Josh: Sounds like an interesting variant- I'd likely give it a go. It seems few people are going to get the votes needed to live, though. You're likely to hit D2 with two people many times, even with a large game.
Thank you for your feedback. The trick with the points system I've devised strongly discourages letting only a few people win each round, as that will allow them to pull into a point lead very easily. it's in the best interests of those trying to prevent people from gaining points to get as even a point distribution as possible while also killing the mafia on the first day, so that the points awarded are thinly spread out among the winning players so they don't take an overwhelming lead for the following round. This is how I imagine it, atleast.
Err, except 8p with 2 Mafia requires that 4 people with 1 Mafia be alive. Assuming that the Mafia will only vote for each other, all other players need to not vote for Mafia to win, resulting in 3- players winning.
Town will be highly less motivated to let people win, and should ALWAYS follows these rules:
Never ever secretly vote. Secretly voting is a scum tell.
Win on the first Day. You will lose otherwise.
Play with two scum or less. Three scum will result in another Day.
I think that having the Town win with only living players is flat-out wrong. Either both teams should have that or neither. The Town wins a smaller point win, even if you vote one person. The expected value is the same for both teams if all team players are awarded. The expected value is ALSO the same if neither team has the rule.
Thank you for your feedback, Webadict. The ratio of players to mafia is intended to be very steep, with 1 mafia for every 8 players almost.
For your concern about having only living players be the only ones which score points, the way I’m imagining the game, this is the only setup that actually functions the way it’s intended. The way I see it, the game is a game of mafia, but it’s also a game where the town have to try to backstab eachother in order to try to put themselves on top. Due to the existence of point exchanging, players don’t even need to win the rounds in order to win, they only need to find creative ways to milk the leading players out of their points.
My decision for having the mafia share their points even in death is so that they have no incentive to backstab eachother, and are forced to work as a team to secure the entire pot for themselves.
The way I’ve envisioned it, it’s about players being forced to think about the long haul. Sure, a player might get lucky in the first round a take a large point lead, but then they might be discriminated against in the following rounds and then lose each successive round due to that.
I’ve invested quite a bit of thought, and really the only gamebreaking strategy I can think of is, of course, the Nao strategy where everyone shares their points so everyone can secure victory in a tie. Provided that everyone plays ball, every single player has a 100% of winning if they all share their points evenly. I might have to change the rules to preserve the ruthless spirit of the game to prevent this, but I’m willing to give it a chance.