Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2017 20:37:42 GMT
I love cults; not really in-game, because they tend to be very broken, but I like the idea of them. A scum faction that works on the Fundamental Theory of Mafia not by decreasing the number of town, but by increasing their own ranks, is an interesting idea. Problem is, by converting a player, you actually do both, which is a really difficult superpower to tame. The standard model of a cult made of individuals plus a factional nightly conversion is literally unbeatable without flawless night play; if one of their own is lynched, no bother, just recruit another player, and all will be honkey-dory. So every single cult in the history of ever has had some built-in disadvantages or handicaps; they will be discussed here.
X-shot recruitments: The cult as a faction can only make a limited number of conversions, typically one in smaller games and two in mid-to-larger ones. This is perhaps the most commonly seen handicap. This forces the original cult leader into some strategic thinking: should I recruit right away so that my chances of being obliterated immediately are lesser, or should I hold on until later so my conversion can be more prudently applied, say, to a well-beloved town leader or a dangerous power role? From a gamemaking perspective, this is a simple and highly effective way to curtail the cult's power while still preserving the fearsome lategame potential that is their wont.
Suicide pact: If the cult leader dies, then every other cult member dies. This is probably the second most common handicap; everything else is used sparsely and sporadically. Typically the cult is not given any handicaps in addition to this, since it is already such a massive hindrance to them. This forces the cult into a position of extreme anxiety; they have to protect their leader at all costs while also not being lynched themselves. The awkwardness of this position makes them very easy to scum hunt, and it relies an inordinate amount on the skill of the leader. It's a high-risk, high-reward scum faction. From a game-making perspective, this is probably not an ideal tool unless the theme is already role madness; most setups cannot sustain the volatility of potential four-death days this entails. The feel that a suicide pact cult introduces to a game is so vastly different from what a normal cult has (battling a slow and steady accretion of scum power versus making desperate strides to make all the bad things go away) that they may well be considered two entirely separate systems.
Role madness: There are so many town and mafia power roles that the power of even a cult is diminished in comparison. Such games typically have ways of producing the multiple night kills and easy inspections that cults fear. A favorite here at PS! Mafia. In situations like these, it is also very easy to underpowered cults. Generally speaking, a single vigilante plus a roleblocker, regardless of alignment, should produce enough of a threat to cults that more drastic measures such as x-shot recruitments or suicide pacts are unnecessary. Balancing cults always faces a core problem: how do you guarantee that the cult won't become overpower, 4 vs 6 on D4, just due to sheer dumb luck? I call situations like these Devourings, when an unopposed cult steamrolls due to poor game design. The chaos of a role madness game almost eliminates this luck factor; but you still should be very sure your design is watertight before hosting.
Less frequent recruitments: The cult ostensibly has infinite recruitments, but can do so less frequently. The two vanilla examples are even and odd night recruitments only. In its basic form, this gives the cult the power to grow and flourish in the late game while preventing a mid-game overwhelm. It also forces the cult to be more conservative and judicious with their day play. Very few downsides from a game design perspective. It should be noted that the cult's early game presence is as tenuous as lesser third parties like SK or survivor, while still lacking the benefits (nightkill immune, tracker-proof, etc.) those other parties have. So if you want to milk the cult for all its worth, this handicap isn't very compatible with role madness themes where people can die suddenly and violently for stupid random inexplicable reasons. Another, more strategically demanding variant is to allow the cult to recruit only after accomplishing some daytime objective; one clever setup made the mafia faction OP while giving the cult leader a neapolitan inspection and the ability to recruit only nights where a mafia was lynched the day before. This had the effect of making the cult a de facto pro-town faction early game, while gradually having them grow more antagonistic to the town as the game went on.
The key component of making cults viable in any theme is easing the in-game transition from baby-cult to monster-cult. The power curve should ideally be smooth and manageable from both the scum end of things and the town end. Mafia factions tend towards tactical equilibrium because as more of them die, it's easier for them to hide and slowly kill off townies. The cult does not have this benefit. The cult should not be in a position where they could never feasibly recover after the loss of a member, and the town should never be completely and impossibly overwhelmed (unless they have already blown so many chances to cut them off that they deserve the loss then). So wise game makers tend to design bizarre and idiosyncratic cults to fit the unique demands of their theme. Below are some examples.
Food Mafia cult—"the cake": 1-shot day or night recruitment, role copier, and a factional nightkill. It was a quasi-cult, and actually behaved more like a smaller mafia. The rest of the role list was ascetic mafia, mafia other-night vote controller, mafia role cop, town crier (sends one mod-confirmed public message per game), two town masons, town vanillarizer, town bleeder, town 1-shot reflexive this-and-next-night roleblocker, town 1-shot fake someone else's death, town other-night auto-targeter, town two-shot commuter, town bomb, and town multivoter. Essentially, the game had LOADS of roles that stifle and depress night activity, which made the cult's nightkill significantly less effective. This cult was underpowered, because the mafia also had a nightkill, but with more players and better roles. It was outclassed by the competition, essentially, and added little additional strategic complexity to the game beyond the one-shot recruitment and its status as another scum faction.
