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[Imp]

You need way more players than I, of course.

But I am aOK with a pretty experienced mod calling for an experiment that might be anything, let's see how it goes, especially if I'm told **that** ahead of time.  I can't track all the mechanics, especially not in my head, I need a lot more experience before I can have a chance to scan your open setup and spot issues.

I might not leap into a new mod's 'I have an idea' with enthusiasm, but that's no issue here.

Also, if you have a role that you think belongs in the game and is more likely to be under-appreciated and less wanted, offering myself as a good pick for that for experimenting with if you choose.  I'm a terrible fit for that if it requires mastery of understanding established mechanics, I won't clear that hurdle.

But if it requires a sincere "I will try this" and "I can try it enthusiastically" from its player to have a chance - even if that role might suck to most people, mebby worth having me try it.  If nothing else, I'm still overflowing with joy from the role FoU started me with and can take my turn for 'who wants this, but it belongs in the game' should there be such, without much of a morale hit - and I'm weird enough I might even enjoy a role most wouldn't.

[Elephant Parade]

I think the only downside to letting Evil pick is that if one option is substantially better than the others, either in general or for their specific role composition, they'll just pick that one. That shouldn't be a problem in practice; it just means more balancing work.

[webadict]

I think the only downside to letting Evil pick is that if one option is substantially better than the others, either in general or for their specific role composition, they'll just pick that one. That shouldn't be a problem in practice; it just means more balancing work.

True.  I think the issue is probably that I might think one isn't that strong and it turns out to be mega-busted.  Buuut, that's part of running the game.

Aaaand that's about it for now.  Questions, comments, concerns, and criticism, if you wouldn't mind.

- I'm a big fun of mafia-as-competitive-puzzle and so it's good to see the more semi-open possibilities. The players won't know exactly what's happening but they can make more informed guesses.
- The Chosen One role is a neat idea. As presented they're more like a sometime innocent-child who is almost guaranteed to die the night after they reveal themselves. Though I suppose with Watchers and other roles that might not be the case-- scum will want to avoid having a town leader with a lot of players running interference.
- I don't think you need to stack multiple roles on players, but if you want to then you could have something like  Destiny + Job — so you could have a Chosen One Thief, Cursed Hexer, Vampire Oracle, etc. The modifiers could do stuff with wincons or put a meta twist on the roles they're attached to (like a Leper Paladin could have the normal paladin powers, but they infect others when used; a Pactbound Tinkerer could gain pacts for their demon master when gifting etc. That way benign seeming 'confirmable' abilities could still have unseemingly or chaotic elements).

That's actually part of the inspiration on this.  I like that Paranormal has known Roles and known Actions, but I also enjoy that Supernatural's Roles have a bit of a free-form to them, especially the Evil teams.  I thought about making a Paranormal game that could be expanded to an AP system, but I realized that in order to make that work, I'd have to change some fundamental aspects to the game.  So, from there, I figured that Roles would have some known aspects to them and some unknown aspects.

Some of the issue with the Evil teams in action-heavy games is that it's hard to counter everything that could exist.  By limiting that design space, there's less an Evil team has to consider (as well as fakeclaim.)

Your idea to have Role Modifiers be Destinies is a good one, and I'll try to tweak it in that direction, especially if they change the expression of the Role and Actions.  Having no stacked Roles would mean that every Role would probably need three known Actions, which... Maybe that works?  I'll think about it.

[NJW2000]

There's an idea I've been mulling over for a game that is BYOR-ish, tentatively calling it Bring Your Own Open. Someone's probably done something like this before, but hey.

The idea is that everyone brings a name for features of the game - roles, powers, items, alignments, elimination types, even phases or mechanics. These are then taken and turned into a very weird open game. Roles are assigned at random - you can't be sure you'll get what you bring.


The motivation is that there are a lot of closed and bastard games, and this forum has had some frustrations over initially hidden features of these games, especially in the context of BYORs. Something I particularly don't agree with is mod participations/feature creation after the game has begun. It's one thing if it needs drastic rebalancing or you've written the rules wrong, that's just a foul-up and I've been there - but designing it in feels like you're not playing mafia any more. I'd also say the subforum could do with more open or semi-open games.

BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT people really like BYORS and chaotic mechanics and hats. Me included.


The details aren't fully there, but I'd like to see players able to bring things other than roles. Items are an obvious choice, especially hats, but I'd also like to see players bringing alignments, powers, elimination types, "mechanics", and so on. Players wouldn't be able to specify what the feature they brought would be, but a sincere effort would be made to include whatever was brought in the game.

