Northsidegal/Setups

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Replayable setups that I've made. If you find any of them interesting, I encourage you to try modding it. Let me know if you do!

Situation Room

Setup 1st run

Proof that I can design a large theme game that doesn't become a complete fiasco?

I'm pretty proud of this design and the way the game played out. It's only a few mechanics separated from a completely vanilla vengescum game, but those mechanics really add a lot to the strategy space such that I think that this is one of the most evenly skewed setups out there – "skew" here meaning that each faction has the ability to make serious gains via their own good play. I deliberately designed it to be scumsided for a few reasons. One, I made the count of scum high to avoid situations where an unlucky scumteam rand happens and everyone dies in the first few days, depriving everyone of getting to enjoy the neighborhood phase. Two, I think the current site meta trends towards townsidedness, so I decided to give scum the extra edge to balance things out.

Based on how the first run went, I think that this was probably the right decision. That being said, I still might remove the scum vengekills during the neighborhood phase if I ran this again – that seems like a decent way to balance things, even if it introduces some weird incentives in terms of keeping people alive.

Some people post-game suggested that this would be a decent Team Mafia setup, which I think would be absolutely incredible. Teams putting maximum effort into this setup would really be something to see, because I think the setup would reward it.

Popcorn Explosion

Setup Marathon run

A fun sort of fast-paced setup I came up with. I ran it once as a marathon, which I think went well.

I'm not sure if it's really interesting enough to really hold interest as a longer-form game, but I bet that it might be able to. It probably would be improved with some other mechanics on top of it, though.

Mask of Monsters

Setup and 1st run

I suppose this probably belongs here. Mask of Monsters was my attempt at doing right with one of my earliest setup ideas – one person is scum, and has to control two accounts which make up the mafia team. Everyone is on secret alts, which of course presents a problem – someone altslipping represents a serious risk to the game's integrity, and in this case one that cannot be solved by force replacement in a way that a regular secret alt game could. Technologically I could have tried to mitigate this by having the game take place in a private thread or via some other means, but instead I thought that it would be smart to incorporate this mechanic into the setup itself via an alt-guess-kill; if the lone wolf guesses the identity of who someone is behind their alt, that player gets killed. I basically consider this alt-guess-kill the second main mechanic of this game behind one scum controlling two accounts, and based on how the first run went I think both mechanics were pretty big successes. The fact that one scum has to pretend to be two people presents alternative methods for scumhunting (some which might be considered unfair or too powerful), which the players took great advantage of. The alt-guess-kill mechanic also seemed to work well, and I think would be a good one to basically just extend to almost any other style of secret alt game.

I think that soon I might try a sort of "disguiser" style alt game where the scum takes over people's accounts.

Secrets of the Anuket Topaz

Setup 1st run 2nd run

Originally conceived as an open and then run as a quasi-closed Mini Theme, this was my attempt to eliminate some of the problems with Extradition Mafia and make escaping a viable mechanic. Did it succeed? Well, I thought the game went pretty well. There were some who said that the setup was townsided because of the fact that Town took it all with one scum lynch Day 3 after having been totally lost the first two days, but I think that scum dropped the ball later and town made great use of the information they gained. It's possible that this setup asks Scum to do a lot more than it does for town, but I think it's pretty punishing on both factions, really.

I'm not very proud of my modding when I ran it (it might be my worst modded game ever), so I would absolutely love to see if anyone ever ran it again (presumably as an open this time).

Update: ran a second time. I think it went pretty well!

Guard Dog 10P aka Double Bluff

Original

Also also known as nsg is indecisive at picking names. My submission for the August Open Setup Challenge.

Eh. It might be a bit boring. Probably not the most fun setup, really, although the guard dog mechanic could certainly be incorporated into something else.

Public Cop 9P

1st run

I ran this game as something of an experiment, to test the strength of a public cop and to see if it could balance a 9 person game all on its own. The result: maybe??

Yeah, the cop didn't actually end up doing anything this game and it basically ended up just being 7:2 mountainous. It was generally agreed, however, that the game would have ended up completely differently had the cop managed to get a shot off, so I think I'm going to go with my confirmation bias and just say that I was right in that a public cop is enough town power to balance a game on its own.

Baton Pass

Original 1st run

My submission for the April Open Setup Challenge and winner for that month. Another one I'm a fan of! I think it's got a unique mechanic that adds to the central game of mafia without removing any of the core elements, similar to coalition. It's a large at 15 players, but at the same time players get removed fairly often, thinning down the playerlist pretty quickly in.

How did it turn out? Well, it depends on who you ask. Let's just say that the first run had its twists and turns, its ups and downs.

Pick 5

Original

My submission for the March Open Setup Challenge. Another one I'm decently proud of. It's never been tested but it was pretty well received by the rest of the open setup creators and I think it's decently balanced. I would say one downside is that it's not really the most interesting or original setup that really reinvents mafia, but I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with just having a solid, replayable setup. Given the strength of the other setups this was pitted against during March, I'm happy with how it placed.

