Stoofer's 3rd Law

[Mr Stoofer]

Stoofer's 3rd Law has now been added to the MafiaWiki. I may need to refine the wording, but essentially it is this:

When designing game of Mafia, as the number and complexity of Pro-Town power roles is increased, the balance moves in favour of the Scum.

The full Wiki entry is under construction but currently reads as follows (it's actually easier to read in the original):

In March 2007, in light of some recent experiences, Mr Stoofer tentatively formulated his 3rd Law. It is still under review, but it currently takes the following form:

When designing game of Mafia, as the number and complexity of Pro-Town power roles is increased, the balance moves in favour of the Scum.

The point is that (contrary to what one might think), it is is actually less helpful to the Town to have lots and lots of elaborate power roles. There is obviously a turning point somehere. Having a Cop is more helpful to the Town than just having plain Townies. But the point quickly comes where adding more power roles just makes life more difficult for the Town.

Reasons for this effect include the following:

1. The power roles interact with each other in ways which are unpredictable (to the Town). For example:
. . . 1. A Roleblocker blocks a pro-town player.
. . . 2. A Tracker sees a pro-town player target someone who is also killed that night -- leading them to suspect the pro-town player
. . . 3. A Vigilante kills a pro-town player.
. . . 4. A Doc stops a Vig killing a Scum.
. . . 5. And so on.
2. This leads to confusion, which can only hurt the town. In such a situation it will be much easier for the Scum - i.e. the informed minority to work out what is going on than the Town.
3. For one thing, only the Scum will be able to separate the genuine claims from the fake claims. Thus:
. . . 1. Truthful claims by Pro-Town players may appear to be false - e.g. where a doc claims to have protected the victim of a nightkill, but failed to protect him due to being roleblocked or having his choice switched.
. . . 2. It becomes easier for Scum to get away with fake claims (they can explain away inconsistencies by reference to some unidentified complexity such as roleblocking).
. . . 3. It becomes impossible or difficult for anyone to confirm themselves. This is the worst of all possible outcomes: when a player claims a power role, and the Town doesn't believe him but the Scum knows he is telling the truth.
4. Even without any interactions, someone claiming a complex role is less likely to be believed -- leading to power roles being lynched after they claim. For example, MeaningofLife42 was lynched in Mini 383: Ben & Jerry's because his role claimed seemed so elaborate as to be made up. It wasn't - it was in fact a potentially very useful Pro-Town role.
5. Once it becomes apparent that the set-up is complex, it can lead to all sorts of paranoia by the Town. An example is Mini 167: Les Miserables, where Changling Bob was a confirmed Mason, but was still lynched because MeMe thought he might be a scum-mason-recruiter!
6. Having a complex set-up also leads to claims by Pro-Town players being disbelieved on the grounds that the game would be overbalanced if they were telling the truth. The Town suffered in Mini 167 from this too: see for example this post by MeMe, which contributed to the Mason's lynching.
7. Conversely, where there is a complex set-up it gives the Scum much more leeway in coming up with fake claims. Once it has been established that there are complex/improbable roles in the game, the Scum can make up complex/improbable fake claims, safe in the knowledge that they will not be counterclaimed and the improbability of their claim will not be used against them. Although the game ended in a Town win, DP12: JeepFest Mafia contains a good example of this: MeMe (Scum) survived for a long time, and came close to winning the game, with an elaborate and improbable fake claim. Mini 167 contains an example of this too: gootentag claimed not to be able to vote at all. Despite the improbability of this role in a 9 payer game, he survived until endgame and won the game for the scum (where he hammahed to win the game for the Scum).

PS:

Vote: spectrumvoid

.

[Mr Stoofer]

Perhaps I should clarify. My point is that as you start adding in

more

and

complex

pro-town roles,

at some point

they start to become less helpful to the Town.

So arguments like this don't really undermined Stoofer's 3rd Law:

I don't think that this necessarily is true. You do have to remember that not all abilities are benficial abilities. Generally a role-blocker is neutral to negative for the town. A cop is helpful. Imagine this set-up:
18 sane cops; 4 mafia

This is obviously very pro-town powered, which is partly a result of being

very simple

.

In any event, consider how this would work in practice. As all the cops came out, the Town would very quickly assume that they were involved in some sort of dethy game. The scum would start claiming cop results which would be hard to untangle from the real results, and there would be general confusion. I am sure in a 22 player game such as this the scum would eventually all be caught, but I would bet every penny I had that at an early stage in this game you would get an example of this:

6. Having a complex set-up also leads to claims by Pro-Town players being disbelieved on the grounds that the game would be overbalanced if they were telling the truth.

