~/*Witchhunt*\~ The Best Mafia Variant Goes God-Tier -- Testers Needed!

**Chocolate Pi** · 02-09-2012, 09:59 PM

Howdy guys, I'm Chocolate Pi. Over the past 5 years, I've iterated on a version of mafia I've simply always called Witchhunt.

Although I've never been on these forums before, many of you may be somewhat familar with the game: the Dersehunt and Polarityhunt series of games by x1372 and Prime Intellect are direct derivatives. (Both gentlemen were savvy players in the original games I hosted on sirlin.net.) The game has continued to improve dramatically; it's grown more lean and refined, simpler yet denser.

Now Witchhunt is approaching the next stage of evolution, Moscone: a free, fully automated web-hosted game system. This is a small game control panel, available in a web-browser (and soon on the desktop or your mobile device) that players can use for any and all game actions or information.

Moscone doesn't replace traditional mafia discussion at all--just everything else, such as lynch voting, witch voting, role powers, deadlines, information distribution, QT distribution, role assignments... all on top of all game logic itself. The idea is that you can use Moscone alongside your forum, IRC, IM chat, Skype call, vent server, carrier pigeon network, or whatever you use to host the game.

I've been building this for quite awhile, and am finally ready for limited public beta-testing. My intention is run a a few games this weekend. There's no limit to how many we can reasonably run, including simultaneously. I will be organizing three types of games starting this weekend (friday afternoon):

1. Endless, rapid-paced Debug Games in which 20 dummy accounts automatically vote and behave semi-randomly. (I've been doing this for a week now.) The fun is, you will be free to login as any of the dummy player whenever you want, and make them do whatever you want. Create the most contrived, insane situations and outcomes possible! Five boonbucks for every bug you find.

2. Nightly IRC test games--semi-serious games of about 6-14 players with quick deadlines, lasting no more than a couple hours total. The main goal of these will be to rapidly collect hands-on usability feedback.

3. An actual, serious business real game with 20-30 players over a couple weeks. (The ruleset supports up to 30.) I would like to get in at least two nights of small games as a sanity check before moving to long-term public games.

The ruleset, including all roles, is directly accessible in the game client itself. However, I will also post it here:

Witchhunt Rules 6.31

Preface: I never do any sort of bastard modding. What you see is 100% what you get, no false or misleading information is ever presented in-game to players by myself as moderator.

Overview

Witchhunt is a game in which two groups seek to control their town by killing the other: The Villagers and the Witches. There are fewer members of the Witch team, but their identities are secret. Whichever team successfully kills all of their opponents wins.

The game continuously marches through a daily cycle. Each phase has a deadline, at which point the game automatically transitions to the next phase.

The biggest and most important phase is Day. During the Day players may make open discussion in the public forum thread, and decide on a target to lynch. Any living player may vote for any other living player, and a true majority (more than half) is required to lynch.

When a majority is reached, the person is automatically lynched. (If the deadline arrives, no one is lynched.) The game immediately transitions to Dusk; Dusk is a very short and relatively unimportant phase, but gives the town a brief window to offer parting words abotu the Day's activities before Night.

During Night, players may not use the public discussion. The Witch Coven, whom are given a private means of communication, collectively selects a target to kill each Night. (Also by pure majority.) Various individual events affecting specific players happen at night as well. (more on that in a moment)

The results of the Witches' foul deed will be announced at the start of Dawn. The players start the cycle anew, using this new information to discuss who the Witches might be and vote for suspects. Players may vote immediately, but a final lynch will not be carried out until the clock officially turns to Day. (Dawn, like Dusk, is simply a brief moment for public reflection.)

Note that there is no "card flip" (announcement of the player's identity) on death!

Guardian Angels

When players die, they are NOT eliminated from the game. Instead they continue to serve their original team as a Guardian Angel. Each Night, the Guardian Angels may vote to protect a target; the protected player cannot die that night for any reason, including if targeted by the Witch Coven.

Angels vote by simple plurality, so dead players who do not wish to continue participating can do so with minimal consequence. Angels see all events that take place in the game (except Coven voting) and may discuss the game freely with each other; using this information, they can make a big difference, but there is a key limitation to their power...

Angels may only collectively protect any individual player once per game. This means that dead Witch players can still assist their side, by working to "waste" precious Angel protections on key players.

If there is a tie among the Angel vote, all targets are protected. This powerful option risks exhausting the Angels' power, and allows dead Witches to more easily waste protections. Angels must protect: If zero Angels vote at Night such that no one is protected, all current Angels lose their right to vote in the future.