Other cults in current PS! Mafia games: May not currently be discussed, but still check them out!
X-shot deathproof cult with a stricter suicide pact: The entire cult dies if even one of its members dies, but they do collectively get a 1- or 2-shot deathproof ability. The more cult that are alive at any given time, the easier it is for them to all suddenly die, but the stronger they are in any individual interaction. I love this idea; it forces the cult to be very judicious with their conversions. I love the idea of the strategic trade-off on an otherwise OP ability.
Sacrificial recruitments: A quasi-cult role in which a cult sacrifices one of their members in order to convert a target. This preserves the total number of cult members alive, preventing them from growing, while having a constantly shifting and unpredictable alignment spread. Strategically, this creates the same trust and coordination problems that normal cults create without the threat of the D4 Devouring. Tactically, this faction is exactly the same as a mafia; just a group of three people with a nightkill. I just invented this, so it has never been tested, but I suspect this will also have the additional bonus of making the late game roster full of stronger players who are selected for harvesting by the cult. Most typical games have their bad players lynched early on and the good ones night killed, and so the endgame is dominated by the moderately okay people; setups that utilize this tool should create more intriguing late game situations with more interesting people.
Cult members are traitors: Castrate the cult by preventing them from communicating. Theoretically makes them much less dangerous during the day; but to prevent a Devouring, additional handicaps are required. Also, a game where you're suddenly told you're no longer town, but you have no idea who your partners are, and you now have to throw out all your old reads and play to your new win condition— I can't imagine that would be very fun. Theoretically workable only in very specific setups with a heavy reliance on day play despite frightening nighttime superpowers.
Player spawning: An idea that has existed on Mafiascum for quite some time, but has yet to be worked into a sturdy setup. The cult is a scum faction that achieves the Fundamental Theory of Mafia by adding to its own numbers. One of the game mechanics in a player spawning theme is the occasional introduction of new players, some of which will be new cult members. Such a setup must have far more raw killing power in order to ensure the playlist gradually decreases, plus ways for town and other factions to benefit from the seeding, which makes the cult's bonus much less appetizing. Suffers from a core philosophical flaw; if you know that these player spawnings are designed to specifically help cult, then lynching the new additions is so much more attractive than scum hunting within the already extant playerlist. If you have an idea to make this work, and it does, then your praises will be sung across the Internet for generations.
Clever use of multiple factions: I designed a setup a while ago with a fire cult (odd night recruitments) and an ice cult (even night recruitments). To prevent the rat race of lynch-cult-new-cultie-appears, trying to convert an opposing cult will result in the death of your own cult member, and if one cult is eliminated, then the other loses the ability to recruit. This should produce a scenario where the town heavily persecutes one cult until it is extinct, then plays nightless the rest of the game. This has never been tested.
So, any other things to note about cults? Any ideas about how to rework or balance them? Got any setups that you think use cults well? Share and discuss below.
X-shot recruitments: The cult as a faction can only make a limited number of conversions, typically one in smaller games and two in mid-to-larger ones. This is perhaps the most commonly seen handicap. This forces the original cult leader into some strategic thinking: should I recruit right away so that my chances of being obliterated immediately are lesser, or should I hold on until later so my conversion can be more prudently applied, say, to a well-beloved town leader or a dangerous power role? From a gamemaking perspective, this is a simple and highly effective way to curtail the cult's power while still preserving the fearsome lategame potential that is their wont.
Suicide pact: If the cult leader dies, then every other cult member dies. This is probably the second most common handicap; everything else is used sparsely and sporadically. Typically the cult is not given any handicaps in addition to this, since it is already such a massive hindrance to them. This forces the cult into a position of extreme anxiety; they have to protect their leader at all costs while also not being lynched themselves. The awkwardness of this position makes them very easy to scum hunt, and it relies an inordinate amount on the skill of the leader. It's a high-risk, high-reward scum faction. From a game-making perspective, this is probably not an ideal tool unless the theme is already role madness; most setups cannot sustain the volatility of potential four-death days this entails. The feel that a suicide pact cult introduces to a game is so vastly different from what a normal cult has (battling a slow and steady accretion of scum power versus making desperate strides to make all the bad things go away) that they may well be considered two entirely separate systems.
Role madness: There are so many town and mafia power roles that the power of even a cult is diminished in comparison. Such games typically have ways of producing the multiple night kills and easy inspections that cults fear. A favorite here at PS! Mafia. In situations like these, it is also very easy to underpowered cults. Generally speaking, a single vigilante plus a roleblocker, regardless of alignment, should produce enough of a threat to cults that more drastic measures such as x-shot recruitments or suicide pacts are unnecessary. Balancing cults always faces a core problem: how do you guarantee that the cult won't become overpower, 4 vs 6 on D4, just due to sheer dumb luck? I call situations like these Devourings, when an unopposed cult steamrolls due to poor game design. The chaos of a role madness game almost eliminates this luck factor; but you still should be very sure your design is watertight before hosting.
