Design & discussion

Pedro

The Last Airbender is actually a great movie
This is my first time on this side of the conversation, please be kind to our game

ZigzagTepidImago-max-1mb.gif
 

Swamped

Dazzling Mafia Queen
Let me clarify the strongman doctor, does that role only protect against strongman (well in this case strongwoman) kills? So if the doctor targets someone who is killed regularly, the protection won't work?

And regarding the neutral role - If she chooses a Fire member as a target, they won't die right? Also, I think the neutral may be more likely to choose mafia members given the higher proportion of Fire in the mafia team. I'll think about if that's alright.
 

Pedro

The Last Airbender is actually a great movie
Let me clarify the strongman doctor, does that role only protect against strongman (well in this case strongwoman) kills? So if the doctor targets someone who is killed regularly, the protection won't work?

Yup, it's a specific counter to the Strongwoman. It won't protect a player from a regular NK, or the neutral's killing ability.

And regarding the neutral role - If she chooses a Fire member as a target, they won't die right?

If Hama targets a Fire member, the Fire member will die.
If she chooses an Air/Water/Earth member, she redirects that member's actions to another target.

Also, I think the neutral may be more likely to choose mafia members given the higher proportion of Fire in the mafia team. I'll think about if that's alright.

How? of the 7 Fire members 4 belong to Town, so I think it's more likely for her to hit Town instead.
 
Alright, some thoughts:

There's 19 players other than Hama. There's 7 Firebenders. That means Hama has between a 6/18 = ~33% and a 7/18 = ~39% chance of hitting a fire bender on their first night depending who got lynched on D1. On the second night it's complicated. Assuming they didn't hit a fire bender on N1 then there'll be 16 players left, and anywhere between 4 and 7 fire benders among them, widening the range to between ~25% and ~44%. That sounds fine by me considering they have to kill 2 of them.

What happens if all fire benders die and Hama is still alive, or there's 1 left but Hama wasn't able to kill any of them? Shouldn't they gain an alt-win condition in that scenario? Pretty unlikely, but it could happen.

How will Ozai's secret vote work in practice? Will they send you a PM with the secret vote? We could figure out if there's something we can do on the vote tool to make it show that vote.

The way Aang's power is phrased is confusing me. It says they can "Once per game during a day, permanently turn a player's role into vanilla". Does this mean the command is submitted during a day phase (so it's not a night phase) and the vanilla role is kept by the target for the rest of the game?

Town has a ton of protective roles but very few offensive roles (it looks like they will never be the source of NKs) making Katara's reviver, Yue's Innocent Spirit and Iroh's Strongman Doctor quite powerful IMO (even though in Yue's case they had to have been lynched first :P). At first glance, I'd say the game is slightly skewed towards town? Aang's power is really good (though also potentially anti-town, same for Zuko's). I'd like to hear your thoughts on the matter.
 

Sawneeks

little green dog
Alright, some thoughts:

There's 19 players other than Hama. There's 7 Firebenders. That means Hama has between a 6/18 = ~33% and a 7/18 = ~39% chance of hitting a fire bender on their first night depending who got lynched on D1. On the second night it's complicated. Assuming they didn't hit a fire bender on N1 then there'll be 16 players left, and anywhere between 4 and 7 fire benders among them, widening the range to between ~25% and ~44%. That sounds fine by me considering they have to kill 2 of them.

What happens if all fire benders die and Hama is still alive, or there's 1 left but Hama wasn't able to kill any of them? Shouldn't they gain an alt-win condition in that scenario? Pretty unlikely, but it could happen.

Hmm, we can add in an alt-win condition. Like you said it's highly unlikely to happen but hey, it's better safe than sorry. :p

How will Ozai's secret vote work in practice? Will they send you a PM with the secret vote? We could figure out if there's something we can do on the vote tool to make it show that vote.

They would send a PM stating where they are placing their secret vote. They will not be able to have their normal vote AND the secret vote on the same person, but they can split it up. The vote, which will show up as 'The Phoenix King' on the final vote count, won't show up until the Day Phase is over. Which is why it's only allowed to activate when a Player is one vote away from being lynched.

The way Aang's power is phrased is confusing me. It says they can "Once per game during a day, permanently turn a player's role into vanilla". Does this mean the command is submitted during a day phase (so it's not a night phase) and the vanilla role is kept by the target for the rest of the game?

Exactly. Unsure if you have seen the show itself or not, but Aang can remove someone's power permanently although it leaves him extremely vulnerable when he does that (hence the voteless + no NK protection). I'll have to talk to Pedro again but we originally wanted it to be announced that 'The Avatar has entered the Avatar State' to be announced when they used that power, making it very risky for them but with a potential for a huge payout.

