I agree that the Supreme Court is very inelegant, but I was really attracted to the idea of a permanent body. Your suggestion of there being other roles for the branches really appeals to me, and I'm going to spend some time thinking of some. If so, the Supreme Court would be completely revamped.
However, I like the President's power of veto, because I think it provides a conflict between the Congress and the President that provides the voters with interesting choices.
edit: I also think it could be cool if there would be two threads: a campaign thread and a game thread. Both of which would be running simultaneously.
edit edit: When there are fewer than six players, or when there are six players plus the remaining Supreme Court, there could be a rule that allows the President to declare martial law, which would cause normal lynching.
But instead of the players in the game voting, I had anyone who wanted to vote have a vote in the election. The president would have powers that they could "campaign" with (If I got elected, I will do this). The players would decide which of them wanted to campaign and a two-week campaign period would take place where they try and convince players to vote them.
The presidents could decide upon certain campaign platforms which would attract a set amount of "CPU Voters."
However, such a game is best run on MafiaScum, where the player base is bigger.
For your game, I don't think campaigning will be big enough to justify another thread.
On this note, I'd like to ask about the new mechanic i'm featuring in the mini im going to try and fast track:
(Camp Tacronic Sing Mafia)
Each RL Week (7-days), players would privately send a vote to me. The winner would be declared at the start of the next week.
Players cannot vote for themselves.
The Winner of the vote will be declared in the thread, though the voting would be private. The winner would be declared the current song (It fits the flavor). The current song would be immune to all kills and lynches. In Addition, each player will have a unique special ability only usable when they are the Current Song (and it is the appropriate phase, day or night, for that ability)
During Twilights, the town would vote for the Current Song during night, which would have the same features as during the day (Though some special abilities may only be used during day and not night and vice/versa).
The current "current song" would not be eligible to win the weekly vote unless it is the twilight vote (this is to prevent players from having to stretch out a "day" for a whole RL week in order to vote for the player they want to be the "current song." Players who do not post enough (I was thinking 7 posts a RL Week) will also not be eligible to be the "Current Song" and their votes will not count.
Thoughts on this? In Essence, the mechanic fuels the game I'm creating (80% done) and combats lurking. It encourages each player to take a more active presence in the game and to try and get the support of the other players so as to become the Current Song.
There were a few other powers i debated giving the Current Song: The main ones being that the current song would have An Extra Vote and be Unblockable, but I decided against that.
Thoughts?
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I love Joboman, Poggy, Niv, and Vezok, because, while they may not be the best players, they still try to win. Having fun is the most important thing to a game, but I've learned that if you don't try to win, then you're ruining everyone else's fun.
@Loran: You might want to take a look at this game: http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9678&start=0. It's ongoing, though, so we can't discuss it, but the mechanical twist there is very similar to your game. You can see how it affected the players.
@Loran: You might want to take a look at this game: http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9678&start=0. It's ongoing, though, so we can't discuss it, but the mechanical twist there is very similar to your game. You can see how it affected the players.
Huh...so this is how you jumped in skill from SoIaF to recently...scum play on the side. Sneaky.
I'll read through it, but it's obviously different in the fact that the "current song" changes frequently (probably 3-4 times per game day, not including twilights) and that only one person gets it at a time. Thus i get the feeling, and i haven't read it yet, that in this version of the game, once the two recipitants of the herbs are decided, then players who may have a tendency to do so may go back to lurking.
(Which my style would hopefully give a disincentive to ever doing)
EDIT: Also, you don't need a majority to win the vote, simply a plurality.
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I love Joboman, Poggy, Niv, and Vezok, because, while they may not be the best players, they still try to win. Having fun is the most important thing to a game, but I've learned that if you don't try to win, then you're ruining everyone else's fun.
A couple of obvious differences, 1. there are several known advantages players get for being the current song (CS hereafter) such as unlynchability and unkillability. 2. Someone will always be the CS and there may be day abilities that depend on it unlike in that game. 3. Voting is confidential and is decided via plurality.
That said, it does bring up one question id like to bring up: Should I make what special unique ability each player would have as CS secret or put what it is in their Role PM.
Essentially, should i tell Player A, if you are CS, you will gain a night kill, or should i just leave what they get out?
The former invites some strategizing, but it makes the voting early simply through claims, whereas I'd like it to be more determined by who the town trusts at any given point.
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I love Joboman, Poggy, Niv, and Vezok, because, while they may not be the best players, they still try to win. Having fun is the most important thing to a game, but I've learned that if you don't try to win, then you're ruining everyone else's fun.
That's a really great information generator. I like it as is.
Err, which post are you referring to? Sorry, I've posted a bunch of conflicting stuff here in my last 2 posts, and you could be talking bout congress mafia etc.
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I love Joboman, Poggy, Niv, and Vezok, because, while they may not be the best players, they still try to win. Having fun is the most important thing to a game, but I've learned that if you don't try to win, then you're ruining everyone else's fun.
Err, which post are you referring to? Sorry, I've posted a bunch of conflicting stuff here in my last 2 posts, and you could be talking bout congress mafia etc.
Any thought (Az or otherwise) on whether the unique special ability each player would have if he was the CS should be known to each player? Or whether their PMs should just tell them that they gain a unique special ability (to be revealed when they are the CS) as a CS
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Quote from Seppel »
I love Joboman, Poggy, Niv, and Vezok, because, while they may not be the best players, they still try to win. Having fun is the most important thing to a game, but I've learned that if you don't try to win, then you're ruining everyone else's fun.
Any thought (Az or otherwise) on whether the unique special ability each player would have if he was the CS should be known to each player? Or whether their PMs should just tell them that they gain a unique special ability (to be revealed when they are the CS) as a CS
That might depend on what those special abilities are. Revealing especially powerful abilities to the players could lead to the town either optimizing its choices with ease and taking lion's share of the votes, or cause indiscrete townies to overshare info and sabotage the town.
Hints could be a good way to go. You need some amount of information that would provoke players to compete for the role to act as a motivating force.
The downside from all of this may be that it gives the players twice as much role-claim data to mine for possible tells. That's a problem to bear in mind while designing it.
A couple of obvious differences, 1. there are several known advantages players get for being the current song (CS hereafter) such as unlynchability and unkillability. 2. Someone will always be the CS and there may be day abilities that depend on it unlike in that game. 3. Voting is confidential and is decided via plurality.
That said, it does bring up one question id like to bring up: Should I make what special unique ability each player would have as CS secret or put what it is in their Role PM.
Essentially, should i tell Player A, if you are CS, you will gain a night kill, or should i just leave what they get out?
The former invites some strategizing, but it makes the voting early simply through claims, whereas I'd like it to be more determined by who the town trusts at any given point.
You're right, there's a lot of differences (the most major one being that the votes are confidential, making the player interactions relatively irrelevant).
Why make the voting confidential? More information and interaction could be made from public voting of the "Current Song." Even if you made it confidential, the town would no doubt set up a system to make players accountable for their choice and to gather information anyway.
As for the abilities, I think that you shouldn't mention what abilities they get if they are choosen. If you do, the game wouldn't be about choosing who you think is the most town, but rather choosing which role you know (of think in Az's idea, if I'm reading it correctly) is the most powerful if selected. How about giving one player a hint that their ability may not be as powerful as their peers? It would provide interesting tension between getting someone you know is town (you) a weak ability, or risking a scum choosen as the "Current Song."
If Player A makes a flawed argument against Player B, and Player C (a townie) sees the flaw what should he do?
1) Point out the flaw as soon as he sees it.
2) Wait until Player B responds then post the flaw.
3) Do nothing.
4) Post that he sees a flaw but hold off posting the actual flaw until Player B has responded.
5) Other.
If this is an example from a specific game that is currently still in progress, even if the event is "over" in the game, you should wait until the game is over to ask general questions about it. A "general" question directly inspired by a real event in an ongoing game is not actually a "general" question at all.
I am in the planning stages of an article for the mafia thread, and it's about methods used to scumhunt and ways to approach one's job as a member of the town.
I'd like to get input from others for the article before it's released, so as to have other opinions besides my own within it. Would anyone be interested?
PM me if you are; I'd theoretically love to arrange a time for us all to meet in the #mafia chatroom to talk about it.
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I love Joboman, Poggy, Niv, and Vezok, because, while they may not be the best players, they still try to win. Having fun is the most important thing to a game, but I've learned that if you don't try to win, then you're ruining everyone else's fun.
Questions on possible game setups I was thinking of:
Setup 1: After the star trek and High school mafia townie knows mafia player's name debacle i wondered about a setup DESIGNED around the concept that a player is in fact aware of the entire mafia's identity.
Game would look essentially something like this (This one would probably be a normal): 20 players. 5 Mafia, 1 Snitch (Knows Mafia names) 14 Town. Alternatively could be 14 Players, 3 Mafia, 1 Snitch, 10 Town. Mafia wins if Snitch dies (Thus Town loses in that circumstance) or normal win condition.
The Snitch would be immune to normal nightkills, but the mafia would have 2-3 Special superkills. For balance reasons several other nonmafia players would be normal-NK immune so as to prevent total mafia lucksacking into a win.
Essentially the snitch needs to get the mafia lynched without outting himself, the town needs to recognize who's scum (and the snitch's hints) and the mafia need to figure out who has the extra inside info.
