webdiplomacy.net

worcej wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 17, 2020 4:24 pm

damo666 wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 17, 2020 12:41 pm

Banning massclaims unworkable imo. I think it should be incumbent on GMs to consider a mass claim when devising the set up.

Anyway, who's up next?

Mini-game and Chaqa. My setup is ready to follow Chaqa.

Technically, Neph was supposed to be M52, but due to traveling he bumped back to M53. So M53 will either be him or me, depending on if he's ready yet, which would mean M54 is the other, and M55 is worcej.

I've GM'd a lot of games and built a lot of setups. Balance can be a hard thing to achieve, and even in M50, EMC and I were lucky enough to get a second chance to re-balance a few small things when we had to restart the game. I think this game had some really cool stuff going on, but I want to lay out a few notes for future GMs/setups I think would help:

More Complex != A Better Setup - new (and experienced) GMs are often wanting to make the coolest/most complex/interesting setup. I get the appeal, and I've gone that route once or twice with my role madness games - but we've all seen how wild and unbalanced those are. Even M19, which had Vash, Captainmeme, and I spend months planning, wound up with a horribly unbalanced role that auto-won for town. The more complexity you add, the harder it is to predict any balance issues that will arise.

Mitigating Massclaim - typically this is not the ideal town strategy because if there are a limited number of town PRs, then scum can hide in the VT pool while killing off the PRs one by one. In general, you don't want too many easily-confirmable PRs. Semi-open setups, sometimes coupled with giving mafia fake-claim roles (as we did in M50).

For good examples of balanced setups, look at M48 and M49. M48 (Gladiator) game had 5 Mafia, 5 PR, 8 VT. This was a decent mix and led to a fairly balanced game. M49 (Infinity War) had 4 mafia, 1 SK, 4 PR, and 13 VT, though some of these VTs had items.

In general, the number of town PRs with active abilities shouldn't be more than the number of mafia+third parties. The number of VTs should also be about half of the total players, though it can be a little more or less depending on the setup.

Departure From WebDip "Norms" - This one was felt a bit this game. We have some general ways we play the game that, when departed from, can cause confusion. I'm not saying not to go in a different direction, but it needs to be made clear in the pre-game and game start. Examples:

1. Typically we inform about roleblocks regardless of whether anything has been blocked or not. This game, you were only notified if you had an action to be blocked. Additionally, the roleblock extended into the next day, which I didn't actually have much issue with.

2. The Captain's additional votes being ambiguous. We've used "Mayor" roles before, so this one was odd, and if we had a way to deduce it anyway through clever voting, it was kind of just... tedious. Though, it did allow for some possible EoD shenanigans. Again, the main issue was - it wasn't obvious.

3. Related to the above - and I don't think this is necessarily set in stone, but from my perspective, the Captain's votes shouldn't have been able to be blocked at all. Roleblocks prevent active abilities - things you consciously choose to do. They normally do not effect passive ones. I.E., you can't roleblock away a Bulletproof, or a *factional* night-kill, or nullifying the win condition of a role that wants to be night-killed, or something.

All this said - I LOVED some aspects of this setup.

The Alliance's shifting roles were inspired.

The Reavers press restrictions created a fun element I'd like to see again.

The Backup roles were neat as always.

Overall it was a fun game, and I'm excited for KIt's next one (possibly because I'm her co-GM lol).

As a somewhat grizzled GM myself these days, I'd like to endorse Chaqa's comments here.

While I enjoy crafting somewhat complex setups myself, I agree with Chaqa that they are at greater risk of imbalance. I also agree that there were too many PRs, and this not only encouraged a massclaim but also made town, quite frankly, a bit too strong. The backups actually significantly increase town's strength in the long term.

I would also strongly agree with Chaqa that the Roleblock mechanics (including specifically the notifications), and the captain voting rules, were unusual and somewhat confusing. Normal mafia practice across several sites distinguishes between "powers" which need to be directly activated by the player, and "modifiers" which are passive and always active. Usually the latter cannot be Roleblocked.

I hope this feedback is seen as constructive.

I agree with that - I really liked the evolving mafia powers, as well as the press rules for the reaver team. I'd love to try out both of those mechanics again.

BH with bounties seems like a fun idea as well, though perhaps that'd be a good 3rd party for a relatively vanilla game.