Nomic-inspired Mafia

[Auro]

Nomic is a game where the rules and mechanics of the game are democratically proposed/changed by the players, and are constantly changing.

I've been thinking about how Mafia games could be influenced to some part before they start. A few have been proposed before, for example Pick Your Power. Here, alignments are decided, and then people 'draft' roles from a pre-determined list. There was one where you could choose your preferred partner before the roles were distributed and that influenced the chance of either rolling Masons or Mafia with them.

How flexible and close to Nomic can we get while keeping the core {informed minority vs uninformed majority} aspect of Mafia?

One general system I thought of was of having certain "fixed" rules that always take precedence and cannot be modified (i.e. rules related to Mafia), something perhaps like this:
1. The game has a discussion phase (Nomic) for a certain period of time, then alignments are distributed randomly, then a gameplay (Mafia) phase.
2. [Mafia Phase]: There are 3 scum and 8 town.
3. [Mafia Phase]: Players can always win with standard Mafia win-cons: Reach parity with town, or eliminate all mafia.
4. [Discussion Phase]: Each player gets 3 tokens to make proposals with at any time. Once a proposal is made, people can discuss and vote on it.

In Nomic though, you're constantly trying to win by influencing rules; removing that and assigning it to the game that's generated via discussion phase is no different from simply discussing setups beforehand and playing them. So...
5. Each player is given a secret additional win-con before the game which is also not subject to change, that can take effect during the Mafia stage; these are cancelled for scum.

While this does remove the core element of Nomic (as you alter rules to pursue a win-con determined by the rules) is a game with this kind of system possible?

[Auro]

Roles, communication, outside game influence, information given to players, lynch mechanics, factional abilities, post restrictions, alliance mechanics. There's no initial setup apart from hidden win-cons.
Unknowing setup breaks can happen, but consider the "Discussion" phase to be very long - so if something breaks the game, people can remove or counter that proposal.

[Auro]

But the suggestions will all be public, so people can counter any breaks they spot before the game starts! Now you could say this still holds for private win-cons, so hmm.

[Auro]

@Ramcius: you do have the full picture during discussion, just sans individual win-cons.

@Nero: Player dependent, I've had enjoyable Nomic games before.

[Auro]

On a very very loose skim: Perfect, thanks for that link! Seems like quite a lot of thought's been put into it. Maybe I should run that sometime.

[Auro]

That kind of just sounds like an open setup invitational?

Of course; that's why I introduced hidden win-cons!

You're entirely correct about the fun being scumhunting via rule proposals. The link NotAJumbleOfNumbers does that by fixing alignments and having proposals as part of the Mafia game itself, balanced somehow by hidden scum vetoes. Give it a skim and tell me what you think?

There are a lot of potential ambiguous proposals which really do nothing but complicate the system, and gaming the complexity is what makes Nomic fun. I think the same should apply here in principle.

[Auro]

yeah i followed that. but if the secret wincons disappear for mafia.... that really isn't mafia, lol. cause then it's mafia vs a bunch of townies that are actually all working towards some secret agenda.

The main win-con of eliminating Mafia stands, the secret ones would have to be auxiliary and probably something difficult.

[Auro]

Once 3 people satisfy auxiliary win-cons game ends - a condition along these lines would fix that. Also, one element I can borrow from there is mod vetoes to rules to prevent rules which cause parallel wins for everyone from coming into play.

[Auro]

Who wins, when 3 secret wincons are achieved - 3 townies that cleared them or all town? If it's former, then it's wild west to stop each other, if it's latter, then town would work to clear those instead of playing mafia

The 3 who did. Well, the wincons are hidden so you don't know what to stop, no? It's not the best solution, but hm, perhaps I can work backwards from Nomic -> no one has secret wincons but up to 3 people can "leave" the game by winning via defined rules.

Zoraster did something similar to this a few years back if I'm reading the concept right.

Event Card Mafia

Interesting! Still, the scope of possible proposals seems limited to the cards themselves. Thanks!

[Auro]

You don't need to know - just block every proposal that isn't beneficial to your wincon

This is possible in regular Nomic too, where you keep blocking proposals. In this case it would only be advantageous to scum
You do need the right p-list for such a game, where there's at least initial momentum on accepting weird proposals.

@Mastina: That does somewhat sound like what I have in mind! In my imagination players would be able to propose and vote on novel mechanics as well. If you ever do run such a game I'll be curious to in/spectate

[Auro]

If everyone blocked everything it's advantageous to scum, as it's a mountainous setup.
There is no "starting setup".

And sure, but that's an implementation detail for a system I've not really thought about too much my curiosity is to whether the core elements of these games could be combined in a manner that allows for gameplay that resembles both games individually. I think some of the proposed systems (especially NotAJumbleOfNumbers' one) come close to this. Nahdia did point out a couple of valid criticisms of it, but I think that's a much more useful starting point anyway.