Similarish winning mechanic for the mafia as in shaman mafia, but instead of having to use the special kill-like thingy on just the person with the idol thingy (which was inanimate and did nothing) they have to kill a player whose actions might give him up.
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Second Concept-Vengeance mafia. 1 SK, 11 Town. No Nights, SK gets a kill every 7 RL days. (Theme is that the town has wronged the SK (Think The Bride) in the Past and she's coming for revenge) and the town has to eliminate her. Similar concept to Assassin mafia except the RL "days" make the game go really fast and put the town on a clock.
(Sounds bland, but the fast pace would make it sort of hectic).
Both games have the weakness in that they could end really really early, but I happen to like that concept. Thoughts?
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I love Joboman, Poggy, Niv, and Vezok, because, while they may not be the best players, they still try to win. Having fun is the most important thing to a game, but I've learned that if you don't try to win, then you're ruining everyone else's fun.
Wouldn't town just be inclined to lynch everyone really really fast?
Which game? The 2nd one? That'd be reducing mafia to a crapshoot, which imexperience the town doesn't do. But just in case for that I'd have in the 2nd one the sk being able to kill once every 7 RL days or once after every lynch. (Essentially a 7 day period without a lynch would be a nolynch)
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I love Joboman, Poggy, Niv, and Vezok, because, while they may not be the best players, they still try to win. Having fun is the most important thing to a game, but I've learned that if you don't try to win, then you're ruining everyone else's fun.
Which game? The 2nd one? That'd be reducing mafia to a crapshoot, which imexperience the town doesn't do. But just in case for that I'd have in the 2nd one the sk being able to kill once every 7 RL days or once after every lynch. (Essentially a 7 day period without a lynch would be a nolynch)
That one has slasher movie flavor written all over it. I think it would be an interesting experiment.
The SK has less interest in pushing a mislynch than traditional mafia since a slow town gets him to "night" anyway. He has a lot of room to maneuver.
Which game? The 2nd one? That'd be reducing mafia to a crapshoot, which imexperience the town doesn't do. But just in case for that I'd have in the 2nd one the sk being able to kill once every 7 RL days or once after every lynch. (Essentially a 7 day period without a lynch would be a nolynch)
That makes more sense. If it's just every 7 RL days, the town should just systematically kill everyone in a random order within 7 days, and chances are by the time you'll randomly lynch the SK before you run out.
Run the stats on the second one... I bet the SK has like a 10% chance to win at best.
Edit: Ran some numbers... I think the town has a 55% win when completely random, and obviously better than that when there's a thread to go on. This is probably way unbalanced.
@Ged, Yeah i figured as much actually, so it still probably works best as an irc-ish game...but it's a fun concept.
One addition to it i forgot to mention is that each town member would be required to survive in order to win. Would give the SK more camo.
The first one I like more, personally.
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I love Joboman, Poggy, Niv, and Vezok, because, while they may not be the best players, they still try to win. Having fun is the most important thing to a game, but I've learned that if you don't try to win, then you're ruining everyone else's fun.
In otherwords its neutral mafia.
11 survivors, 1 SK.
Right?
Haven't heard of that, but indeed. Yes.
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I love Joboman, Poggy, Niv, and Vezok, because, while they may not be the best players, they still try to win. Having fun is the most important thing to a game, but I've learned that if you don't try to win, then you're ruining everyone else's fun.
Copy and pasted from Memorable Mafia Moments, because I decided I want to discuss this:
Quote from CropCircles »
Unilateral vigging is, most often, the wrong play. I often bring up L5R, in jest, as an example of it going well, but the simple fact is that the town lost that game. I mean, sure, the town mislynched 3 out of 4, and the game was fairly scum heavy, so you could make the arguement that the vigging was the only reason the town even got close to winning, but it simply doesn't stand. It's equally easy to argue that the viggings robbed the town of valuable lynch information that could have let every other townie make better choices and pull out a win. There are simply too many variables to take into account, too many hypotheticals, and at the end of the day, you can't mistake effort with results. Games where the vig fires early and often usually end in a town loss. Period.
I agree 100% with the above statement, from a Spike mentality.
But I, myself, and simply more of a Johnny/Timmy kind of guy. Winning is great, but it simply isn't everything. Hell, if you look at my track record, I appear to be a pretty heavy liability to the teams I play on. I think I've won about 25% of the games I've played. (I'm likely to try and up my game, I think, as my status as a liability is getting worse every game, but I'm speaking historically here. :p)
I love it when people in mafia die. I can't stand waking up to a killess night, or crawling through a three month Day 1. I want blood, I want daykills, I want to see 5 people kick the bucket in a single post, I want to see gambits, I want chaos, I want action. I get killed - so what. I lose - whatever. It's nice to stay alive and it's nice to win, but priority number one for the Cropster is movement, action, deaths, and gambits. These have defined the games I find most enjoyable.
AezWolging is absolutely bad play, and people should take flak for it. But if a vig is allowed to fire Night 1, and they want to, I think they should. Good strategy is definately an important part of the game, most players will rate it as the most important, and the vig should realize that it is bad play, but if that's the way they want to go, then do it. Once again, though, I must emphasize that if your goal is to win, if your goal is to be a good team player, unilateral vigging, especially early game or at lyol, will almost always be bad play. People do need to recognise this.
The short version of my arguement here is that it's cool for players to AezWolg, in most scenarios, because, put simply, they are playing within the guidlines of their role. People should be aware that it is usually bad play, but if that's how they want to play, then that's how they want to play. Personally, there will be very few times that I go into a night with a nightkill available to me, and not use it.
But thinking this through has brought up an interesting question to me. Whose fault is it when a game ends in an unsatisfactory way due to early, often vigging? Amistarian ended early due to a few big mess ups(in addition to solid scum play, of course), one of those screw ups being an extra kill every night from the vig. Drawn Together, Dollar, LotR, L5R, Random 2...all come to mind when I think of games defined by AezWolging bringing down the town. Every time a game is broken because some role was too powerful, or there were too many scum, players come into the post game ripping into the mod about how the set-up was broken. But when players are given too much power, the ability to kill off as much as 25% of the players in the game, and the town loses because that single misplay, all the blame goes to the player, who in reality was playing completely within the restraints of his role, given by the mod.
For the rest of this post, and for the sake of this arguement, I am talking within the restricted realm of balanced games. I've played in quite a few slanted games that I had a lot of fun in, and I am a firm believer that, sometimes, it is good to sacrifice balance for sake of creativity. See: Sephiroth in FFVII. However, many players are only going to enjoy a game that is properly balanced, and the novelty of a mass daykiller would wear off pretty quick if it showed up everywhere. The discussion I want to open is for the sake of games that strive for balance above all else.
Why is it that full fledged vigilantes are accepted as balanced in standard games? It's not the same as an over powered scum group screwing over a town, I'll admit that. If the town loses because the scum were over powered, it is unsatisfying because they lost inspite of what might have been good play on their part. If they lose because one of their team mates made the wrong play, like killing 4 or 5 townies, then they don't feel cheated by the mod, they feel cheated by their team mate.
But that's not all there is to it. Doomsday and Battle Royale come to mind, here. In the endgame, some players complained about the problems that come with trying to balance a game with multiple mafias. You pretty much have to rely on the two groups to crosskill a certin number of times. If they don't at all, then there are so many scum that the town can lose inspite of hitting every one of their lynches. If they crosskill too much, then the town can win inspite of mislynching at every turn. It's too random.
A full Vigilante present in the game can have a similair effect. Because it is a town role, and because AezWolging most often hurts the town, it doesn't fall into the area of Town vs Mafia vs Mod. The town lost because a townie played bad, they didn't lose because the Mod screwed them to the point that good play didn't matter. But that doesn't mean the mod should include the role, from a balance perspective.
Look at it this way: If a player was given the ability to kill four players every night, and then went on to kill so many townies that the game ends in a scum win Night 2, the town would clearly feel screwed by a role that had too much influence on it's own. The mod could argue that the player should have realized it was bad play, but in that instance, I doubt anyone would really feel like the game was balanced. On the other side of the spectrum, the vig could be a one shot, who has some kind of drawback or other limitation tacked on to his single kill. This variation would clearly be unable to screw either side on it's own. By itself, it has no balance issue, regardless of how the player uses it. The line between a balanced vig and an unbalanced vig lies somewhere between the two.
Obviously, each game has specifics that could influence where that line falls, but I'm starting to come into the line of thinking that the line has previously been set further toward the broken side. Think about it; how many games have been shifted heavily one way or the other because a single townie was given enough power to off three or four players without restraint. You want to reward good play and punsh bad play, but the Vigilante takes that idea and goes to the extreme, allowing one players actions to sway the game much further than any of his teammates could ever think to, instantly making the game swingy in a way that isn't needed at all.
No other town role has this effect on a game. The doc is nuisance to the scum, but it's incredibly rare for a doc to protect successfully enough to change the course of the game on it's own. The Cop usually has to claim to actually get anything done, at which point if the scum can't out right kill him, they'll usually have a Roleblocker, GodFather, or some other tool to deal with him. Not to mention the possibility of non-sane cops. These things are intentionally included so that a single role doesn't wreck the game. You never hear in the end game "Wow, we would have won if the Cop hadn't <insert action>, instead it was a complete landslide!" or "Too bad the Doc targetted Player A and Player B, that totally split the game in half!"
