But since I’m not as smart as the teeming mafioso sometime this year I would appreciate some help maybe in game design? My thinking is something like this. (generic layout)
Scum:
Sith Lord (if apprentice dies will have success in a Padawan recruitment to apprentice a failure if attempted on any other townie)
Sith Apprentice (promoted to Lord if original is taken out at that time gets same power as the Lord)
Storm Trooper normal goon
Storm Trooper normal goon
Independent
Bounty Hunter
Town
Jedi (detective role)
Jedi 2 (doctor role)
C-3PO/R2-D2 etc (masons)
Padawans (townies)
Sound somewhat possible, interesting at all? I’m looking now at the mafia website and the offboard website we play on at the backends to try to figure out the jsexton (sp) formula.
This won’t be a game for months because all the other games currently scheduled but I wouldn’t mind some general pointers so if I get a turn I can be ready.
Bounty hunter would be possibly a survivor, serial killer or not involved at all. I loved the Batman game, would play it again …and again. But I’m thinking something more vanilla but still as colorful.
Sith Lord would be the “godfather” with the ability to recruit only if his apprentice gets killed and only if he recruits a padawan if he attempts on a jedi master his ID would be discovered (to balance that recruitment ability? the power even if successful can only be used once?)
The apprentice is the backup “godfather” nothing special unless the godfather falls then he gets the same power as described above.
Well I thought him mis-recruiting and hitting a Jedi would kinda balance it as well as only used once thing. But this is the kind of thing I need to hear, so beat me up
Well I think a single-use recruitment is a perfectly fine tool for the Scum, but you’ll want to keep in mind how powerful it is: I believe the standard strategy is for Scum to wait until they’re either down to a single player (in which recruitment pulls them back from the brink) or until a recruitment would give the scum a majority vote, which in most games would instantly end the game in the scum’s favor.
Consider, however, how potent the very existence of recruitment is: as long as town knows that scum has it, every nokill night (and I suggest you require Scum to abstain from killing on the night they Recruit, or else town would simply have no strategy beyond dumb luck to deal with it) will mark a potential Recruitment. Each time it happens, you can count on Town to exhaustively discuss potential and/or logical targets for recruitment. The most trusted townies are frequent targets for recruitment, which means that they face potential scrutiny every time the Sith fail to kill anyone, scrutiny with savvy Scum might exploit.
In any case, my point is that Recruitment has the potential to be an extremely powerful tool, especially in the endgame: Town tends to die really, really quickly, and a couple of Town lynches will really start to add up. Add to that a player who changes allegiance in the endgame, and you have a situation where it can be really, really hard for Town to make any headway.
Now, the Detective is the obvious countermeasure for Recruitment, and while I expect we’ll want to hear recommendations from the experienced players on how such a mechanism would come into play, if you’re going to allow pseudo-infinite recruitment I would suggest two key advantages for Town: first off, they’ll need a roleblocker, so that they can attempt to prevent Sith recruiting in the endgame, and more importantly, I would recommend some kind of protective or investigative power that grows stronger each time to the Sith recruit.
Very interesting, how would you make a Jedi Master become more powerful in his detective role after each recruitment attempt? Something like
Day 2 Sith Apprentice voted into exile
Night 2 detective investigates clone trooper gets reading back as scum
Night 2 Sith Lord recruits Padawan
Day 3 Padawan exiled
Night 3 detective investigates Sith Apprentice gets back reading of Sith Apprentice
That kind of increase of power? Or no Sith Apprentice to start and once the Sith Lord recruits a player as his apprentice then the recruitment stops?
I was thinking of adding a power role blocker sorta player with a Yoda as a priest thing like I said this is all very preliminary and I think with a few months I can have a game ready with help of course.
Hmm, that sounds as if it would work: I tend to favor a minimalist approach, which is obviously going to bias things, but I would recommend:
a) Sith Lord: investigates as Town. Once per game may Recruit a townie, who will become the Sith Apprentice. <insert conditions that could block recruit “here”>
b) Sith Apprentice: investigates as Scum. Becomes Lesser Sith Lord upon death of Sith Lord.
c) Lesser Sith Lord: Investigates as Town. Does not have recruiting powers.
This way you get a cool recruiting gimmick, but you keep it from getting out of hand without the need to introduce an unnecessarily complicated Town role. With this setup you could probably get by with little more than a Detective and Doctor.
My first suggestion would be to bring in the spirit of the movies by allowing only two Sith at any time: a Sith Lord (who registers as Padawan to the Jedi Detective) and a Sith Apprentice (who registers as Sith).
As Omi no Kami points out, you shouldn’t allow a Sith Apprentice to recruit immediately and continually.
How about this?
(*By the way I’m calling the C3PO roles etc ‘robot-owner’. They look like Padawan, but are secret geeks!)
To begin with, there is one original Sith Lord. He has 3 powers, available immediately:
he registers as Padawan throughout.
he may recruit one Apprentice at night. (N.B. he can only ever have one at a time, but if killed, he may recruit a further one.) Note that no Sith can recruit either the Detective or the Doctor. (If he tries for either, the attempt fails and that Padawan is told of the attempt. The Sith is not told which role the Padawan has.)
If any Sith recruits a robot-owner*, the other robot owners are told one of them has been recruited … but not which one.
instead of recruiting, the Sith Lord may use the Dark Side of the Force to kill any one player at night.
