Easy Allies MAFIA

[Fanto]

Ok, here we go!

So, just to start, I went and compiled a bunch of the ideas that we had and then put down just some random brainstorming questions/thoughts that we can probably go over to start nailing things down further and get it looking more like a game.

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25 Players – A nice full-sized game, probably aiming for Unusual/Bastardish.

19 Town – Vanilla/PR split? Cop? Doctor? Vig? X-Shots? Odd/Even? Weak versions? How Bastard do we want to go with some roles? Day powers?

5 Scum – PRs? Counters? Fake show/event role?

1 Neutral – Win con? Unique, or existing role?

Daily events based on EZA shows.

Examples:
Betting Special = Placing bets to win prizes.

Hall of Greats = Thunderdome.

Mysterious Monsters = Trivia questions with prizes.

Easy Update = Some bastard-ass shit.

Alignments with different shows to choose who participates, similar to religion mechanic from GoT. Plenty of room for brainstorming there still though.

Flavor ideas? New studio? Allies as Town PRs? Alter egos (Ultima Brad, Cold Blooded, etc.) as Scum team? Flavor for Vanillas?

 

[Fanto]

If we did the Allies as the Town PRs for flavor, then that would be 9 PRs and 10 Vanilla. If we add in Amanda as an ally as well, which we probably should, that would be 10 PRs and 9 Vanilla.

A Neutral can easily be Sophie, as a dog she is not concerned with the problems of the Town and/or the Mafia. What would be a fun Neutral role to have here? Something unique maybe?

For the Scum team, I suppose it will depend on what PRs we decide to pick out for Town in terms of what they would need to counter them with, and then what else would feel balanced there for them I guess.

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Here's a list of all the shows, I think that's all of them at least, so we can brainstorm any others that might make for good events to add to the list:

Easy Allies Podcast - Pop-Tarts and Toaster Strudels, or one of the many other podcast games, we can probably get something from there.
Frame Trap
Friend Code
Easy Update - This can definitely be something funny and/or unexpected.
Betting Special - Maybe a night time event, place bets at night and then win a prize at the start of the day?
Huber Syndrome
Tabletop Escapades - Random D&D adventure during the middle of a game? Would be hilarious but I don't know how it would work lol.
Fiasconauts
Top 10s - I feel like there is room to do something with this and forcing people to make read lists lol.
Spoiler Mode - This could have some good Bastard potential lol.
Trailer Jones
Reaction Shots
The Hall of Greats - Gotta be a Thunderdome day.
The Busted Trifecta
Don’s Discount Gaming
Game Sleuth
Box Peek - There has to be some way we can incorporate Box Peek into this lol.
Mysterious Monsters - Maybe similar to bets, pose some trivia questions at night, whoever gets the most correct wins a prize?

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That's about where I am for now. I can start throwing out some role ideas and stuff, but it might be best to start nailing down some more of these high level type things first? I don't know.

 

[melonrabbit]

Were we thinking the show events should occur during the days only or at night also? Because it might be interesting to have some events go during the night phases as well.

Also Peek Box could work as kinda of a "live" mafia as bit of a Thunderdome to see who peeks first.

 

[melonrabbit]

Definitely think Amanda is an ally.

Most important question I can think of at the moment is -- can we use Don bucks?

 

[Fanto]

Yeah I think having both day and night events would be cool. We can have things like the game show at night and have people PM their answers, then at the start of the following day maybe the winner gets a Day Vig shot or something haha.

Yeah, with Amanda as an ally then we have 10 of them for flavor and/or PR purposes.

Don Bucks can probably be incorporated somehow lol. Maybe we can have the players who participate in the Betting Special bet Don Bucks on game-related things, and whoever wins the most back gets a prize.

Like, if we want to lean into Bastard style mechanics for it, we can tell them at night that they can bet on who will be lynched during the day, and then give them odds on how likely it is each person is lynched, so they'll win more for convincing people to get rid of someone who would be hard to lynch normally lmao.

 

[melonrabbit]

Gambling on who town lynches sounds like it could lead to an exciting time :D

How Bastard are we leaning? Like is there a tanner?

 

[Fanto]

What is a Tanner again?

I'm thinking we can lean at least towards giving out, maybe not useless, but weird, uncommon, and/or misleading roles to Town, and keeping some of the more useful powers tucked away as prizes for winning the events. So maybe Town has like a Miller or a Sleepwalker, with no Investigator or Motion Detector, but they can win an Alignment Cop or Tracker/Watcher shot from an event?

And then I still think the idea of giving a Scum player a role that introduces a bogus event into the game that gives out fake powers as prizes would be funny, or does something just blatantly anti-Town for a day lol.

Basically, anytime we might start to think "Nah, that would be kind of Bastard..." we could instead think "Yeah, that would be kind of Bastard!" lol.

 

[melonrabbit]

Tanner(s) win by getting lynched.

 

[melonrabbit]

I should clarify that I was mainly joking.

 

[Fanto]

Ah yeah lol, probably no Tanners in this game.

But like I said, I think it would be interesting to give uncommon or misleading roles to Town, while keeping the really useful stuff as prizes for the events. Like, maybe Town just doesn't have an investigator, but investigation abilities can be won from the events. But of course, Scum can win events too, so they can also obtain these shots and keep them away from Town.

Thinking a bit more, I wonder how many total events we would want in the game? 25 players is going to be a decently long game unless we add in some extra kills. If I remember right, GoT stopped doing the religion events after like D5 or D6 I think? So maybe we could do something similar where we have enough to keep it going through the start and the mid-game, but then keep them out of the end-game.

 

[melonrabbit]

Probably smart. We could opt to have a finale event towards the end game. But yeah, I'm thinking events should be more front loaded.

... There is also the possibility that scum choose to hold their fake event towards late game and so there might be an event regardless.

 

[Fanto]

Hmm, so looking at the list of shows, maybe we can have 5 events? 3 day time ones and 2 night time ones maybe. I'm thinking like,
Day Events: EZA Podcast, Hall of Greats, Box Peek
Night Events: Betting Special, Trivia Game Show

With 25 players, we can have 5 players aligned to each event. Maybe this is a way to work in the Neutral's win condition? Maybe they have to win at Box Peek? Lol.

And then Scum can have a 6th bonus event that they can introduce at any time, it will just move to the front of the order or come in after all the others have finished, it's up to them. This should be Easy Update, and it should just be fucking wild lol.

 

[Fanto]

And then I think for Day events, the winner should receive a Night power right at the end of the day that they can use that night. And for the Night events, the winner should receive a Day power at the start of the day.

 

[Fanto]

I'm wondering how the Day events can go though, if it should be like a riddle that someone will be rewarded for figuring out. Because the Night Events can just be like guessing games or something where they send us PMs with their answers. Day Events it might be harder to figure out a "winner" though.

Hmmm... Maybe prizes only for the Night events? Day Events are more just things that shake up the normal routine a bit? Maybe we should have another Night event then, so it's 3 Day events and 3 Night events?

 

[melonrabbit]

This should be Easy Update, and it should just be fucking wild lol.

Exactly my thinking. Ian embodies that chaos.

Events could be riddles or perhaps even posting requirements or minigames. The shows should be what is dictating flavor and shaping the game for an given phase.

 

[Fanto]

One idea I thought of is that maybe we could have the real events on odd days/nights, and then only allow the fake event to be used on an even day.

So the normal schedule would be like, events on D1/N1, D3/N3, and D5/N5. But then the Scum role can deploy their fake event on D2, D4, D6, D8, or as far as it goes.

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Another idea I had was that maybe for the D1 event, we could do a Pop-Tarts and Toaster Strudels thing, where everyone votes for someone to be their Pop-Tart, which means they want them to be protected from the kill on N1, and then vote for someone else to be their Toaster Strudel, which is the normal vote for the day. Whoever gets the most votes for each is either protected for the night or lynched, respectively.

 

[Fanto]

Ok, big post coming up here.

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So, if we wanted to try nailing some things down here:

I think it's a good idea to do the odd day/night events. It gives some breathing room for the game so it isn't just constantly events (and so we don't have to think up a ton of different ones lol). It also gives Scum a spot to use their fake Event on an even day where it won't interfere with any of our plans, and will also be a hint to Town that the event might not be on the up and up lol.

I don't know if this will work as well with the show alignment idea unfortunately, so maybe put that one on the back burner for now and see how this looks without that idea.

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So thinking of what events could be used for Days and Nights, based on things we've discussed so far...

D1: EZA Podcast (Poptarts and Toaster Strudels) - Players will vote for their Pop-Tart (who they want to protect on N1 from kills) and their Toaster Strudel (their normal lynch vote).
N1: Mysterious Monsters (Trivia) - Players will be presented with a to-be-determined number of EZA related trivia questions at night. They will PM their answers to us, and whoever gets the most right wins a prize.

D3: Hall of Greats - Thunderdome day, players can only vote for the people we say they can vote for. We'll either randomly select players from the whole group, or else maybe put our thumb on the scale and make sure there's at least 1 Scum in the mix, up to us lol.
N3: Betting Special - Players will place a bet on who they believe will be lynched on the following day. The higher the odds on their particular player, the better the prize they receive if they get lynched. (Or at least, that's what we tell them lol #BastardThoughts)

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For the final two on D5 and N5 in this version, we'd probably need to brainstorm a bit more here.

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Box Peek... What if we did something just ridiculous for this lol, hang with me for a moment here while I go for something wild.

Players will vote for two players, similar to the Pop-Tart/Toaster Strudel day, but they will instead be nominating two players to participate in a game of Box Peek. At the end of the day, or I suppose the twilight phase actually, the two players with the most votes will compete in a game of Box Peek within the thread. Whoever loses is lynched.

How do you play Box Peek on a forum, you ask? Simple.

The rules of Box Peek are that once the players are in their boxes, then they need to poke their head out and "peek" at the other player before they can "peek" back at them.

So, ResetEra has a 30-second limit on how often one can make a post. If one of the players can post twice in a row before the other can make a post, then they will win. HOWEVER, if the other player is able to post before the other's 30 second time limit is up, then they will win instead. The phase will continue until one of them has won, so when the first post is made matters not, it can all be a war of attrition lol.

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For the final night event I'm not sure yet, I think I just spent all my creative energy thinking of how to play Box Peek on a forum within a game of Mafia lol.

But that's what I've got for now, let me know what you think of all that.

 

[melonrabbit]

I guess I'm wondering in terms of balance is having the scum event appear on an even day too much of a red flag that it is a fake? Maybe it would be easier if they subbed out an event? Not sure. Just some thoughts.