Of course, you don't want to end up with a different elimination type every day and seven different factions, even if it's an open game, so a cost should be imposed for each feature you bring to the game. Players could have ten coins, say, and could spend them as they liked on features of varying cost. Bringing items would be cheap, while roles would be expensive/limited and elimination types, mechanics and alignments would be very costly. The money would all be spent pre-game, and would have no connection to the actual gameplay.

Not sure what else would be available to purchase - roles should be assigned at random and it's an open game, so nothing that can be used in the actual game.

One idea is boosts - modifiers for the things you bring. Maybe a simple boost to make it more powerful/important to the game, a Death boost to give it more killing power, an Ultra boost to make it uncircumventable, a Meta boost to make it influence other mechanics, a Meme boost that forces the GM to reference insufferable mafia subforum memes in the flavour, and so on. Boosts would also cost money, so maybe you'd give up bringing a role and an item, and just bring a boosted role instead.


Obviously this would be a nightmare to balance and run, but it might be an open game that nonetheless satisfies that BYOR craving.

[Imp]

so a cost should be imposed for each feature you bring to the game. Players could have ten coins, say, and could spend them as they liked on features of varying cost. Bringing items would be cheap, while roles would be expensive/limited and elimination types, mechanics and alignments would be very costly. The money would all be spent pre-game, and would have no connection to the actual gameplay.

Not sure what else would be available to purchase - roles should be assigned at random and it's an open game, so nothing that can be used in the actual game.

This sounds interesting and I'm generally up to play whatever, but...

Are you saying that we 'pay' a limited resource to bring stuff to the open, as well as pay that same resource to choose what we want to play from it?

So Max helpfully pays to bring 'kill' as an option for us all and then pays more to be able to use it, while I can just wait to see what others already brought then pay that 'more' to be able to use what I see, and don't even have to pay to bring anything?

Or are you interpreting this another way?

[TricMagic]

Might suggest putting it in sign-ups so you have time to balance everything. With the understanding it will probably be in a month.

[NJW2000]

The boosters and currency would apply to the features you bring to the game. You wouldn’t get to choose what role and items you start the game with though - you just get assigned a role at random.

Kind of like “Bring someone else’s role” except you also bring items, alignments, elimination types, etc. And it’s open.

I realise doing it that way might mean losing some of the appeal of the BYORs.

Might suggest putting it in sign-ups so you have time to balance everything. With the understanding it will probably be in a month.

It would take a while to design the open game, so might be worth putting in signups very early. If I was going to do this idea, I’d probably need a hand balancing though. Any volunteers?

[Imp]

“Bring someone else’s role”

I suspect we'd find a lot of poisoned roles on offer, the kind that people think they'd enjoy playing against.

[RoseHeart]

I've been really struggling as a forum game host, freezing up and my anxiety is getting worse. When I am able it's a very enjoyable and satisfying hobby. I want to ask webadict if there may be a way to cohost a mafia with his bot. Is it self sustaining on its own now? If so I could add art and story, and if I have problems at least the bot could finish. Also how long does it take for someone to express interest in hosting, and then be able to do so? If webadict gives permission then I'd like to reserve hosting a mafia please.

[webadict]

I've been really struggling as a forum game host, freezing up and my anxiety is getting worse. When I am able it's a very enjoyable and satisfying hobby. I want to ask webadict if there may be a way to cohost a mafia with his bot. Is it self sustaining on its own now? If so I could add art and story, and if I have problems at least the bot could finish. Also how long does it take for someone to express interest in hosting, and then be able to do so? If webadict gives permission then I'd like to reserve hosting a mafia please.

I'm running the next one, a new game type called "Demonology" if you wanna help with that.  If you meant me helping with running your own Mafia, I'm not sure if there's anyone specifically waiting after me, so... whenever you have an idea, you can just ask, probably.  So far, we've only had a couple of people asking to run games at a time, but there's not really any specific queue anymore.

The bot is currently just a script I run as needed.  It doesn't run anything on its own (nor does it keep any track of the game.)  TolyK was working on a bot that was potentially self-sustaining, but he's been kinda busy lately.  You might be able to ask him for it?  Though, you might be better off having another player help run your game, which I wouldn't mind doing.