"We can't

all

be sane cops!!!".

And you might even get some of this:

5. Once it becomes apparent that the set-up is complex, it can lead to all sorts of paranoia by the Town.

In other words, I bet the game wouldn't be such a cakewalk as one might initially think.


***

Of course Stoofer's 3rd Law does not apply to Open Set-ups.

[Mr Stoofer]

My point is simply: there comes a point when adding more different power roles make life harder. Where that point is, depends on the setup.

I know it's not really a law. It's more of a "thing for game designers to bear in mind". But I needed a third law and this is it. Stoofer's 1st Law isn't a law either.

[Mr Stoofer]

In one game the cop was blocked and the doc prevented the kill.

So there were two pieces of bad information in the mix

. I understand your comments, but I don't agree with how serious the "misses" are or how valuable the "hits" are.

This is exactly my point!

[Mr Stoofer]

Good posting by Thestatusquo.

I think Mr. Flay's version is too watered down. Stoofer's 3rd Law is not a law (one counterexample does not disprove it) but I think that in pretty much

any

set-up, there comes a point where increased complexity hurts the town: i.e. Thestatusquo's second limb.

[Mr Stoofer]

Perhaps a better way of expressing it would something like this:

• The greater the complexity of the set-up, the more difficult it is for the Town (the uninformed minority).
• Complexity of a set-up is a function of (amongst other things) the number and complexity of power roles.
• Therefore adding a Pro-Town power role, especially a complex one, may not benefit the Town, but may instead hurt the Town because it increases the complexity of the set-up.

This is of course too longwinded for a "Law" but it encapsulates my point. Maybe the last bullet point is the law and the first two bullet points are the reasons for it.

Although the last bullet point is rather similar to Mr. Flay's formulation...

[Mr Stoofer]

I certainly agree that:
-> All roles (pretty much) have some cost.
-> They should also have a benefit.
-> But the benefit suffers from diminishing returns under Stoofer's law at a greater rate than the costs do.
-> Thus as amount and complexity of roles increases (complexity within roles also, such as a commuter has a greater effect here than a bulletproof), the town's power increases more slowly and may eventually be harmed.

I <3 Adele.

[Mr Stoofer]

I can agree with that, and can think of examples, but in my experience it is more common this "theoretical" translates into Town confusion.

[Mr Stoofer]

Now that's something that I had not considered...

If the Town accepts that it is never going to figure out the setup, that information such as cop results must be treated with the utmost care even when shown to be reliable in the past, then the Town can simply play the game as though it is vanilla or almost so. A cop being role-blocked doesn't matter if you are not going to place a huge amount of weight on a cop's results -- even if his last 5 investigations have all proved to be correct.

Disclaimer: Stoofer's Laws only apply to Mafiascum.

[Mr Stoofer]

My experiences as player and mod have actually led me to the exact opposite conclusion as Stoofer. The basic theory behind it seems to be that one of the mafia’s main strengths being that they are “informed” working against the “uninformed”. So as the number and complexity of Pro-Town power roles is increased, the mafia lose this advantage. As a result, the balance moves against them. There’s probablyfor the S more to it than that, and I’d like to respond to this thread more fully, but I don’t really have the time for a bit.

The reason why I disagree is that it is

much

easier Scum to figure out what is going on. They know which kills are theirs and which kills were not. They know which claims are true and which are not. etc etc

[Mr Stoofer]

it's all about balance, which becomes increasingly difficult as the game gets more saturated, and the approach of the meta to balancing saturated games.

√

The point of Stoofer's 3rd Law is to make mods think: will adding [role] to the game really help the Town? Or will it make it more difficult and confusing, due to (amongst other things) unanticipated interactions between pro-town power roles?

[Mr Stoofer]

I wasn't meaning to raise any interesting questions. In my response "more difficult and confusing" = more difficult and confusing for the Town = moving the game balance in favour of the Scum.

It's up to the mod to decide whether he wants to make life harder or easier for the Town. My only point is: don't think that adding that [elaborate power-role] will necessarily move the game balance towards the Town; it might move it the other way, especially if you already have loads of other elaborate power-roles.

[Mr Stoofer]

Isn't that what I said?