Peek Box sounds in line with the vague idea I had only now with actual rules. Hella rules.

Also is Poscasting voting and Betting Special to similar or would it read as confusing to players? I realize they don't service the same function but I'm wondering if that will be as obvious to players.

Finally random idea. Let me know if it is too over the top.

Instead of just handing out prizes what if we had a bank and a list of items and players got Don Bucks and were able to purchae things. We'd only have one of X item (but wouldn't update the list in the main thread) and so if you had enough Don Bucks you could escape lynch

Yeah that's probably too much. Blame my morning brain.

Oh last thing for now - should we for flavor refer to lynches as Trials?

 

[Fanto]

Hmm, yeah probably worth thinking about the scum event more there, it would be a bit obvious if it was used past D2. It might make more sense to have them replace one yeah.

Yeah, we can still think up something else for the Betting Special, perhaps relating more to your idea which I will touch on below.

Trial being used instead of lynch sounds good to me, yeah.

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I do not think that idea is too over the top at all lol. We can definitely go down that road and see where it takes us. This is exactly the kind of wild stuff I want to have in this game!

One idea that just came to me while thinking about it: What if we made a list of bets for everyone to wager on pre-game, like Bosman and Huber do, but had them be about things that might happen in the game instead of things that might happen at a press conference?

Here's some examples of possible bets:
On what Day/Night will Town hit Scum for the first time?
How many total posts will be made on D1?
Will a Cop reveal themself?

 

[Fanto]

Um, weird. I just made a post in here, but it says it is "awaiting moderator approval"? I've never seen that before...

Hopefully it goes through this time?

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Hmm, yeah probably worth thinking about the scum event more there, it would be a bit obvious if it was used past D2. It might make more sense to have them replace one yeah.

Yeah, we can still think up something else for the Betting Special, perhaps relating more to your idea which I will touch on below.

Trial being used instead of lynch sounds good to me, yeah.

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I do not think that idea is too over the top at all lol. We can definitely go down that road and see where it takes us. This is exactly the kind of wild stuff I want to have in this game!

One idea that just came to me while thinking about it: What if we made a list of bets for everyone to wager on pre-game, like Bosman and Huber do, but had them be about things that might happen in the game instead of things that might happen at a press conference?

Here's some examples of possible bets:
On what Day/Night will Town hit Scum for the first time?
How many total posts will be made on D1?
Will a Cop reveal themself?

 

[Fanto]

Just had a thought that scum's Easy Update event could maybe be a posting restriction of some kind...

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Otherwise, I've just been thinking more about how to structure the events.

I'm currently thinking through some stuff here below, so let me know what you think, if it's even possible to do, and if we could get it through review, because it is kind of out there lol.

We could maybe do some fun "Night 0" kind of stuff, where prior to D1 actually starting, we "begin" the game by posting a schedule that shows everyone what days/nights different events will be coming out, and then also start up the Betting Special and give out Don Bucks, telling everyone they can either spend their Don Bucks now on Powers from the Store (cheap ones won't be very good though) or they can bet their Don Bucks on various things that we think of, and then win back enough to buy better prizes from the Store on later days. We post all of this info in the thread for everyone to see, but they have to PM us with their bets and/or items they want to purchase. We can have this "Night 0" play out for 24 hours and then start up D1. We wouldn't allow anyone to use their powers on N0 though, and no kill from the mafia either, it's just a pre-game event basically.

 

[melonrabbit]

Just had a thought that scum's Easy Update event could maybe be a posting restriction of some kind...

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Otherwise, I've just been thinking more about how to structure the events.

I'm currently thinking through some stuff here below, so let me know what you think, if it's even possible to do, and if we could get it through review, because it is kind of out there lol.

We could maybe do some fun "Night 0" kind of stuff, where prior to D1 actually starting, we "begin" the game by posting a schedule that shows everyone what days/nights different events will be coming out, and then also start up the Betting Special and give out Don Bucks, telling everyone they can either spend their Don Bucks now on Powers from the Store (cheap ones won't be very good though) or they can bet their Don Bucks on various things that we think of, and then win back enough to buy better prizes from the Store on later days. We post all of this info in the thread for everyone to see, but they have to PM us with their bets and/or items they want to purchase. We can have this "Night 0" play out for 24 hours and then start up D1. We wouldn't allow anyone to use their powers on N0 though, and no kill from the mafia either, it's just a pre-game event basically.

Idk why but I always felt that Easy Update would be a post restriction kindof power. So we are on the same page there. Was leaning towards either gif only posts or having a musical element like players could only post in song lyrics or something.

Would we be doing this n0 stuff in the main thread? It would be interesting to have a public n0. Would definitely throw players off a bit.

I definitely enjoy having some fun with players n0 lol

As I said on discord, I'm working on a bank/item sheet. Have more to share tonight/tomorrow when not under work crunch.

 

[Fanto]

or having a musical element like players could only post in song lyrics or something.

This is exactly what I was thinking of at first lol. Like, maybe have it say something like "Your posts must contain at least one verse and one chorus" lol.

And yeah, I was picturing the N0 stuff happening in the main thread. Basically we would just suddenly start the game with N0 once we got all the Role PMs confirmed instead of posting a normal D1 start timer, that's how I'm picturing it working for now at least.

I'll try to put together some more stuff with the events while you work on the item list. This game is already nuts lol I love it.

 

[Fanto]

Ok, so here's what I've got so far. I'm working with the idea of only doing events during the day right now just to see how this looks, because I think that makes a lot of sense now with the N0 stuff that we've thought of.

(I can probably get this all into a spreadsheet later too)

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N0: Betting Special/Don Bucks, as described above.

D1: EZA Podcast - Players vote for their Pop-Tart (who they want to be protected for the night) and their Toaster Strudel (who they want to vote out of the game)

D2: Mysterious Monsters - Players will be given EZA-related trivia questions and will be rewarded with Don Bucks for correct answers.

D3: Hall of Greats - X amount of random players will be put into a Thunderdome.

D4: ??? - I think we should insert another way to get Don Bucks here, like the Trivia show.

D5: Box Peek - The two players with the most votes at EoD will compete in a game of Box Peek, winner stays, loser goes.

Easy Update can override any of these events, and the rest will be pushed back a day. So the furthest the events can continue would be D6, after that they are over since it will be getting towards end-game at that point.

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Ok, and then I also put together a flavor list of the Allies as the Town PRs, then I figure Vanillas can just be "EZA Fans", and of course the alter egos for the Scum team. Rainy Day Ian with the Easy Update role, of course lol.

Town:
Daniel Bloodworth
Kyle Bosman
Don Casanova
Michael Damiani
Bradley Ellis
Michael Huber
Ian Hinck
Brandon Jones
Ben Moore
Amanda Troop
+ 9 EZA Fans (Vanillas)

Mafia:
Ultima Brad
Brand Manager
Benzilla
Rainy Day Ian (Easy Update Event)
Cold Blooded

Neutral:
Sophie

 

[melonrabbit]

Ok, so here's what I've got so far. I'm working with the idea of only doing events during the day right now just to see how this looks, because I think that makes a lot of sense now with the N0 stuff that we've thought of.

(I can probably get this all into a spreadsheet later too)

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N0: Betting Special/Don Bucks, as described above.

D1: EZA Podcast - Players vote for their Pop-Tart (who they want to be protected for the night) and their Toaster Strudel (who they want to vote out of the game)

D2: Mysterious Monsters - Players will be given EZA-related trivia questions and will be rewarded with Don Bucks for correct answers.

D3: Hall of Greats - X amount of random players will be put into a Thunderdome.

D4: ??? - I think we should insert another way to get Don Bucks here, like the Trivia show.

D5: Box Peek - The two players with the most votes at EoD will compete in a game of Box Peek, winner stays, loser goes.

Easy Update can override any of these events, and the rest will be pushed back a day. So the furthest the events can continue would be D6, after that they are over since it will be getting towards end-game at that point.

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Ok, and then I also put together a flavor list of the Allies as the Town PRs, then I figure Vanillas can just be "EZA Fans", and of course the alter egos for the Scum team. Rainy Day Ian with the Easy Update role, of course lol.

Town:
Daniel Bloodworth
Kyle Bosman
Don Casanova
Michael Damiani
Bradley Ellis
Michael Huber
Ian Hinck
Brandon Jones
Ben Moore
Amanda Troop
+ 9 EZA Fans (Vanillas)

Mafia:
Ultima Brad
Brand Manager
Benzilla
Rainy Day Ian (Easy Update Event)
Cold Blooded

Neutral:
Sophie

(I'll have a real reply after work, but the short of it is I approve of your words, sir)

 

[Fanto]

Hmm, I just thought of a kind of fun idea for Jones, Amanda, and Sophie, but it involves Sophie being Town instead of Neutral most likely.

What if Jones and Amanda are Lovers, but each night they can also use a "Check" command to try to find Sophie, who ran away from home! If they find her, then Sophie gets added to the Lovers Chat as well, but also becomes a Lover, so all three will be killed if one of them die. Sophie would probably just have some kind of random Bastard/garbage role at first and wouldn't know that she could be recruited as a Lover. Like, maybe she starts as a Dog Investigator, and each night she can check to see if someone else is a Dog lol.

Just a random thought, if we think of something fun for the Neutral role I'd probably be down for that instead, but this just came to me now haha.

 

[melonrabbit]

Hmm, I just thought of a kind of fun idea for Jones, Amanda, and Sophie, but it involves Sophie being Town instead of Neutral most likely.

What if Jones and Amanda are Lovers, but each night they can also use a "Check" command to try to find Sophie, who ran away from home! If they find her, then Sophie gets added to the Lovers Chat as well, but also becomes a Lover, so all three will be killed if one of them die. Sophie would probably just have some kind of random Bastard/garbage role at first and wouldn't know that she could be recruited as a Lover. Like, maybe she starts as a Dog Investigator, and each night she can check to see if someone else is a Dog lol.

Just a random thought, if we think of something fun for the Neutral role I'd probably be down for that instead, but this just came to me now haha.

Ooo. I really like that.

We could have Elyse be our neutral instead.

 

[Fanto]

Ok, so going back to this:

D4: ??? - I think we should insert another way to get Don Bucks here, like the Trivia show.

What if we had this be Don's Discount Day, based on the now retired Don's Discount Gaming series, and all of the items in the store are like, 50% off, or maybe even more, just in case people haven't been able to purchase some of the more expensive/better ones, this way we would give people a chance to be able to buy one with less Don Bucks.