When I think of games like Random 2, my first thought, the thing I immediately associate with it, is the AezWolging vig and the town that lost because of it. What other roles have this kind of power? How often is a game defined by how well or how poorly a Doc or a Cop played? Why do we consider this a balanced role?
There are plenty of ways of ways to limit a Vigilante to the point that is still a useful role, but won't go on a spree and toss the game to the scum.
Dear player,
You are the vig, but you only have two shots.
You are the vig, but you lose your killing ability if you hit a townie.
You are the vig, but you may only fire every other night.
You are the vig, but every night you fire, you won't be able to vote the following day.
You are the vig, but you can't fire until Night 3.
There are plenty of ways to do this, and most of the time, you can do it in a way that is linked to the flavor of your game, which often leads to a richer experience. It also helps give scum more room to false claim. Scum can't usually get away with claiming a killing role since they won't be able to keep up the extra kills, if they are lucky enough to have one. But if limited vigs are more of a presence, opportunistic scum will have another place to hide, since they claim previous makia kills, depending on the circumstances, and then claim they are out of shots, or lost the ability to kill for whatever reason, or some other restriction that will keep them from having to prove themselves more later.
I don't think all full Vigilantes should be done away with. Like I said, sometimes fun roles and creative approaches are worth sacrificing balance for. But I want to challenge this community to question the balance of full vigs in their games. I think making limited vigs the standard will help make games on this site more enjoyable, and much less swingy.
Full vigs used to be balanced: before vigging-for-fun became an accepted practice. Before that phenomenon, a full vig was a completely balanced asset, a potential second lynch that the town often badly needed to make up lost ground.
That's not to say that vigging-for-fun is going to disappear just because it should for the health of games; it won't. And it's not to say that there's something fundamentally wrong with an approach that sees mafia as fun and utilizing your role to the fullest as part of that fun. People ought to see it that way. That's healthy.
But even admitting the fun of vigging, it also happens to be among the most reckless and inconsiderate acts a player can make within the game without actually breaking the game rules. Ideally, players would have the restraint to rein in their own fun level where it starts to throw the entire game drastically out of whack.
Gambits? Love them. Creative use of role? Absolutely. Unconventional play? Sure.
But when players start tossing the game to gratify what I'd say is a pretty trivial game-itch, that wouldn't result in much opportunity for fun lost as a result...Right or wrong, that's going to cause problems for our games.
Does that mean that we have to start designing games to take into account rogue townies? Probably so. As a general proposition, it's very dangerous to focus too much of the town's power in any single role, because the death of that player results in an erratic swing in the course of the game. Regardless of the factor of uniliateral vigging, it's a good practice for balance purposes.
But the downside of the limited vig argument is that with most variants, you're stripping the town of firepower. If you can't double your kills at need, sometimes the mafia will simply race the town.
Perhaps a new breed of vig that's linked to the number of votes on a player at the end of the day would be a good solution to that.
The variant where the player has to wait until a later night to fire also looks pretty good for balance purposes, though it's going to limit towns sometimes and be a bit paternalistic.
I don't think the vote trade-off vig will be too elegant. It does give some chance of notification, but it's not a sufficient disincentive to firing.
Every other night and forfeiture on hitting townie run into the reduced-firepower problem. The first halves your strength, lessening the amount of damage rogues can do but still not preventing the poor play. As for hitting townies, sometimes that's precisely what you need your vig to do, and losing the ability is tough. It's kind of elegant, but really swingy.
Whatever solution is implemented, it should probably try to make sure that:
1. The town can still keep up with the amount of scum killing power.
2. Acting in concert with the town is encouraged.
3. The game balance won't be thrown off if the player goes rogue, or dies.
Does that mean that we have to start designing games to take into account rogue townies? Probably so
I find it tough to weigh in on this statement here. On one hand, a game should be designed so that a rogue vig doesn't mean game over for the town. In a standard normal game, that's not that difficult. Ironically, watcher/tracker roles, gunsmith roles etc etc manage to counter an aezwolger, by catching him and lynching him as an SK. Also such players in normal games tend to start behaving rather strangely when they aezwolg and start missing, and get keyed on as scum.
As such, in normal games, there are several "automatic stabilizers" that kick in if a townie (vig) power role goes "rogue." Amestrian was a rare example of a perfect storm occuring....a vig misfiring 3 times, a town being really off, the scum not killing or blocking the vig and having a double kill available, which is really powerful in and of itself.
Mini games on the other hand deserve extra care. By definition a mini is a shorter game, and thus a full vig is ridiculously swingy. I've always favored restricted vigs (such as one-shots) in such games....in my first modded game, Star Wars Mafia on wifom, I had a vig in the game, but made her have a miss chance that increased for each day she didn't target a scum, which worked well i thought.
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I love Joboman, Poggy, Niv, and Vezok, because, while they may not be the best players, they still try to win. Having fun is the most important thing to a game, but I've learned that if you don't try to win, then you're ruining everyone else's fun.
Vigs are balanced. You don't balance a role around how badly townies can play that role. Cops are "unbalanced" if the townie investigates the same player every single night and it's a godfather. Cops are just easier to play than vigs.
A role would be unbalanced if it's presence alone meant that one faction has a lowered chance of winning. Vigs don't lower the town's chance of winning. People playing them poorly does (which can be said about anything the town does).
But even admitting the fun of vigging, it also happens to be among the most reckless and inconsiderate acts a player can make within the game without actually breaking the game rules. Ideally, players would have the restraint to rein in their own fun level where it starts to throw the entire game drastically out of whack.
I think these two sentences really touch on the heart of my stance.
Vigging can be fun for the player doing it, but throwing the game for the fun of one person is very clearly a negative thing. One thing I would love to see would be a common ban on vigs firing the first night in games that start at night. There's absolutely no fun in killing a player for no game based reason before they even get to post, except the joy of forcing another player out of the game, which is pretty lame.
The second sentence there starts with a pretty key word: ideally. This is exactly my point. The world is not perfect, and what is ideal is not always what happens. That doesn't mean that we need to police every player's actions to ensure their not making the game unfun for other people, but I do think the Vig is a role that has a little too much power in that department. Inevitably, some newb is going to get their hands on a role that can boot a player out at any time, without reason. We as a community could be against vigging-for-fun, but somebuddy will come along and do it. Example: You say that the full vig used to be balanced before vigging-for-fun was accepted, but even in the days of High School Mafia, WoLG offed a townie Night 0.
That's what really confuses me. A townie will have no in-game incentive to off a random player before they're allowed to post, they will only ever do it for the pure fun of killing someone or to spite that player, so why do we allow something that is inherently going to make the game less fun, and then only chastise the player who did it, and not the mod who allowed it?
If a role has the possibility to make a game less fun, and a mod wants their game to be fun, they should make the adjusments needed to keep the role fun.
Quote from Az »
Gambits? Love them. Creative use of role? Absolutely. Unconventional play? Sure.
But when players start tossing the game to gratify what I'd say is a pretty trivial game-itch, that wouldn't result in much opportunity for fun lost as a result...Right or wrong, that's going to cause problems for our games.
I'm not sure I understand this sentence, but I feel the need to clarify something.
Vigging simply for the sake of vigging is not condusive with a fun game of mafia, not on the whole, not ever. When I talk about reckless vigging, I'm assuming that the player doing the killing is trying to hit scum, and trying to win the game. The simple fact is, when players do that, they more often hurt then help. I'm just saying that a player can recognize that what they are doing is not strategically the best play, but still do it. A player can accept that they are not good enough at the game to catch scum on their own, but that doesn't mean they can't try. It's fun to try to find different methods and tricks to catch scum. Unilateral vigging, gambits, these things make the game of catching scum more fun. And the player who falls victim, be they scum or town, should realize that they were killed because someone thought they were mafia, and that's the name of the game.
But the intent should always be to play the game you signed up for, and not to screw with the other players.
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Does that mean that we have to start designing games to take into account rogue townies? Probably so. As a general proposition, it's very dangerous to focus too much of the town's power in any single role, because the death of that player results in an erratic swing in the course of the game. Regardless of the factor of uniliateral vigging, it's a good practice for balance purposes.
Yup.
Quote from Az »
But the downside of the limited vig argument is that with most variants, you're stripping the town of firepower. If you can't double your kills at need, sometimes the mafia will simply race the town.
The thing is, the town can have any number of different tools to fight scum. Plenty of games are made without a cop, without a doc, or without a vig, and are not inherently unbalanced. The type of vig variant, how limited it is, is going to depend partially on the set-up as whole. My goal here is not to create a cookie cutter that will shape the way all MTGS games should look, but simply to open for consideration the idea that the full Vig is not as balanced as it has been considered in the past.
Quote from Az »
Whatever solution is implemented, it should probably try to make sure that:
1. The town can still keep up with the amount of scum killing power.
2. Acting in concert with the town is encouraged.
3. The game balance won't be thrown off if the player goes rogue, or dies.
I'm "meh" on the fist two. There are plenty of other factors, even in games with only standard roles, that can make a game balanced without giving the town any firepower. Once again, what the limitiation is is going to depend on the game.
Acting in concert with the town seems like something that you're not really going to be able to fit on most vig variants. It seems out of place here, and should really be encouraged through the community's culture.
The game balance is the point that I'm most concerned with. I don't like that a single player "going rogue" can have such an effect on a game.
