Matrix Madness Signups

[Variance]

GAME INFO

Start Date: Monday 30th January at 6pm EST / 11pm GMT
Start/End of Day: 6pm EST / 11pm GMT
Phase Lengths: 48 hour days, 24 hour nights
Night Chat: Mafia Only (via Discord)
Out of Thread Communication: Mafia Only (via Discord)
Mafia Factional Kill: Mandatory
Posting Requirement: 10 posts per day
Postcap: 150 posts per day, lifted 1 hour before End of Day
Voting: Plurality Always Enabled + Majority Enabled after Day 1, votes are locked at ELo (when Town must Eliminate correctly or Lose)
Players: 15

SETUP DETAILS

Please note that this is an experimental game, meaning that balance is not guaranteed. You are encouraged to try and break the setup as you see fit and provide feedback once the game begins. If you have any questions at all, do not hesitate to ask either in the signup thread, or to the host privately once the game has begun.

	A	B	C	D	E	F
1	Mafia JOAT	Mafia Role Cop	Town 3-shot Roleblocker	Town 2-shot Doctor	Mafia Jailkeeper	Town Motion Detector
2	Mafia Roleblocker	Town 2-shot Jailkeeper	Mafia Tracker	Town 3-shot Tracker	Mafia Universal Backup	Town JOAT
3	Mafia Tracker	Mafia Jailkeeper	Mafia Universal Backup	Town Universal Backup	Town 3-shot Tracker	Town 2-shot Jailkeeper
4	Town Universal Backup	Town 3-shot Tracker	Mafia JOAT	Mafia Universal Backup	Town JOAT	Mafia Role Cop
5	Town JOAT	Mafia JOAT	Town 2-shot Doctor	Mafia Jailkeeper	Town 3-shot Roleblocker	Mafia Universal Backup
6	Town 3-shot Roleblocker	Town Motion Detector	Town 2-shot Jailkeeper	Mafia JOAT	Mafia Role Cop	Mafia Roleblocker

• The setup is determined by randomly selecting one row or column from the above matrix, and then adding 9 Vanilla Townies. This will always result in 3 Town Power Roles, 3 Mafia Power Roles and 9 Vanilla Townies.
• For example, if Column A was randomly selected, the setup would be a Mafia JOAT, a Mafia Roleblocker, a Mafia Tracker, a Town Universal Backup, a Town JOAT, a Town 3-shot Roleblocker, and 9 Vanilla Townies.
• As another example, if Row 5 was randomly selected, the setup would be a Mafia JOAT, a Mafia Jailkeeper, a Mafia Universal Backup, a Town JOAT, a Town 2-shot Doctor, a Town 3-shot Roleblocker, and 9 Vanilla Townies.
• Town JOAT has 1x Doctor and 1x Motion Detector and 1x Roleblock.
• Mafia JOAT has 1x Strongman, 1x Neapolitan and 1x Roleblock.
• The following roles are non-consecutive (cannot target the same player twice in a row): Town 2-shot Doctor, Town 2-shot Jailkeeper, Town 3-shot Roleblocker, Mafia Roleblocker and Mafia Jailkeeper.

ADDITIONAL MECHANICOnce per game, either on Night 1 or Night 2, the Mafia may guess which players are Town's PRs (Power Roles) by submitting a list of 2 or 3 people (2 if there are 2 alive Town PRs, and 3 if there are 3 alive Town PRs).

• Mafia are not allowed to submit a guess when there are only 0 or 1 Town PRs alive.
• Mafia will only be told how many Town PRs they correctly determined from their guess - they will not be told which were correctly identified.
• Mafia may decide to make no guess at all.

Should the Mafia make a guess, they will receive a reward or punishment depending on how many Town PRs they correctly identified, as follows:

3 Town PRs Remaining:

• 0 Correct - An alive member of the Mafia, selected by the Mafia, will die the night after Mafia submits their guess.
• 1 Correct - The Mafia will be unable to attack the night after Mafia submits their guess.
• 2 Correct - No effect.
• 3 Correct - The Mafia gain an unstoppable and untrackable kill for use the night after the Mafia submit their guess, alongside the factional kill.

