Setups

A setup is a combination of roles and settings to make a game of its own. The main goal of a setup is to be balanced and fun to play for **all Alignments**. A setup that is simply 10 unique town power roles and then 2 mafia stuck helplessly in the middle will rarely be fun. As such, here are some things to think about when creating a setup.

A list of well-tested and known setups can be found here.

## Creating a setup

Creating a good setup can be daunting, with so many options. This is to help narrow down what to add.

### Ratios

It is important to have not only a good ratio of town to mafia, but villagers to power roles, miscondemns required for a mafia win to correct condemns required for a town win, and so on.

#### Town to Mafia

This obviously varies between games; 11 villagers to 2 mafia is considered balanced with no power roles, and 5 town to 2 mafia is considered balanced with Cop and Doctor. This is because Cop and Doctor are very strong together, making less town required for balance.

A good rule of thumb is to have 2-3 town to every mafia in a game with many power roles, and 3-4 town for every mafia in the absence of town power. The weaker town power is, the more town are required to make the game balanced. The ratio of 3:1 is recommended for most games.

In larger games, less town are required for each mafia because town power roles become more powerful as a group.

#### Power Role to Villager

Villagers should always outnumber town power roles. If the ratio of mafia to town is high, the villagers might outnumber the power roles by one. If the mafia have few members compared to town, the town should be mainly comprised of villagers.

Consider the following setup: Announcer, Cop, Doctor, Drunk, Governor, Lamb, Villager x 2, Mafia, Tagger

This setup has too many Power Roles. It is optimal for the townies on day 1 to all claim their role, and force the mafia to either counterclaim or claim within the small pool of Villagers that exist. This will very quickly make a bad situation for the mafia, as half of town is confirmed town. Additionally, the power roles can help sort the remaining villagers, making the game an automatic town win very quickly. The best way to avoid this sort of scenario is to have a balanced ratio of power roles and villagers. It is recommended to have a simple majority of town be Villager roles, so that massclaiming strategies do not benefit the town.

#### Miscondemn to Condemn

The number of condemns required to kill all mafia and number of miscondemns required for mafia to win should be roughly equal. If one of these numbers is higher than the other, the team needing to condemn correctly that many times should have more power to compensate.

An example would be how in Classic (3 Villager, Cop, Doctor, 2 Mafia), the town need to vote correctly twice in a row to win, and the mafia only need to cause one miscondemn, but the amount of town power in Cop and Doctor balances it out. Similar things could be said about Janitorial. On the opposite end of the spectrum, 2 Mafia vs 11 Villager requires significantly more miscondemns for mafia to win than correct votes for town to win because town has very little power.

### Interactions

In a setup it is important to know how roles will work with each other. For example, it is important to know that with a Doctor and a Cop alive, the Cop can safely claim and be protected by the Doctor. This specific scenario is known as Follow the Cop, and is often something to avoid or give mafia counterplay to (often in the form of a Hooker, who can shut down the cop).

Some roles will change overall gameplay with their interactions, such as how Clown makes players anxious about voting last.

#### Breaking strategies

Breaking strategies are anything a town or mafia team can do to significantly enhance their chance of winning beyond what is intended by the setup designer. The most common one is massclaiming, where town members all claim their role at the start of the game to take advantage of how power roles can be confirmed town if not counterclaimed.

Some roles in combination will also be very powerful, and interactions between them should be designed around (such as with Follow the Cop) or avoided. An example of an interaction to avoid would be how Doctor can protect other Doctors in a circle, so it would be best to replace them with Medic or Guardian, or only have one.

### Power

Town and Mafia should have about equal levels of power, or it can be imbalanced. As well as this, any singular role having too much power is bad because if that role dies early, the game will be drastically different than if that role had survived to the end. If one team has more power, a solution could be to have more of the opposing team, or have less powerful roles and interactions in the overpowered teams.

## Types of setups

Setups can vary wildly due to the large number of roles and options that are provided. Setups may fall into many or none of these categories

### Mountainous

Mountainous setups are those with only two roles. The most basic one is Mafia vs Villager. Depending on what these two roles are, the ratio of town to mafia can vary wildly. As there are only two roles, most mountainous setups are very focused on the discussion and scumhunting aspects of play. They could be considered the most pure form of mafia.

### White Flag

White Flag setups are based on the mechanic where if only 1 mafia member remains, they lose. this is most easily accomplished with Jekyll, and a town full of roles that are hard for mafia to kill at night such as Bomb or Grandma.

### RR Off

This describes setups that have the setting Hide Roles Upon Death turned on. The gameplay is substantially different, since town has little to no information, especially on tells between players, without power roles.

Additionally, setups can range from simple to complex, simply by the mechanics they offer. For example, Lovers Mafia can work as a beginner's game. Everyman probably will not.