[RoseHeart]

Cool. While I am eager to get practice cohosting with a bot, more practice cohosting the normal way is also exciting. I had a lot of fun making art for and RPing with Meph on Bastard Paranormal 3.

Consider me in for Demonology!

[TolyK]

I've been really struggling as a forum game host, freezing up and my anxiety is getting worse. When I am able it's a very enjoyable and satisfying hobby. I want to ask webadict if there may be a way to cohost a mafia with his bot. Is it self sustaining on its own now? If so I could add art and story, and if I have problems at least the bot could finish. Also how long does it take for someone to express interest in hosting, and then be able to do so? If webadict gives permission then I'd like to reserve hosting a mafia please.

I'm running the next one, a new game type called "Demonology" if you wanna help with that.  If you meant me helping with running your own Mafia, I'm not sure if there's anyone specifically waiting after me, so... whenever you have an idea, you can just ask, probably.  So far, we've only had a couple of people asking to run games at a time, but there's not really any specific queue anymore.

The bot is currently just a script I run as needed.  It doesn't run anything on its own (nor does it keep any track of the game.)  TolyK was working on a bot that was potentially self-sustaining, but he's been kinda busy lately.  You might be able to ask him for it?  Though, you might be better off having another player help run your game, which I wouldn't mind doing.

It's as if I felt my name being called and logged back in after months.

I haven't worked on the bot or on mafia in forever.

The engine behind the bot is here: GitHub and documentation.
The Bay12 bot itself is private on GitHub (mostly to reduce spam... I think it can be open-sourced now?) but also needs documentation on how to be configured, etc. It's not "configure, fire and forget" at this point, so if you're not super technical it's not going to work, sorry.

[FallacyofUrist]

A few sanity changes I've been thinking over for future games.

The base mafiakill is always Free. To make the allure of mechanical analysis to figure out 'who killed' less tempting, the mafiakill is always a Free action. Doesn't grant immunity to tracking or any other form of investigation, but it doesn't take up the night action slot to use. This would only apply to the base mafiakill, special ones wouldn't have Free by default.

Yes, I know web's AP system solves this too, but that's a headache to design and keep track of.

Directly quoting private chats is forbidden. Currently, there's a litmus test for anyone claiming to have a private chat, whether it be deadchat or a mason chat, which is 'directly quote a block of text from the chat'. Under this rule, that would be forbidden for a similar reason as directly quoting private mod communications / role PM stuff. Paraphrasing would still be completely fine.

Reworked mediums. Currently, being a medium in a role heavy game provides a ton of information, and it's a strongly town-sided role. If a non-town player ends up as a medium, it's useful to them, but it leaves the dead players with a lot of discontent.

A new medium design would be a channeler - someone who can pick one player, during the Day, to rejoin the living to converse in some limited fashion. Something like "sending messages to the mod which are relayed once per real-life day".

This would also provide room for scum fake-mediums which can write fake messages. I'm still thinking that idea over, though.

Personal priority: abilities are still resolved according to natural action resolution or a variant, but in the event of paradox or contradiction, each player has a hidden individual priority score, each unique, and the player with the higher score would have their abilities win out in such a paradox/contradiction scenario. Yeah, sure, you can assign priority to abilities, but you can still run into matching scores in that case, plus weird stuff with autos.

The scores, I think, would be assigned randomly.

[hector13]

I like the idea about not quoting private chats and mediums in particular, as there was a game recently that had the medium copy-pasting huge chunks of the dead chat into the game that really broke it for scum - it basically cleared the medium and allowed them to channel the more experienced players as part of their ability - which I thought was pretty unfair.

Not really sure on everything else since I’m not a night game kinda guy, though being able to mechanically solve things by D3/4 is usually a bit naff.

[Elephant Parade]

Most of your ideas make sense (although the AP system is a viable alternative to free mafiakills), but I don't think invisible RNG personal priority is any better than settling ties with coinflips. In fact, outside of cases where the same two players clash multiple times, it's functionally identical to coinflips. When contradictions happen, I think mutual failure is the way to go.

Also, I think mediums are just intrinsically goofy and shouldn't be nearly as common as they are.

e: Part of my frustration with RNG resolution comes from how my FBYOR masonbuddy got sus'd for stealing the same vote as another player and always losing the coinflip. That was very silly, and his action always being the one to fail because he rolled lower at the start would be no less silly.

e2: I assume free mafiakills would also imply weaker mafiakills -- the ones in FBYOR were pretty crazy