2 Town PRs Remaining:

• 0 Correct - An alive member of the Mafia, selected by the Mafia, will die the night after Mafia submits their guess.
• 1 Correct - The Mafia will be unable to attack the night after Mafia submits their guess.
• 2 Correct - The Mafia gain an unstoppable and untrackable kill for use the night after the Mafia submit their guess, alongside the factional kill.

This mechanic is being tested as a means of removing the possibility for Town to massclaim early, a desirable feature for Open and Semi-Open setups where the host does not want their setup to potentially be broken and/or simplified by players. This is especially desirable in games where Town will be keen to advantage themselves by any means, such as in the Mafia Championship.

[Variance]

Signups

Empty / N/A

Extra Queue

Empty / N/A

Subs

Empty / N/A

Spectators

Empty / N/A

Use:

• /in to join as a player, or to add yourself to the extra queue when the game is full.
• /out to drop out and remove yourself from any list.
• /sub to join as a substitute.
• /spec to join as a spectator.

Game start: January 30th, 2023 at 6:00 PM EST

[Hypnotist]

/in

[lilypetal]

/in

[Vibrava]

/in

[Porscha]

^ love that mon

Rules complicated and syndicate champs starts a couple days into this one. Looks fun tho

[EvilContract]

/in

[Prince J]

/in

Getting as much mafia as I can in prep~

Let’s gooooooo

[Schweppes]

/in

[sOHiJK]

/in

[Vibrava]

^ love that mon

Rules complicated and syndicate champs starts a couple days into this one. Looks fun tho

Someone has good taste.

[Arapocalypse]

What stops mafia from submitting a guess of vanilla town on every single member of the town on night 1 and automatically getting a dayvig day 2?

[Variance]

What stops mafia from submitting a guess of vanilla town on every single member of the town on night 1 and automatically getting a dayvig day 2?

So it's not a case of the mafia guessing whether players are Vanilla Town or a Power Role - the Mafia need to actually find posts where people are claiming or hinting at being a role (or VT/PR) in order to earn points

so for example if you were a Town Power Role, and you made the following post on day one:

I am a power role

The Mafia would be able to submit this post in the Mafia chat as proof of someone claiming (either by giving the post number or post link), and would earn 5 points for it as you are a Power Role. If you were a Vanilla Town they'd earn 2 points instead

Power Roles making a claim or claim hint provides more points than a Vanilla Town because it provides more information for town, e.g. it would take 3 power roles to claim for town to achieve full knowledge of who is what, whereas it would take 9 VT to claim for town to achieve the same knowledge

Hopefully that makes sense. a big part of this as a test game is trying to find out how to explain the additional mechanic more effectively and/or finding a simpler variant that is as effective, as well as finding any potential flaws, because it is admittedly quite complex as it stands so questions are really useful

let me know if you guys have any more questions at all and i'll be happy to answer

[Arapocalypse]

What stops mafia from submitting a guess of vanilla town on every single member of the town on night 1 and automatically getting a dayvig day 2?

So it's not a case of the mafia guessing whether players are Vanilla Town or a Power Role - the Mafia need to actually find posts where people are claiming or hinting at being a role (or VT/PR) in order to earn points

so for example if you were a Town Power Role, and you made the following post on day one:

I am a power role

The Mafia would be able to submit this post in the Mafia chat as proof of someone claiming (either by giving the post number or post link), and would earn 5 points for it as you are a Power Role. If you were a Vanilla Town they'd earn 2 points instead

Power Roles making a claim or claim hint provides more points than a Vanilla Town because it provides more information for town, e.g. it would take 3 power roles to claim for town to achieve full knowledge of who is what, whereas it would take 9 VT to claim for town to achieve the same knowledge

Hopefully that makes sense. a big part of this as a test game is trying to find out how to explain the additional mechanic more effectively and/or finding a simpler variant that is as effective, as well as finding any potential flaws, because it is admittedly quite complex as it stands so questions are really useful

let me know if you guys have any more questions at all and i'll be happy to answer

Sure, but hints can be incredibly vague; what's to stop mafia from choosing pretty much any post from a town player and claiming it's hinting at them being vanilla town?