Less frequent recruitments: The cult ostensibly has infinite recruitments, but can do so less frequently. The two vanilla examples are even and odd night recruitments only. In its basic form, this gives the cult the power to grow and flourish in the late game while preventing a mid-game overwhelm. It also forces the cult to be more conservative and judicious with their day play. Very few downsides from a game design perspective. It should be noted that the cult's early game presence is as tenuous as lesser third parties like SK or survivor, while still lacking the benefits (nightkill immune, tracker-proof, etc.) those other parties have. So if you want to milk the cult for all its worth, this handicap isn't very compatible with role madness themes where people can die suddenly and violently for stupid random inexplicable reasons. Another, more strategically demanding variant is to allow the cult to recruit only after accomplishing some daytime objective; one clever setup made the mafia faction OP while giving the cult leader a neapolitan inspection and the ability to recruit only nights where a mafia was lynched the day before. This had the effect of making the cult a de facto pro-town faction early game, while gradually having them grow more antagonistic to the town as the game went on.
The key component of making cults viable in any theme is easing the in-game transition from baby-cult to monster-cult. The power curve should ideally be smooth and manageable from both the scum end of things and the town end. Mafia factions tend towards tactical equilibrium because as more of them die, it's easier for them to hide and slowly kill off townies. The cult does not have this benefit. The cult should not be in a position where they could never feasibly recover after the loss of a member, and the town should never be completely and impossibly overwhelmed (unless they have already blown so many chances to cut them off that they deserve the loss then). So wise game makers tend to design bizarre and idiosyncratic cults to fit the unique demands of their theme. Below are some examples.
Food Mafia cult—"the cake": 1-shot day or night recruitment, role copier, and a factional nightkill. It was a quasi-cult, and actually behaved more like a smaller mafia. The rest of the role list was ascetic mafia, mafia other-night vote controller, mafia role cop, town crier (sends one mod-confirmed public message per game), two town masons, town vanillarizer, town bleeder, town 1-shot reflexive this-and-next-night roleblocker, town 1-shot fake someone else's death, town other-night auto-targeter, town two-shot commuter, town bomb, and town multivoter. Essentially, the game had LOADS of roles that stifle and depress night activity, which made the cult's nightkill significantly less effective. This cult was underpowered, because the mafia also had a nightkill, but with more players and better roles. It was outclassed by the competition, essentially, and added little additional strategic complexity to the game beyond the one-shot recruitment and its status as another scum faction.
Other cults in current PS! Mafia games: May not currently be discussed, but still check them out!
X-shot deathproof cult with a stricter suicide pact: The entire cult dies if even one of its members dies, but they do collectively get a 1- or 2-shot deathproof ability. The more cult that are alive at any given time, the easier it is for them to all suddenly die, but the stronger they are in any individual interaction. I love this idea; it forces the cult to be very judicious with their conversions. I love the idea of the strategic trade-off on an otherwise OP ability.
Sacrificial recruitments: A quasi-cult role in which a cult sacrifices one of their members in order to convert a target. This preserves the total number of cult members alive, preventing them from growing, while having a constantly shifting and unpredictable alignment spread. Strategically, this creates the same trust and coordination problems that normal cults create without the threat of the D4 Devouring. Tactically, this faction is exactly the same as a mafia; just a group of three people with a nightkill. I just invented this, so it has never been tested, but I suspect this will also have the additional bonus of making the late game roster full of stronger players who are selected for harvesting by the cult. Most typical games have their bad players lynched early on and the good ones night killed, and so the endgame is dominated by the moderately okay people; setups that utilize this tool should create more intriguing late game situations with more interesting people.
Cult members are traitors: Castrate the cult by preventing them from communicating. Theoretically makes them much less dangerous during the day; but to prevent a Devouring, additional handicaps are required. Also, a game where you're suddenly told you're no longer town, but you have no idea who your partners are, and you now have to throw out all your old reads and play to your new win condition— I can't imagine that would be very fun. Theoretically workable only in very specific setups with a heavy reliance on day play despite frightening nighttime superpowers.
Player spawning: An idea that has existed on Mafiascum for quite some time, but has yet to be worked into a sturdy setup. The cult is a scum faction that achieves the Fundamental Theory of Mafia by adding to its own numbers. One of the game mechanics in a player spawning theme is the occasional introduction of new players, some of which will be new cult members. Such a setup must have far more raw killing power in order to ensure the playlist gradually decreases, plus ways for town and other factions to benefit from the seeding, which makes the cult's bonus much less appetizing. Suffers from a core philosophical flaw; if you know that these player spawnings are designed to specifically help cult, then lynching the new additions is so much more attractive than scum hunting within the already extant playerlist. If you have an idea to make this work, and it does, then your praises will be sung across the Internet for generations.
Clever use of multiple factions: I designed a setup a while ago with a fire cult (odd night recruitments) and an ice cult (even night recruitments). To prevent the rat race of lynch-cult-new-cultie-appears, trying to convert an opposing cult will result in the death of your own cult member, and if one cult is eliminated, then the other loses the ability to recruit. This should produce a scenario where the town heavily persecutes one cult until it is extinct, then plays nightless the rest of the game. This has never been tested.
So, any other things to note about cults? Any ideas about how to rework or balance them? Got any setups that you think use cults well? Share and discuss below.
