Can I get spoiled then? Since I designed parts of the game and know the setup? (And i think i know what if the masons are lying about something).
Roosh's Rules for Balanced Dirty Masons
As for the idea of Dirty Masons- the key is simple- if you make them dirty, the best way to do so is one of two ways:
1. Tell the mason if they die, they WILL show up as PFK **Masons ***no matter what. This basically makes the masons understand that they can play as masons until one of them dies. As soon as that happens it will all fall apart. So basically only 1 of them can truly "claim" mason and the others would have to hide, because if you have multiple masons coming up and one is scum- you sure as hell are going to have to kill off the others.
2. You tell the masons that one of them is Evil. This is the solo dirty masons. This way when the masons are revealed, they themselves will be playing and internal game trying to figure out if there is a scummy one amongst them, and the town must know of it ASAP (or not, if the masons want to keep it private). However, that mason should when he dies show up as scum or PFK alone.
Those are the two scenarios that I always consider in a game and always consider putting as I feel they're balanced enough on their own for Dirty Masons.
*The fact that it shows up as a PFK MASON vs. PFK indicates that the entire mason group is playing for keeps. Thats a HUGE thing to point out, else a Dirty mason from case 2 would just spell downfall for the town by then allowing all the other masons to be lynched. The Mod MUST make a clarifcation for the two scenarios.
Well, that’s the problem. You made a distinction that satisfies your own personal definition and “the way the world works” but no one else is privy to the workings inside your head. If you publish “PFK” or “PFK Mason,” to many people there would be no distinction, no clear way to determine whether all masons are PFK or just the one. It’s all fine and good that you want to make a distinction, but that distinction is arbitrary and unknown to the rest of us.
PFK Mason is something to be avoided. It is better to simply call them Cabal, because that’s what they are.
The distinction would be made in the death flavor of course. No worries on that one. PFK/ PFKMason are just modding terms I’d use. Sheesh. The death flavor would point out X was playing alone as the traitorous mason or whatever his name would be, but for my spreadsheets and such, I’d keep him down as a PFKMason and that’d be his “alignment” or whatnot, but the death would make clear how he was playing and such- as each of the PFK’s deaths in **Batman **did- each was playing alone.
Well, Cabal to me indicates recruitment. And that’s a bad taste in everyone’s mouth with a whole crap load of worries and such.
So non-recruiting Cabal= “dirty mason!”
Plus, the bonus of the Dirty masons- they KNOW they’re the only Masons around and that’s the bonus they get for the fact that when one of them dies, the whole jig is up.
That’s why As scum, I always consider taking out a mason or two- but the problem is in these games, they’re almost NEVER Power roles NOR is there a chance of them being PFK. But if a scum takes out a mason and he’s a dirty mason- it buys the scum 2-3 days with which they can try to derail the town by making them look for more masons and such (with the whole point of course being that PFK Masons aren’t really a “threat” to the town, until the endgame… As PFK Masons would have to outnumber townies and scum- so they’re a nonlethal Scum group- and its more efficient just to focus on hunting for scum still and ignoring the masons until it starts to get closer to Lynch or Lose… Though, scum would want to convince the town that the opposite is true, and that both are equally bad things!
Yeah, I agree with the general sentiment towards “dirty masons” that they should be avoided. I even got into a disagreement with one of the mods of SDMB over it (which didn’t have dirty masons, BTW). I think it was hawkeyeop, but I don’t recall.
Though, given Roosh’s approach, I can see how it at least adds some fairness to the mechanic. I don’t know if I would ever use it since I haven’t given it enough thought, but at least town has an ability to know the masons are dirty.
Masons’ power is that they are inherently confirmable. That’s what makes them useful whether or not they have extra powers. In Marvel, we were trying to figure out how to get my bomb power to activate, but in the end we decided that it was better to just play straight mason and let the chips fall where they may. Because the fact that we were confirmable town was the important part. The bomb power would have been nice, but it was the “reduction on the meat” so to speak.
“Mason” has a very specific meaning in these games. If you really want a separate group that could pretend to be masons then you can give them some other label and tell them that there are no masons in the game. That way you won’t have people whining about mason abuse.
The discussion about dirty masons reminds me why I prefer open setups. I prefer that all the rules be described up front. It’s hard enough to play without making anti-Town mistakes when you know the rules. Making an anti-Town mistake because there’s something in the setup you don’t know is doubly annoying.