Town has a ton of protective roles but very few offensive roles (it looks like they will never be the source of NKs) making Katara's reviver, Yue's Innocent Spirit and Iroh's Strongman Doctor quite powerful IMO (even though in Yue's case they had to have been lynched first :P). At first glance, I'd say the game is slightly skewed towards town? Aang's power is really good (though also potentially anti-town, same for Zuko's). I'd like to hear your thoughts on the matter.

It's something we have discussed too. :x

Town being defensive over Scum's overly offensive roles was the design we were going for but Town is a bit skewed in their favor. The problem is it's so swingy since Aang can hit a Townie, Yue can be NKed, and Iroh can protect someone but still fail if it's a normal NK and not Strong. I'm honestly 50/50 on how it's currently set for Town but really unsure on where or what to change.
 
Yeah, I'd definitely call it swingy. What I'd worry the most about is, it seems relatively balanced at first, but then it can easily be "broken" by Aang getting lucky/unlucky. On the other hand scum does have unlimited strongwoman kills, which would also feel overpowered to me in a regular game.

About Town's lack of offensive roles: Doesn't this make Katara's reviver super powerful, since NK targets will very rarely not be town? For there to be an actual risk of making a bad decision with Katara, Hama would need to be targeting a Mafia Fire Bender, which is a 3 in 19 = ~15% chance to begin with.
 

Pedro

The Last Airbender is actually a great movie
Swampie was replaced by L_P as this game's reviewer.

me and neeks couldn't find time to change the setup to something more balanced, but once we do we'll post an update here.
 

Sawneeks

little green dog
@Fireblend @Lone_Prodigy

We updated a few things that could use your input:

1. Toph is no longer a Bodyguard, she is now a Tracker.
2. Katara is no longer a Reviver, she is now a Doctor.
3. Iroh has become an Ordinary
4. Earth King has been replaced by Dock/Xu/Bushi to add another Fire Nation member to Town.
5. Hama now has an alt. win con to become a Survivor in the case all Fire Nation members die before she can complete her win con.

Couple of questions. We're debating making Hama's win con into killing 3 Fire Nation members instead of 2 since the Fire Nation makes up so much of the game, however we're worried that's still too many kills. Should we keep it at 2? Toph being a Tracker is due to keeping Azula as an unlimited Strongwoman. If Azula become an x-shot Strongwoman we'd change Toph to a Motion Detector. Given Town has little to combat a Strongwoman....should we nerf her a bit? Or keep her as-is since Town still has an Innocent, now a Tracker, and a Vanillaizer.

Updated doc is here, it's the second tab titled 'v2.0'
 
On Hama:
On N1 there will be 7-8 Fire nation members out of 18 players depending on who gets lynched D1, so that's 39%-44%. Those are some good odds I think. For N2 things might get a bit trickier depending on who gets lynched; worst case scenario being 4 of 15 (2 lynched, 1 night killed, 1 puppetmastered') and best case scenario being still 8 (none dead) so anywhere between 26% and 50%. The 26% scenario is very unlikely, I would say probability is a bit tilted towards it retaining a similar distribution to the first night's odds. I guess, if I were to make it more difficult I wouldn't add more kills but maybe force a recharge night in-between successful kills, or something like that. It could prove more frustrating to play though and less elegant, it might be worth keeping as is. I'm ok with the alt win condition.

On Azula:

Dunno how I feel about unlimited strongwoman. It feels hard to balance to me, but if you think the tracker+innocent is good enough counterweight for town I'll allow it. I want to hear @Lone_Prodigy 's thoughts on it first though. Personally I think I would turn it into an x-shots role. The vanillaizer is what worries me though, it can very easily throw a wrench into either side's balance and I don't see it as a pro-town role at all since it can be so volatile. It's still a permanent vanillaizer, right? I think it might also be a bit out of place in a game with relatively few roles? Again, personal opinion, I don't know if I'd use the power at all if I was playing and had been given that role lol.
 

Lone_Prodigy

Am I at 10 posts yet?
Sorry for the delay. I'm on a train so it seems appropriate to review this.

What happens if the neutral controls the fire mafia who kills a fire townie? Control resolves first? Win in one night?

Is the innocent spirit an innocent child?

Seems like the only advantage town has is in numbers. Gladiator (one time use?) has good odds of hitting town. Doctor is useless with unlimited strong kills. Tracker doesn't have a lot of positive targets. Vanillizer doesn't seem that strong since most PRs aren't terribly useful.