Minor brainstorming session below on the other shows:

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Here's a list of the remaining shows that we haven't really brainstormed much for yet:
Frame Trap
Friend Code
Huber Syndrome
Tabletop Escapades
Fiasconauts
Top 10s
Spoiler Mode
Trailer Jones
Reaction Shots
The Busted Trifecta
Don’s Discount Gaming
Game Sleuth

Frame Trap has the "caught in a frame trap" game, which is usually just a gaming trivia thing that Ben does, so that's a bit too close to the trivia show.

Friend Code, I don't really watch, so I'm not sure if Damiani has a game/gimmick for this, I can maybe do some research there though.

Huber Syndrome, pure distilled hype in the form of a 10-20 minute video. I'm not sure what we could do for an event with that or how to win Don Bucks from it...

Tabletop Escapades, Dungeons & Dragons. This would be ridiculous if we could figure out a way to incorporate some kind of small D&D scenario into the game lol. Could easily reward Don Bucks, might be going too far though.

Fiasconauts, I'm not really familiar with too much, but I understand that it's a party game.

Top 10s, I feel like there is potential here for brainstorming, I'll maybe come back to this later.

Spoiler Mode, same as above, I feel like both of these could have some themes that we can translate to Mafia some how.

Trailer Jones, watching video game trailers and scoring them, not sure what to do with that.

Reaction Shots, Ian and Huber's movie podcast, I haven't really watched many episodes, I don't think they have any games/gimmicks though.

The Busted Trifecta, Don's amazing fictional horse racing series. Probably some good potential here to come up with something just because it's Don.

Don's Discount Gaming, see above.

Game Sleuth, eh, feels too broad since an episode can be about any game with a popular rumor that needs to be uncovered.

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So, out of that little session above, I would probably come down to going with Top 10s, Spoiler Mode, The Busted Trifecta, or Don's Discount Gaming for the other show we need. I'll try to brainstorm some more ideas on those first three and wait to hear what you think about the Don's Discount idea above.

 

[melonrabbit]

I've been thinking how best to incorporate some of the shows to events. For starters, I do like having a discount window for players to spend their Don Bucks. Definitely something we want to encourage for maximum fun.

I think that Fiasconauts is definitely almost un-translatable. And on a personal note, do do watch it. Some of the Allies best content. (Regina's Wedding is a showstopper - let me know if you need more recommendations)

Top 10s - I do have an idea for this. What if players had to blind submit to us their most likely to be scum (including themselves) and earn Don Bucks/points based on a correct reads. We wouldn't reveal individual player's 10 Tops. we would just publicly list who earned the most points. Scum does have a handicap in this game but if they aren't caution enough they risk ranking/scoring too high.

 

[melonrabbit]

^ the above might need some tweaking but that's the basic idea.

 

[Fanto]

Yes! I like this a lot actually lol. I had been thinking of something kind of similar for Top 10s as well, using read lists, but I hadn't quite figured out what to do yet.

I think it could work out almost exactly like you have it down actually.

For each Scum in a player's Top 10 list, they get X amount of Don Bucks. We don't publicly announce anyone's lists, or how many Don Bucks were rewarded to anyone, we just tell everyone who got the most Don Bucks. That seems pretty fair, and yeah Scum would maybe not want to be the ultimate winner because then their name gets put in the spotlight and people are going to wonder why they knew so many Scum members lol.

One issue I can maybe see is if Town just agrees to post all their lists in the thread, then they might be able to compare their earnings and maybe narrow things down too much? I suppose there's a way to mitigate that by changing the payouts depending on what spot in the Top 10 they are at, like having Scum at #1 is worth more than having Scum at #10?

Either way, yeah, I really like this idea lol. I'll pencil this in for D4, and then we can maybe figure out something else to do with Don's Discount Day, or maybe even that could be a PR or a prize or something? Hmm...

I'll try to get this all into a spreadsheet here soon just to organize things better. I can probably do that later tonight.

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And yes, I have heard Fiasconauts is great, I just haven't ever checked one out yet. I will watch the Regina's Wedding one while I make us a spreadsheet later. :D

 

[melonrabbit]

We should probably discuss if there is a penalty for someone that loses all their Don Bucks? Restricted posting? Game over seems almost too simple ... and kind.

This is a bastard game after all.

 

[Fanto]

Oh god, yes lol.

Hmm, just off the top of my head, we could have it so they can only make 10 posts a day, which would definitely fuck with most players lol.

We can probably think of something sillier than that though lol. I do agree there should definitely be stakes though, we can't just let people throw their hard-earned Don Bucks away lol.

 

[Fanto]

Ok, here's a spreadsheet I threw together quick.

The first page is the schedule of the events and info about them that we have so far, as well as a work-in-progress bet list that I thought of. You should be able to add in your item list to that page as well if you want.

The second page is the work-in-progress list of players/flavor names/alignments/roles that we have so far.

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Also, I just got through the setup portion of Regina's Wedding where they made their relationships and characters, and I have already laughed so much just imagining what is going to happen lol. Thanks for the recommendation haha. :D

 

[Fanto]

Ok, this would dramatically affect everything about this game, but thinking about what Elyse's Neutral role would be, I have to throw this idea out there...

What if Elyse is a Cult Leader and she can recruit the EZA Fans (Vanillas) to her Cult?

I would hate myself forever for putting a Cult in my game after what happened in MafiEra, but it just popped in there lol.

Otherwise, I would be fine with her being a Serial Killer of some kind, maybe a different win con than a traditional SK though.

If we were to do something specifically focused on this game, I could maybe see us brainstorming a Neutral role that is related to a particular event, or to the Don Bucks in some way as well, though they might need a backup win con of Survivor or something.

 

[melonrabbit]

I was actually leaning towards Elyse being a thief and having to successfully steal Don Bucks from players to "Cash Out" of the game.

Glad you are/were enjoying all that Fiasco can offer :)

 

[Fanto]

Oh god, I love that lol.

Would it be like, she starts with 0 Don Bucks and has to steal from other players, or would she still receive and be able to earn Don Bucks like everyone else?

I would kind of lean towards the former I think, where she starts with none and needs to steal a certain amount from other players in order to "Cash Out" haha. That would be a good twist where she's kind of working to an opposite goal of both the Town and Mafia, since they would both want to eventually spend their Don Bucks on items to help their team win, whereas Elyse can only win by gaining more Don Bucks.

 

[melonrabbit]

Yes, I think the role would start at zero. She wouldn't be able to earn Don Bucks but could spend them to add an extra bit of temptation. Should she steal or buy something from the bank to aid her against town and scum alike?

 

[melonrabbit]

We could call the role gambler?

 

[Fanto]

Yeah, I like that for sure, letting her still be able to buy things makes sense.

Not sure where to go from here really, we'll need to brainstorm some Town/Scum roles eventually, but we'll probably want to think about balancing them around the items in the store. Because if we're going to keep more powerful abilities in the store, then we probably don't need like a Cop or whatever for Town if they can buy Cop shots from the store instead, stuff like that. That's pretty much where my head is at right now I think.

 

[melonrabbit]

Yeah. Designing the store/items is the next logical step.

 

[Fanto]

I'm trying to think about how much Don Bucks different items should cost, as well as how many Don Bucks players should start with.

I can maybe think of a system where we start out by giving like 500 Don Bucks to each player (except Elyse) and then the cheaper items in the store each cost like 300 Don Bucks. That way they can only buy one item at most early on with their starting cash. Then we can have the more expensive items cost more than 500 Don Bucks, that way they can't be purchased until people have won/earned some more Don Bucks in the later days (and hopefully haven't had any stolen from them by Elyse).

I think something like that would probably work, where enough players on both Town and Scum will want to buy out the cheap items early and spend their Don Bucks, but other players might decide to use them for bets or save them and see if they can win more during events in later days so they can buy the expensive items instead.

In addition, putting my Bastard Hat on, we could have some bogus items in the store as well. Maybe like one of the cheap items is a cake, and we give it a description that makes it sound really cool, but what we don't mention is that the cake was poisoned and whoever buys it will die the night after they eat it lol. Something like that maybe haha.

 

[Fanto]

I just thought of an idea for a Scum role that involves Don Bucks.

So, one of the Scum players could maybe send "offers" to other players in exchange for giving them Don Bucks. Basically like a Black Market of items that don't do what they are supposed to do. This way we could keep the actual item store clean and full of real items to purchase, but at night players might be approached by someone who is offering them a deal they can't find on the normal store. Anyone who decides to go for it and buy something from the store will be not only giving over their hard earned Don Bucks to a Scum player, but will also be receiving a bogus item in exchange!

I call it: The Backdoor Shady Dealer.

 

[melonrabbit]

I just thought of an idea for a Scum role that involves Don Bucks.

So, one of the Scum players could maybe send "offers" to other players in exchange for giving them Don Bucks. Basically like a Black Market of items that don't do what they are supposed to do. This way we could keep the actual item store clean and full of real items to purchase, but at night players might be approached by someone who is offering them a deal they can't find on the normal store. Anyone who decides to go for it and buy something from the store will be not only giving over their hard earned Don Bucks to a Scum player, but will also be receiving a bogus item in exchange!

I call it: The Backdoor Shady Dealer.

I love it lol

I feel like this is something Huber can get behind. Also I suck for the delay. Forgive me.

 

[Fanto]

Yeah it's all good. I'm honestly fine with taking our time on this because it's going to be a pretty large and complicated game so it's probably best to make sure we're fully ready with it before it goes to review.

Obviously I'll be focused on running LiS for a little bit here now, but I'm down to figure out a time to brainstorm stuff after that's over. Really once we can brainstorm ideas for what powers to put in the store, I feel like we can just go nuts figuring out some fun (aka bastard) roles to dish out to the allies and the scum team haha.

 

[Fanto]

Ok, so I'm going to go ahead and brainstorm a bunch of abilities that I think we could sell as items in the store.

Also I can't remember, did we want to make it so they can only purchase items during the day, or can they purchase them only at night, or both?

For the record, I don't think we should explicitly say what the items will do, we'll just give them a hint based on the name of the item. So we'll probably want to come up with some special names for everything as well. We'll also probably want to make it so that there is a limited amount of some of the items. Like maybe for less-expensive ones there are 3 of each, and for the medium tier there are 2 of each, and then just 1 of each for the most expensive (and best) ones.

Also, I think it's a good idea to mix in some not-so-great ones with some good ones as well, just because it's Bastard lol.

All items will probably be 1-Shot too.


