French Revolution Mafia [Concluded]

[GeneralHankerchief]

Okay, what follows are some of my thoughts with regards to balancing in terms of the pre-game stuff and the factions. Later on I'll go more into the happenings that went on during the game itself, but first things first. Commentary from you guys is encouraged.

General:
When designing this game, I was looking to accomplish three goals first and foremost: First of all, I wanted to offer a game that had a high degree of difficulty for all players and sides. Secondly, I wanted to create a game that was self-correcting; i.e. if there were any lopsided factional imbalances I wanted there to be a good chance of these being rectified. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, I wanted the (non-Royalist) players a real choice in how they would go about achieving their win conditions and accomplishing their goals, in a way that I had been trying to do for so long with the various installments of my Pirate Ship Mafia series but never quite getting there. I'll talk more later about these three goals, particularly the third, in my yet-to-come post about game events, but for now just keep these in mind as you continue reading.

The last thing I want to say in this section is that, regarding the factional abilities that were tied to each player, there was a fairly significant correlation between their naming and the player who was secretly attached to that ability. For example, the Montagnards' "Pose For Portrait" ability, their 3x Jailkeeper, was attached to seireikhaan - whose role was Jacques-Louis David, the famous painter. Obviously the entire faction didn't know about this, as there was incentive to keep role names secret, but khaan might have been able to put two and two together and if he was in danger of the lynch, might have subtly hinted to his Montagnard colleagues that he was tied to a power.

Montagnards:
Factional abilities:
1x vigilante shot - each faction has access to this ability
Proscription: 1x additional vigilante shot - assigned to Jabbz (Saint-Just), later reassigned to Lewwyn
Pose for portrait: 3x jailkeeper - assigned to seireikhaan

The Montagnards were the only faction that thematically did not have a "hat". Considering that, historically, they were in power for the greater part of the Reign of Terror, I decided to make them the sort of jack-of-all-trades faction. Their powers weren't sexy, certainly not compared to those of the Populists or Militarists, but they got the job done. In addition, they had Robespierre, the single most powerful non-Royalist role in the game (with two passive bulletproofs the first two nights), on their team, and I generally figured that whoever randed Robespierre would at least add one other Montagnard to the Committee early on.

Populists:
Factional abilities:
1x vigilante shot - each faction has access to this ability
Orator of Justice: 1x jailkeeper - assigned to autolycus
Enemies list: You submit a list of five players during the night. One full day phase later, the political faction of these five players will be publicly revealed (example: If you submitted this list on N1, it would publicly be revealed at the start of D3). You also have the option of waiting an additional full day cycle in order to see how many of the players on the list are Royalists. The person submitting this factional order must remain alive for the duration of the ability’s activation in order for it to work. 1x. - assigned to Arakhor
Wrath of the sans-culottes: This is a fun one. You unleash the power of the peasantry upon your enemies. 1x vig, with a chance of side-effects: 33% chance of an additional random kill (small chance of two additional random kills), 33% chance of additionally killing someone either visiting or visited by the target at night, 33% chance of a random jailkeeping of a variable amount of players depending on how many are left in the game (anywhere from 3-7). - assigned to Zack

The Populists' abilities were designed to be powerful, but scattershot, reflective of the anarchic qualities that the sans-culottes of Paris possessed at the time. They had their 1x Jailkeep just to ensure they didn't only have access to two total unique abilities, but their big two did not have much in the way of precision. The Enemies List ability, if used on any Royalists, would not point precisely to who in the group was the Royalist - if it scanned 5 people and there was only one Royalist in the group, the result given would have said "of these five people there is one Royalist among them" and that would be it. In addition, it had a huge delay, implemented out of paranoia by me that a lucky scan would break the game. In hindsight I think the delay was exactly right in terms of timing.

As far as the dreaded Wrath of the Sans-Culottes, I regret nothing.

Girondins:
Factional abilities:
1x vigilante shot - each faction has access to this ability
Sanctuary: 3x Doctor, cannot use all three protections on the same target (two is fine). - assigned to Kagemusha (later reassigned to atheotes)
Introspection: 2x Watcher (see who targets a person). Target must be a member of the Gironde faction unless there are less than three Girondins remaining. - assigned to NotACop

I always meant for the Girondins to be a defensive faction. They had almost nothing in the way of offensive abilities, but, with proper application, would be dynamite at protecting their own, or, at the very least, taking down their attackers with them. This was nice in theory, but in practice the Girondins were perceived to be underpowered relative to the other three factions, and I can't say that I disagree. I think a part of me knew this and increased the number of times they could use their abilities to compensate, but it wasn't enough. I still like the idea of a "defensive" faction, but in a game with this many vig attempts flying around, I probably would have added a jailkeeper or something, and maybe split their protections between people so they weren't screwed if the member attached to the protections died early.