This is kind of semantics, at this point, because I'm arguing under the idea that swingy is unbalanced, which means we probably don't mean the same thing by "unbalanced."
The point is, the role allows a single player to mess up the outcome of the game. Every other player in the town can play well, but if the vig runs rampant and tears the town apart, they can still lose inspite of hitting most their lynches.
Cops aren't swingy or unbalanced. A cop can target the same player every night, and all he's doing is not contributing what he could be. It's bad play, it hurts the town, but it doesn't screw the town over. A vig's power to screw the town is much greater, as playing the role poorly can end up with as much as 25% of the town getting killed, and the town can lose based soley(or at least primarily) on one person's poor performance.
I believe that giving any one townie that much influence is unbalanced.
I know that if I was given a vig role that said I could only vig 3 times I would be more careful with my vigs. Does that limit change my potential to mess up? No. 3 kills is plenty and probably trhe same amount a full vig will ever be able to use. But just seeing that my ammo is not unlimited would make me have second thoughts about viggging someone. I can't really explain it but it just somehow makes each shot feel more important and thus requiring more care.
I think x-shots would be the best answer if you're worried about a rogue townie in your game. How many shots off does an actual non-rogue vig get off? 2-3 max I'd say, more if the game lasts longer than normal.
That said, I think most players know that reckless vigging is bad - newer players get the itch to shoot, since it's probably the first time they've played unlimited killing role, and they have less experience to know when or when not to shoot (Amistarian is a good example). I think everyone might benefit if we posted a small article or other in the article thread, with examples on standard vig play, and link to it in the "New to mafia" thread.
I'm reading over these arguments, and I'm confused about a point that seems to have been assumed.
Is Aezwolging (And by this, I mean vigging at every oppurtunity, including Night 0) not mathematically better for the town?
I have no basis in saying that it is, but I believe I heard from someone (mayhaps Arlmx?) that aggressive vigging is mathematically better for the town.
If so, then telling a vig to not vig when possible is like telling a player to do the fun thing, over the thing that will give him a greater chance to win, which would make the player make an very uncomfortable choice (lower fun or don't play to win).
I'm reading over these arguments, and I'm confused about a point that seems to have been assumed.
Is Aezwolging (And by this, I mean vigging at every oppurtunity, including Night 0) not mathematically better for the town?
I have no basis in saying that it is, but I believe I heard from someone (mayhaps Arlmx?) that aggressive vigging is mathematically better for the town.
If so, then telling a vig to not vig when possible is like telling a player to do the fun thing, over the thing that will give him a greater chance to win, which would make the player make an very uncomfortable choice (lower fun or don't play to win).
Armlx did make that argument in FT mafia. (He was scum btw, but the point was moot as i don't think it colored his arguments, though there was a redirecter in the game.). And the problem is that math can't really totally codify mafia.
Maybe randomly this works out, but it'd depend on the # of scum in each game and the power roles involved. More often than not on this site, it's worked miserably....Aggressive vigging worked for CC in L5R, whereas it didn't work in countless other games.
A big note is of the L5R example, which is far different....A Daykilling Vig has a much greater chance of hitting scum than a nightkilling one. A daykilling vig can make sure that a player has claimed before they die, giving him more information on who to shoot. Moreover, a daykilling vig can turn his shot over to the town so they can work it as a second lynch. Plus as a day ability its far less likely to be messed with.
A nightkilling vig can be RBed, Redirected, hit a UnNightkillable etc etc, making it far less effective than a second lynch, particularly if the town decides on it ahead of time. If the vig is rogue and shooting on his own...he's far less effective than the town is at figuring out who's scum, and oftne lacks claim information from his targets which could be crucial.
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I love Joboman, Poggy, Niv, and Vezok, because, while they may not be the best players, they still try to win. Having fun is the most important thing to a game, but I've learned that if you don't try to win, then you're ruining everyone else's fun.
I know that if I was given a vig role that said I could only vig 3 times I would be more careful with my vigs. Does that limit change my potential to mess up? No. 3 kills is plenty and probably trhe same amount a full vig will ever be able to use. But just seeing that my ammo is not unlimited would make me have second thoughts about viggging someone. I can't really explain it but it just somehow makes each shot feel more important and thus requiring more care.
This is kinda my point, in a lot less words. Restraining a vig to a few shots is usually not going to really change how many shots they fire. If you look back at games, it's pretty rare that vigs fire that much. So it's hardly crippling the town's power.
On the other hand, it provides incentive to hold your fire. Especially for newer players, who are more likely to AezWolg, and who won't have a perfect idea of how often vigs usually get to fire.
Most of what I'm trying to push here is to start crafting the role into a form that is more elegent to the way the role is supposed to be played. I don't want to completely force people into playing the role a certain way, I just want to limit the damage they can do and provide incentives to play in a fasion that is likely to make the game less swingy, and thus more fun on the whole.
It just doesn't seem elegant to me to tell a player they can use an ability every night without restraint, and then expect them not to.
Quote from iLord »
If so, then telling a vig to not vig when possible is like telling a player to do the fun thing, over the thing that will give him a greater chance to win, which would make the player make an very uncomfortable choice (lower fun or don't play to win).
I'm sure there are people out there that will go through some numbers that "prove" that aggresive vigging is better for the town, but there are a lot of factors in mafia. Most notably, the lynch of a scum can easily provide you with enough reactions to track down mmore scum, or to clear townies and find scum through process of elimination. But if, say, three scum are killed by a vig, and two remain, and the town has mislynched at every turn, it is possible that the wagons that never happened on the now dead scum could have provided evidence to catch those remaining scum, but instead they go on to win because they avoided commiting to opinions on their scum buddies, and slipping tells. That might not be the best example, but the point is that numbers can't take into a lot of the factors that determine who ends up winning a game of mafia.
On the other hand, if you look back at games where vigs fire early and often, the town almost always loses. Early vigging is lots of fun for the vig, not a lot of fun for the players he kills, and very unfortunate for the other 13 or 14 townies who can lose inspite of their best efforts.
Quote from loran16 »
Aggressive vigging worked for CC in L5R, whereas it didn't work in countless other games.
Not true. We lost that game to the "SK."
L5R is a perfect example of how aggressive vigging can be fun, it most certainly was epic, but the fact remains that we lost that game. Sure, I knocked off two of the three mafia myself. But the town mislynched for the first three days, which could easily be attributed to the lack of information available due to the vigging of the scum instead of them being run up and lynched.
L5R is a perfect example of how aggressive vigging can be fun, it most certainly was epic, but the fact remains that we lost that game. Sure, I knocked off two of the three mafia myself. But the town mislynched for the first three days, which could easily be attributed to the lack of information available due to the vigging of the scum instead of them being run up and lynched.
I'd disagree with this...the town should've won that game....an SK (or 4th scum really) in a mini is really really tough for ANY town to overcome and i feel that the town deserved the win, since rafk didnt know he wasn't town.
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I love Joboman, Poggy, Niv, and Vezok, because, while they may not be the best players, they still try to win. Having fun is the most important thing to a game, but I've learned that if you don't try to win, then you're ruining everyone else's fun.
Armlx did make that argument in FT mafia. (He was scum btw, but the point was moot as i don't think it colored his arguments, though there was a redirecter in the game.). And the problem is that math can't really totally codify mafia.
Maybe randomly this works out, but it'd depend on the # of scum in each game and the power roles involved. More often than not on this site, it's worked miserably....Aggressive vigging worked for CC in L5R, whereas it didn't work in countless other games.
A big note is of the L5R example, which is far different....A Daykilling Vig has a much greater chance of hitting scum than a nightkilling one. A daykilling vig can make sure that a player has claimed before they die, giving him more information on who to shoot. Moreover, a daykilling vig can turn his shot over to the town so they can work it as a second lynch. Plus as a day ability its far less likely to be messed with.
A nightkilling vig can be RBed, Redirected, hit a UnNightkillable etc etc, making it far less effective than a second lynch, particularly if the town decides on it ahead of time. If the vig is rogue and shooting on his own...he's far less effective than the town is at figuring out who's scum, and oftne lacks claim information from his targets which could be crucial.
Redirection can be particularily dangerous, and the vig shot is most definitely not as effective as a second lynch. The other downfalls you and CC listed are definitely true as well - more information is always beneficial the the town.
However, I disagree that information the scum leaves is more important than a dead scum body. The information taken from the scum may be used to take down another scum, or even out the entire scum team. However, it just as likely could be not analyzed, or even analyzed incorrectly.
Yes, with a good analyst, information could be used to bring about more than 1 dead scum. However, one good analyst cannot control the lynch. Many a time an irrational town prevents a player that was spot on from carrying out his suspicions. Additionally, all of the good analysts are wrong at times - the chance that they can actually use the information to peg more than one scum is not large enough to give up the dead scum for.
With a theoretically adept analyst, we must also consider a skillful mafia player that could sufficiently muddy the waters. All scum uncsciously drop scumtells. A good scum intentionally drops false tells.
In short, what I'm trying to say here is that the certainty of the the dead mafia body is usually more important than the information the living mafia member would have given, because the information is not reliable enough. I've not much experience, but I know enough that even the best among us don't dependably hit scum and can carry out their lynch.
On the vigging of townies before their claim, I agree that I had failed to consider it. I can't decide whether or not vigging the unclaimed is good - a claim could seem confirmable, but too much reliance on claims is something the moderator's are beginning to design against.