Double Vote
Triple Vote
Bulletproof Vest
Commuter
Miller (So they will return Not Town if they are investigated the following night after purchasing the item)
Flavor Cop
Vanilla Cop
Bus Driver
Loved/Hated (Needs an extra vote, or one less vote, to be lunched during the next day respectively)
Lightning Rod
Motion Detector
Sleepwalker


I think that's a decent brainstorm session to start with at least. We can make some of the not-so-helpful or lesser powers be the cheap ones, and then keep better things like the BP Vest and the Commute as being more expensive so they can't be bought up right away.

I would also say that there could be some super expensive, and therefore super OP, ones that we could try brainstorming as well lol. Like a 1-Shot Strongman Vig shot for 10,000 Don Bucks or something lol, like just something really powerful whether it went to Town or not.

 

[Fanto]

Also I was just thinking this about Don Bucks too:

What if instead of doing our own Betting Special on N0, we made it so that any player can place a bet with another player on anything they want?

-----

So it would work like this:

Let's say Fantomas, Melonrabbit, and Lone_Prodigy are all playing EZA Mafia.

Fantomas says "Hey Melon, I'll bet you 200 Don Bucks that Lone_Prodigy doesn't make any more than 20 posts this phase!"

Fantomas then enters the following command in the thread in highlighted text: "Bet: Melonrabbit, 200, LP makes less than 20 posts"

Melonrabbit posts a gif of Bosman nodding, and then enters the command: "Bet: Fantomas, accepted"

LP then goes on to make 12 posts that phase. At the end of the day, the gamerunner will take 200 Don Bucks from Melonrabbit and give them to Fantomas.

----

This would lead to some wild stuff, and we would probably need to think of some restrictions to place on it somewhat, but it could also make it so that people can earn a lot of Don Bucks early by winning silly bets against each other lol.

This also makes it so that they can earn Don Bucks outside of events as well via direct player interactions. Scum could try to lose bets to each other on purpose for example in order to get one of their own a bunch of Don Bucks early, but Town might sniff that out, or be able to look back on other weird interactions like that with bets later in the game once they've seen some flips.

Let me know if this is too out there lol.

 

[melonrabbit]

Also I was just thinking this about Don Bucks too:

What if instead of doing our own Betting Special on N0, we made it so that any player can place a bet with another player on anything they want?

-----

So it would work like this:

Let's say Fantomas, Melonrabbit, and Lone_Prodigy are all playing EZA Mafia.

Fantomas says "Hey Melon, I'll bet you 200 Don Bucks that Lone_Prodigy doesn't make any more than 20 posts this phase!"

Fantomas then enters the following command in the thread in highlighted text: "Bet: Melonrabbit, 200, LP makes less than 20 posts"

Melonrabbit posts a gif of Bosman nodding, and then enters the command: "Bet: Fantomas, accepted"

LP then goes on to make 12 posts that phase. At the end of the day, the gamerunner will take 200 Don Bucks from Melonrabbit and give them to Fantomas.

----

This would lead to some wild stuff, and we would probably need to think of some restrictions to place on it somewhat, but it could also make it so that people can earn a lot of Don Bucks early by winning silly bets against each other lol.

This also makes it so that they can earn Don Bucks outside of events as well via direct player interactions. Scum could try to lose bets to each other on purpose for example in order to get one of their own a bunch of Don Bucks early, but Town might sniff that out, or be able to look back on other weird interactions like that with bets later in the game once they've seen some flips.

Let me know if this is too out there lol.

Oooh. I haven't thought of direct player to player bets. Are we allowing for anyone to challenge anyone or have predetermined matchups (maybe at day start)? Agreed we would need restrictions. Probably only one bet per player otherwise it could get difficult to keep track for us. I'm good with general player chaos but want us to run a tight ship lol

But overall I think that's great idea on what to do with Don Bucks.

I did see the item list you posted. Thoughts incoming.

 

[Fanto]

Oooh. I haven't thought of direct player to player bets. Are we allowing for anyone to challenge anyone or have predetermined matchups (maybe at day start)? Agreed we would need restrictions. Probably only one bet per player otherwise it could get difficult to keep track for us. I'm good with general player chaos but want us to run a tight ship lol

But overall I think that's great idea on what to do with Don Bucks.

I did see the item list you posted. Thoughts incoming.

Yeah, good idea on the match-ups and one bet per player per day, that should work pretty good as a way to control the chaos. I think we could say it's ok for them to propose multiple bets to each other, but only one can be "locked in" for each day between them.

I also think we should make sure everyone knows that the general rules will apply to the bets as well so they don't go too nuts lol. So like, they can't make someone go post something outside of the thread, or send PMs to people, stuff like that. Otherwise I can't think of many things that would be off limits really, as long as they don't break any rules I'd be excited to see what they come up with lol.

 

[melonrabbit]

Maybe scum can reset a bet match-up or create a unique betting scenario?

 

[Fanto]

Yeah, something like that could work for sure. Like, maybe a Double Down on Don scenario, or a way to reverse a bet or deflect it to someone else maybe. I'm sure we can think of some fun stuff for that lol.

 

[Fanto]

Double Vote
Triple Vote
Bulletproof Vest
Commuter
Miller (So they will return Not Town if they are investigated the following night after purchasing the item)
Flavor Cop
Vanilla Cop
Bus Driver
Loved/Hated (Needs an extra vote, or one less vote, to be lunched during the next day respectively)
Lightning Rod
Motion Detector
Sleepwalker

So, back to the brainstorm list of items:

As I was saying in that post, I think we should not directly tell the players what the items do until after they have received one. So the names of the items themselves will just be hints towards what the actual item does, it would be up to the players to decide to share what they actually do.

So, for example, we could have like the Double and Triple votes be called something similar, but with references to 2 and 3 respectively. Like maybe the name of some fake video game sequels?

The BP Vest could be like a Winter Coat.

The Commuter could be like a Scooter.

The Miller could be something funny probably lol.

Flavor Cop and Vanilla Cop could be something similar too, maybe types of candy or something?

Anyways, that should explain better what I meant by that. I think that will make it more fun for everyone involved. There can be some puzzling done to figure out what the items might do, it would leave some room for Scum to lie about what they do, and we can maybe fool people into picking things like the Miller or Lightning Rod by making them sound enticing lol.

 

[Fanto]

Ok, things have been super busy for me recently, moving to a new city and starting a new job, but I am ready to keep going on this whenever.

I think it might be nice to just start throwing out ideas for roles. The way we have it right now, there would be 11 Town PRs and 8 Vanilla Town, 5 Scum who will probably have PRs, and then Neutral Elyse.

I still love our idea for Jones and Amanda to be Lovers, and for them to be able to recruit Sophie as a third Lover if they can find her.

For Scum, we have the idea for the fake event role, which I still think would be great. Then the idea I threw out about a fake item seller basically, the Backdoor Shady Dealer.

Neutral Elyse being a Don Bucks Thief still sounds great to me.

So that would leave us at 8 Town PRs to come up with and 3 more Scum PRs.

I feel like we should definitely have some game mechanic specific PRs for both Town and Scum. So things that have to do with the item store, Don Bucks, and the betting mechanics. That way we'll leave more normal roles as items to win, and the actual roles can lean more on the mechanics. The items should be what are actually going to help Town solve things, or help Scum to prevent Town from solving things.

Maybe Don can have a Double Down On Don role? Like, maybe he can win or lose double what he bets if he activates it after making a bet? I think it would probably need to be done through PM though since it might confirm him as Town if it was a public command.

Maybe a Scum role could deactivate someone's item or change it in some way? Or prevent them from earning/spending any Don Bucks for a day?

I also kind of like the idea of a role, either Town or Scum, that could like force them to win a bet or something. That would be a very Bosman role lol, and as a Bastard game, it would be perfectly fine for someone to be able to cheat their way into earning some easy Don Bucks like that.

 

[Fanto]

I also feel like we can work a lot of the finer details here out in a review thread once we get something put together. LiS didn't change too much in review, but there were definitely some roles that got changed or scrapped during the process.

Like, the way Max's rewind ability ended up working was not something me and Bae came up with at first, that came out of the review thread.

 

[Fanto]

Ok, I'm gunna try to work on some stuff this weekend, I'll be throwing out a lot of ideas in here, probably get a new spreadsheet going or something. I'll make sure to PM you on Discord too when I do.

I'll also get a full recap post in here too of all the high level stuff that we've already worked on just because it's been a while.

 

[Fanto]

Ok, so here is a brief overview of what we have right now on a high level.

-------

Easy Allies Mafia is a 25-player Bastard game.

19 Town / 5 Mafia / 1 Neutral

Special Game Mechanics:

• Don Bucks
  • Players will receive X amount of Don Bucks at the start of the game. They will also be presented with an Item Store where they can spend their Don Bucks to purchase different items which will give them different powers.
• Bets
  • Players may place bets with each other during the day phases on anything (within the rules) that they choose. Once the terms have been agreed to by both parties and "locked in", the gamerunners will pay out the bets in Don Bucks once the results of the bet have been determined. Players may only place one bet per day with one other player unless their role or an event says otherwise.
• Events
  • For the first 5 day phases, there will be events hosted based on a number of EZA shows.
    • D1: EZA Podcast
      • Players vote for their Pop-Tart (who they want to be protected for the night) and their Toaster Strudel (who they want to vote out of the game). There will be no Majority/Turbo vote rule in effect on D1 for either of these votes.
    • D2: Mysterious Monsters
      • Players will be given EZA-related Trivia questions throughout the day phase and will earn Don Bucks if they answer them correctly via PM.
    • D3: Hall of Greats
      • X amount of random players will be put into a Thunderdome for the day.
    • D4: The Betting Special
      
      • Players will be able to make unlimited amounts of bets with any players they choose for this day only.
    • D5: Box Peek
      • The two players with the most votes at EoD will compete in a game of Box Peek in the thread. During the Twilight Phase, if one player is able to post twice within 30 seconds before the other player posts, then they will win the Box Peek game, and the other player will die.
    • ??? - Easy Update
      • A Mafia player can override any of these events with the Easy Update event instead, which will take it's place on the schedule.

So really the only major thing we don't have worked out here too much is the Easy Update event, which we still never quite figured out what we wanted to do for that. A posting restriction of some kind, like posting gifs or song lyrics, was something we thought of early on, but I bet we can still think of something more specific for that since it will likely be affecting everyone in the game on the day it gets used.


Next post will have some screenshots of a spreadsheet that I put together with some full role ideas that I brainstormed for the whole Town/Scum teams as well as the Event list and the Item Store.

 

[Fanto]

So, let me know what you think of these roles I thought up, I am kind of in love with some of them, especially Huber and Bosman's roles, but I definitely want to hear what you think as well. I'm not going to guarantee this is all balanced appropriately yet, but that's what our Reviewers will be for lol.

