Live Action Mafia

A game of sneakiness and paranoia
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 Post subject: Rules Change Discussion
PostPosted: Sun Jan 18, 2015 2:20 am 
What did you like about the new rules this game? What didn't you like? What rules changes would you like to see in future games?

My thoughts / things I just discussed with Josh:

The clue system - I personally enjoyed it and thought it added an interesting element to the game. However, I probably interacted with it more than anyone except possibly Lily Chen, so I'm probably biased. Josh pointed out that it is actually a buff to investigators (rough estimate of how many mafia + rogues are alive), and investigator buffs aren't a thing game needs.

Vigilantes, vampires, and a new role - I liked how the critical elements of prophet are separated into two roles: town kill power and innocence checking power. I like vigilante (especially how it adds interesting interactions with rogues), but I think vampire has a bunch of crap that I'm not a fan of tacked onto it. I think I would be interested in once again introducing a modified "seer" role, which allows a player to once per game ask the gods, "Is X role Y?" and get an honest answer. Interestingly, this would allow someone who is shown to not be a mafia to still be rogue, and vice versa, with the only way to definitely determine innocence requiring that the seer know the person's role. It also doesn't demonstrate objective innocence, which I think might be interesting.

Superheroes and Investigators- I like how superheroes have the option of investigating more than 1/2 of the days, but at the price of only being able to make older investigations. I think that's an interesting player decision to make. Josh raised the suggestion of only letting investigators investigate each kill once, which I initially objected to, until he proposed that this limitation not apply to superheroes. I'm think I'm a fan of this idea; investigators can investigate every day, but only once per kill, and superheroes can investigate kills as many times as they want, but they can't visit kill sites and investigate on the same day.

Cynics and paranoia - Superhero paranoia is interesting, but I really think we should have just kept cynic in game.

Innocent child - I think letting innocent children use an incant, rather than requiring moderator intervention, is just straight up improvement.

Other roles - Still a fan of conspiracy theorists, gay knights, and rogues. Desperadoes I'm neutral on.

Medkit - I think having medkits be more numerous, but shorter term, is an interesting idea. I might prefer 48 hours of protection though.

Lynching - I like the idea of banning no-lynch (town can be dumb otherwise), but I do think allowing no-lynch on day 1 (or on the day of the first kill) would be pretty reasonable.

Mayor/Police Officer - I think mayor is fine. Police officer I worry won't work very well without the clue system. I think police officer should get to do another thing.


Overall my assessment is that the rules changes this game were good overall. While I would like to see some rules be different, the rules this game were great for testing out new ideas (e.g. new aspects of superhero).


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PostPosted: Sun Jan 18, 2015 2:46 am 
Clue system --- I think for future games, I want the rogues to be the only ones playing the clue game, not the mafia.
Vigilantes, vampires --- Given how last-second vampire was, I think it ended up working well. These were the two roles I was still seeking advice for until game started.
Superheroes and investigators --- Superhero is something like 3/4 of a cynic + 3/4 of an investigator. I like the tradeoff and being a little different, but I think a bit stricter clue system would fix that.
Cynics --- Nothing important to say
Innocent child --- I think it's a bit more elegant, too. Arkhipov proposed that the innocent child only be able to do this in-person. If there's a desire to shift towards more in-person interactions, that would be a good change.
Desperados --- I'm bearish on this role, but I didn't want to reduce the number of roles further.
Medkit --- 48 hours is so long to count.
Lynching --- I think "once the town lynches, it cannot stop" might be a reasonable change. I would like a role that interacts with lynching in a more interesting way.
Mayor/Police Officer --- Police Officer gets to use "kaboom" instead of bang, which is relevant to mafia, rogues, vigilantes, and gay knights.

Items --- Mike/receivers need to be unpaired because of an exploit I figured out. Also, random public item redistribution can be used as a source of public randomness, which needs to be fixed for later games.

Automation --- I still would like some webapp (Archangel?) to handle most aspects of running game (announcing kills, handling investigations, counting votes, handling roles, handling item use and transfers), if anyone else wants to get on that.


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PostPosted: Sun Jan 18, 2015 12:01 pm 
So, to be clear, how I wanted to change superhero and investigator was as follows

superhero can on a given day either go to a new kill site or investigate a previously visited kill site.

Investigator works like ordinary investigator except they only get 1 investigation per kill site.

Investigator and superhero are both then fairly simple roles, which feel and play rather differently and are both the strength of about .6-.7 current investigators and, interestingly, both have interesting resource limitedness (investigators only get 1 shot per kill so it matters, superheros waste a day to find a new site, so the tension between new sites, and more investigations is real)

I agree with katie about keeping both cynic and conspiracy theorist as real, distinct, roles. They have very different flavors do to the different trigger mechanism and are somewhat complicated as distinct roles.


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PostPosted: Sun Jan 18, 2015 10:50 pm 
These modifications prevent an investigator from effectively claiming superhero or vice versa.

I like the clue system, not that I interacted with it much. What does "making the rogue play the clue game" mean?


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PostPosted: Sun Jan 18, 2015 11:03 pm 
# of rogues plus one clues spawn at each murder site. Only rogues can destroy clues.

This accomplishes a few things:
1. Reduces the number of clues. Unfortunately, there were just too many clues in the game. Cutting it in this way will help make the clues an actual restriction
2. Puts less pressure on the mafia to coordinate destroy all of the clues. Rogues have no idea when the murders will happen, and won't necessarily be able to get their on time.
3. Makes counting the mafia harder for the town.


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PostPosted: Sun Jan 18, 2015 11:08 pm 
I really liked the clue system, but it did feel a bit unnecessary as a limit on investigators since no one even came close to their clue limit anyway. I think pegging it to the number of rogues would be an improvement. Also, having both the clue count and the mayor's count the mafia power seemed unnecessarily strong for town.


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PostPosted: Tue Jan 20, 2015 1:58 pm 
It's conceivable that if all the rogues were eliminated in early game (e.g. through poor play) the clue system would be too hard a limit - nobody would be able to investigate more than once, which is especially bad if the investigators and superheroes are changed as suggested above.


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 23, 2015 4:52 pm 
I think there should be more shovels. They encourage people to look back on old logs and see who talked/voted against/sided with mafia, which is a fun aspect of game that didn't happen so much in this game.


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 23, 2015 4:55 pm 
There were 4 shovels in game. 2 of them were used, both on people the mafia planted evidence on.


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