@mmod + loran: I see where you are both coming from, but that's kind of a different arguement.
Yeah there were a lot of scum, but the town had a lot to work with. Full cop, full doc, CC = Daykiller, and I seem to remember Puzzle being unnightkillable. Also, Raf couldn't win if unnightkillable Puzzle was alive, so if we had lynched better and not killed Puzzle, we would have won. On top of that, the scum were given jack sqaut in the department of confirmable abilities, so it was claim vanilla, make something up, or claim to have a really weak vig like role and get killed after making a snide remark asking me for content. In the face of 3 powerful, instantly confirmable town roles.
The fact that Raf didn't know he would turn is a decent point, but if the Mafia were all dead and the game was still going, he was canidate number one for SK since Day 1. If we had one more lynch at our disposal, we would have won. Simple fact is that I vigged aggresively, and the town lost.
It may not be a good example of how early vigging can hurt the town, but I don't think it can be used as a counter example either.
Redirection can be particularily dangerous, and the vig shot is most definitely not as effective as a second lynch. The other downfalls you and CC listed are definitely true as well - more information is always beneficial the the town.
However, I disagree that information the scum leaves is more important than a dead scum body. The information taken from the scum may be used to take down another scum, or even out the entire scum team. However, it just as likely could be not analyzed, or even analyzed incorrectly.
Yes, with a good analyst, information could be used to bring about more than 1 dead scum. However, one good analyst cannot control the lynch. Many a time an irrational town prevents a player that was spot on from carrying out his suspicions. Additionally, all of the good analysts are wrong at times - the chance that they can actually use the information to peg more than one scum is not large enough to give up the dead scum for.
With a theoretically adept analyst, we must also consider a skillful mafia player that could sufficiently muddy the waters. All scum uncsciously drop scumtells. A good scum intentionally drops false tells.
In short, what I'm trying to say here is that the certainty of the the dead mafia body is usually more important than the information the living mafia member would have given, because the information is not reliable enough. I've not much experience, but I know enough that even the best among us don't dependably hit scum and can carry out their lynch.
On the vigging of townies before their claim, I agree that I had failed to consider it. I can't decide whether or not vigging the unclaimed is good - a claim could seem confirmable, but too much reliance on claims is something the moderator's are beginning to design against.
Well misused, claim analysis can be bad, but if a player you vig is a doc, or say a confirmable mason who hasn't claimed yet, you look really foolish. And let me tell you, confirmable masons seem to often get overconfident and make themselves town targets due to their overconfidence in being "cleared."
Once again, yes GOOD vigging can win games for towns. But the first option for a good analyst should be trying to sway the lynch. If after a few times that fails and no one is listening to you, vigging can be appropriate (As an SK, Bateleur did that in Seinfeld, but he was essentially playing as a vig due to circumstances.) But early vigging is a bad idea that usually turns out awfully.
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I love Joboman, Poggy, Niv, and Vezok, because, while they may not be the best players, they still try to win. Having fun is the most important thing to a game, but I've learned that if you don't try to win, then you're ruining everyone else's fun.
Well misused, claim analysis can be bad, but if a player you vig is a doc, or say a confirmable mason who hasn't claimed yet, you look really foolish. And let me tell you, confirmable masons seem to often get overconfident and make themselves town targets due to their overconfidence in being "cleared."
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. The problem with this is that it's not clear what roles are confirmable anymore - more and more mods are attempting to design their set-ups that way.
Sure, a unclaimed mason is basically confirmed. I guess vigging one would be detrimental to the town. But I can't decide if that's enough to deter vigging the multitude of unconfirmable roles.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. The problem with this is that it's not clear what roles are confirmable anymore - more and more mods are attempting to design their set-ups that way.
Sure, a unclaimed mason is basically confirmed. I guess vigging one would be detrimental to the town. But I can't decide if that's enough to deter vigging the multitude of unconfirmable roles.
It should be. The truth is that its likely that the claim won't be enough to convince a vig that his prospective target isn't scum. But until he has the claim, he's acting not on the best-possible amount of info and is giving away a shot that the claim will clear the player and prevent the vig from wasting a shot.
In mid-late game where the town is failing, perhaps a vig could shoot an unclaimed player, but only then should it be advocated, and really only in desperate circumstances.
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Quote from Seppel »
I love Joboman, Poggy, Niv, and Vezok, because, while they may not be the best players, they still try to win. Having fun is the most important thing to a game, but I've learned that if you don't try to win, then you're ruining everyone else's fun.
It should be. The truth is that its likely that the claim won't be enough to convince a vig that his prospective target isn't scum. But until he has the claim, he's acting not on the best-possible amount of info and is giving away a shot that the claim will clear the player and prevent the vig from wasting a shot.
But if the claim won't likely convince a vig not to shoot, wouldn't getting in an extra shot (say on Night 0) be more important than the claim?
But if the claim won't likely convince a vig not to shoot, wouldn't getting in an extra shot (say on Night 0) be more important than the claim?
Errr, Night 0 vigging is bad. You have no evidence to go on and are just randomly shooting. More or less, you're taking the mod's setup, saying "I hope this is really balanced, because If its not i could be throwing things way off kilter here" and firing into a blank crowd.
Vigging without any information at all (such as play analysis) is a poor idea. Remember, roughly 3/4 of the time you'll knock out a townie, and that's not good odds. Moreover, since you've not given the chance of anyone to talk to and react to your target you're not really gaining any information from killing. In essence, 3/4 of the time, you're hurting yourself.
(Moreover, you're kind of ruining the point of mafia here by making it random at the start....That's not fun for anyone really, and since it doesn't give the town an edge, why do it?)
Personally, vigging after day 1 is also too early unless a player has claimed and is considered the target for tomorrow. And even then PERSONALLY, i'd hold my fire as things may come up at night that may convince you that your target is town and that he shouldn't be lynched/vigged.
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Quote from Seppel »
I love Joboman, Poggy, Niv, and Vezok, because, while they may not be the best players, they still try to win. Having fun is the most important thing to a game, but I've learned that if you don't try to win, then you're ruining everyone else's fun.
Shooting unclaimed is always worse then shooting claimed, because even though mods do like to find new and interesting ways to keep people from gaming the mod and lynching based soley on claims, there are still players in just about every game that are correctly identified as townies based on their claim.
Seriously, when you look over a set-up, you can almost always pick out at least a few players who would be instantly confirmed when they claimed or at least confirmed once they have proven their ability. You vig without that info, you are taking the chance of cutting down a tree that was never really a tree to begin with, and robbing the town of not only a warm body, but usually a helpful role.
The fact that people sometimes clear people based on a claim when that person is scum isn't completely relevant, because it is much more often that players are correctly identified as town then players are incorrectly cleared as scum. Besides, when a scum is incorrectly cleared, they often have to keep up an act, which often falls through. So killing them before pursuing other options is not the precentage play.
And if you kill an unclaimed information role, they won't be able to share their results, which can hurt. You force a claim, then if you still don't belive them and you kill them, at least you've got confirmed info on the table in the event that they are town.
What about something similar to Battle Royale? Have a person with a passive/active ability that gives the town an extra lynch, but roles aren't revealed until end of day? It does seem overly powerful IMO, but perhaps if it can be tweaked enough it'll be as good as a vig, and nowhere near as bad on a reckless player.
Personally I wouldn't use such a role, seeing as how some days gets to 60-70 pages.
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However, I like the President's power of veto, because I think it provides a conflict between the Congress and the President that provides the voters with interesting choices.
edit: I also think it could be cool if there would be two threads: a campaign thread and a game thread. Both of which would be running simultaneously.
edit edit: When there are fewer than six players, or when there are six players plus the remaining Supreme Court, there could be a rule that allows the President to declare martial law, which would cause normal lynching.
But instead of the players in the game voting, I had anyone who wanted to vote have a vote in the election. The president would have powers that they could "campaign" with (If I got elected, I will do this). The players would decide which of them wanted to campaign and a two-week campaign period would take place where they try and convince players to vote them.
The presidents could decide upon certain campaign platforms which would attract a set amount of "CPU Voters."
However, such a game is best run on MafiaScum, where the player base is bigger.
For your game, I don't think campaigning will be big enough to justify another thread.
What happens if there's a tie for a office?
My Custom Set: Solescurio
(Camp Tacronic Sing Mafia)
Each RL Week (7-days), players would privately send a vote to me. The winner would be declared at the start of the next week.
Players cannot vote for themselves.
The Winner of the vote will be declared in the thread, though the voting would be private. The winner would be declared the current song (It fits the flavor). The current song would be immune to all kills and lynches. In Addition, each player will have a unique special ability only usable when they are the Current Song (and it is the appropriate phase, day or night, for that ability)
During Twilights, the town would vote for the Current Song during night, which would have the same features as during the day (Though some special abilities may only be used during day and not night and vice/versa).
The current "current song" would not be eligible to win the weekly vote unless it is the twilight vote (this is to prevent players from having to stretch out a "day" for a whole RL week in order to vote for the player they want to be the "current song." Players who do not post enough (I was thinking 7 posts a RL Week) will also not be eligible to be the "Current Song" and their votes will not count.
Thoughts on this? In Essence, the mechanic fuels the game I'm creating (80% done) and combats lurking. It encourages each player to take a more active presence in the game and to try and get the support of the other players so as to become the Current Song.