Still plenty of room to brainstorm more Items or take some out or switch them around in both stores too. These are both just rough draft lists of roles and items, so feel free to chime in with any ideas you have too!

One thing to note again about the Items in both of the stores is that they will be given names that hide what they actually are from the player. So for example, instead of listing a "Bulletproof Vest" as being the name of that item in the store, we would call it a "Fancy Coat" or something like that. Once the player received an item from the normal store though, they would be told what it actually does for them.

Items purchased from the Backdoor Shady Dealer's store however will tell the player they do something completely different from what actually happens. So if they bought an Insane Cop shot from them for example, they would be told it is a normal Cop shot. Basically, they will be told a lie about what the item actually does in those cases.

The main thing from here that I do want to work out on our own before we take it to review is how our economy of Don Bucks is going to look. So basically, how many Don Bucks will each player start with, how much will the items in the stores cost, how much will the events pay out, how much does Elyse need to win, etc.

----

So in summary, the two big things I would want to get ready before we shuffle into a review thread would be what exactly the Easy Update event will do, and what the Don Bucks Economy is going to look like. Once we have those things figured out, and any additional tweaks for the roles and/or items, I think we can go ahead and submit it for a review.

 

[Fanto]

Oh, I just realized I had replaced Top 10s after I took that screenshot of the events from my spreadsheet haha.

Since EZA doesn't do the Top 10s anymore, I figured I would swap that out with a new event I just thought of, which was The Betting Special that I mentioned above, which plays off of our new betting mechanics.

 

[Fanto]

Oh jeez, I've been busy and just dealing with a lot of life stuff and completely forgot to come back to this recently.

-----

I've got some more ideas I want to throw around, I'll hit you up on Discord.

For Easy Update, I could maybe see it being a day filled with random posting restrictions for certain periods of time, or other weird useless/time-consuming events that we put on that would help Scum by making it harder for Town to communicate for the day.

Like, maybe at the start we'll say that no one can make more than 10 posts for the next 12 hours or something, then maybe players can't vote for 12 hours, then maybe we throw out some trivia questions and promise rewards, but give none out at the end, and then maybe finish the day by randomly rewarding a player with a fake Day Vig shot or something lol.

I'm just trying to think of some Bastard-ass shit here lol.

-----

I'll also try to think up some more items for the store and maybe some other roles for the players, especially Scum. I do like most of them, but I feel like a couple are maybe throwaway or aren't really balanced that well.

Still interested to hear if you have any thoughts on this stuff too!

 

[Fanto]

Ok, so I went ahead and just did a bunch more work on this. I think it's pretty close to being ready for review now.

Here is the updated Event List, Item Store, and Backdoor Shady Dealer Store, complete with prices and flavor names for the items:

Spoiler

Here is the list of Town Roles:

Spoiler

And the list of Scum/Neutral Roles:

Spoiler

The only things I don't have prepared are an explanation for how bets will work, though I can probably come up some official terms/rules for that based on what we've discussed in here, and then what trivia questions we'll ask for the Mysterious Monsters event, but there's plenty of time to put those together. Everything else is pretty much good to go though.

I'll hit you up on Discord quick too. Let me know if you have any thoughts/ideas/changes you'd want to make or anything like that.

If we're cool with this though, I think I'd be fine sending it to review and hammering out the finer details in there.

 

[Natiko]

@Geno and I have access to this thread now. What's the best place to look to get a grasp on the game?

 

[Fanto]

@Geno and I have access to this thread now. What's the best place to look to get a grasp on the game?

Oh shit!

Ok, ok, hold on, I have a pre-typed post saved somewhere, I just need to make it for you quick. I was expecting a new thread haha.

 

[Fanto]

@Natiko @Geno

Hello, and welcome to the Easy Allies Mafia Review Thread!

The Concept:
This game is a 25-player Bastard game with many unique mechanics and roles.
19 Town/5 Mafia/1 Neutral
48/24 day/night rhythm

The Mechanics:
Don Bucks:
Players will receive “Don Bucks”, a currency, which they may use to purchase items from an Item Store.

Items in the Item Store are 1-shot abilities and are labeled with flavor names, they do not directly tell players what they do until they purchase it.

Purchases are made privately via PM with the gamerunners.

There is no supply limit in the item store, players may purchase as many as they can afford.

The Mafia has a role that allows them to anonymously sell fake/harmful items at night to a player of their choosing.

The Mafia store does have a supply limit, so once an item is purchased it will not be listed again in the future.

The Neutral begins the game with 0 Don Bucks, but may steal up to 1000 Don Bucks from another player at night. Once they reach 5000 Don Bucks, they will win and exit the game.

All other players will begin the game with 1500 Don Bucks each.


Bets:
Players may also initiate Bets between themselves and one other player per day.

Player 1 will initiate the bet with "Bet: <Player Name> X, Y" where X is the amount of Don Bucks they wish to bet, and Y is what they are betting on.

Example: "Bet: Melonrabbit, 500, LP makes less than 10 posts today"

Player 2 will then need to lock the bet in by confirming it with "Bet: <Player Name> accepted"

Bets may only concern game-related things and must take place in the game thread. Players may not “dare” people into breaking the rules in any way, either of the game or of the forum.

Examples of things on which bets could be placed:
Post counts
Who will be voted out
Who will be killed at night
Who will flip Town
Who will flip Scum
Is there a Neutral in the game
Outcomes of mini games and/or events
Whether someone else will or will not win a bet they placed

Once the bet has been completed, the bet will be paid out accordingly.

A bet has no specific time limit, but if one of the players dies before a bet they placed has been completed, then the money placed on the bet is returned.

Example: If Player 1 had a bet for 500 Don Bucks with Player 2 on Day 1, it wasn’t complete at the end of Day 1, and Player 1 died on Night 1, then Player 2 would receive their 500 Don Bucks back from the bet at the start of Day 2.

Only one bet can be locked in each day for each player.

Example: If Player 1 challenges Player 2 to a bet on Day 3 and they lock it in, Player 2 may not place a bet with another player on Day 3.


Events:
There will also be Events during the first 5 day phases of the game. These events will alter the game and/or provide players with ways to earn Don Bucks.

Day 1: EZA Podcast – Players vote for their Pop-Tart and their Toaster Strudel. Their Pop-Tart is who they want to receive immunity from death on Night 1. Their Toaster Strudel is who they want to vote out of the game normally. There will be no Majority rule in effect for either of these votes during this event.
Day 2: Mysterious Monsters – Players will be given EZA-related trivia questions throughout the day. The first player to respond with the correct answer in the thread in highlighted text will win Don Bucks based on the difficulty of the question.
Day 3: Hall of Greats – The 4 players with the highest post counts will be placed in a “Thunderdome”.
Day 4: Huber Syndrome – Players will have their Don Buck totals doubled at the start of the day and will stay in effect for the rest of the game. In addition, all items in the store will be half off, but for this day only.
Day 5: Box Peek – The two players with the most votes at the end of the day will compete in a game of Box Peek in the thread. The winner will stay in the game, while the loser will die.

Box Peek will be played during the Twilight Phase of the day, no players except those who are playing Box Peek are allowed to post in the thread during this phase.

The rules of Box Peek will work like this:

A Player will post the word “Peek” in highlighted text in the game thread.

If 1 minute passes without the other player Counter Peeking, then that player will win.

If the other player is able to post “Counter Peek” in highlighted text before 1 minute passes, then they will win instead.

This is extremely goofy and makes little to no sense, yes.

However, I would imagine that if both players knew the other was around at EoD, there would be hesitation in wanting to make the first Peek for fear of being counter-peeked.

On the other hand, if one player knew the other was not there at EoD, they could peek immediately and easily win.

But again, if a player were to realize they were likely going to be in the Box Peek, they could purposely lurk the thread and not post at EoD, making their opponent think they weren’t around, watch them go for the immediate peek, and then counter peek for the win.

There are some funny ways this could play out, so I have faith in the players to make this fun.


Finally, the Mafia has an ability to replace one of these events on the night before it occurs with a new event called Easy Update.

Easy Update has many effects on the game.
1. Randomly shuffles the prices of all items in the Item Store. This stays in effect for the rest of the game.
2. Cuts all players’ Don Buck totals in half. This stays in effect for the rest of the game.
3. All bets will pay double winnings and double losses on this day only. (Example: A bet for 50 Don Bucks from each player would pay out 200 Don Bucks to the winner and the loser would lose 100 Don Bucks)
4. All votes must be accompanied with a rhyme including that player’s name on this day only. (Example: Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m voting for Dr. Monkey, and so should you)
5. A player may only be voted out with a majority vote on this day, it will not end until it happens.

In addition, the Mafia player who initiates Easy Update cannot be voted out on this day. The thread will be alerted of this, but will be lied to and told they were randomly selected for this immunity. They will also be privately given one free item from the item store of their choosing that costs $3500 or less after the prices have been shuffled.




The Spreadsheet:
Here is a link to a 2 page spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1L3M7HxAb2WyLVUxFme99bVpeze-h9ay9bqwkRGCAKIE/edit?usp=sharing

The first page includes all of the Power Roles in the game, as well as flavor names and alignments.

The second page includes information about the events as described in here, as well as all of the items in the Item Store and the Mafia Store complete with flavor names and prices.

Thank you in advance for all of your help in reviewing this game. I look forward to your comments, questions, and concerns, in that order.

Addendum:
In addition, I would like to note that there is definitely some extra brainstorming that can still be done here, especially for the Items in the Item Stores and possible for the way the events will work.

Also, I just want to say, I was literally crossing my fingers and hoping that Geno would get to review this after seeing HvV2 and all the wacky ass shit in there because this is somewhat similar but just not quite as out there, but I would love to push things further towards that level of maximum chaos as well.

 

[Natiko]

Oh shit!

Ok, ok, hold on, I have a pre-typed post saved somewhere, I just need to make it for you quick. I was expecting a new thread haha.

I asked and there didn't seem to be a set way we handle when a game has a prelim thread, so I went ahead and just rolled it forward.

Just read through your initial explanation, and I have a few questions but let me dive into the spreadsheet in case it answers some of them.