Here's just a few "hints" off the top of my head: references to the possibility of dying (ex. if I die this EoD then kill X, I might die this EoD, etc.), any reference to future plans (ex. I'll think about that tomorrow, that's a problem for the future, maybe a problem to consider in LYLO), or any post even vaguely referencing themself doing something later, etc.

All of the above could be construed as a vanilla town hint, but they also can be abused to pick many posts!!!

You also do not even have to pretend something is a hint, seeing as from what you said in the rules, the awarding of points is only calculated on whether the mafia were right or wrong about their guess!! What's stopping them from submitting any post from a town player and claiming it's a hint/claim?

That's how I would try to break it as mafia, anyway; free kp!!

[Arapocalypse]

There's also other things: if you're trying to aim the mechanic towards literally any claim/PR read, what about PR reads that are based on posts that are absent from the thread?

An example: reading into a person's lack of response to a PR claim/lack of response to mechanics discussion!!!

I suppose if you continue with allowing mafia to submit any post from their PR/vanilla read, then that would be fine; would still run into the above issue, though!!

[Variance]

What stops mafia from submitting a guess of vanilla town on every single member of the town on night 1 and automatically getting a dayvig day 2?

So it's not a case of the mafia guessing whether players are Vanilla Town or a Power Role - the Mafia need to actually find posts where people are claiming or hinting at being a role (or VT/PR) in order to earn points

so for example if you were a Town Power Role, and you made the following post on day one:

I am a power role

The Mafia would be able to submit this post in the Mafia chat as proof of someone claiming (either by giving the post number or post link), and would earn 5 points for it as you are a Power Role. If you were a Vanilla Town they'd earn 2 points instead

Power Roles making a claim or claim hint provides more points than a Vanilla Town because it provides more information for town, e.g. it would take 3 power roles to claim for town to achieve full knowledge of who is what, whereas it would take 9 VT to claim for town to achieve the same knowledge

Hopefully that makes sense. a big part of this as a test game is trying to find out how to explain the additional mechanic more effectively and/or finding a simpler variant that is as effective, as well as finding any potential flaws, because it is admittedly quite complex as it stands so questions are really useful

let me know if you guys have any more questions at all and i'll be happy to answer

Sure, but hints can be incredibly vague; what's to stop mafia from choosing pretty much any post from a town player and claiming it's hinting at them being vanilla town?

Here's just a few "hints" off the top of my head: references to the possibility of dying (ex. if I die this EoD then kill X, I might die this EoD, etc.), any reference to future plans (ex. I'll think about that tomorrow, that's a problem for the future, maybe a problem to consider in LYLO), or any post even vaguely referencing themself doing something later, etc.

All of the above could be construed as a vanilla town hint, but they also can be abused to pick many posts!!!

You also do not even have to pretend something is a hint, seeing as from what you said in the rules, the awarding of points is only calculated on whether the mafia were right or wrong about their guess!! What's stopping them from submitting any post from a town player and claiming it's a hint/claim?

That's how I would try to break it as mafia, anyway; free kp!!

yeah i think the biggest problem with it is ambiguity as you say. even if the host can decide what construes a hint and what doesn't, there's contention over whether or not the host's decision is correct or not; there's too much subjectivity involved which can create a sense of unfairness.

issue is if you decide to allow all hints then town can obviously abuse this by providing hints which make it incredibly obvious what they are, but are not outright claims. so it's an essentially unsolvable issue inherent to this mechanic. making me think this is not the way to go tbh

there's also another issue that is probably impossible to solve, as you implied: atm mafia could just put all of a player's posts into one submission, without even thinking about which posts are the actual claim / hints, and gain the best possible chances of getting a reward for that player.

to combat this issue you could make it so that mafia can only submit a maximum amount of posts per town player, but then this creates another issue where town can abuse this by claiming / hinting over a larger amount of posts than whatever the maximum is

another issue is that it becomes difficult for the host to analyse every submission if there are multiple posts per submission, straying from the ideal of an easy to host game

in light of the above issues which are likely impossible to solve, this mechanic does not really seem like something worth testing. So I'll be swapping out this mechanic for another one (see next post)

[Variance]

Additional Mechanic

Once per game, either on Night 1 or Night 2, the Mafia may guess which players are Town's PRs (Power Roles) by submitting a list of 2 or 3 people (2 if there are 2 alive Town PRs, and 3 if there are 3 alive Town Power PRs). Mafia may also decide to make no guess at all, and are not allowed to submit a guess when there are only 0 or 1 Town PRs alive.

