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[notquitethere]

Where? I've looked back in this thread and there hasn't been a declaration of intent since your own.

[Teneb]

Where? I've looked back in this thread and there hasn't been a declaration of intent since your own.

It's in the New Player's Guide thread.

[notquitethere]

No, that was a misunderstanding: Flying Dice didn't actually want to run the game:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

However, since then, Scelly9 and Tiruin have also put in a request.

[Teneb]

Yeah, my bad. it's Scelly9. I got confused for a bit because I was doing the votecount at the time.

[Leafsnail]

I think we should talk about the newbie setup.

1. What is the current setup?
0-1 Cop
0-1 Doctor
5-7 Townies

0-1 Mafia Roleblocker
0-1 Mafia Godfather

2. When did we start using this setup?
The setup was first used in BM4, and as far as I can tell we haven't changed it since.  That means all beginner setups between BM4 and BM38 used this setup (I'm not including BM39 in this as it is unfinished).

3. What is the problem?

Spoiler: Data (click to show/hide)

Game	Power Roles	Winners
BM4	Doctor vs Roleblocker	Mafia
BM5	Cop vs Godfather*	Mafia
BM6	Cop vs Roleblocker[/b]	Mafia
BM7	Cop vs Godfather/Roleblocker*	Town
BM8	Cop/Doctor vs Godfather	Town
BM9	Cop/Doctor vs Godfather	Mafia
BM10	Cop/Doctor vs Goons	Mafia
BM11	Townies vs Goons	Nobody
BM12	*	Mafia
BM13	Townies vs Godfather/Roleblocker	Mafia
BM14	Cop vs Godfather	Mafia
BM15	Cop vs Godfather	Mafia
BM16	Doctor vs Godfather	Nobody
BM17	Doctor vs Roleblocker	Mafia
BM18	Doctor/Cop vs Roleblocker/Godfather	Mafia
BM19	Cop vs Goons	Mafia
BM20	Doctor vs Goons	Mafia
BM21	Townies vs Goons*	Mafia**
BM22	Townies vs Goons	Mafia
BM23	Doctor vs Goons	Town
BM24	Cop vs Roleblocker*	Mafia
BM25	Doctor vs Roleblocker	Town
BM26	Cop vs Roleblocker*	Mafia
BM27	Doctor vs Cop	Mafia
BM28	Doctorvs Roleblocker*	Town
BM29	Townies vs Roleblocker	Mafia
BM30	Cop vs Roleblocker*	Mafia
BM31	Cop vs Goons*	Mafia***
BM32	*	Mafia
BM33	Doctor vs Roleblocker*	Mafia
BM34	Cop/Doctor vs Godfather/Roleblocker	Mafia
BM35	Cop/Doctor vs Roleblocker	Mafia
BM36	Cop/Doctor vs Roleblocker/Godfather	Mafia
BM37	Doctor vs Roleblocker	Town
BM38	Cop vs Roleblocker	Mafia

*I am not 100% sure about these setups - they may have included more roles.
**Was a kindof disastrous game all round, pretty funny to read though.
***Lurking resulted in the town no lynching at lylo!

Mafia wins too often.  We've had enough games to observe a clear pattern here, and it seems like town is only winning 1/6th of the time.

4. What can we learn from this?
- Town needs to be buffed in some way in BM.  Perhaps by guaranteeing a town PR or changing the setup to something more forgiving.
- There are more PRs in these games than you'd expect by chance I think, but I haven't properly checked this.
- I really miss dakarian, and I'm still angry about Neruz.
- PLEASE WRITE THE SETUP SOMEWHERE MODS

[Vector]

Me too.  I really miss Dakarian and Neruz.

I personally think there shouldn't be a scum IC.  That would probably help a LOT.

[Leafsnail]

That would help the balance, but I think the scum IC is a pretty valuable teaching tool.  I'd rather try and switch up the roles.

[Vector]

I actually don't think so, because most of playing scum is about playing town well, and the rest of it is a bunch of fiddly bits you can only get through enormous amounts of experience.

I don't like switching roles because this should be a behavioral game, first and foremost, and something with more PRs is just too much.  If you take away some roles from the scum, okay, that's one thing, though I still think it's bad for balance (a PR with guarantees is a PR that's not being taught well).

Alternatively, we switch up BM to generally be easier, with the assumption that the learning isn't contained there and we start running an NSBM series for real.  I could get behind that.

[Toaster]

For the record, there was a roleblocker in BM Trainwreck XXI.


What if the scum IC could only post in thread?  Or wasn't even told who the scum were?

[Jim Groovester]

As best as I can recall, we started using that setup since it's the default beginner setup at Mafiascum, at least at the time we adopted it.

There are other problems endemic to BMs that explain the terrible town win rate, and they don't have to do with the setup. Poor player activity, frequent replacements, players not knowing what the hell they're doing, players being unable to tell the difference between noob and scum. If any other game had these problems the town win rate would probably take a turn for the shitter just as well.

If the setup is balanced not accounting for player skill then that's all we should care about.

I personally think there shouldn't be a scum IC.  That would probably help a LOT.

I agree with this. Scum ICs are able to give their players personal attention, attention that the playing ICs are unable to give the rest of playerbase. This is not a trivial advantage.

What if the scum IC could only post in thread?  Or wasn't even told who the scum were?

I don't see how that would work.

[Vector]

Yeah.  Having someone with you who can't really get jittery from in-game action is also an incredibly strong plus.

[Leafsnail]

It's a variant on an old mafiascum newbie setup C9+2, as far as I can tell:
http://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=C9%2B2
This one was deemed overly mafia sided, and unlike ours it didn't have any mafia power roles.  That's why there was a switch to 2of4, which would always contain at least one town PR (although the doctor/townie setup is still mafia sided).

Basically if you run the statistics 2 mafia out of 9 players is actually pretty mafia sided, so some power roles are needed to even things out.

[Jim Groovester]

I guess it's worth a try. Mafiascum has done this a lot more than we have.

[GlyphGryph]

I'm going to support the notion that town simply losing more often isn't necessarily indicative of a problem. BMs are supposed to be educational - I don't think the concern should be how often each side wins, but rather how much and effectively the players learn.

Instead of the current setup, if we could get people willing to serve as an advisor for a group of maybe 3 players and provides personal advice. 

[Captain Ford]

I'm going to throw in with GlyphGryph and state that losing is actually the most educational experience possible. It teaches townies what sort of reads they can rely on, and which they can't. Being right doesn't teach this, and can often teach the wrong things. Having good scum is crucial for teaching good scumhunting.

If there's a problem, I think it's that our newbie retention rate is abysmal.