Dethy's are super town sided. The Christmas dethy has been my annual attempt at balancing it for forums with a slower pace, as they are usually played in more real time settings, giving less analysis time. Overall I'd say I've failed horribly. I feel like despite all the beef I put into the scum role, town was still heavy handed. I have outlines for the next few iterations (because that is what happens when me and zinger spend a game shooting the **** over design theory) but they are probably not going to make Aaarrrgh happy because they shift to telling a story over being a solid logic puzzle. I'm not sure how they'll play out.

Ninja edit: I started this past before his and JD made their posts above. I'm leaving this as is and will respond to them in another post.

In JD's dethys, scum have had a variety of abilities, but those abilities have always interacted with the core mechanic of dethy: the investigations. They have made the puzzle harder, but still (in most cases) solvable. The Due Hard ability punished town for solving the puzzle. There's a difference. If you read the metaphor in my previous post, you can see that there were two parts to it: first, the slightly different rules than you're used to, which is something you can adapt to and is no big deal. Then, the discovery that the thing which should give you the win instead makes you lose. That's the party I can't get over. I didn't even mind the fake cult. That was just another puzzle to be solved. But solving it and then losing to deus ex machina just feels bad.

I've been talking to JD out of thread about this, and one of the things that I mentioned is that both of these dethy games have been deeply unsatisfying from a narrative point of view. I'm JD's game, a town victory was overshadowed by a prank which convinced me that not only had I absolutely misread the entire gamestate, but also somehow gotten perfectly framed in a way that would cause town to lose the game. In this game, it turned out that the only way to win was to force a no lynch after we had already found scum, which is not a conclusion anyone could be expected to reach. Once CL used that ability, the only thing he had to do was vote, because at that point we were almost guaranteed to lynch someone, but it made absolutely no difference who. I wouldn't mind losing if I felt that scum had outplayed town, but we literally solved every puzzle that could be solved, and then lost to an ability which was used the night before and changed the rules in an absolutely unpredictable way.

@KoD: I address most of your points in the big one I just posted, but let me add this: if the only thing you think we should have done differently was the Tevish lynch, then I would have preferred it if the game had just ended once it happened. Nothing any town player did after that point mattered at all, so why did we have to go through the motions? And I don't think CL outplayed us. We narrowed it down to two suspects and lynched both of them in turn. Having the ability to just straight up veto your own lynch doesn't require skill except to know when to use it, and it was pretty obvious that we were entering the endgame.

@JD: in my opinion, Dethy doesn't need to be perfectly balanced. That is not its purpose. I can't remember if I've ever been scum in one of these (I don't think I have), but if I was I wouldn't mind the game being stacked against me, because I would see that as a challenge. At that point, I would just play the game and have fun. Because I would know exactly what it would take for me to win, and how hard it would be. That's completely different from a game being difficult because there are hidden rules to play around.

I realize I'm the minority opinion here. If all of you prefer to play this way, please go ahead. But this is not currently my idea of fun.

I hope I'm managing to get my points across without sounding to whiny or harsh. CL played well with what he had, and I certainly don't blame him for grabbing the victory when it presented itself.

It is now almost 1:30AM in my time zone, so if I crossed any lines in my last few posts please assume that I didn't mean it that way and only expressed myself clumsily because I'm tired. I'm going to sleep now.

Happy New year!

Scratch this for at least the next one. That one might end up being pretty standard dethy with the idea I had today.

As for it's balance, I wasn't seeking perfect, just some. Under a standard strategy of rotating non self investigations and no lynches town should be able to PoE half the game by day 2 every single game. What scum does is ultimately irrelephant because you aren't looking to finger the liar but determine the cops instead.

I was just looking back over some. I totally forgot I made the first one a survivor game.

@Arrgh:

Except a tie vote, but yes, you can't be expected to foresee that ability.

Course, I'd like to refer you back to the first day where a forced tie in the votes prevented anyone from being lynched. Contrasting that with Tevish's lynch, and honestly that's on the town. More so if you had the intent to prevent Tevish's lynch.

But hey, you dislike the design. I get that.

I liked it.