Should the Mafia make a guess, they will receive a reward or punishment depending on how many Town PRs they correctly identified, as follows:

3 Town PRs Remaining:

• 0 Correct - An alive member of the Mafia, selected by the Mafia, will die on Night 3.
• 1 Correct - The Mafia will be unable to attack on Night 3.
• 2 Correct - No effect.
• 3 Correct - The Mafia gain an unstoppable kill for use on Night 3, alongside the factional kill.

2 Town PRs Remaining:

• 0 Correct - An alive member of the Mafia, selected by the Mafia, will die on Night 3.
• 1 Correct - The Mafia will be unable to attack on Night 3.
• 2 Correct - The Mafia gain an unstoppable kill for use on Night 3, alongside the factional kill.

@Hypnotist @lilypetal @Vibrava @EvilContract @Prince J @Schweppes @sOHiJK

just to let you all know the additional mechanic has now been altered to the above as a result of the issues mentioned in my previous post

will let you all know if there are any other significant alterations

[Vibrava]

Wait, but this is mountainous numbers with town having semi-open setup power roles. The mafia power roles are just there to help them get around the town ones so they'd benefit more in pure mountainous. Isn't that going to be town sidesided as things stand?

The once per game power role guess mechanic is only worthwhile for mafia if they can comfortably guess every pr alive which is hard to do when town knows it exists and how it works.

[Variance]

Wait, but this is mountainous numbers with town having semi-open setup power roles. The mafia power roles are just there to help them get around the town ones so they'd benefit more in pure mountainous. Isn't that going to be town sidesided as things stand?

that would be correct if we were assuming mountainous is balanced, but it's notoriously wolfsided; for reference, the odds of Town winning in 12v3 mountainous is 24.5% assuming elims are at random, which tends to not be too far off in practice. so the townsided-ness of Town PRs helps to raise the town winning percentage so it's a more even playing field

The once per game power role guess mechanic is only worthwhile for mafia if they can comfortably guess every pr alive which is hard to do when town knows it exists and how it works.

yeah, that's the intention - to make it so that mafia only would want to use it in scenarios where town either massclaim or make their prs obvious to the point where they may as well be massclaiming. bear in mind that my main intention with the mechanic is to try and kill the possibility of early massclaims from town

that's why the drawbacks are in place, to make it so Mafia can't just guess risk-free and potentially be rewarded in situations where the town actually weren't massclaiming or making their prs obvious at all

[BlueKang]

/sub

[Arapocalypse]

Additional Mechanic

Once per game, either on Night 1 or Night 2, the Mafia may guess which players are Town's PRs (Power Roles) by submitting a list of 2 or 3 people (2 if there are 2 alive Town PRs, and 3 if there are 3 alive Town Power PRs). Mafia may also decide to make no guess at all, and are not allowed to submit a guess when there are only 0 or 1 Town PRs alive.

Should the Mafia make a guess, they will receive a reward or punishment depending on how many Town PRs they correctly identified, as follows:

3 Town PRs Remaining:

• 0 Correct - An alive member of the Mafia, selected by the Mafia, will die on Night 3.
• 1 Correct - The Mafia will be unable to attack on Night 3.
• 2 Correct - No effect.
• 3 Correct - The Mafia gain an unstoppable kill for use on Night 3, alongside the factional kill.

2 Town PRs Remaining:

• 0 Correct - An alive member of the Mafia, selected by the Mafia, will die on Night 3.
• 1 Correct - The Mafia will be unable to attack on Night 3.
• 2 Correct - The Mafia gain an unstoppable kill for use on Night 3, alongside the factional kill.

@Hypnotist @lilypetal @Vibrava @EvilContract @Prince J @Schweppes @sOHiJK

just to let you all know the additional mechanic has now been altered to the above as a result of the issues mentioned in my previous post

will let you all know if there are any other significant alterations

Seems better, more aimed at specifically PR-claiming/recommends against guesses where they're not entirely confident about it!!! I'm assuming they aren't told which of their guesses are PRs, if not all their guesses were PRs?