You should totally play in the game Naf, Rysto, and I are designing. There will be no anti-Town mistakes to make because there is no Town. No traditional scum either. The players form their own alliances, which they are free to break as they see fit.
We aim to tantalize! I figure if one of the three of us keeps talking about it casually every couple of months people will be chomping at the bit to play by the time it is actually ready.
Heh, but then I can’t laugh as the Town tries to use its preconceived notions and they fail miserably. :points to the G in Bastard:
I like playing in games, but I like to MAKE my games when I feel like things are getting the same, or people are in a rut- and try to change things around a bit. It’s the only way to keep it interesting. The only reason I’d throw in that Mason bit is because Masons get a free ride so often. I’m deliberately obfuscating things for the Townies and the “standard” players. (Rooshian methods vs. Storytelling Methods again). I know this isn’t “fun” for everyone, but that’s why I don’t make so many Games
But when I do… you better be on your toes. (Like NAF’s No Power Role game- I’d been kicking an idea like that around, but I just concluding it’d be too dastardly, as It’d be fun for me, but not the players (Which is always my goal #2- make the game fun too, hence Gastard and not straight out Bastard- i don’t want to screw over people, but I want to have a challenging game, with perhaps a greater emphasis on Fun and amusement rather than balance and logic). As soon as I saw **Storyteller **was scum in that No PowerRole Game, I knew the game was done…that’s just too easy- esp. when he claimed Cop… Just- you don’t give a marksman that much ammo and time to set up his team, you know? It was just a lesson in how Scum can crush a Town that depends on Power Roles to save it.
There will be lot of “traditional” mafia roles, but with certain tweaks for balance and with very interesting flavor provided by Rysto. (He’s got me interested in actually reading the series he based it off of. Of course, my list of books I want to read is ginormous anyway, so I don’t know when I’ll get around to it.)
It started with an idea I had for an all PFK last-man-standing type thing, akin to Survivor. And Naf volunteered to help me balance it. Rysto had been thinking about doing a game based on the flavor he had in mind, and realized this game would work. So he volunteered to help with color. So with tweaks, color, and balancing figured in, the game has morphed into something which is much better than what it started as. (Though, we’re not quite finished. The Holidays slowed our progress a lot.) So the general idea is still there, but it won’t quite be “last man standing”.
There also won’t be many rules. The players will have the ability to PM each other, and editing within the edit time window will be allowed.
The lynch mechanic will still be there, and will likely be treated as it is in most mafia games. (Standard “largest number of votes”.)
The nice thing is, most strategies are valid because this is largely a Lord of the Flies type setup. So you can vote off lurkers and won’t worry about whether they are allied with you or not. You can vote someone just because they annoy you. But understand, they can do the same right back to you.
So it’s not really mafia as such. It’s more a mafia inspired game that the players pretty much run themselves. We mods are just there to provide flavor, make sure nothing gets broken, and to collect and organize the various PMs. (Yes, not carbon copying the mods on the PM’s is a modkillable offense.)
Ok, since I’m working on several Mafia rules set at the moment, can I get opinions on which sound more fun to play in?
Conspiracy 3. Smaller (~20 players), reshuffled secret powers, but otherwise similar set up to the previous two.
Munchkin Mafia. I posted a preliminary rules set on Idle’s board. Basically players have D&D alignments: Good vs Evil, Lawful vs Chaotic, with joint win conditions. Everyone is a power role, but alignment detection is unlikely, so it’ll require real Mafia-play to root out players.
I was kicking around an idea vaguely similar to yours. No vanilla roles, every player has the same set of one-off powers. Everyone has different victory conditions, but a lot of overlap. So players A, B and C could try to win together, or B, C and D, but A and D cannot win together.
A cooperative game where players still compete, but no one dies. Not really mafia, but still might be fun. Borderline role-playing game.
Interesting. I read 2 and 3 and figured they are quite similar. I like the idea of multiple factions, but some factions are friendly and others are not friendly. You would need at least 4 factions, probably five.
One thing you could do is have five factions and each faction needs two factions dead to win. So there is only one faction winner, but you have some allies in that you don’t need each other dead and you need the same faction dead to win…
Interesting.
But that would be an enormous game, with a surprisingly early endgame.
