Meta discussion

[Madge]

You've read crossover? I'm playing it and I'm not sure I could say as much!

[wam]

You've read crossover? I'm playing it and I'm not sure I could say as much!

Well speed read! I don't have to analyse and can read spoilers.

[SuicideJunkie]

Throwing a simple idea out. Would this be entertaining or unfun?
"My Mafia is Full of Eels"
Vanilla rules, except that all messages are to be run through google translate before posting (EG: english->russian->french->english->submit)

---

Also,
Over the last week I've also been sketching out a two-room symmetry game. Super de-flavored basics:
About 8 players per team.
About 3 players from each team are then swapped to the opposite room and act as Mafia to the enemy town.
All mafia would all know each other in both rooms, but each set of mafia is hostile to the ones in the other room. Mafia would have local daychat, but no NK.
The town has NK-into-the-other-room. Lynch is local to each room in the standard way.

The townies have to root out the local mafia, while helping their own (unknown IDs to town) mafia in the enemy room to victory.
The mafia have to convince the local town to shoot the other mafia, and lynch the local town.
The last team standing (or lynch control in both rooms) wins the game.

I was pondering how to lightly connect the two towns for NK targeting purposes (beyond the local mafia anti-knowledge, and any power roles), and the Eels idea came to me tonight. I could perhaps make a perl script (so it updates instantly even while I sleep/work) to cross-post mangled voices from the other room for flavor without giving too much away.

[BoomFrog]

Interesting, but why does town want to kill the other room town? They don't really care where the NK goes right?

[plytho]

Interesting, but why does town want to kill the other room town? They don't really care where the NK goes right?

One room's mafia is aligned with the other room's town. It's team A vs team B. Room one has 5 A and 3 B, room two has 5 B and 3 A. So town A wants to kill town B.

[SuperJedi224]

Sounds like it might be interesting.

[SuicideJunkie]

What plytho said.

Turning the mafia's NK into a quasi-lynch does take away a lot of direct control, but the difference would be made up by numbers and/or powers.

For the veterans; any advice/opinions on balance?
Not controlling the NK and a hostile mafia that know your names vs extra members locally.
Which side would you tilt powers to if any?

Giving away the other mafia would only get one of them killed at a time, and invite equal retribution lynchings.

[BoomFrog]

Yeah, I don't think you tell the mafia who each other are. Unless they have no way to communicate between rooms. But you could tell all of town A who is in Mafia A. Since they are aligned they won't spoil the beans. Although that might be rough for the mafia since they have to hide that they don't know who the other mafia are.

[SuicideJunkie]

Yeah, I don't think you tell the mafia who each other are. Unless they have no way to communicate between rooms. But you could tell all of town A who is in Mafia A. Since they are aligned they won't spoil the beans. Although that might be rough for the mafia since they have to hide that they don't know who the other mafia are.

That's a good point. Any clean comms (or comms power) would quickly give the game away as asking enemy townies would give conflicting answers and open them to NKs, while a mafia would happily and accurately unveil all the others in a PM.
And one of Town's distinguishing features is having to figure out stuff from scratch without having any real knowledge at the beginning.

But I do now have an idea for a simpler first practice game that isn't as juicy but doesn't need complex communication.

"You Only Live Twice."
When you are first lynched or NKed, you get moved to the other room and swap teams. A NKed townie from room 1 becomes a mafia in room 2, while a lynched mafia from room 1 becomes a townie in room 2. Those who start in room 2, move to room 1 in the same manner.
Roles are not revealed on first death. Game keeps going after mafia or town are eliminated in a room, since more will likely arrive from the other room, and the newcomers will have to try and show they've turned over a new leaf.
If you are killed a second time, then you're out for real. Game ends when normal victory conditions are met in both rooms and no further transfers will happen.
Bond flavour.

[BoomFrog]

Do you get to know if the newcomer was lynched or NKed?

Even if you don't I think I'd policy lynch whoever joins my room D2. They are most likely mafia since early deaths are usually town.

[SuicideJunkie]

Telling room two it was an NK would give it away completely, so that would be an easy no.
Policy lynching would suck to be sure, but if all the deaths are bundled up into a single transfer, you would at least expect to have company on D2.

Would it be crazy to hold back the introduction of one townie for each side until D2, to dilute the probabilities and avoid double-tapping the first ones out by policy?

[SuicideJunkie]

Here's an actual meta question:
How do people feel about true randomness vs mysterious but ultimately deterministic mechanics in games?

For example;
If you have a crazy cop, how should "random" ideally be determined?
- A coin flip at time of use
- A predetermined pattern for the duration of the game (such as N1=Sane, N2=Insane, N3=Naive, N4=Paranoid, repeat)
- A predetermined but secret function of the forum (if posting time in seconds is odd then Sane, else Insane)

[freezeblade]

I feel that if it's advertised as "random" in the rules post, or mod declaration, then I expect a random number generator of some sort to be used. If it's declared as random, but not actually random (ie example 2. I'd count example 3 as a form of random generation), I'd likely cry fowl unless it's a bastard game.

[BoomFrog]

If it was stated as "secretly determined" then any of those are fine. However, as I think you know a random sanity cop is useless even if there is a secret pattern, the player will almost never have enough info to figure it out.

[SuicideJunkie]

Probably worse than useless in fact.
But Crazy Cop is listed as one of the Basic Extra Roles in the noob guide, so it seemed a good example.