 

[Natiko]

Questions:

• How will Don Bucks be tracked? Will there be a visible overall tally that is public?
• Does the Betting Cheat when instantly after placing the command?
• Does the Betting Cheat become the Duelist the same phase?
• Does the Double Down cause the other player to lose double as well? What happens if they don't have enough to cover it? (e.g. Player A has 2000, Player B has 1000. Player A has this PR and doubles down a bet of 1000). For the sake of simplicity I imagine you would NOT want the other player to be impacted as it can cause some cascading weirdness.
• Are there any exceptions to the backup? Does it ignore vanillas?
• Are Brandon and Amanda already lovers and Sophie becomes a third lover if found?
• When the Easy Update override happens - does it push out the scheduled events one night or does it just fully preempt the next one and removes it from the schedule entirely?
• How many Don Bucks are given for answering trivia D2? How many total questions will you ask?
• Birthday Cake item - what are some examples of "unreasonable"?
• Shady Dealer items - are the recipients made aware of what they received (e.g. here is explicitly an insane cop shot) or will they be unaware (here is a totally normal, not at all weird cop shot)?

 

[Fanto]

Questions:

• How will Don Bucks be tracked? Will there be a visible overall tally that is public?
• Does the Betting Cheat when instantly after placing the command?
• Does the Betting Cheat become the Duelist the same phase?
• Does the Double Down cause the other player to lose double as well? What happens if they don't have enough to cover it? (e.g. Player A has 2000, Player B has 1000. Player A has this PR and doubles down a bet of 1000). For the sake of simplicity I imagine you would NOT want the other player to be impacted as it can cause some cascading weirdness.
• Are there any exceptions to the backup? Does it ignore vanillas?
• Are Brandon and Amanda already lovers and Sophie becomes a third lover if found?
• When the Easy Update override happens - does it push out the scheduled events one night or does it just fully preempt the next one and removes it from the schedule entirely?
• How many Don Bucks are given for answering trivia D2? How many total questions will you ask?
• Birthday Cake item - what are some examples of "unreasonable"?
• Shady Dealer items - are the recipients made aware of what they received (e.g. here is explicitly an insane cop shot) or will they be unaware (here is a totally normal, not at all weird cop shot)?

Great questions!

I will go in order:

How will Don Bucks be tracked? Will there be a visible overall tally that is public?

They will be tracked privately, no one in the thread will be aware of other players' Don Buck totals.

Does the Betting Cheat when instantly after placing the command?

The bet will still play out normally, but the Cheat will always win it in the end.

Does the Betting Cheat become the Duelist the same phase?

They will become the Duelist once the bet has been completed.

Does the Double Down cause the other player to lose double as well? What happens if they don't have enough to cover it? (e.g. Player A has 2000, Player B has 1000. Player A has this PR and doubles down a bet of 1000). For the sake of simplicity I imagine you would NOT want the other player to be impacted as it can cause some cascading weirdness.

No, the Double Down will only affect the player who uses it. In that scenario, assuming Player A won the bet, Player B would only lose their 1000, but Player A would receive a total of 4000 (their 2000, 1000 from Player B, and 1000 from the House).

Are there any exceptions to the backup? Does it ignore vanillas?

Good point. Yes it only works for PRs, a Vanilla dying before a PR wouldn't affect them.

Are Brandon and Amanda already lovers and Sophie becomes a third lover if found?

Yes.

When the Easy Update override happens - does it push out the scheduled events one night or does it just fully preempt the next one and removes it from the schedule entirely?

We went back and forth on this, and I'm still somewhat unsure. I would like for all the events to happen ultimately, so I think I would rather push the other events out rather than have it replace one entirely.

How many Don Bucks are given for answering trivia D2? How many total questions will you ask?

I'll have to think on this one a bit, this was one part that I didn't quite get around to yet in terms of writing out all the trivia questions. I'll set that as my homework for now.

Birthday Cake item - what are some examples of "unreasonable"?

Well, I was thinking like if a Mafia player asked for a Recruit shot or something, that might be considered unreasonable. Or anything involving alignment or role switching in general I guess, those kinds of things seem like they might be pushing it a bit too far. Like if someone wanted the power to change someone else into a Jester, I would probably have to tell them no lol.

Shady Dealer items - are the recipients made aware of what they received (e.g. here is explicitly an insane cop shot) or will they be unaware (here is a totally normal, not at all weird cop shot)?

Good question, I was thinking it would be best to lie to them but some of the powers might be hard to conceal with a lie. For example, what would I tell them the Lightning Rod is? I would ideally not want them to know the Insane Cop shot is an Insane Cop shot, which is easy enough to lie about, but the others I would need some help coming up with ways to lie about them.

 

[Fanto]

Good question, I was thinking it would be best to lie to them but some of the powers might be hard to conceal with a lie. For example, what would I tell them the Lightning Rod is? I would ideally not want them to know the Insane Cop shot is an Insane Cop shot, which is easy enough to lie about, but the others I would need some help coming up with ways to lie about them.

I could just make it so that they don't find out what they do at all, they just get the flavor name and need to try using it to find out what it does. Would lead to some funny situations I'm sure, especially if I tell them the Bomb is a Day power lol.

 

[Natiko]

Questions/Comments Pt. 2:

• Will there be a way to mutually cancel bets if desired? What if players lock themselves into a bet that drags out for an eternity?
• You specify only one bet per phase, but can you have multiple active bets? (e.g. Player A makes a bet with Player B D1. It does not conclude prior to the end of D2. Can they go ahead and make a new bet with Player C on D2?)
• I would update the spreadsheet with whatever roles are not valid for the backup (presumably vanilla and lovers)
• There's always ways to lie, just know the game will be classified as bastard if it's an explicit lie (e.g. the sane/insane cop example)
• What will the punishment be for failing to rhyme on Easy Updates day?
• How will you handle players trying to make bets they don't have the funds for?
• Does the Easy Updates double to winnings/losses only apply to bets that are made on that day phase?
• Betting Champion - will they basically just be playing against the house every time?
• Can players buy items at night? How will that interact with night abilities that interact with money (the heal, the steal, etc.)?
• Speaking of - I kinda hate the heal failing due to money issues since they don't have any visibility to what other players have
• Also speaking of - I have concerns about an unlimited supply of vig shots being in the shop given there is a day where everyone will get double money and it'll be half off. Could extremely derail the game.

 

[Fanto]

Will there be a way to mutually cancel bets if desired? What if players lock themselves into a bet that drags out for an eternity?

This is something that I thought of in the back of my head, so yeah I suppose as a kind of fail-safe we can allow players to cancel a bet if they both agree to canceling it.

You specify only one bet per phase, but can you have multiple active bets? (e.g. Player A makes a bet with Player B D1. It does not conclude prior to the end of D2. Can they go ahead and make a new bet with Player C on D2?)

No, you cannot, and this is specifically to discourage the kinds of bets that could lead to the above scenario of an everlasting bet. I'd like to encourage players to bet on things within a reasonable amount of time, but I don't want to stop them if they want to make some huge bet that only pays out in LyLo or some shit too lol.

I would update the spreadsheet with whatever roles are not valid for the backup (presumably vanilla and lovers)

Will do.

There's always ways to lie, just know the game will be classified as bastard if it's an explicit lie (e.g. the sane/insane cop example)

Oh yeah, I'm fully expecting it to be labeled Bastard because there will be lies.

What will the punishment be for failing to rhyme on Easy Updates day?

The vote will not be officially counted unless it is accompanied by a rhyme. Since the day will only end with a majority vote, it will be up to the players to rhyme their way out of it together.

How will you handle players trying to make bets they don't have the funds for?

They won't be allowed to, so they would need to own up to the fact that they are low on Don Bucks, or else haggle with the other player for a lower amount of Don Bucks to place the bet. If they were to try, the bet wouldn't be locked in by us, and I suppose we would have to say that one of them doesn't have enough Don Bucks for it just to be clear as to why it wasn't locked in, which would suck for them I guess if they wanted their total to be kept secret.

Does the Easy Updates double to winnings/losses only apply to bets that are made on that day phase?

I don't know, maybe something to rethink or change around a bit.

Betting Champion - will they basically just be playing against the house every time?

Yeah, they just get the chance to buy in on any bets basically, a secret way to earn Don Bucks.

Can players buy items at night? How will that interact with night abilities that interact with money (the heal, the steal, etc.)?

I had been picturing the item store being closed at night, hence why when the Backdoor Shady Dealer comes knocking at someone's door with some items to buy, they might be enticed to get something from them lol.

Speaking of - I kinda hate the heal failing due to money issues since they don't have any visibility to what other players have

Yeah, I could try to rework that one a bit. I could have it just work similarly to the Cop needing to spend Don Bucks to use it instead.

Also speaking of - I have concerns about an unlimited supply of vig shots being in the shop given there is a day where everyone will get double money and it'll be half off. Could extremely derail the game.

Yeah, I suppose some of them could have supply limits, like the Vig and the Birthday Cake. I do want to think over some of the items again because I'd like for some more pro-Scum items to be in there too, I feel like the item store is pretty powerful for Town currently but not so much for Scum.

 

[Fanto]

I had been picturing the item store being closed at night, hence why when the Backdoor Shady Dealer comes knocking at someone's door with some items to buy, they might be enticed to get something from them lol.

And I suppose to actually answer the question, I would have the Shady Dealer resolve before the Don Buck Thief, so the player's money that the Thief is stealing is from the total after they purchased something.

 

[Fanto]

Bah, I forgot I was going to put together a Night Action list as well, I'll add that to my homework too.

 

[Natiko]

Crunching the numbers - right now the game can end at the start of Day 5, and that's assuming you limit the shotgun to one-use and that the most chaos scum can cause with the birthday cake is one additional death. That feels pretty fast for a game this size.

 

[Fanto]

There might be a lot of chances for multiple kills, yeah lol.

For Town there's the Day Vig shot, the Vig shot in the Item Store, Huber's ability to kill someone in his Gossip chat, and the Mafia's Bomb item being sold to one of them.

I think it would be safe to remove one or two of those from the game since yeah, it's a lot of extra kills.

I could come up with something other than a Day Vig for Bloodworth, that removes one extra kill. I could also get rid of Huber's ability to kill someone in the Gossip chat.

That would bring it down to the extra kills being a lone Vig shot in the Item Store, the Mafia's Bomb item, and the possibility that someone would choose another Vig shot for their Birthday Cake item.

 

[Natiko]

There might be a lot of chances for multiple kills, yeah lol.

For Town there's the Day Vig shot, the Vig shot in the Item Store, Huber's ability to kill someone in his Gossip chat, and the Mafia's Bomb item being sold to one of them.

I think it would be safe to remove one or two of those from the game since yeah, it's a lot of extra kills.

I could come up with something other than a Day Vig for Bloodworth, that removes one extra kill. I could also get rid of Huber's ability to kill someone in the Gossip chat.