I want to be clear that it was only the Die Hard ability which didn't sit right with me. Im most Dethy games, there is only one lynch, and it usually happens in either MyLo or LyLo. Now, this game was different in that we did have an early lynch, but because it was a miss it didn't matter. In almost all scenarios, the Die Hard ability could guarantee the scum win, because there is no effective counterplay. That's the only part of this game I didn't like. A mechanic which punishes a player for achieving their win condition will never be fun to me.

The counter play is in not lynching.

Back when Tevish suggested himself or CL for the lynch, CL didn't have the ability active. He was fortunate in that he wasn't the target of the lynch that day. Had CL been lynched, we wouldn't be having this conversation because winning certainly feels better than losing.

Had the lynch on Tevish been avoided (by forcing a tie and thus a no lynch), then it wouldn't have mattered if CL used Die Hard because you'd have the body to spare.


Again, the only counter play would have been in no lynching (forcing a tie), but I will fully admit that not knowing about that ability certainly would have made it hard to see coming. Hard, but not impossible. After all, CL jester signaled with claiming to be the JD's Dethy. A strict dose of paranoia maybe would have avoided it.


Either way, the ability wasn't an auto win. It had to be used in the specific circumstance where a lynch into the ability use to force another mislynch (via the ability) would have allowed it. Hell, the lack of a kill that night should've been an indication that something was up as well.

And no, the win con was never achieved. The win con is to lynch JD's Dethy, but, as was explained by Zinger, an array of tools were at his disposal to confound us and cause us to mislynch.

From Zinger



Like, to be utterly frank, after it was established that the cult was a hoax and no kill was made after Tevish's death, you would have lost nothing by no lynching that night. I'm fairly certain that a tied vote would have resulted in no one being lynched (and CL would've been forced to vote least the only vote on the field is on him with no other vote to defer to).

The thing is, I cannot find a case where the ability actually creates fun gameplay. Either it does nothing, or it's a massive GOTCHA out of left field. The other abilities create more dynamic gameplay which makes it a lot harder for town to reach the right conclusions, but this also makes it more rewarding to do so. Die Hard doesn't.

As for how town sided the game really is (and I will use a fine player game here, because that's more standard), scum has at least a 50% chance to hit a significant cop with the first kill (more if one of them targeted scum), and then 1/3 to hit the other with the second kill. That means that in 1/6 of cases, there is no useful info after D2, and at least a 2/3 that at least one of the significant chips is dead at that point. In games where an ability manipulates N0 results in a hard to predict way, that seems decently fair.

Remember too that we are working with a very small sample size here, which does not accurately reflect the real probabilities of winrate. I mean, town won one game because I placed a pressure vote and no one (including me) paid enough attention to prevent the lynch (and also because scum accidentally grabbed themselves with their ability, meaning that in that particular game scum might have had a better chance at winning if it was vanilla, ironically enough). Town won another game because a town player missed night deadline and straight up lied to cover their shame, happening to perfectly frame scum in the process. I honestly believe that the town win streak is at least partially due to random chance rather than the game being inherently unbalanced.

I'm kind of with Aaarrrgh here? At least as far as I think that while the experiment was worth doing once, and came out a fine game, it's probably not exactly worth repeating, and the last few games have been particularly trolly whether or not that was something all involved signed up for based on the pitch

I'm tempted to put my own game in the setup zone. I don't know how many people we can muster, though. I'd like 12, and I have a vaulted design file for 12 that's... still got unique elements, but should play out as much more normal, in so much as all but one role is something you could find on the mafia wiki as a standard-ish role. If we can't make that, though, I'd have to design something on the fly. I think I could, again with the aim of keeping things basic without necessarily keeping things vanilla (I like it when every role in a game is different from the other roles in the same game, or nearly so).

But I'm not exactly an experienced host so I don't know if I'm really the one to 'bring balance to the force'

I'd actually be willing to run a dethy to show what I'm talking about. I hope we could find 12 players for the game Tevish wants to run, but I'm guessing it could take a while, so maybe I should run this while we're collecting those people?

