Mafia

Heh. That would be a good thing to know, huh? It's in the Announcement section--you should have the link to the yeanopanel now that you're a Host. I think you'll be able to figure most of it out but some parts can be confusing.

Also, if you remove or add any players to the roster, it'll reset the roles and you won't be able to use the panel anymore so I'll have to reinstate you. You should be able to do everything else with the panel without issue, but it's probably best if I deal with making changes to the players. ^^

I think a few more days would work just fine. The problem we had last game was that people didn't notice sign-ups were open, but since we have a site-wide announcement that shouldn't be an issue this time around. Just make sure you announce the start date in the sign-up thread!

You can also start thinking about possible roles you might want to include, if you haven't already. Your current roster is as follows:

1. Female Alpha Wolf
2. Helius
3. white lancer
4. White Thunder
5. Vandy
6. `Roxas`
7. Castrael
8. Black Yoshi
9. MajorasMask9
10. chief
11. Trever Leingod
12. Speed Bike Pro
13. hezekiah
14. Redack

The general rule of thumb I follow is that approximately 1/4 to 1/3 (depending on how powerful the special roles on both sides are) of the players should be Mafia.

Also, it's your call if you want Feral to be able to access the Dead Thread even though he's not playing. Usually this works out fine, but it has caused problems in the past.

The Town not getting an outright killing role isn't unbalanced at all. I find the Vigilante's effectiveness a little questionable anyway--it's a fun role, and it's nice to have if they have higher Night priority, but for most of the game they're likelier to hit a Townie (or Town-sided role) than they are a Mafia member. So I don't generally put them on the same level as roles like the Cop.

The Coptor combination can be a really powerful one. It can work in a game, but I find that a lot of those games wind up being pretty similar (i.e. Cop roleclaims early and Doctor covers them the entire game). I personally prefer it if there's something that would prevent that particular strategy (like hezy's Distracted Doctor or the Martyr), but it's up to you.
http://wiki.epicmafia.com/index.php?title=Alien
Are those the Aliens you're referring to? I've read through that but never seen them played in a game before. Third party roles can be a lot of fun, but they'll also be tricky to balance. Usually they're worth it, though.

And reducing the amount of vanilla Townies is good...to a point. The problem is that if there are too few vanilla Townies, it becomes easy for the Town to roleclaim--they're not the most exciting role, but they basically exist so that the Mafia has an easier place to hide in the event of a roleclaim. I remember we've had at least one game (I think it was Xhin's?) where I woke up on the first day and realized that if everyone roleclaimed, we would have a very good chance of winning if we just knocked off Townies. So, yeah. Just something to look out for when deciding how many of them to include. ^_^

Balancing the game is the toughest part--once you've got the game going, it should be mostly smooth sailing except if the players have a lot of questions.

Ah, interesting. So ideally, the Aliens would probably want to keep the game moving slowly until they probed their max number. And they'd have to hope that the Mafia kept knocking off people they'd already probed rather than ones they hadn't. I think it could work--the one hangup I have about it is that I'm not sure if there's anything to stop them from roleclaiming as Aliens on Day 1 to keep from being lynched/Nightkilled. Would there be just one Alien or would there be a group?

Yeah, balancing games would be a lot simpler if you could somehow prevent roleclaiming as a strategy. I don't really think it's possible though--then you'd wind up having to decide whether things like Vandy's hints from last game count as roleclaiming.

Is this Trever's idea, then? Or did he just mention it to you?

I guess the UFO Hunters are Town-sided, but they have a condition where they get extra points for finding the Aliens? I like the concept of the role, but they should probably either not get bonus points for getting an Alien lynched or be third-party, because if not you might wind up with a situation where they can get [(2 victory points)+(1 survival point)+(2 points for catching both Aliens)+(3 good player points)=8 points total]. I think it'll work fine just to factor in their success at finding Aliens into their good player points just like you would with a Cop. Or maybe that's what you meant all along and I'm just being silly. {:P}

The other thing about the UFO Hunters is that the Aliens really can't do anything about them except sit back and hope the Mafia kills them. I would consider reducing this to one UFO Hunter because otherwise, from the Aliens' perspective, it's like there are two Cops that they won't even be able to kill if one or both of them roleclaim.

I kinda like how the different win conditions for each of them intersect and contradict--it's complicated (and will have to be laid out very clearly for everyone's benefit), but I think it'll make for an interesting game. The ratio as it stands right now:

9-4-2

That actually looks pretty good. Both the Mafia and the Town have some powerful roles--the Silencer can be a tricky one to balance since it basically means that there's one less Town-sided (or Alien) player. You'll have to decide what happens if the ratio gets to (for example) 4-4[/4]-1[/1]. Typically, the Mafia wins the game if they equal the number of Town-sided players (with third-party roles not mattering in the ratio), but if you want you can rule that they have to equal half of all players total in order to win (since the third party this time has its own win condition).

And ah...the Sensor. I actually...kinda hate this role, haha, because I used it in the first game I hosted and I felt like it really threw the game balance off. I think it could maybe work in this setup, since there's no Doctor, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind with the Sensor:

1. You'll have to determine whether the Aliens (and the Godfather) count as anti-Town to its sensing ability.

2. The Sensor will likely speed up the game, since the Town will want to lynch more often in order to get sensing results. This will hurt the Aliens' ability to get probing points.