That would bring it down to the extra kills being a lone Vig shot in the Item Store, the Mafia's Bomb item, and the possibility that someone would choose another Vig shot for their Birthday Cake item.

I think removing a kill or two and potentially re-examining the triple lover or the double neutral would smooth out a lot of the swinginess that feels present currently. Or alternatively you increase the mitigation present (commutes, blocks, heals, BPs, revives, etc.)

 

[Fanto]

I think removing a kill or two and potentially re-examining the triple lover or the double neutral would smooth out a lot of the swinginess that feels present currently. Or alternatively you increase the mitigation present (commutes, blocks, heals, BPs, revives, etc.)

Yeah, I was just rethinking the triple Lover scenario, might have to cut that and just leave Sophie as a useless Bastard role lol.

The Double Neutral wouldn't mean that they die together though, I'm not sure if I made that clear, but yeah it is another way for Town to lose a member.

Otherwise yeah, I could make some of the protection shots cheaper in the store, that's something I'll try to work on.

For now let's say I'll come back with some changes on those soonish, but I'll definitely be reducing the killing roles and upping the amount of protection shots available.

 

[Natiko]

They don’t die together, but they can exit together with a win. For town’s purposes that’s the same thing - two unexpected non-mafia exits. I’m not saying it needs to change, just pointing out why they got mentioned too. I’ll wait and see what tweaks are made with this and with the item shop before pushing too much further. Biggest question mark to me besides that is the money and how fast the collective amount may rise. Going to be interesting to balance.

Another thought - you can rotate items in the shop, or at least the more powerful ones. That would stagger their availability which might be useful (and can potentially help mitigate the influx of crazy on double money and half price day).

 

[Fanto]

Biggest question mark to me besides that is the money and how fast the collective amount may rise. Going to be interesting to balance.

Yeah, I'm not sure what it will be like as well, it's all basically just guess work on my part to get something put together at least. I can tweak it some more eventually, probably after I figure out the trivia question stuff.

Another thought - you can rotate items in the shop, or at least the more powerful ones. That would stagger their availability which might be useful (and can potentially help mitigate the influx of crazy on double money and half price day).

Yeah, this is a good idea, I'll come back around to that and see if I can figure out some kind of schedule like that maybe.

 

[Fanto]

Ok, just to put down a list of things I'll be working on in the near future for now:

1. Change Backup to not include Vanillas or Lovers
2. Trivia Questions
3. Lies for the Shady Dealer Items
4. Easy Update doubling of bet payouts and losses, think some more
5. Change the way the Doctor works
6. Change the supply limits for items
7. Create a list of Night Actions in priority order
8. Limit extra kills (change Day Vig to something else, remove Huber's kill)
9. No third Lover
10. Increase availability of protection shots
11. Tweak Don Buck economy
12. Rotating schedule for item availability

I'll make updates in here as I go through this list, I'll probably get started on it tomorrow.

Feel free to keep making comments/asking questions though, I'm more than happy to keep discussing things. It's a ridiculous game with a lot of shit going on that took us months to piece together, so I'm more than happy to respond to questions/concerns haha.

 

[Natiko]

I think those are all good starting points. Don’t over correct by removing half the extra kills, the third lover, and then also throwing in too much protection. I’ll wait until more changes roll in or Geno shows up with thoughts.

 

[Fanto]

Ok, did a couple things tonight just because I was bored.

1. Change Backup to not include Vanillas or Lovers
2. Trivia Questions
3. Lies for the Shady Dealer Items
4. Easy Update doubling of bet payouts and losses, think some more
5. Change the way the Doctor works
6. Change the supply limits for items
7. Create a list of Night Actions in priority order
8. Limit extra kills (change Day Vig to something else, remove Huber's kill)
9. No third Lover
10. Increase availability of protection shots
11. Tweak Don Buck economy
12. Rotating schedule for item availability

Changed the Backup to make it clear they don't get a Vanilla or Lover role.

Changed the Doctor to function the same way as the Sleuth, and also decreased the amount of Don Bucks it will cost them to use their powers to 500 from 1000.

Created a role priority list for all PRs and the current items in the item stores, included in the below spoiler tag:

Spoiler: Night Action Priority

Commuter
Switcher
Scum Roleblock
Huber Roleblock
Doctor
Shady Dealer
Ian's Search
Easy Update
Thief
Scum Kill
Vigilante Kill
Sophie Sniff
Flavor Cop
Vanilla Cop
Insane Cop
Sleuth
Tracker

Removed Huber's killing ability but gave him unlimited shots of his blocking ability.

Removed the ability for the Lovers to recruit Sophie.

 

[Fanto]

So, here's a few more things to cross off the list for now:

1. Trivia Questions
2. Lies for the Shady Dealer Items
3. Easy Update double of bet payouts and losses
4. Change the supply limits for items
5. Increase availability of protection shots
6. Tweak Don Buck economy
7. Rotating schedule for item availability

For the Shady Dealer Item lies, here's what I've got right now:

Universal Miller - Bulletproof Vest
Insane Cop - Normal Cop
Hated - Loved
Lightning Rod - Commuter (and tell them they need to activate it for it to work)
Bomb - For the Bomb, I'm thinking it might be fun to just call it by it's flavor name, the Chocolate Cake, and tell them that at the end of the day they'll find out what it does. And it will kill them lol. If that doesn't sound like a good idea though, let me know.

----------

For the item supply limits:

Here's the items in the store, and my current take on the supply limits for each:
Double Vote - 5
Triple Vote - 5 - (kind of what to replace this)
Loved - 4 (kind of want to replace this too)
Bulletproof Vest - 4
Flavor Cop - 3
Vanilla Cop - 3
Switcher - 2
Commuter - 2
Tracker - 2
Vigilante - 1
Birthday Cake - 1

I'll get around to changing the pricing on some of these as well, and figuring out some different stuff to add too, likely things that would help Scum a bit more.

This also ties in to increasing the availability of protection shots, I'll be redoing some of the pricing on these too I think, but for now having 4 BP Vests and 2 Commute shots in there, as well as the rework to the Doctor, should provide some decent protection if people can afford it.

----------

I haven't updated the spreadsheet with any of this yet, but I'll get around to that eventually, probably once I feel more comfortable with the changes for sure.

Once I get all of the Item Store stuff set then I'll move on to figuring out the rotating item schedule.

Tweaking the Don Buck economy will likely happen while I continue to mess around with the things involving Don Bucks, so that one will kind of be an ongoing thing.

I kind of want to replace that Easy Update modifier with something else, so I'll continue to think on that and see if Melon has any ideas there too.

Then yeah, I'll at least get an outline going for the Trivia Questions event soon, figure out how many there will be in total and how many Don Bucks I want to pay out for each of the questions.

 

[Geno]

New years stuff, I promise to catch up tomorrow or the day after and give my thoughts.

 

[Fanto]

Looking forward to your thoughts! :)

----

I'll sit down and work on a few more things tonight.

 

[Fanto]

1. Trivia Questions
2. Easy Update double of bet payouts and losses
   
3. Tweak Don Buck economy
   
4. Rotating schedule for item availability

Ok, so I said I wanted to replace the Triple Vote and Loved items in the store with some new ones.

How about...

Messenger - Send a message to their target saying whatever they want - Flavor name: Piece of Paper
Randomizer - Causes their target's night action, if they use one, to be used on a random player - Flavor name: Bag of Dice

And then, for a Don Buck Economy Tweak, here's how I think a possible update for the Item Store prices could look now that they have supply limits by making the first half cheaper than the back half:

• Double Vote
  • Price: $500
  • Quantity: 5
• Flavor Cop
  • Price: $750
  • Quantity: 5
• Messenger
  • Price: $1000
  • Quantity: 4
• Bulletproof Vest
  • Price: $1250
  • Quantity: 4
• Randomizer
  • Price: $1500
  • Quantity: 3
• Vanilla Cop
  • Price: $1750
  • Quantity: 3
• Tracker
  • Price: $2000
  • Quantity: 2
• Switcher
  • Price: $3000
  • Quantity: 2
• Commuter
  • Price: $4000
  • Quantity: 2
• Vigilante
  • Price: $5000
  • Quantity: 1
• Birthday Cake
  • Price: $9999
  • Quantity: 1

As for the rotating item schedule, I'll continue to think on how best to approach that. On the one hand I could try to balance things out and come up with a set schedule, or from another point of view I could maybe have constants and variables, like maybe you can always have a chance to buy the one-of-a-kind items but the other 3 or 4 available ones are randomized each day. I'll keep thinking there.

-----------

Ok, so instead of Double Bet Payouts/Losses as an effect of Easy Update:

Since players will have their Don Buck totals cut in half, there should be a way for them to earn some Don Bucks. That was my theory behind the double bets but with a penalty for losing as well.

Oh! Oh!

So, in the Mysterious Monsters trivia show, there is an enemy called the Trickster, and he only asks trick questions. So perhaps on Easy Update day, there will be another round of Trivia Questions that will pay out Don Bucks, but they will all be trick questions!

That should work.

-----------

So with that stuff down, the only things left on my list are the Trivia Questions, or at least an outline for them (I'll do the new Easy Update ones at the same time), and then the item schedule.

 

[Geno]

I like it a lot thus far. Natiko made some good questions, I have a few too.
1. Is the supply universal or a per person thing? If universal can the same player buy the same item multiple times? Can they stack them too? Like if they buy 2 triple votes is it a sextuple vote?
2. The event where they all get their money doubled and all shop prices are half is a bit much I think, maybe keep the second one only? There's a chance there will be too much cash.
3. Are the multivotes removed from the shop in mylo/lylo? Because the mafia can hold money, all can buy the multivotes and win.
4. What are the mini games you mention?
That's all I can think of now. I thought about how to make this crazier like you said but can't think of anything right now with the current setup, maybe make mysterious monsters work like it does there, with players needing to sign up for the event, and going in turns and choosing categories. But then again it's the internet and you can cheat.

 

[Fanto]

Is the supply universal or a per person thing? If universal can the same player buy the same item multiple times? Can they stack them too? Like if they buy 2 triple votes is it a sextuple vote?

It would be a universal supply limit. They can buy the same item multiple times, but they can't stack them. I would probably make it so they can only use one active item per day/night. So if someone had bought both a Vanilla Cop shot and a Tracker shot, they would have to pick which one they want to use at night.

The event where they all get their money doubled and all shop prices are half is a bit much I think, maybe keep the second one only? There's a chance there will be too much cash.

Yeah, I'd be down to change that to just be half-off the item store prices.