Note that if a person is targeted with a kill at Night and survives, the town is still informed that they were targeted! This is very valuable information!

Player Assignments (Roles and Team)

Each player is given two assignments: a unique role, and a designated team.

Unique roles provide every player with a special, unique ability of some sort. These abilities may be offensive or defensive, mechanical or informational. Powers granted by your role only apply while you are alive.

Roles however, are seperate from team assignments. Most roles can be given to either a Villager or a Witch. While [i]there are only these two teams,[/u] there are a few special team assignments that put players in a special place on their team.

For example, a select few Villagers are designated as Holy Villagers. Certain especially powerful roles are marked Holy, and these will always be given to the Holy Villagers. (This ensures that Witches never get their hands on the most potent abilities.) These Holy Villagers are commonly the highest priority Witch targets, thanks to their strong powers.

Another special type of Villager is the pair of Village Lovers. These two Villagers get random roles like everyone else, but suffer a particular curse: If one dies, the other is killed as well. However, there is an upside: One of those Holy Roles is Cupid, who provides both Lovers with immunity at Night as long as he lives. Because Lovers can privately communicate and take advantage of both their unique Roles, they are potentially a big thorn in the Witches' side.

Additional Mechanics of Large Games:

Role List
Warning: Big images!

Shoutout to the art team!

Example Moscone Logs:

F.A.Q. List:

Where do I find this wonderful thing?

LINK:
http://chocolatepi.net/wh/Moscone.html

We will be discussing this right here, in this topic, for the time being.

**g0m** · 02-09-2012, 10:21 PM

This looks great, I especially like the art (You're a really good drawer!). Can I join one of your trial games? I'm very good at mafia and the like, so I should take good to your game!

**Chocolate Pi** · 02-09-2012, 10:28 PM

Originally Posted by g0m

This looks great, I especially like the art (You're a really good drawer!). Can I join one of your trial games? I'm very good at mafia and the like, so I should take good to your game!

To address this immediately, I am responsible for NONE of the art except some parts of the background templates. (and some basic stuff like font selection)

Some of the images are still prototypes stolen from deviantart--the artist names are all listed on the images if you are interested.

The most customized, incomplete ones are the work of the Witchhunt Art Team, a set of talented individuals that may stop by to comment. I'm sure they would be very happy to hear any feedback or comments on their work so far!

**absoluteCertainty** · 02-09-2012, 10:40 PM

but why is it teal

**GenetiXientist** · 02-09-2012, 10:49 PM

Oh hey, I've read your games on Sirlin, if I actually had time not taken up by school and shit I'd be more than willing to try to test it out.

Looks like a good idea, but Prime's tallybot is pretty advanced in its own way, and this seems pretty similar.

**g0m** · 02-09-2012, 10:55 PM

Originally Posted by absoluteCertainty

but why is it teal

TEAL IS THE BEST FUCKING COLOUR EVER. IF YOU TALK SHIT ABOUT TEAL AGAIN I WILL KILL YOU MYSELF.

**absoluteCertainty** · 02-09-2012, 10:56 PM

Originally Posted by g0m

TEAL IS THE BEST FUCKING COLOUR EVER. IF YOU TALK SHIT ABOUT TEAL AGAIN I WILL KILL YOU MYSELF.

joke's on you it's cyan
if it was teal it would actually be ok
hee hee hee ok that was really silly.

**Crilly** · 02-09-2012, 11:22 PM

Would like to playtest over weekend, am in Australia so different time-zones however.

BTW, can we see the possible distribution tables for roles? Also can we actually quit out of games at the moment?

**Chocolate Pi** · 02-09-2012, 11:26 PM

They are ordered/numbered linearly in the order they are added. This includes team assignments. (For example, a game of 10 players includes roles up through Recluse, and has 2 Witches.)

Edit: Wait, I have this open on another monitor, why don't I just post it???

**Chocolate Pi** · 02-10-2012, 04:03 PM

Critical update before we even get started, stop the presses!

The ability to change the background color for each state????? This is OBVIOUSLY witchcraft of the highest degree.

This is out of control; I expect people to make their lynch decisions entirely on where they stand on the teal-vs-fuchsia debate.

THIS IS WAR, CHOOSE A SIDE.

**OzTheWizard** · 02-10-2012, 04:57 PM

Originally Posted by GenetiXientist

Looks like a good idea, but Prime's tallybot is pretty advanced in its own way, and this seems pretty similar.

Does it support carrier pigeon networks too? My free time comes in non-consecutive small amounts of minutes, so IRC games don't work for me.

I'd be happy to join any forum games using this Moscone thing.

