Proposal for 2 person mafia

[Entropy]

Korora and I jointly devised the following game idea last night on IRC, when we should have been sleeping.

Each player must secretly select Town, Mafia, or Jester before play begins, or have one of those roles randomly assigned by a mod. Once play begins, either player can shoot the other at any time, ending the game. However, if both players agree to lay down their arms the game will also end. Here are the win conditions:

• A townee wins if they survive, have not killed a jester, and have eradicated the mafia if there is one.
• Mafia members win if they all survive, and have not killed a jester.
• A jester will win if killed by town or scum, or if they come to a peaceful agreement with another jester. A jester can also win by shooting a jester, in which case the jester who has been killed loses.

Some interesting strategy falls out of this setup, along with plenty of juicy WIFOM...

Edit: I propose this game be called a Wild West Duel, as I can't help but think of two cowboys being told to draw as soon as the game begins.

Edit 2: Jester win conditions have been amended such that the jester has a chance of winning by shooting.

[Gojoe]

I have another idea... ROCK PAPER SCISSORS!!!

[Entropy]

It doesn't completely degrade to RPS, I don't believe...

T wins if other player is T or M and they shoot first, making this a preferred T strategy.
M wins on no-lynch no matter what, making this a preferred M strategy.
J wins if they get shot, making avoiding a no-lynch a preferred J strategy.

If all players used these preferred strategies, then:
T would beat M (quick shoot)
M would beat J (force no-lynch)
J would beat T (get quick-shot)

However, no-lynch is almost as good a T strategy, as they win with a T or J as long as they can avoid getting shot, and neither M or J is likely to shoot. This creates an interesting prisoner's dilemma in the T-T scenario.

Additionally, players can choose to go against the odds, or meta-game to try to predict the opponent's chosen role...

[MasterOfAll]

What about my 0 person mafia game, Entropy?

Master is in for 0 person game.

Oh, and I think that the 2 player game works best if roles are randomly assigned, rather than players selecting their own role. But either way provides some interesting scenarios.

So, who is working on the #xkcdmafia mod-bot that can randomly assign roles via PM for this 2 player game, and then alert players of who won after action has been taken?

Then, we can scale up to 3 player, 4 player, N player with various mod-bot options.

[Sungura]

I have another idea... ROCK PAPER SCISSORS LIZARDS SPOCK!!!

Edited.

[Brooklynxman]

I have another idea... ROCK PAPER SCISSORS LIZARDS SPOCK LAVA GOD-MODE!!!

Edited.

Fixed

[oneofthedragon]

hum. This probably could have been in discussion.

[Entropy]

If it should be I wouldn't object to it being merged in.

[b.i.o]

We tried this in IRC. It didn't work.

[Entropy]

Where did it break?

[b.i.o]

Well, basically, in order for you to vote any more intelligently than you would randomly, you need information. And if you give out information, your opponent can act to assure their victory, which has a decent chance of not coinciding with your victory, so you have no incentive to give out information. So it ends up being basically random.

When I played it, it ended up being exactly like a wild west duel. Both people tried shooting as soon as possible.

[korora]

I think the key to the game working is that you play multiple times in a row and choose your own roles. If the other person likes to shoot right away, choose Jester and rake in the wins.

[InstinctSage]

So it becomes like a paper scissors rock metagame?

[Entropy]

Something like that, yeah, but with the possibility for both players to win.

[Rufaellie]

I see the potential, I modded what b.i.o. was talking about and it wasn't pretty. It was just first person to act wins, pretty much. And most often it was to shoot. It would make for interesting WIFOM arguments, except that even in forum there isn't enough time because by the time you discuss it the other player has all the data they need and will just shoot. So it's possible, but has problems.

[InstinctSage]

So it sounds like you need a disincentive for shoot first policy and a means of discussion which doesn't immediately out your role/goals.

Maybe extend to a 3 person game with each player having one shot, and instead of players choosing roles just hand out 1 mafia, 1 town, 1 jester.
Mafia wants to kill town, town wants to kill mafia, jester loses automatically if he isn't shot first, so the game always ends after the first shot and no-one is inclined to just take it at random.

It would still be unbalanced though. The mafia would only have to look for jester tells and shoot against that; the townie would have to pick out scum tells from jester tells.

You need voting instead of daykills. But a jester would have no incentive to vote for anyone else. So 2 townies 1 mafia. I think that's the smallest workable game size. But it would still be a pretty crappy game. You're basically shooting in the dark, like any day 1. No information to work on. What mafia would find it difficult to blend in on day 1 when he could basically play the exact same way as a townie?

There'd need to be some aspect that lets the town discover which one of them is mafia, that the mafia player has to avoid. Can't think of what it could be though. Enough of my rambling.