Are the multivotes removed from the shop in mylo/lylo? Because the mafia can hold money, all can buy the multivotes and win.

I could probably make that happen with the idea for a rotating item store, yeah. I could make it so later in the game the Double votes stop being available for purchase. If Mafia has a Double vote going into MyLo/LyLo though I don't think I'd want to prevent them from using it. It would suck for Town to lose like that, but it would be a valid strategy for the Mafia to hold on to Double votes I think.

Otherwise I can replace the Double votes as well, I've already shuffled the Triple Votes out just because I was thinking in later days that could lead to some ridiculous stuff, but the Double votes might have to go too. I'll think on it some more.

What are the mini games you mention?

Assuming you mean for the Duelist role, I had been thinking of something like a Poker or a Blackjack event like you did for HvV2, something that can be played publicly in the thread between two players. I haven't fully decided on that yet, but I'll make a note to come up with something official for it.

Otherwise, yeah I do like the idea of signing up for the Mysterious Monsters event, but I also wanted it to be a chance for any player to get some quick Don Bucks, so I think I'd rather just pop in every now and then with a trivia question and whoever answers it first gets the Don Bucks.

 

[Fanto]

I would probably make it so they can only use one active item per day/night. So if someone had bought both a Vanilla Cop shot and a Tracker shot, they would have to pick which one they want to use at night.

To expand on this a little bit, I would also say that PRs can still use their normal ability + one item per day/night. So if, for example, Damiani were to own a Messenger shot, he could both send a Message and do his normal Cop check on the same night.

 

[Geno]

From my experience running it Blackjack is better than Poker, then again it will be just 2 people but with 7 it was extremely difficult to keep track of. Other options you can use is tic tac toe or connect4.

 

[Fanto]

Didn't really get around to working on this much tonight, but I'll get some more stuff done this weekend and get the spreadsheet updated again.

 

[Fanto]

Ok, sorry I'll work on this today now haha.

 

[Fanto]

Ok, so here's an idea for a rotating item schedule:

Each day there will be a total of 5 items available in the Item Store.

2 of these 4: Double Vote / Flavor Cop / Messenger / Bulletproof Vest
2 of these 4: Randomizer / Vanilla Cop / Tracker / Switcher
1 of these 3: Commuter / Vigilante / Birthday Cake

That way there is some RNG involved in terms of like, the Mafia's ability to just buy all the Double Votes and use them together to force an early LyLo. If it's still a concern, I can raise the price on the Double Votes a bit to counter that possibility some more as well.

-------

Then for an outline for the trivia questions, something like this would probably work:

Easy Questions ($250):
1.
2.
3.

Medium Questions ($500):
1.
2.
3.

Hard Questions ($1000):
1.
2.
3.

So it would be $5250 total in prize money being given out.

Then for the new Easy Update effect with the Trick Questions, I think 5 questions each worth $1000 Don Bucks should work.

-------

So, everything we've discussed so far is updated in the spreadsheet now. I added a new page that includes an outline for the trivia questions.

That's everything that was on the list for now, so I'll go ahead and hand it off for more questions/comments again.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1L3M7HxAb2WyLVUxFme99bVpeze-h9ay9bqwkRGCAKIE/edit?usp=sharing

 

[Fanto]

Also! I just had a thought:

I don't know if I mentioned this, but the players will be able to see the full list of events publicly in the thread, they just won't know what they do.

While remembering that I wanted to tell you guys that, I thought of another thing:

What if instead of having the events in a set order, players voted at night on which one they wanted to do the next day? It would be like in MafiEra when we voted at night on what modifier we wanted.

I kind of like that. So basically, the D1 event will always happen, but the other 4 can be voted on, and Easy Update can override the choice if it's used.

I could also try to come up with some more events, the current ones were meant to be few in number and therefore all were meant to be pretty game-changing, but coming up with some lesser ones might be nice to throw in the mix too?

Let me know what you think.

 

[Natiko]

RE: The economy - currently I would estimate the available bucks to be around $49,250 though that DOES NOT account for the totals being halved at some point. Additionally the total value of all items for sale is $57,999 (and this will be halved one of the days). Not horrible.

Here's an idea - if you liked the Sophie idea (becoming a third lover) you could still keep it in, but have Sophie become a Mason third to the Lover pair (enters chat, does not die with them). Pretty strong for town, but that might be okay (we can fine tune in other places if desired).

As far as items, I think it might be more fun to trim down some of the quantities and come up with additional items, but there's a lot going on so I can understand if you don't want to.

Events - Voting is fine if you want that, don't think it really impacts balance all that much (though hitting the half price shop day early could do weird things).

Question: If the Double Vote is available on D1 or whatever, will every shot of it be available that day or just a subset?

 

[Fanto]

RE: The economy - currently I would estimate the available bucks to be around $49,250 though that DOES NOT account for the totals being halved at some point. Additionally the total value of all items for sale is $57,999 (and this will be halved one of the days). Not horrible.

Yeah, I'm not sure exactly how the math should be looking there, I just tried to keep things somewhat consistent. I'm not an economist lol :P

Here's an idea - if you liked the Sophie idea (becoming a third lover) you could still keep it in, but have Sophie become a Mason third to the Lover pair (enters chat, does not die with them). Pretty strong for town, but that might be okay (we can fine tune in other places if desired).

I did like that idea a lot, yeah, it was one of the first things we talked about doing I think haha. Having her become a Mason instead would be cool, but yeah I'm not sure what else would need to be tweaked to allow for that. Perhaps give the Cop limited shots to reduce the possible amount of green checks? Oh, or maybe make them a 1-Shot Amnesiac Cop since that's my signature role? :P

As far as items, I think it might be more fun to trim down some of the quantities and come up with additional items, but there's a lot going on so I can understand if you don't want to.

Yeah I'd be cool with this, it's just hard to come up with items that I think would be useful. I don't really mind having a lot of stuff going on because I expect each night phase to be a shitshow anyways lol. I'll try to come up with some more stuff to add, and feel free to make any suggestions as well. I kind of want to have some straight up Scum powers in there too.

Events - Voting is fine if you want that, don't think it really impacts balance all that much (though hitting the half price shop day early could do weird things).

Yeah, I really liked how that worked in MafiEra and I feel like this would be another system that could work well like that. I'd probably want to add like 2 or 3 more events to the list though if I do it this way just to throw in some more variety, give the players more options, and let them speculate more on what they all do.

Question: If the Double Vote is available on D1 or whatever, will every shot of it be available that day or just a subset?

I would probably have all the shots available, yeah. I could do a one item per customer each day type of thing though, so someone couldn't just buy out an item's stock for themselves on one day.

I'm starting to think having Double Votes in there is probably a bad idea though with how those could be hoarded and used by the Mafia. I'll probably go ahead and replace those with something else while I'm coming up with more items to add.

 

[Natiko]

I'll ponder on some other suggestions that could be used for items. I don't think the Double Votes have to go, but I would probably just limit it to 1 Double and 1 Triple or 2 Doubles. Just to reduce the potential fuckery.

 

[Fanto]

So just poking around and looking at some roles quick, I think a Motivator shot could be an item to include. I could even make it more specific and have it give an extra shot of an item to a player if they own one.

Otherwise I didn't really find much that stuck out. I'm thinking of maybe trying to come up with some unique stuff based on the game mechanics and/or flavor like I did for some of the actual roles.

 

[Fanto]

Ok, sorry I kind of took a break from this for a week. I have an appointment in a few hours, but I'll get back into it this afternoon.

 

[Fanto]

So here's an idea for an item that would fit well in this game I think:
https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Traffic_Analyst

A Traffic Analyst is a role that is capable of checking to see whether a player can privately communicate. As an informative role, its night choice is to choose a player, and the analyst will learn whether or not there are any players that that player can legally communicate with outside the game thread. (The identity of the people that the target can communicate with is not learned, nor is the content of the communications.)

So essentially, they'll learn whether someone was in a private chat that night or not. Since there will be multiple possible private chats in this game (Mafia, Lovers, Gossip, Neutrals) it would not necessarily be a red check if someone found out they were in a private chat. On the other hand, if Scum were to use it and get a positive result, they could theorize whether that player is a Lover or a Gossip or what and decide if they want to kill them for being in a private chat.

On the same line of thinking, we could maybe add a Gunsmith type item as well:
https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Gunsmith

The Gunsmith is an information role that can target a player at Night to learn if they have a gun in flavor.

a Gunsmith gets guilties on all Mafia (except Traitors and Doctors), Cops, Vigilantes, Gunsmiths, Role Cops, Vanilla Cops, Backups of roles with guns and JoATs that have any of these listed powers.

There will be a Cop and a Vig that can trigger a guilty check, and also I would say if someone possessed an item on this list it would also count, which brings in the Vanilla and Flavor Cop shots as well. This would allow Scum some wiggle room if they were checked since they could claim to own an item that does one of those things, though of course Town would probably want receipts haha.

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So, in conclusion, I think Motivator, Traffic Analyst, and Gunsmith shots could all work as extra items in the store. Let me know what you think, I know it's kind of crammed full of investigative shots right now. I would still go through and rearrange the store quantities and prices again once we get some more items to add into it for sure.

 

[Natiko]

Would you give a positive check on someone that had but had already used one of those items?

There are other things you could do - Mind Control a night action of someone, ask a question to spec. Different variants of some existing ones like a watcher or motion detector, a deflector or whatever the self redirecting one is. Vanillaizer. Innocent child. The Neapolitan thing (check if vanilla or not). All kinds of shit, just have to scrounge around for some lesser used roles lol

I think the big things to settle on are items and if you’re adding more events (and if so what they are).

 

[Fanto]

Would you give a positive check on someone that had but had already used one of those items?

No, they would need to be currently holding the item.

There are other things you could do - Mind Control a night action of someone, ask a question to spec. Different variants of some existing ones like a watcher or motion detector, a deflector or whatever the self redirecting one is. Vanillaizer. Innocent child. The Neapolitan thing (check if vanilla or not). All kinds of shit, just have to scrounge around for some lesser used roles lol

Ok yeah, these are some good ideas. Mind Control/Spec Question/Deflector/Vanillaizer all seem like good things that could fit in here. That would be like, what, 7 more new items plus the ones I thought of? That should make things more interesting.

I think the big things to settle on are items and if you’re adding more events (and if so what they are).

Yeah, I'll get another update to the spreadsheet here later today and figure out how I want to sort the item store with the new additions.

For other events, I figure I could check back on other games that have had them recently, like MafiEra and The Mansion, to get some other ideas going for what kind of modifiers I could introduce.