**Chocolate Pi** · 02-10-2012, 05:03 PM

I am currently monitoring #mspafia, #mafia, this forum threads, and the games running in Moscone (which I just cleaned out, and started some new debug games). Anyone interested can take a gander and mess around with things; let me know what you think! Feedback is pretty critical at this point.

**A Killer Cuppa Tea** · 02-10-2012, 06:14 PM

Despite the fact that you haven't really been in this community, your influence has touched it to it's very core, Chocolate_Pi. For that you deserve our thanks! Come by some time, join a game or two

. I would most certainly love to help test your app - currently (long story short) I am out of a computer, and am writing this from my phone...

However, you mentioned something about a Phone App? Also, you might wanna make the site phone friendly somehow (I don't know much about the nitty and gritty of how that would happen) - in either case i would be more than happy and incredibly willing to carry out usability tests and whatnot for it. I'm always on these forums, and I usually come to the IRC so I'll prolly talk to you about it there.

**Rubisco** · 02-10-2012, 07:08 PM

I would like to help with the testing. I've never played Mafia before though, so I don't know if I'd be of any use.

**Chocolate Pi** · 02-10-2012, 07:21 PM

Originally Posted by A Killer Cuppa Tea

However, you mentioned something about a Phone App? Also, you might wanna make the site phone friendly somehow (I don't know much about the nitty and gritty of how that would happen)

The client is a flex application, which means I can build it to a typical webpage flash file, a desktop application, or as an app for each respective major mobile device.

For the time being, testing will be exclusively concerned with the web client, since there are likely to be many changes needed and it is far easier to update one thing than 3-5 almost-identical-things. Once it gets in a good state on both the server and client sides, I'll make the required customization to build to the other platforms.

Originally Posted by Rubisco

I would like to help with the testing. I've never played Mafia before though, so I don't know if I'd be of any use.

Of course! Different people stress software in different ways, and this is critical to test. While mafia pros will be better at testing the game design and making sure GUI behavior matches prior expectations, entirely new players walk in with a fresh perspective--this provides a needed emphasis on the effectiveness of things like the rules and state/event clarity.

**GenetiXientist** · 02-12-2012, 09:44 PM

Needed feature:

The ability to leave/unregister for a game.

**KaiDASH** · 02-14-2012, 08:00 PM

So a few things for the ui:

It isn't important right now (since there is only one game and everyone is alive) - but on the game select page, having some sort of notation for the following things would be handy

-Are you in this game?
-Are you dead or alive?
-Is the game in day/night/registering?

On the Lynch Vote page, being able to easily bring up a screen of who voted to lynch X player (in chronological order, hopefully!) would be nice, because atm to see the order someone got their lynch votes in you need to go to the game log and manually find out.

Maybe a 'lynch' button of some sort to cut back on the amount of accidental lynch vote that occur (which mostly just spam up the game log). In line with the last suggestion, maybe clicking on someone brings up a pop-up menu with things like 'view voting history' 'lynch this player' 'make note' 'etcetc'

**Rubisco** · 02-15-2012, 06:07 PM

How do you log in as one of the players in the automatic debug game?

**Chocolate Pi** · 02-15-2012, 06:09 PM

Originally Posted by Rubisco

How do you log in as one of the players in the automatic debug game?

The passwords are the same as the usernames. (John/John)

**Laset** · 02-15-2012, 08:47 PM

I propose some kind of "remember me" option, so that I don't have to relog in every time my computer freezes and needs to be rebooted.

**Rubisco** · 02-15-2012, 09:02 PM

Do the Lovers know who each other are automatically, or do they have to communicate with each other first?

**Chocolate Pi** · 02-15-2012, 09:09 PM

Originally Posted by Laset

I propose some kind of "remember me" option, so that I don't have to relog in every time my computer freezes and needs to be rebooted.

This is happening right now.

Originally Posted by Rubisco

Do the Lovers know who each other are automatically, or do they have to communicate with each other first?

Yes, notification is established in the game log. This was broken and is now fixed, for all future games.

**Rubisco** · 02-15-2012, 10:01 PM

I'm fooling around with the third debug game, and the coven isn't able to see who the youngsters are.

**GenetiXientist** · 02-15-2012, 10:04 PM

They aren't supposed to until the "youngsters" join.

**Chocolate Pi** · 02-15-2012, 10:07 PM

Originally Posted by Rubisco

I'm fooling around with the third debug game, and the coven isn't able to see who the youngsters are.

Hmm, it's not in the log at all? Lemme check...

Thread: ~/Witchhunt\~ The Best Mafia Variant Goes God-Tier -- Testers Needed!

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