There were a few other powers i debated giving the Current Song: The main ones being that the current song would have An Extra Vote and be Unblockable, but I decided against that.
Thoughts?
Logical Reasoning is dead; Long Live Stupidity
My Custom Set: Solescurio
Huh...so this is how you jumped in skill from SoIaF to recently...scum play on the side. Sneaky.
I'll read through it, but it's obviously different in the fact that the "current song" changes frequently (probably 3-4 times per game day, not including twilights) and that only one person gets it at a time. Thus i get the feeling, and i haven't read it yet, that in this version of the game, once the two recipitants of the herbs are decided, then players who may have a tendency to do so may go back to lurking.
(Which my style would hopefully give a disincentive to ever doing)
EDIT: Also, you don't need a majority to win the vote, simply a plurality.
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A couple of obvious differences, 1. there are several known advantages players get for being the current song (CS hereafter) such as unlynchability and unkillability. 2. Someone will always be the CS and there may be day abilities that depend on it unlike in that game. 3. Voting is confidential and is decided via plurality.
That said, it does bring up one question id like to bring up: Should I make what special unique ability each player would have as CS secret or put what it is in their Role PM.
Essentially, should i tell Player A, if you are CS, you will gain a night kill, or should i just leave what they get out?
The former invites some strategizing, but it makes the voting early simply through claims, whereas I'd like it to be more determined by who the town trusts at any given point.
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Err, which post are you referring to? Sorry, I've posted a bunch of conflicting stuff here in my last 2 posts, and you could be talking bout congress mafia etc.
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The current song.
Logical Reasoning is dead; Long Live Stupidity
That might depend on what those special abilities are. Revealing especially powerful abilities to the players could lead to the town either optimizing its choices with ease and taking lion's share of the votes, or cause indiscrete townies to overshare info and sabotage the town.
Hints could be a good way to go. You need some amount of information that would provoke players to compete for the role to act as a motivating force.
The downside from all of this may be that it gives the players twice as much role-claim data to mine for possible tells. That's a problem to bear in mind while designing it.
You're right, there's a lot of differences (the most major one being that the votes are confidential, making the player interactions relatively irrelevant).
Why make the voting confidential? More information and interaction could be made from public voting of the "Current Song." Even if you made it confidential, the town would no doubt set up a system to make players accountable for their choice and to gather information anyway.
As for the abilities, I think that you shouldn't mention what abilities they get if they are choosen. If you do, the game wouldn't be about choosing who you think is the most town, but rather choosing which role you know (of think in Az's idea, if I'm reading it correctly) is the most powerful if selected. How about giving one player a hint that their ability may not be as powerful as their peers? It would provide interesting tension between getting someone you know is town (you) a weak ability, or risking a scum choosen as the "Current Song."
My Custom Set: Solescurio
If Player A makes a flawed argument against Player B, and Player C (a townie) sees the flaw what should he do?
1) Point out the flaw as soon as he sees it.
2) Wait until Player B responds then post the flaw.
3) Do nothing.
4) Post that he sees a flaw but hold off posting the actual flaw until Player B has responded.
5) Other.
No. That is already done with. I am just asking generally. Unless the rules go that far...
I'd like to get input from others for the article before it's released, so as to have other opinions besides my own within it. Would anyone be interested?
PM me if you are; I'd theoretically love to arrange a time for us all to meet in the #mafia chatroom to talk about it.
Logical Reasoning is dead; Long Live Stupidity
Setup 1: After the star trek and High school mafia townie knows mafia player's name debacle i wondered about a setup DESIGNED around the concept that a player is in fact aware of the entire mafia's identity.
Game would look essentially something like this (This one would probably be a normal): 20 players. 5 Mafia, 1 Snitch (Knows Mafia names) 14 Town. Alternatively could be 14 Players, 3 Mafia, 1 Snitch, 10 Town. Mafia wins if Snitch dies (Thus Town loses in that circumstance) or normal win condition.
The Snitch would be immune to normal nightkills, but the mafia would have 2-3 Special superkills. For balance reasons several other nonmafia players would be normal-NK immune so as to prevent total mafia lucksacking into a win.
Essentially the snitch needs to get the mafia lynched without outting himself, the town needs to recognize who's scum (and the snitch's hints) and the mafia need to figure out who has the extra inside info.
Similarish winning mechanic for the mafia as in shaman mafia, but instead of having to use the special kill-like thingy on just the person with the idol thingy (which was inanimate and did nothing) they have to kill a player whose actions might give him up.
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Second Concept-Vengeance mafia. 1 SK, 11 Town. No Nights, SK gets a kill every 7 RL days. (Theme is that the town has wronged the SK (Think The Bride) in the Past and she's coming for revenge) and the town has to eliminate her. Similar concept to Assassin mafia except the RL "days" make the game go really fast and put the town on a clock.
(Sounds bland, but the fast pace would make it sort of hectic).
Both games have the weakness in that they could end really really early, but I happen to like that concept. Thoughts?
Logical Reasoning is dead; Long Live Stupidity
I WANT YOUR DEATH BARONS! Message me if you want to get rid of them!
Which game? The 2nd one? That'd be reducing mafia to a crapshoot, which imexperience the town doesn't do. But just in case for that I'd have in the 2nd one the sk being able to kill once every 7 RL days or once after every lynch. (Essentially a 7 day period without a lynch would be a nolynch)
Logical Reasoning is dead; Long Live Stupidity
That one has slasher movie flavor written all over it. I think it would be an interesting experiment.
The SK has less interest in pushing a mislynch than traditional mafia since a slow town gets him to "night" anyway. He has a lot of room to maneuver.
That makes more sense. If it's just every 7 RL days, the town should just systematically kill everyone in a random order within 7 days, and chances are by the time you'll randomly lynch the SK before you run out.
I WANT YOUR DEATH BARONS! Message me if you want to get rid of them!
Edit: Ran some numbers... I think the town has a 55% win when completely random, and obviously better than that when there's a thread to go on. This is probably way unbalanced.
One addition to it i forgot to mention is that each town member would be required to survive in order to win. Would give the SK more camo.
The first one I like more, personally.
Logical Reasoning is dead; Long Live Stupidity
In otherwords its neutral mafia.
11 survivors, 1 SK.
Right?
Haven't heard of that, but indeed. Yes.
Logical Reasoning is dead; Long Live Stupidity
The short version of my arguement here is that it's cool for players to AezWolg, in most scenarios, because, put simply, they are playing within the guidlines of their role. People should be aware that it is usually bad play, but if that's how they want to play, then that's how they want to play. Personally, there will be very few times that I go into a night with a nightkill available to me, and not use it.
But thinking this through has brought up an interesting question to me. Whose fault is it when a game ends in an unsatisfactory way due to early, often vigging? Amistarian ended early due to a few big mess ups(in addition to solid scum play, of course), one of those screw ups being an extra kill every night from the vig. Drawn Together, Dollar, LotR, L5R, Random 2...all come to mind when I think of games defined by AezWolging bringing down the town. Every time a game is broken because some role was too powerful, or there were too many scum, players come into the post game ripping into the mod about how the set-up was broken. But when players are given too much power, the ability to kill off as much as 25% of the players in the game, and the town loses because that single misplay, all the blame goes to the player, who in reality was playing completely within the restraints of his role, given by the mod.
For the rest of this post, and for the sake of this arguement, I am talking within the restricted realm of balanced games. I've played in quite a few slanted games that I had a lot of fun in, and I am a firm believer that, sometimes, it is good to sacrifice balance for sake of creativity. See: Sephiroth in FFVII. However, many players are only going to enjoy a game that is properly balanced, and the novelty of a mass daykiller would wear off pretty quick if it showed up everywhere. The discussion I want to open is for the sake of games that strive for balance above all else.
Why is it that full fledged vigilantes are accepted as balanced in standard games? It's not the same as an over powered scum group screwing over a town, I'll admit that. If the town loses because the scum were over powered, it is unsatisfying because they lost inspite of what might have been good play on their part. If they lose because one of their team mates made the wrong play, like killing 4 or 5 townies, then they don't feel cheated by the mod, they feel cheated by their team mate.
But that's not all there is to it. Doomsday and Battle Royale come to mind, here. In the endgame, some players complained about the problems that come with trying to balance a game with multiple mafias. You pretty much have to rely on the two groups to crosskill a certin number of times. If they don't at all, then there are so many scum that the town can lose inspite of hitting every one of their lynches. If they crosskill too much, then the town can win inspite of mislynching at every turn. It's too random.
A full Vigilante present in the game can have a similair effect. Because it is a town role, and because AezWolging most often hurts the town, it doesn't fall into the area of Town vs Mafia vs Mod. The town lost because a townie played bad, they didn't lose because the Mod screwed them to the point that good play didn't matter. But that doesn't mean the mod should include the role, from a balance perspective.
Look at it this way: If a player was given the ability to kill four players every night, and then went on to kill so many townies that the game ends in a scum win Night 2, the town would clearly feel screwed by a role that had too much influence on it's own. The mod could argue that the player should have realized it was bad play, but in that instance, I doubt anyone would really feel like the game was balanced. On the other side of the spectrum, the vig could be a one shot, who has some kind of drawback or other limitation tacked on to his single kill. This variation would clearly be unable to screw either side on it's own. By itself, it has no balance issue, regardless of how the player uses it. The line between a balanced vig and an unbalanced vig lies somewhere between the two.