Militarists:
Factional abilities:
1x vigilante shot - each faction has access to this ability
Ballot stuffing: Can designate two secret votes on any target the night before that will be tallied during the day. Both votes are allowed to be made the same day or separate days. Votes may be rescinded (only by the person who submitted the order) during the day, but may not be changed to a different target. - assigned to Dp101
Conscription: Override a target’s night actions and have them vig, roleblock, or protect a different target of your choice. 2x ability, may not repeat actions. - assigned to Csargo
Secret police: 1x day vigilante shot. First come, first served. Post must be made in the public thread with bold purple text and may not be made in the first two hours of a phase. - assigned to Manasi

Before the game started, I was most worried about the Militarists being overpowered compared to the other factions. Indeed, they had an impressive collection of abilities, but the mitigating factor I put in was that there was a sinister element to each of these abilities. The ballot stuffing, which was never used, would naturally be looked upon with suspicion by the rest of town, and would most likely cause tinfoiling. Much the same with conscription and the overriding of someone else's action. Most prominently, there was the dayvig, which I meant to make as nakedly open as possible - it had to be done in public, and there were no checks and balances in the form of a second Militarist signing off before the action was initiated, etc. The end result was that while the Militarists mechanically had probably the best set of abilities, they came with allowing paranoia to set in both amongst the other factions as well as themselves. A poisoned apple, if you will. Considering the final day's vote came down to two Militarists, this goal would appear to have been achieved on the surface, but I'm not entirely sure it was successful.

Royalists:
Factional abilities:
Factional kill, 1 per night.
Roleblock, cannot target same player consecutive nights.
Additional roleblock, 3x usage.
(Note: Multiple actions cannot be taken by the same player unless that player is the only Royalist remaining)

There was a lot of speculation based on how many Royalists there were, but I had always designed the number to be four. While this number seems light in a 24-player game, there were three things that would make it a more even fight: First, the Royalist infiltration of most (if not all) of the factional Quicktopics - even if they couldn't hijack orders at the last minute they could still report on the goings-on and give their teammates a clearer picture than anybody, thus fulfilling the definition of Mafia at its most basic: a knowledgeable minority vs. an in-the-dark majority. Second, the factional design of the game - since it was hardcoded into people's win conditions that there was no town, per se, people always had other targets at night and were able to justify it as well. Third, the roleblocks. These had priority over all other actions at night (save for the Committee recruitment, which was automatic), which meant that, properly applied, the Royalists could always ensure that one action failed. Choxorn predominantly used his to sideline an entire faction that he happened to target at night, and then, most effectively, blocked Zack from tracking Csargo the very last night, which kept Csargo firmly in the town's crosshairs. All things considered I think the number of roleblocks I allowed the Royalists was right about in the proper range with everything else going on.

Committee of Public Safety:
The Committee's first and foremost goal is to safeguard the Revolution by weeding out and killing the Royalists. Political preference (ostensibly) does not matter. Obviously, the goal here is to keep it free of Royalist infiltration.
Each night, you choose one person to join the Committee. This is an automatic action and is not affected by roleblocks, jailkeeps, having already performed a factional ability, etc. The seniormost member of the Committee has final say on recruitment.
Other Committee factional abilities are:
- Nightly tracker upon 3 members
- Nightly vigilante upon 4 members
The Committee has a maximum limit of five members.

The Committee was, in my opinion, the keystone to balancing the game. I said earlier that I wanted to create a game that was self-correcting; the Committee was my primary tool for achieving this. If the Royalists were dominant and killing off people left and right and avoiding the lynch, the Committee would be a last-ditch weapon for the town to get their act together; for them to pool information and gain an extra track (and maybe vig) and maybe even band together against the threat. If the Royalists were decimated early on (as we saw here), then the Committee would be the primary battleground in the factional game, especially with seniority deciding who gets to submit the orders. If the game state was more even, then the Committee would be somewhere in between.

All things considered, when you strip away the fancy mechanics and the factional politics and everything that made this game what it was, I still wanted it to come down to how well the Royalists could infiltrate and gain the trust of the town, just like in any other mafia game. Choxorn did this successfully and was rewarded with a Committee invite, and used his knowledge of its inner workings to further manipulate the situation to his advantage.

As far as the Committee mechanics go, I think getting a tracker at 3 members and a vig at 4 turned out well - the Committee was only able to get over the hump and get to 4 near the very end of the game. Early on in the development cycle I had them getting a vig at 5, which would not have been as exciting.



So that's the meat of it, the first part anyway. Again, any commentary is greatly appreciated, and I'll go more into the actual gameplay stuff (the added vigs/protections I gave everybody, the Committee in practice rather than theory, etc) in a later post. Possibly tonight, maybe tomorrow.