For the night 1 guess, with 1/2 correct why does it stop an attack/give them an extra kill on night 3 specifically? Why not night 2?

Regarding night 2, what if there is only 1 PR left alive? Possible, with 2-3 deaths before night 2!!

[Variance]

Additional Mechanic

Once per game, either on Night 1 or Night 2, the Mafia may guess which players are Town's PRs (Power Roles) by submitting a list of 2 or 3 people (2 if there are 2 alive Town PRs, and 3 if there are 3 alive Town Power PRs). Mafia may also decide to make no guess at all, and are not allowed to submit a guess when there are only 0 or 1 Town PRs alive.

Should the Mafia make a guess, they will receive a reward or punishment depending on how many Town PRs they correctly identified, as follows:

3 Town PRs Remaining:

• 0 Correct - An alive member of the Mafia, selected by the Mafia, will die on Night 3.
• 1 Correct - The Mafia will be unable to attack on Night 3.
• 2 Correct - No effect.
• 3 Correct - The Mafia gain an unstoppable kill for use on Night 3, alongside the factional kill.

2 Town PRs Remaining:

• 0 Correct - An alive member of the Mafia, selected by the Mafia, will die on Night 3.
• 1 Correct - The Mafia will be unable to attack on Night 3.
• 2 Correct - The Mafia gain an unstoppable kill for use on Night 3, alongside the factional kill.

@Hypnotist @lilypetal @Vibrava @EvilContract @Prince J @Schweppes @sOHiJK

just to let you all know the additional mechanic has now been altered to the above as a result of the issues mentioned in my previous post

will let you all know if there are any other significant alterations

Seems better, more aimed at specifically PR-claiming/recommends against guesses where they're not entirely confident about it!!! I'm assuming they aren't told which of their guesses are PRs, if not all their guesses were PRs?

yeah so mafia would just be told how many they got correct, rather than exactly who their correct guesses were, so they don't gain too much information from it. will make that clear in the mechanic - I put something in before covering this but must have accidentally removed or something

For the night 1 guess, with 1/2 correct why does it stop an attack/give them an extra kill on night 3 specifically? Why not night 2?

good question - the tl;dr is that it's simpler for all the rewards/punishments to be actioned on night 3. as with the 0 correct punishment and the unstoppable kill reward, mafia need to submit a player to be killed, which ideally would come after mafia's guess has been processed (which occurs latest end of night 2), so logically it makes sense for mafia to submit the night after this (night 3).

in theory you could base rewards/punishments off of whether mafia submitted guesses on night 1 or night 2, then the rewards/punishments could be processed on night 2 if mafia guess N1 and night 3 if mafia guess N2, but this would mean the mechanic becomes more complex to understand unnecessarily

Regarding night 2, what if there is only 1 PR left alive? Possible, with 2-3 deaths before night 2!!

If there are less than 2 PRs remaining then mafia cannot submit a guess - massclaim becomes not threatening with 1 town PR alive so the mechanic is no longer really necessary in this case

[Arapocalypse]

good question - the tl;dr is that it's simpler for all the rewards/punishments to be actioned on night 3. as with the 0 correct punishment and the unstoppable kill reward, mafia need to submit a player to be killed, which ideally would come after mafia's guess has been processed (which occurs latest end of night 2), so logically it makes sense for mafia to submit the night after this (night 3).

in theory you could base rewards/punishments off of whether mafia submitted guesses on night 1 or night 2, then the rewards/punishments could be processed on night 2 if mafia guess N1 and night 3 if mafia guess N2, but this would mean the mechanic becomes more complex to understand unnecessarily

Ah okay yes, I see what you mean; misread it a little!!! That being said, I don't think that would necessarily make it overly complex if the mafia just get the strongman on the next night after the mafia guess!! For instance: 0 correct - An alive member of the mafia, selected by the mafia, will die the night after the mafia submit their guess!

A bit wordy, but I'd lean making the reward more immediate for the mafia!! Technically I wouldn't mind changing it to a factional dayvig instead, but don't think it really matters much given it's a strongman!!