So, yeah. It's a very powerful role that'll change the game, and it's up to you whether you like that change or not. I think its presence is more acceptable in this game than in most because of the presence of the Assassin (which will make roleclaiming a much worse strategy), so I'd pretty much consider those two roles linked--if you keep one, keep the other, and if you swap out one, swap out the other (unless the Sensor gets replaced by a normal Doctor--the Assassin would also be something of a deterrent to the Coptor strategy).

Bah, stupid forgetting to put the end formatting tag. -_-

Oh, and one other thing. You mentioned that points would be limited to 4--does that mean you're cutting out good playing points in favor of the bonus points (i.e. is that the absolute maximum for anyone to get even if they play a brilliant game)?

Honestly, the reason I wanted to have two of them was to add a little twist to the game (which seems improbable now since I couldn't contact Xhin). The idea was that if a UFO hunter gets probed, they get turned into a cow. They're still town sided, they can still vote to lynch or not lynch, but their in-game contribution is limited to "Moo!".

XD

I'm not sure how much that would actually help balance, but I got a good chuckle out of that. The thing about that is that (assuming you made this public--Xhin and I at least would know about it) if someone started Mooing at me and then cast their vote for someone, I'd probably find it safe to assume that they were the UFO Hunter trying to get us to vote out an Alien (it is like the Silencer, but weaker because part of the Silencer's strength is its ability to null someone's vote for a round). Would they lose their detection abilities if they were turned into a cow?

As for the Sensor, I'm having a hard time deciding what would be best (which is why its hard to balance). The biggest issue with the Sensor isn't so much that it narrows down the list of the Guilty as it is that it can confirm people innocent--if 5 people vote to lynch someone and one of them is Guilty, and then the Guilty person gets taken out, those other 4 are instantly all confirmed innocent. Maybe having 'Guilty' roles like the Godfather and Aliens would insert enough ambiguity into that result (i.e. those four aren't necessarily innocent) so that the Sensor isn't that overpowered? With no Doctor, it could work. I don't think the Godfather will be overpowered regardless--in the absence of Coptor, more Mafia probably get caught based on people's readings than anything else.

With points, it's really all up to you--my first time hosting, I practically vomited points all over just about everyone who played, but the second time I only gave out one "good player" point and the rest only came from surviving/winning. Traditionally, the maximum per game has been six (2 winning, 1 survival, 3 good playing), and that's reserved for people who play brilliantly and are absolutely essential to their team's victory. So I'd say the points definitely shouldn't go higher than that, and you can put the ceiling lower (like at 4) if you want. Also, if you did decide to allow up to six, it should be reserved for some really special playing (and only one per game, if that).

Maybe having 'Guilty' roles like the Godfather and Aliens would insert

Missed something in there...I meant roles that didn't show up to the Sensor.

Making the Aliens have to decide when they want to turn someone into a Cow would make it difficult for them--it's like the Mafia kill, only they only get to do it once, it's not as powerful, and they have to be really sure that the person they're targeting is the right person. Also, what would happen if they accidentally tagged a Mafia member with this power instead? I think it's probably not necessary to nerf this particular power of theirs. The one issue is that it would basically be a free kill for the Mafia (since the UFO Hunter's identity would be confirmed), which would mean two kills if the Assassin was alive.

UFO Hunter counters aliens and aliens counter UFO hunter. I still almost think two UFO hunters are necessary, as it would be suicide (cowicide?) for the UFO Hunter to reveal a single alien, as the other would simply take him out at night. I'm unsure how to better balance this.

Personally, I don't really see how this is different from an Alien-focused Cop. Both get taken out instantly if they roleclaim and reveal anything, and the Cop has a more dangerous enemy to deal with. The UFO Hunter is already a powerful role (equivalent to the Cop) from the Aliens' perspective, so I don't really think they need to have anymore powers especially because if they do reveal after finding an Alien, they've already wiped out half of the Alien team.

I definitely wouldn't reduce the number of Mafia players, no matter what (especially now that we're adding Frustro to the game). Another rule-of-thumb that I try to follow: when in doubt on balance issues, lean towards the Mafia (you could probably include the Aliens in that). That's because it's typically harder to pretend to be Town-sided than it is to actually be Town-sided, and I'm pretty confident we've had more games like the last one (where the Mafia went down quickly and the Town was hardly in danger) than the game before that (which might actually have been the only one where the Mafia had an easy victory, and even then it was due more to bad/uninvolved playing on the Town's part).

Although that raises another question - what's the best/most fair way for me to assign roles? Do we have a random chance generator or something?

I've always just used random.org, though there are probably better websites out there. I'd imagine you could probably find a good one pretty easily via Google.

Sounds good to me! I'll dip out of this thread and you can start assigning roles.

1. Female Alpha Wolf
2. Helius
3. white lancer
4. White Thunder
5. Vandy
6. `Roxas`
7. Castrael
8. Jo Nathan
9. Black Yoshi
10. MajorasMask9
11. chief
12. Trever Leingod
13. Speed Bike Pro
14. hezekiah
15. Redack
16. Xhin
17. Frustro

I just hope this restart doesn't throw me back as Mafia again. -_-"

Also, if you put the Outsider in, what will they come up as to the Sensor?

AND it looks like Hindenburg might want to join as well. So 18 players.

I added Hindenburg. Watch out for him, though--chief thinks he might cause trouble. If he does something stupid like wreck the game, we'll ban him from future games.

Also, I might suggest 1 more Alien to help balance out the game. The ratio with that is:

11-4-3

That's actually a pretty steep hill for both the Mafia and the Aliens to climb (although the Assassin's presence helps).