Obviously, each game has specifics that could influence where that line falls, but I'm starting to come into the line of thinking that the line has previously been set further toward the broken side. Think about it; how many games have been shifted heavily one way or the other because a single townie was given enough power to off three or four players without restraint. You want to reward good play and punsh bad play, but the Vigilante takes that idea and goes to the extreme, allowing one players actions to sway the game much further than any of his teammates could ever think to, instantly making the game swingy in a way that isn't needed at all.
No other town role has this effect on a game. The doc is nuisance to the scum, but it's incredibly rare for a doc to protect successfully enough to change the course of the game on it's own. The Cop usually has to claim to actually get anything done, at which point if the scum can't out right kill him, they'll usually have a Roleblocker, GodFather, or some other tool to deal with him. Not to mention the possibility of non-sane cops. These things are intentionally included so that a single role doesn't wreck the game. You never hear in the end game "Wow, we would have won if the Cop hadn't <insert action>, instead it was a complete landslide!" or "Too bad the Doc targetted Player A and Player B, that totally split the game in half!"
When I think of games like Random 2, my first thought, the thing I immediately associate with it, is the AezWolging vig and the town that lost because of it. What other roles have this kind of power? How often is a game defined by how well or how poorly a Doc or a Cop played? Why do we consider this a balanced role?
There are plenty of ways of ways to limit a Vigilante to the point that is still a useful role, but won't go on a spree and toss the game to the scum.
Dear player,
You are the vig, but you only have two shots.
You are the vig, but you lose your killing ability if you hit a townie.
You are the vig, but you may only fire every other night.
You are the vig, but every night you fire, you won't be able to vote the following day.
You are the vig, but you can't fire until Night 3.
There are plenty of ways to do this, and most of the time, you can do it in a way that is linked to the flavor of your game, which often leads to a richer experience. It also helps give scum more room to false claim. Scum can't usually get away with claiming a killing role since they won't be able to keep up the extra kills, if they are lucky enough to have one. But if limited vigs are more of a presence, opportunistic scum will have another place to hide, since they claim previous makia kills, depending on the circumstances, and then claim they are out of shots, or lost the ability to kill for whatever reason, or some other restriction that will keep them from having to prove themselves more later.
I don't think all full Vigilantes should be done away with. Like I said, sometimes fun roles and creative approaches are worth sacrificing balance for. But I want to challenge this community to question the balance of full vigs in their games. I think making limited vigs the standard will help make games on this site more enjoyable, and much less swingy.
[The Family]
That's not to say that vigging-for-fun is going to disappear just because it should for the health of games; it won't. And it's not to say that there's something fundamentally wrong with an approach that sees mafia as fun and utilizing your role to the fullest as part of that fun. People ought to see it that way. That's healthy.
But even admitting the fun of vigging, it also happens to be among the most reckless and inconsiderate acts a player can make within the game without actually breaking the game rules. Ideally, players would have the restraint to rein in their own fun level where it starts to throw the entire game drastically out of whack.
Gambits? Love them. Creative use of role? Absolutely. Unconventional play? Sure.
But when players start tossing the game to gratify what I'd say is a pretty trivial game-itch, that wouldn't result in much opportunity for fun lost as a result...Right or wrong, that's going to cause problems for our games.
Does that mean that we have to start designing games to take into account rogue townies? Probably so. As a general proposition, it's very dangerous to focus too much of the town's power in any single role, because the death of that player results in an erratic swing in the course of the game. Regardless of the factor of uniliateral vigging, it's a good practice for balance purposes.
But the downside of the limited vig argument is that with most variants, you're stripping the town of firepower. If you can't double your kills at need, sometimes the mafia will simply race the town.
Perhaps a new breed of vig that's linked to the number of votes on a player at the end of the day would be a good solution to that.
The variant where the player has to wait until a later night to fire also looks pretty good for balance purposes, though it's going to limit towns sometimes and be a bit paternalistic.
I don't think the vote trade-off vig will be too elegant. It does give some chance of notification, but it's not a sufficient disincentive to firing.
Every other night and forfeiture on hitting townie run into the reduced-firepower problem. The first halves your strength, lessening the amount of damage rogues can do but still not preventing the poor play. As for hitting townies, sometimes that's precisely what you need your vig to do, and losing the ability is tough. It's kind of elegant, but really swingy.
Whatever solution is implemented, it should probably try to make sure that:
1. The town can still keep up with the amount of scum killing power.
2. Acting in concert with the town is encouraged.
3. The game balance won't be thrown off if the player goes rogue, or dies.
I find it tough to weigh in on this statement here. On one hand, a game should be designed so that a rogue vig doesn't mean game over for the town. In a standard normal game, that's not that difficult. Ironically, watcher/tracker roles, gunsmith roles etc etc manage to counter an aezwolger, by catching him and lynching him as an SK. Also such players in normal games tend to start behaving rather strangely when they aezwolg and start missing, and get keyed on as scum.
As such, in normal games, there are several "automatic stabilizers" that kick in if a townie (vig) power role goes "rogue." Amestrian was a rare example of a perfect storm occuring....a vig misfiring 3 times, a town being really off, the scum not killing or blocking the vig and having a double kill available, which is really powerful in and of itself.
Mini games on the other hand deserve extra care. By definition a mini is a shorter game, and thus a full vig is ridiculously swingy. I've always favored restricted vigs (such as one-shots) in such games....in my first modded game, Star Wars Mafia on wifom, I had a vig in the game, but made her have a miss chance that increased for each day she didn't target a scum, which worked well i thought.
Logical Reasoning is dead; Long Live Stupidity
They hate us cause they ain't us.
A role would be unbalanced if it's presence alone meant that one faction has a lowered chance of winning. Vigs don't lower the town's chance of winning. People playing them poorly does (which can be said about anything the town does).
Vigs are swingy, definitely, but not unbalanced.
Vigging can be fun for the player doing it, but throwing the game for the fun of one person is very clearly a negative thing. One thing I would love to see would be a common ban on vigs firing the first night in games that start at night. There's absolutely no fun in killing a player for no game based reason before they even get to post, except the joy of forcing another player out of the game, which is pretty lame.
The second sentence there starts with a pretty key word: ideally. This is exactly my point. The world is not perfect, and what is ideal is not always what happens. That doesn't mean that we need to police every player's actions to ensure their not making the game unfun for other people, but I do think the Vig is a role that has a little too much power in that department. Inevitably, some newb is going to get their hands on a role that can boot a player out at any time, without reason. We as a community could be against vigging-for-fun, but somebuddy will come along and do it. Example: You say that the full vig used to be balanced before vigging-for-fun was accepted, but even in the days of High School Mafia, WoLG offed a townie Night 0.
That's what really confuses me. A townie will have no in-game incentive to off a random player before they're allowed to post, they will only ever do it for the pure fun of killing someone or to spite that player, so why do we allow something that is inherently going to make the game less fun, and then only chastise the player who did it, and not the mod who allowed it?
If a role has the possibility to make a game less fun, and a mod wants their game to be fun, they should make the adjusments needed to keep the role fun.
I'm not sure I understand this sentence, but I feel the need to clarify something.
Vigging simply for the sake of vigging is not condusive with a fun game of mafia, not on the whole, not ever. When I talk about reckless vigging, I'm assuming that the player doing the killing is trying to hit scum, and trying to win the game. The simple fact is, when players do that, they more often hurt then help. I'm just saying that a player can recognize that what they are doing is not strategically the best play, but still do it. A player can accept that they are not good enough at the game to catch scum on their own, but that doesn't mean they can't try. It's fun to try to find different methods and tricks to catch scum. Unilateral vigging, gambits, these things make the game of catching scum more fun. And the player who falls victim, be they scum or town, should realize that they were killed because someone thought they were mafia, and that's the name of the game.
But the intent should always be to play the game you signed up for, and not to screw with the other players.
Yup.
The thing is, the town can have any number of different tools to fight scum. Plenty of games are made without a cop, without a doc, or without a vig, and are not inherently unbalanced. The type of vig variant, how limited it is, is going to depend partially on the set-up as whole. My goal here is not to create a cookie cutter that will shape the way all MTGS games should look, but simply to open for consideration the idea that the full Vig is not as balanced as it has been considered in the past.
I'm "meh" on the fist two. There are plenty of other factors, even in games with only standard roles, that can make a game balanced without giving the town any firepower. Once again, what the limitiation is is going to depend on the game.
Acting in concert with the town seems like something that you're not really going to be able to fit on most vig variants. It seems out of place here, and should really be encouraged through the community's culture.
The game balance is the point that I'm most concerned with. I don't like that a single player "going rogue" can have such an effect on a game.
[The Family]
The point is, the role allows a single player to mess up the outcome of the game. Every other player in the town can play well, but if the vig runs rampant and tears the town apart, they can still lose inspite of hitting most their lynches.
Cops aren't swingy or unbalanced. A cop can target the same player every night, and all he's doing is not contributing what he could be. It's bad play, it hurts the town, but it doesn't screw the town over. A vig's power to screw the town is much greater, as playing the role poorly can end up with as much as 25% of the town getting killed, and the town can lose based soley(or at least primarily) on one person's poor performance.
I believe that giving any one townie that much influence is unbalanced.