If the Sith Lord is killed, and he had an Apprentice, that Apprentice (who initially registers as Sith) may take one night of inaction to learn each of his new powers:
power to kill
power to recruit (he may only use this once)
If the new Sith Lord is killed, any Apprentice recruited by the new Sith Lord (i.e. the first Apprentice) may take one night to learn one new power:
power to kill
For example, Alf is the original Sith Lord. He registers as Padawan throughout.
On night 1, he may recruit, kill or do nothing.
He decides to recruit Bob. However Bob is the Doctor, so the attempt fails and Bob is told someone tried to recruit him.
On night 2 Alf recruits Charlie as his Apprentice. N.B. Charlie now registers as Sith.
On night 3 Alf kills a Padawan.
On day 4 Alf is lynched. Charlie is now the new Sith Lord (but with no current powers).
On night 5, Charlie decides to learn how to recruit.
On night 6, Charlie decides to recruit Dave. However Dave is a robot-owner, so the other robot-owners are alerted that one of them has been recruited. Dave now registers as Sith throughout.
On day 7, Charlie is lynched.
On night 7, Dave decides to learn how to kill (the only power he can learn).
On night 8, Dave makes a kill.
My first thoughts when I read this setup and then this idea was why not go with that?
Instead of the Sith as Mafia, make the Sith Duo a separate group. Same with the Jedi (have them be maybe either 2 or 3 at most).
The Jedi are more so like Mason FBI Players (Bah, there isn’t a good definition of the role). Basically it’s this: An FBI player is a Pro-Town Cop that gets a result of the Serial Killer (or whatever 3rd party role) or Not. and that’s it. He can’t tell town vs. scum. He’s only designed to find the SK, and when he finds him he kills the SK, and becomes a normal Townie.
So why not have that mechanism for the Game:
Have Rebels vs. Empire but have it be a fully balanced game with ONLY military roles. Cops and such can be specialized soldiers.
However, to add to the mix: have the Sith duo act as a specialized SK Duo with its own goals (perhaps killing off the jedis). Meanwhile you have a weakned group of Jedi’s that act as Masons, maybe with a head Jedi that has the power to kill 2-3x at most or something limiting them to give them the excuse of the extra troops).
And their win condition is ALSO outside of the Rebel/Empire issue- they must root out the Sith Duo and kill them.
So it’s basically 2 games being played at once: Rebels vs. Empire Mafia, and SK duo vs. Jedi Mason Duels.
To make it EVEN more complex, you could have the game itself of Mafia (Rebels and Empire) HINGE on the other’s wins: Ie: rebels can’t win w/o Jedi’s winning, and Empire can’t win without Sith Winning.
IN this sort of a setup there is not a Town. There Are instead TWO TOWNS with its own roles/flavor/etc.
EACH PLAYING MAFIA against each other. Pretty crafty, eh?
Being VERY VERY busy sadly. (In august I start med school).
Which may mean I’d be free to talk but not Play or Mod as much… So you may be in luck for just ideas and such. I’ll prolly stop by here and there to say hello and all, but I certainly won’t be able to keep up my doping to these current levels sadly.
I’d like to see a Simpsons based game. Anyone have any thoughts?
I think Bart and Lisa would be an investigative duo. Together they make a good team, but invididually, Lisa is better than Bart. Individually, if Lisa investigates a player she’s 75% accurate, Bart is 25% accurate. If they both investigate the same player on the same night they’re 100% accurate.
Or two Doctors, Dr. Nick and Dr. Hibbert, one good one bad.
Bad guys could be Burns, Smithers and ??? (Patty and Selma?)
Sideshow Bob should be a Serial Killer, with a win condition that Bart must be dead.
Chief Wiggum would have to be a Naive Cop.’
Lenny and Karl would be Masons (stone cutters)
Duff Man would be the Role Blocker
Rather than Patty and Selma, I think Kang and Kodos would be much better choices. You could even swing a reason why Burns would be aiding the aliens in their invasion of earth. You can fill out any remaining scum goons with other aliens.
Alternately, there’s always the Springfield mafia themselves (i.e. Fat Tony and his goons) as the scum element.
I was also thinking the Bullies (i.e. Jimbo, Dolph, and Kearney) could be a good mason group with Nelson Muntz as their head.
But with a big theme game like that you need to be able to prevent the mass name claim from giving the game away. *
That is more of less my problem with the Jedi mafia game Roosh proposes too. I can’t see how you make it balance with what are effectivly 2 opposing mason groups playing the real game, and two groups of what are effectivly cannon fodder.
I think there is a good idea in there though. I have been trying to figure out how to make something similar work since M2 finished, but I can’t figure out how to make it happen without forcing a bunch of totally useless players into the mix.
*I would make Kang and Kodos the masons, put Patty and Selma on opposite teams and make them “starcrossed lovers” (one dies the other goes too) make Dr. Nick’s player only think he is a doctor (he has no real power, but the player is told he has power.) and have the scum as a whole consist of a group of people trying to oust fat Tony and his boys from power. Fat Tony is a Miller. You can make Superintendant Chalmers the Boss, Patty is in there, maybe Apu as a scum role blocker or investigator. Flanders is obviously the SK. NO ONE plays as any Homer, Marge, etc. They are saved for use in the color.
There is a lot of good stuff there, for a huge insane game actually.
