent an early Imperial win if the Imperials play well.

Finally, the cybrid - the game almost always starts with one cybrid, so there's not much thought that goes into balancing that. The most important thing to consider is the number of converts (and the risk inherent in those converts). Generally, the parasite cybrid is the weakest of the converters, and is most useful in smaller games - a 7 or 9 player game is good for the parasites. The standard machinator is more common, and you need to expect cybrids to (if the other players fail to lynch any) be the most powerful faction around 4 or 5, in a game where night kills are less likely. So you'll probable have at least one less imperial and rebel by then, and then one more. That leaves somewhere around 3-4 Imperials, 2-3 Rebels. So you want your cybrids to at least be as powerful as the larger group (plus their significantly higher reliability and increased percent of power roles). So in an 11 player game, you'd want your cybrid to have at least 3 converts, and maybe a bit on top. Generally, a Metagen SK is more pro-cybrid than a Metagen survivor, so in this case I might give the cybrids a serial killer, if I haven't given them a kill, or a survivor if I have.

[webadict]

In general, how do mods balance cult/SK roles in a 9-12 player game? My earlier questions were about non-sk/cult games, but now let's say there's a 10-p game with a cultist; is 7-2-1 the right thing, or are there other options? How about a smaller game: say 8p, can 5-2-1 work? or 6-1-1?

Let's do a case by case here.

First, I'm going to assume a few things. First, that the SK is a standard SK: Third party, kills at night. Second, I'm going to assume a standard Cult: Third party, converts at night, all converts die when leader dies.

Now, an sk can fit into a 9-player game (6-2-1), but he will make the game EXTREMELY short. Like, 3 Day long game.
A cult, on the other hand, wouldn't be too bad. Cults tend to favor late-game power versus weak early game. So, the cult doesn't grow too powerful in this case, as the exponential factor is limited by time.

A 10-player game (7-2-1) is the same as above.

An 11-player game (8-2-1) is where it shifts toward sk being more balanced. As the number of townies increase, the late game potential of the cult increases. However, an sk in this game makes for a good balancer away from town. It does limit the power of the scum a lot, but I think an additional Mafia-Ally would be  perfect set-up.

A 12-player game (8-3-1) is extremely doable for both alignments.

For games less than 8 players... you can't have a cult. An sk, yes. A cult, please don't unless there a big limiter on them. At that point, they become a survivor with a substantial power increase. The same is true of an sk, but an sk can combat the mafia.

For an sk and a mafia, I'd do:
(2-0-1)
(2-1-1)/(3-0-1)
(3-1-1)
(3-2-1)/(4-1-1)
(4-2-1)
(5-2-1)

[Leafsnail]

Now, an sk can fit into a 9-player game (6-2-1), but he will make the game EXTREMELY short. Like, 3 Day long game.
A cult, on the other hand, wouldn't be too bad. Cults tend to favor late-game power versus weak early game. So, the cult doesn't grow too powerful in this case, as the exponential factor is limited by time.

I'd have to disagree.  With 6-2-cult leader the town can lynch mafia day one, another mafia member day two, a cultist day three and then lose.  The cult leader would have to die quickly in order for the town to have any chance at all, making it swingy.

"The town can play perfectly and still lose" is an inherent problem with cults though I guess.