Also yeah I see I missed you saying no guessing with 0-1 alive town PRs, makes sense!!!

[Chelsea]

/in

[Kuti plz]

/spec

[BlueKang]

/in

[cmitc1]

/in

[lucy]

/sub

[CrimsonFox]

okay /in

[Variance]

good question - the tl;dr is that it's simpler for all the rewards/punishments to be actioned on night 3. as with the 0 correct punishment and the unstoppable kill reward, mafia need to submit a player to be killed, which ideally would come after mafia's guess has been processed (which occurs latest end of night 2), so logically it makes sense for mafia to submit the night after this (night 3).

in theory you could base rewards/punishments off of whether mafia submitted guesses on night 1 or night 2, then the rewards/punishments could be processed on night 2 if mafia guess N1 and night 3 if mafia guess N2, but this would mean the mechanic becomes more complex to understand unnecessarily

Ah okay yes, I see what you mean; misread it a little!!! That being said, I don't think that would necessarily make it overly complex if the mafia just get the strongman on the next night after the mafia guess!! For instance: 0 correct - An alive member of the mafia, selected by the mafia, will die the night after the mafia submit their guess!

A bit wordy, but I'd lean making the reward more immediate for the mafia!! Technically I wouldn't mind changing it to a factional dayvig instead, but don't think it really matters much given it's a strongman!!

Also yeah I see I missed you saying no guessing with 0-1 alive town PRs, makes sense!!!

true true for some reason it didn't come to me that you could just word it like that lol - I've now updated the OP to "An alive member of the mafia, selected by the mafia, will die the night after the mafia submit their guess"

I've also made some optimisations to the matrix including removing some roles that are not really 100% "champs-friendly" (town 2-shot watcher, town bodyguard and town 1-shot bulletproof), as the main aim of this test game is to test it as a champs setup, and also changed up the modifiers and changed the ordering a bit. I'll likely make a few further small optimisations to the ordering to make sure it's as balanced as possible

btw raisins for removing those roles as someone is likely to ask:

2-shot watcher - not particularly well-liked even when gated as it's just really strong and swingy for that reason

bodyguard - while fine as a role it's not really champs-friendly as people wouldn't want to opt to die in place of someone else in an environment where your skill is being tested

1-shot bulletproof - maybe a more personal thing but I've realised I dislike the random element involved with 1-shot bulletproof, especially in a competitive environment like champs; as the positive attribute of 1-shot bulletproof is randomised through the game rand itself there's not much mafia can do to know who the bulletproof is unless they get lucky with an investigative role, so mafia can get punished for something largely outside of their control

[Variance]

thanks very much ara for all the help, setup is looking a lot better now

[WerewolfHunter]

/in

[niphredil]

/in

[lucy]

/out

[Creature]

/in

[CRichard564]

Hello I shall /in

[CRichard564]

Quite a number of peeps I've played with before yes.

[CRichard564]

So the mafia has anti-claim in this setup. Which discourages PR claiming willy nilly.

[lucy]

/sub

[lucy]

/sub

put me in if someone outs, just dm first letting me know

[Variance]

Just to let you all know a few changes have been made to the setup, the ordering of the matrix was altered a bit, town roles are now lower power (often being x-shot). will be worth giving another read of that part of the setup details

will be randing at about 11pm gmt tomorrow (48 hours before game start), so if you need to out please do before then ideally

@Hypnotist
@lilypetal
@Vibrava
@EvilContract
@Prince J
@Schweppes
@sOHiJK
@BlueKang
@Chelsea
@cmitc1
@CrimsonFox
@WerewolfHunter
@niphredil
@Creature
@CRichard564

[CrimsonFox]

/out

[Variance]

subs very appreciated btw

[Creature]

will be randing at about 11pm gmt tomorrow (48 hours before game start)

Oh $%#! didn't think it would take this long

[BlueKang]

/out

[Twice Shrunk]

/in

kind of burnt out and probably will take things slow but w/e will put in effort

[Twice Shrunk]

/out

[sOHiJK]

/out
signed up for this thinking i would have some time but life decided no

[lucy]

/out

[Mason]

/out