We all start somewhere. For me balancing starts out individual roles balanced against each other and then teams balanced against each other. For known roles it's easier since you will have a general idea of how they are going to be played from in game experience. Balancing roles you create yourself is where things get tough and games might get a little swingy.

I wouldn't disagree on the die hard ability in general but I also took this game 0% seriously so it being here it didn't bother me as much. I only ever investigated monster. Which could only rule me out of being two cop variants at most. I whoopsed shrugged missing deadline. And then the last day I straight up lied to swing monster's vote from CL's (and that cost everybody the game technically...). Sorry bout it?

Actually, JD, your crazy lie is part of the reason I felt the loss was so frustrating. You went out on a limb and did an epic last ditch effort to save the game, and you managed to rally the town and out the needed votes on scum. That's the kind of thing I want to see get rewarded. The realization that it would have been better for us to shrug and let CL/Monster get their tie vote instead of fighting back was a major feel bad moment.

Whether or not it creates "fun gameplay" is strictly a matter of opinion. YOU found yourself in a situation where the use of the ability, for CL, added a lot of value (to CL). That was strictly because Tevish got lynched. You said it yourself a bit ago about how in Dethy there is typically one lynch that matters. Well guess what? That lynch on Tevish mattered, and despite your perspective Tevish still got lynched which created the scenario that benefited CL.

That's hardly the fault of the ability or Zinger's design.

As I already outlined, had Tevish not been lynched (which seems like something you should have strived for, but hey mistakes happen -- own up to it), then it would have created a different situation where if CL had used that ability he'd STILL have to play like a jester to make use of it. The only problem there is that you'd have a life to spare because Tevish would've still been alive at that point. So even if Die Hard had caused a mislynch (on Tevish), and CL killed, say, you, then that'd still leave Monster and JD alive to swing the vote at CL.


As far as I am concerned, that's fun and dynamic gameplay.

I am well aware now that letting Tevish die was a mistake, I have no issue admitting that. And we have no way of knowing how the game would have ended of it hasn't happened. But either way, I will never consider an ability which practically guarantees a scum win in MyLo fun and dynamic. Yes, we could have managed to reach a MyLo situation where the ability wasn't active, but the only thing that would have done (unless CL just used the ability badly) was putting us in LyLo without telling us.

I guess the point I haven't brought up yet is that I just fundamentally disagree with the notion that this ability was "designed to infuriate and confound the rest of you into maybe lynching the wrong Holiday." I mean yes, it was certainly infuriating, but it didn't confound us into lynching the wrong holiday. It just lynched the wrong holiday regardless of our actions. It almost completely removed player agency for the entirety of the last day of the game. As I already said, if we lost the game the moment Tevish died, why did we have to play another day?

And again, I don't expect you all to agree with me. I know my feelings are not entirely rational.

Tevish literally said shoot between him and CL. Stands to reason you wanted Tevish alive.

CL could not have gone into the next day with Die Hard active as he'd have to pass on killing (which he did when he did use the ability), and you guys would have had an extra life, essentially, to throw at the Die Hard ability in pursuit of CL.




And as I previously pointed out, the action of a tie lynch would have avoided Die Hard completely, unless I am missing something. I'm pretty sure I'm not though as the ability simply threw the lynch from the most votes to the second most votes. Ie. from the two votes on CL to the one vote on whoever CL had voted. All you had to do was tie the vote and avoid a lynch all together.

But hey, you guys went ham after the person who sat there and openly admitted to being Dethy. Not that I entirely blame you for that because it's not like you knew that ability was a thing.


Either way, yes, I entirely disagree with your perspective. Puts a damper on an otherwise good game with friends. Or something.

Yeah, this is not a hill I'm ready to die on. No amount of turning this over is going to make me enjoy the way the game ended, and I don't want to make people feel like they aren't allowed to enjoy it. I'm sorry if I've done that. I just wanted to clarify why I didn't find this as much fun as I could have.

Part of me wants to keep digging into this, but only from a game design perspective. I should let the dust settle a bit more before I do that, though.

A game design perspective is more JD and Zinger's area.

I'm just here to play games.

With friends.