[The Family]
That said, I think most players know that reckless vigging is bad - newer players get the itch to shoot, since it's probably the first time they've played unlimited killing role, and they have less experience to know when or when not to shoot (Amistarian is a good example). I think everyone might benefit if we posted a small article or other in the article thread, with examples on standard vig play, and link to it in the "New to mafia" thread.
Is Aezwolging (And by this, I mean vigging at every oppurtunity, including Night 0) not mathematically better for the town?
I have no basis in saying that it is, but I believe I heard from someone (mayhaps Arlmx?) that aggressive vigging is mathematically better for the town.
If so, then telling a vig to not vig when possible is like telling a player to do the fun thing, over the thing that will give him a greater chance to win, which would make the player make an very uncomfortable choice (lower fun or don't play to win).
My Custom Set: Solescurio
Armlx did make that argument in FT mafia. (He was scum btw, but the point was moot as i don't think it colored his arguments, though there was a redirecter in the game.). And the problem is that math can't really totally codify mafia.
Maybe randomly this works out, but it'd depend on the # of scum in each game and the power roles involved. More often than not on this site, it's worked miserably....Aggressive vigging worked for CC in L5R, whereas it didn't work in countless other games.
A big note is of the L5R example, which is far different....A Daykilling Vig has a much greater chance of hitting scum than a nightkilling one. A daykilling vig can make sure that a player has claimed before they die, giving him more information on who to shoot. Moreover, a daykilling vig can turn his shot over to the town so they can work it as a second lynch. Plus as a day ability its far less likely to be messed with.
A nightkilling vig can be RBed, Redirected, hit a UnNightkillable etc etc, making it far less effective than a second lynch, particularly if the town decides on it ahead of time. If the vig is rogue and shooting on his own...he's far less effective than the town is at figuring out who's scum, and oftne lacks claim information from his targets which could be crucial.
Logical Reasoning is dead; Long Live Stupidity
On the other hand, it provides incentive to hold your fire. Especially for newer players, who are more likely to AezWolg, and who won't have a perfect idea of how often vigs usually get to fire.
Most of what I'm trying to push here is to start crafting the role into a form that is more elegent to the way the role is supposed to be played. I don't want to completely force people into playing the role a certain way, I just want to limit the damage they can do and provide incentives to play in a fasion that is likely to make the game less swingy, and thus more fun on the whole.
It just doesn't seem elegant to me to tell a player they can use an ability every night without restraint, and then expect them not to.
I'm sure there are people out there that will go through some numbers that "prove" that aggresive vigging is better for the town, but there are a lot of factors in mafia. Most notably, the lynch of a scum can easily provide you with enough reactions to track down mmore scum, or to clear townies and find scum through process of elimination. But if, say, three scum are killed by a vig, and two remain, and the town has mislynched at every turn, it is possible that the wagons that never happened on the now dead scum could have provided evidence to catch those remaining scum, but instead they go on to win because they avoided commiting to opinions on their scum buddies, and slipping tells. That might not be the best example, but the point is that numbers can't take into a lot of the factors that determine who ends up winning a game of mafia.
On the other hand, if you look back at games where vigs fire early and often, the town almost always loses. Early vigging is lots of fun for the vig, not a lot of fun for the players he kills, and very unfortunate for the other 13 or 14 townies who can lose inspite of their best efforts.
Not true. We lost that game to the "SK."
L5R is a perfect example of how aggressive vigging can be fun, it most certainly was epic, but the fact remains that we lost that game. Sure, I knocked off two of the three mafia myself. But the town mislynched for the first three days, which could easily be attributed to the lack of information available due to the vigging of the scum instead of them being run up and lynched.
[The Family]
I'd disagree with this...the town should've won that game....an SK (or 4th scum really) in a mini is really really tough for ANY town to overcome and i feel that the town deserved the win, since rafk didnt know he wasn't town.
Logical Reasoning is dead; Long Live Stupidity
Redirection can be particularily dangerous, and the vig shot is most definitely not as effective as a second lynch. The other downfalls you and CC listed are definitely true as well - more information is always beneficial the the town.
However, I disagree that information the scum leaves is more important than a dead scum body. The information taken from the scum may be used to take down another scum, or even out the entire scum team. However, it just as likely could be not analyzed, or even analyzed incorrectly.
Yes, with a good analyst, information could be used to bring about more than 1 dead scum. However, one good analyst cannot control the lynch. Many a time an irrational town prevents a player that was spot on from carrying out his suspicions. Additionally, all of the good analysts are wrong at times - the chance that they can actually use the information to peg more than one scum is not large enough to give up the dead scum for.
With a theoretically adept analyst, we must also consider a skillful mafia player that could sufficiently muddy the waters. All scum uncsciously drop scumtells. A good scum intentionally drops false tells.
In short, what I'm trying to say here is that the certainty of the the dead mafia body is usually more important than the information the living mafia member would have given, because the information is not reliable enough. I've not much experience, but I know enough that even the best among us don't dependably hit scum and can carry out their lynch.
On the vigging of townies before their claim, I agree that I had failed to consider it. I can't decide whether or not vigging the unclaimed is good - a claim could seem confirmable, but too much reliance on claims is something the moderator's are beginning to design against.
My Custom Set: Solescurio
Yeah there were a lot of scum, but the town had a lot to work with. Full cop, full doc, CC = Daykiller, and I seem to remember Puzzle being unnightkillable. Also, Raf couldn't win if unnightkillable Puzzle was alive, so if we had lynched better and not killed Puzzle, we would have won. On top of that, the scum were given jack sqaut in the department of confirmable abilities, so it was claim vanilla, make something up, or claim to have a really weak vig like role and get killed after making a snide remark asking me for content. In the face of 3 powerful, instantly confirmable town roles.
The fact that Raf didn't know he would turn is a decent point, but if the Mafia were all dead and the game was still going, he was canidate number one for SK since Day 1. If we had one more lynch at our disposal, we would have won. Simple fact is that I vigged aggresively, and the town lost.
It may not be a good example of how early vigging can hurt the town, but I don't think it can be used as a counter example either.
[The Family]
Well misused, claim analysis can be bad, but if a player you vig is a doc, or say a confirmable mason who hasn't claimed yet, you look really foolish. And let me tell you, confirmable masons seem to often get overconfident and make themselves town targets due to their overconfidence in being "cleared."
Once again, yes GOOD vigging can win games for towns. But the first option for a good analyst should be trying to sway the lynch. If after a few times that fails and no one is listening to you, vigging can be appropriate (As an SK, Bateleur did that in Seinfeld, but he was essentially playing as a vig due to circumstances.) But early vigging is a bad idea that usually turns out awfully.
Logical Reasoning is dead; Long Live Stupidity
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. The problem with this is that it's not clear what roles are confirmable anymore - more and more mods are attempting to design their set-ups that way.
Sure, a unclaimed mason is basically confirmed. I guess vigging one would be detrimental to the town. But I can't decide if that's enough to deter vigging the multitude of unconfirmable roles.
My Custom Set: Solescurio
It should be. The truth is that its likely that the claim won't be enough to convince a vig that his prospective target isn't scum. But until he has the claim, he's acting not on the best-possible amount of info and is giving away a shot that the claim will clear the player and prevent the vig from wasting a shot.
In mid-late game where the town is failing, perhaps a vig could shoot an unclaimed player, but only then should it be advocated, and really only in desperate circumstances.
Logical Reasoning is dead; Long Live Stupidity
But if the claim won't likely convince a vig not to shoot, wouldn't getting in an extra shot (say on Night 0) be more important than the claim?
My Custom Set: Solescurio
Errr, Night 0 vigging is bad. You have no evidence to go on and are just randomly shooting. More or less, you're taking the mod's setup, saying "I hope this is really balanced, because If its not i could be throwing things way off kilter here" and firing into a blank crowd.
Vigging without any information at all (such as play analysis) is a poor idea. Remember, roughly 3/4 of the time you'll knock out a townie, and that's not good odds. Moreover, since you've not given the chance of anyone to talk to and react to your target you're not really gaining any information from killing. In essence, 3/4 of the time, you're hurting yourself.
(Moreover, you're kind of ruining the point of mafia here by making it random at the start....That's not fun for anyone really, and since it doesn't give the town an edge, why do it?)
Personally, vigging after day 1 is also too early unless a player has claimed and is considered the target for tomorrow. And even then PERSONALLY, i'd hold my fire as things may come up at night that may convince you that your target is town and that he shouldn't be lynched/vigged.
Logical Reasoning is dead; Long Live Stupidity
Seriously, when you look over a set-up, you can almost always pick out at least a few players who would be instantly confirmed when they claimed or at least confirmed once they have proven their ability. You vig without that info, you are taking the chance of cutting down a tree that was never really a tree to begin with, and robbing the town of not only a warm body, but usually a helpful role.
The fact that people sometimes clear people based on a claim when that person is scum isn't completely relevant, because it is much more often that players are correctly identified as town then players are incorrectly cleared as scum. Besides, when a scum is incorrectly cleared, they often have to keep up an act, which often falls through. So killing them before pursuing other options is not the precentage play.
And if you kill an unclaimed information role, they won't be able to share their results, which can hurt. You force a claim, then if you still don't belive them and you kill them, at least you've got confirmed info on the table in the event that they are town.
[The Family]
Personally I wouldn't use such a role, seeing as how some days gets to 60-70 pages.