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I'm trying to devise a point-based scoring system for a variant of Mafia/Werewolf. The idea is that there are teams coming in, and so individual players should be able to earn points regardless of role which add to the overall team score. Is there anything like this out there that might help me balance the point values?

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I think adding scoring to the game will have side effects ruining the core game play. Most of the game is played by subtlety where people have no reason to kill others unless... This goes away with a point based system. For instance if points are awarded for survival, people would start gaming it instead of concentrating on killing the wolves. – Andrey Mar 19 at 13:22
@Andrey Unfortunately, I have to have some way to declare one or more teams the "winner", as this is part of a day of friendly-competitive events. Unless the coordinators would let me just make this one not count toward the final prize... – Yamikuronue Mar 19 at 13:26

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I am going to answer this assuming this is a convention, you are GMing the game, and there must be winners written in on a card at the end If you are going to play 1 or 2 games you should pick the winners yourself. Just decide who did the best job. Did someone manage to lie to the group really well, or did anyone lead the group, get them past the chaos, and lynch for victory? If you do not feel comfortable picking, let the players vote, but let them only pick from the winning team.

If you are going to have 5+ games you could consider a point system. Maybe just giving a point to everyone on the winning team. Whatever you do, do not let the players know the scoring If people know how the game is scored they will game the system. If this happens it will most likely ruin the game for everyone, (and probably let the wolves cakewalk their way to victory in later games). Players will quickly think "he is willing, lets lynch him just in case" If again there are ties, I recommend just picking winners yourself, let the players vote on who they thought was most helpful.

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Ooh, there's a thought: maybe a secret scoring system with bonus points for player-elected MVP and bonus points for GM-elected MVP? Kind of like the Mario Party bonus stars? – Yamikuronue Mar 19 at 13:49
Secret scoring systems are inherently evil... players should know their goal and be able to achieve it in any way they choose that can fit into the rules. – Sconibulus Mar 19 at 15:49
@Sconibulus "Secret scoring systems are inherently evil" can you back that up in some way? People will be there to play werewolf, not 5 game werewolf meta. This is in a way the same thing as why StackExchange keeps fraud algorithms secret – Andrey Mar 19 at 16:18
@Andrey Of course I can't, evil is a moral judgement, not an objective one. My opinion is that any game where not only the scores, but the scoring mechanism is kept secret isn't really a game at all. It's a bunch of random activities leading toward an endpoint, where someone is declared the winner. If the scores are NOT kept secret, (when someone earns a point, players, or at least that player, are informed) and the scoring system is consistent, and preferably objective, there is wiggle room, as the system is, at least, determinable. – Sconibulus Mar 19 at 16:55
up vote 1 down vote

Well the first thing that comes to mind is to play multiple games such that each player is on each team a predictable number of times

for instance, let's say you have 9 villagers(one of which is an informant) and 3 mafia. you would play the game 12 times, so each player is an informant once, and a mafia 3 times.

You probably want to have multiple games going on at the same time, and isolated from each-other, and have people constantly switch groups. That way, it would be much much harder for people to guess everyone else's role.

Another way to do it, would be random. at the beginning of each game, you randomly assign players to a role, and you still play multiple iterations of the game.

This way can be a little bit more luck based, but the more you repeat it, the more the actual better players will rise to the top scores.

You can also mitigate the luck factor a little bit by balancing the roles such that no role has a benefit over the other. If mafia tends to win more often, than you can reduce the points that they get when they win. etc. you might also assign points based on how they win/how many people are left alive.

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I think this idea would work, but you should ensure that the percentage of players of different teams per opposing side is equal. Else, players could attempt to lose on purpose for the greater good of their team mates. – mafutrct♦ Mar 19 at 13:04
@mafutrct Of course, if I intentionally assign roles following some pattern, it makes it easier to guess who the werewolves/mafia are... – Yamikuronue Mar 19 at 13:25

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