Scum cop isn't that useful but makes a great fake claim, and hammer guy is situational but can lead to some voting shenanigans.

Looking at this, I can see the neutral winning early and town eating itself.
 

Pedro

The Last Airbender is actually a great movie
Sorry for the delay. I'm on a train so it seems appropriate to review this.

What happens if the neutral controls the fire mafia who kills a fire townie? Control resolves first? Win in one night?

Control resolves first, so the Townie would remain alive.

Is the innocent spirit an innocent child?

Nope, that's just the name of the role. The default name for this kind of role is Virgin, but that's not a good name.

Seems like the only advantage town has is in numbers. Gladiator (one time use?) has good odds of hitting town. Doctor is useless with unlimited strong kills. Tracker doesn't have a lot of positive targets. Vanillizer doesn't seem that strong since most PRs aren't terribly useful.

I clarified that the Gladiator is an one-time use; forgot about that, thanks. Since Febe saw the same thing, I'd totally be okay with limiting the number of strong kills, say 3 shots?

---

On the Neutral's win con: Yeah, it's not particularly a difficult one as it is, but increasing the number of targets she needs to hit or putting a recharging night between commands would make it too hard/bothersome, to me. That and I'm biased in that I dislike neutral win conditions that look unreachable.
 

Lone_Prodigy

Am I at 10 posts yet?
With the lack of extra kills (neutral kills are random) the game will be slower and give the neutral more time to win. Unless they get unlucky (tracked, copped) it shouldn't be too hard for them to win.

I would suggest limiting the strong kills and role cop checks, and increasing the neutral win con to 3. Otherwise I think it's fairly balanced.
 

Pedro

The Last Airbender is actually a great movie
Ok! neeks is away for the weekend so we'll make adjustments on Monday and update you two. Thanks for the suggestions, L_P!
 

Sawneeks

little green dog
Changed it to:

2-shot Scum Role Cop
3-shot Scum Strongman

Makes it so at least Scum have to shoot blindly once with the Strongman shot.

Also a bit unsure on the Neutral's wincon being 3. With Scum overwhelmingly being Fire Nation I worry that they will target them more often than Town. The Neutral is already fairly strong in the fact that they control other Player's actions on top of killing people so leaving it at 2 feels a bit more fair. There's also the chance that the Neutral just doesn't hit Fire Nation until later too.

So. I don't know. I see the argument for 3 over 2 but I worry that's too much.
 

Lone_Prodigy

Am I at 10 posts yet?
The way I see it, the best case scenario is the neutral winning after N2, which is awfully fast for a neutral meeting their win con.
 

Pedro

The Last Airbender is actually a great movie
Febe did the math above, at best it's a 22% chance (44% * 50%) of hitting 2 Fire players night after night. For all the reasons we've already said, I don't mind those odds and wouldn't want to increase the requirement to 3.
 

Pedro

The Last Airbender is actually a great movie
@Fireblend @Lone_Prodigy the discussion kind of died, but it seems you two are mostly okay with the design. Would you two be willing to approve it or would you want further changes to it?
 

Pedro

The Last Airbender is actually a great movie
okay, then all that's left is for you to read our role pms and see if they are correct \o/
 

Pedro

The Last Airbender is actually a great movie
\o/\o/\o/

Thank you both!! I'll let people know that this design is finished.

aaa, i'm happy
 

Pedro

The Last Airbender is actually a great movie
For whoever gets here to re-review our game!:

We're thinking of removing Katara, the Town Doctor, and Azula, the Mafia Strongwoman, plus an Earth Kingdom Vanilla Townie and a Fire Nation Vanilla Townie, bringing the game down to 16 players.

(then we'd rename a Water Tribe VT "Katara" and the Mafia Goon "Azula", because we love those characters and want to keep them in the game if only as flavor, but in terms of *design* the change above is the one we want to make)
 

Pedro

The Last Airbender is actually a great movie
When it comes to the Neutral and its wincon to kill 2 Fire Nation members:

In the design as it is, there are 7 Fire Nation roles out of 19 possible targets for the Neutral, giving it a 36% chance of a hit.
After the change suggested, there will be 5 out of 15 possible targets, 33.3% chance. It will be a little lower, but when you consider that Mafia will have one fewer member and thus the Neutral will have an easier time wiping their numbers out, I think it's fair.
 
These seem fine to me. I can't decide whether town or scum gets hit the hardest by the reduction, which I guess is a good sign?
 
Top Bottom