This might be another one to consider if you're interested in modding an open setup.

Fire on the Mountain

1st run

Ouch. Disaster game. I don't think many people (if anyone) had fun playing this near-350 page replacement-filled slog. Not sure how much of that is because of the setup, but I would say the lack of nightkills every night probably contributed. I don't think there's much about this idea that's salvageable – unless a game is strictly nightless and despite the fact that it's expected to raise EV by delaying nightkills, I think that people just really don't like getting no information each night. Maybe arson games are really more suited to micros than larges.

Tough on Crime

Original Marathon run

My submission for the February Open Setup Challenge. I'm proud of this one. I think the parole mechanic is pretty unique and makes for interesting gameplay. The rest of the setup is a bit less elegant and could definitely be changed around, but I think the central mechanic is a good one. In fact, I've always meant to use it in a series of closed large themes, but that's another thing I've never really gotten around to.

Was run once as a marathon, which went decently well I thought. It wasn't a complete broken disaster, so that's promising at least.

Treestump Express

1st run 2nd run 3rd run

Another one that's a modification to another person's setup, this time of BulletNLynchproof's Express Mafia. Essentially the entire game is the first and last day of a mafia game, and in the treestump variant everyone gets to stay alive to discuss for LyLo, which I think is interesting. My first run was cut short by early voting in LyLo, so I wanted to run this one again, because I think it's a pretty fun one. I ran it a few more times over 2020, all of which ended in scum victories, so it looks like it might be a little scumsided.

City That Never Sleeps

Original 1st run

Made as a modification to another player's setup. This is one that I've always liked and wanted to run but haven't gotten around to it yet. It's pretty flavorful and thematically consistent in all of the roles and mechanics, and I think there's some depth in the gameplay.

Of course, falling victim to the setup designer's curse, when I ran this setup the traffic analyst died night 1, effectively rendering it a mountainous game just with a bit of neighborhood trickery. Ultimately I'm still sort of happy with the way things played out – even if I wish that more of the game's mechanics could've been explored, the first run was probably a decent demonstration that too much of what makes the setup interesting rests around one single role. This "city planner" mechanic where each lynch creates a neighborhood would end up getting re-explored in a later setup which used it to better effect, Situation Room.

Panic Room

Original 1st run

Made as my submission for the January Open Setup Challenge. I think it's a neat idea, but looking back on it I do think there are some problems and I definitely don't think it's the best setup I've ever made.

It was actually run once (not by me), and to my regret I didn't really follow the game very closely. From what I hear, however, the game ran into some issues and ended up ending fairly early with a mafia victory. May have also been run once as a marathon game?

The Coalition

Wiki

1st run 2nd run 3rd run 4th run (invalid via cheating)

Another one that's technically not really my original idea, although I did give it a new name and was the first one to actually run it. Ah... I know this isn't really mine, but I feel a big connection to it, and I'm really glad that the idea seems to have taken off (other people have modded this setup and it's appeared as a mechanic in other games). So, thanks mith!

Anyways, as for the setup itself, I'm (obviously) a big fan. I think something great about it is that if town manages to win day 1 via the coalition, the game is just over immediately – something to consider is that, in a regular 9 person setup, if the town can form a townblock of 5 people, the game is auto-win anyways. It's also a great twist on the mafia formula while still focusing essentially on all of the aspects that make mafia what it is.

Red Flag

Wiki

1st run 2nd run

Okay, I didn't actually make this one, mith did. But I'm the only one who has ever run it or really noticed it after years, so I consider it a "mine" just a little bit. There's an interseting aspect with regards to mafia potentially nightkilling one of their own members given the win conditions, but apart from that I'm not sure how successful of a setup it is. From what I've been told it's far too centric on the first day of the game, and pretty much everything is decided from there. That being said, the first run of this game is still among the favorite games I've ever modded, I really liked the playerlist that eventually replaced in towards the end.

Investigative Reporting

Link

I liked the idea of a larger setup, although this game does fall victim to the classic trap of an open seutp revolving too much around one role that makes the game pointless / a slog if it dies early. Would eventually get my fix of setups with public investigations by modding Vengecop and later making Public Cop 9P.

Two Scoops

Link

My very first attempt at creating a setup. I wanted to create the kind of semi-open, choice-driven setup that would offer near-infinite replay value similar to Pick Your Power X/Y or Stack the Deck, but I was probably a little ambitious in my attempt. The idea I had was far too complex to really offer diverse, balanced options – what probably would have ended up happening is that there would be one optimal choice that would always get made every time.

This did eventually serve as the inspiration behind Pick 5, however, which I think managed to get the basic idea of this while still being balanced.