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?

[Ramcius]

Honestly, I have hard time thinking what players can even suggest, if they have no idea about setup (I'm assuming it would be closed bastard setup), especially considering that they unknowingly might break setup, but I can see mod coming with some different mechanic at the start of the day or during the day and people can decide, if they want this new mechanic or not

[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.

[Ramcius]

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.

Ah, so it's only pregame suggestions? But thing is - most people aren't good at making or balancing setups, so things will go through that will break it. But it might be fun as an experiment

[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.

[Ramcius]

You said it yourself - they need spot them, but it's not that easy to spot, especially, when you don't get full picture of the setup during initial phase, you don't know what can be broken in future, something might be fine at the moment, but when something else will be added, earlier mechanic might break it. Another issue is that people will be going for pro town mechanics - rolling town is much higher chance, so you want better starting position. During game town will hold majority, so only pro town suggestions go through, not supporting, not even talking about suggesting pro scum, will be met with suspicion and potential lynch

It might be interesting to let people make suggestions in pregame, but final word is left to mod to add or not suggestion in final game and give people list of things they can suggest for voting during game that wouldn't break setup

[Nero Cain]

players can barely decide on a lynch. You expect them to agree on rules and things too?

[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.

[NotAJumbleOfNumbers]

Someone else has come up with an (untested) nomic-like mafia game called "The Council" already. I suggest you look at it here: https://kevan.org/games/thecouncil

[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.

[Ramcius]

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

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

No, you don't, you don't know in advance what suggestions will be passed in the future, you might have idea of what can be passed based on suggestion, but still it's not guaranteed

[Nahdia]

I like the idea. But I think you lost me at the part where the players design the whole setup via proposals. That kind of just sounds like an open setup invitational? I also feel like some of the fun of the idea could be scumhunting within the rule proposals, which if I'm understanding correctly wouldn't be present in what you proposed. The hidden alignment thing is interesting, but also makes this start to feel much less like mafia because then who can truly be said to be town?

I would envision it working better as like, creating rules during the day phase which people can approval. Stuff like post restrictions, night-action rules (ie all players must target X), things like that. The only problem I see is how do you get town to be on-board with that, because a lot of it sounds inherently anti-town?

[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.

[Nahdia]

Hmm... just a quick pass over it makes me think that for the relatively mech-savvy playerbase of mafiascum, this would be suuuuper townsided. And having the mod just veto rules they think are too heavily in favor on one-side in balance feels a bit problematic to me. Mods aren't perfect, that's why we have reviewers!

One way I could see it being altered with the magic of private topics is letting the mafia "sabotage" the rules proposed in private. Like, one of the examples is to introduce a gun (essentially a 2-shot vig). The mafia could then propose in their private topic "But the first shot is a blank" or something like that.

[Ramcius]

I like the idea. But I think you lost me at the part where the players design the whole setup via proposals. That kind of just sounds like an open setup invitational? I also feel like some of the fun of the idea could be scumhunting within the rule proposals, which if I'm understanding correctly wouldn't be present in what you proposed. The hidden alignment thing is interesting, but also makes this start to feel much less like mafia because then who can truly be said to be town?

I would envision it working better as like, creating rules during the day phase which people can approval. Stuff like post restrictions, night-action rules (ie all players must target X), things like that. The only problem I see is how do you get town to be on-board with that, because a lot of it sounds inherently anti-town?

He says that alignments are rolled after setup is made, secret wincons are there from the start tho

[Nahdia]

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.

[Ramcius]

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.

Well, one solution would be cap secret wincon wins, let's say like 2 people only can do this, afterwards you must win mafia game. But that's more of a bandage for this mechanic that doesn't really fit into mafia game

[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.

[Alyssa The Lamb]

I'm assuming mafia have fakeclaim wincons? otherwise I can't see why not just claiming all the secret wincons isn't gamebreaking

[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.

[Ramcius]

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.

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

[AGar]

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

Event Card Mafia

[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!

[Ramcius]

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.

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

You can have secret wincons, but you need to find fine balance on how many people can leave using those without disrupting game too much and wincons must be enticing enough to try pursue them, but not easy enough to drop everything to pursue them

[mastina]

I actually devised a game where this would come into play.
Players would've decided EVERYTHING.
Size of the game.
Number of town.
Number of scum.
Presence, or absence, of third parties.
Presence, or absence, of multiball.
Number of town power roles.
Number of scum power roles.
The types of roles used.
The presence, or lack, of certain modifiers.
The length of deadline.
The lynch rules (plurality, majority, etc.).
Everything that I could think of which players could vote on, they would vote on.

I ended up not running it tho because I was too busy to flesh it out. (And in hindsight, probably smart because I doubt I'd have been able to run it anyway.)