P&P GM's Handbook

This is a basic, introductory guide to GMing the popular chat-game Predators & Prey (P&P) - containing information about role balance, recommended setup details, standards and important details to keep in mind. Please bear in mind that this guide assumes you have a reasonable amount of familiarity with the game (have played in 8 or more 'full' games, at least) and understand common jargon.

So You Wanna GM

So you want to run P&P. A laudable endeavor, fraught with challenges! It can, however, be quite rewarding. There are a few important details to keep in mind before you even get started, though - before you get started thinking of what roles you want to involve, or figuring out optimal player-count, or deciding upon a setting, or anything similar!

• GMing is a very fun, but very stressful endeavor. P&P, as with any game that regularly involves up to a dozen players standard, all talking and typing at once, is a rapid and hectic game. You should be aware that you will be expected to catch votes thrown into standard conversation, whether your name is said or not, that you are expected to keep published vote totals constantly up-to-date, that you will be expected to write intermediary posts at the same time as you are keeping track of these things, that you will be keeping track of a timer at the very same time, and that you will be called upon to make snap decisions and bear the full implications of your setup and its interconnectedness, in mind, at all times. In essence - stay calm, think fast, type fast, and be prepared to multitask.
• Keep players appraised of the time. Be exact with your timings. Get a real-world or digital stopwatch, and try to keep your posts on-time and as close to precise as you can. Because of how high-pressure and high-speed P&P is, 10 seconds can be the difference between the predators managing to stay un-lynched long enough to win the game, or losing it, and players count on the GM to keep them appraised of how much time they have remaining at exact, regular intervals. For a standard 20-minute day, time calls are made at 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 3 minutes, and 1 minute. For a standard 10-minute night, calls are at 5, 3, and 1 minutes. The general ratio is - when time is 50% elapsed, 75% elapsed, 85-90% elapsed, and 95-99% elapsed, players should be hearing something from you! On important days - Lylo, for instance - when things are running down to the wire and there is no clear lynch-consensus, it is not terribly uncommon to make time-calls at 30 seconds and 10 seconds as well. Trials should have time-calls to the nearest minute; thus, a 5-minute Trial would have time calls at 3 minutes and 1 minute remaining.
• Write good Role PMs, and have them ready before the game. Whatever roles you use, you should have clear, well-defined role PMs that exactly lay out the abilities, limitations, and potential interactions of every player's special roles. You may check Role PMs (a scratchpad of many past role PMs sent out) to get an idea of what information to include in your own, and freely make use of, modify, or imitate all PMs contained therein. Players should read their Role PMs and know exactly what their role is, what it's named, whose team they are on, and, when applicable, additional special information relating to their faction or the gametype.
• Minimize outside distractions. It is - and I cannot stress this enough - extremely difficult to GM a game as rapid, hectic, and diverse as P&P if you have outside influences pressing on your attentions. Sometimes, emergencies happen (and if you anticipate one, or even if you don't, it never hurts to have a 'backup GM' with info on your setup and the like, that you hand things off to during such events, but in general, you are expected to make running the game (and thus, keeping your players happy) your primary focus and endeavor, during the time in which the game's ongoing. It is considered very rude for a GM to allow external conversations they might be having, on-or-off the chat, or any other activities they may be engaged in, to get in the way of running the game. Your players will be unhappy. Other GMs will be unhappy. You may have a hard time getting people to play under you if you make a habit of this. Again - everyone makes mistakes - but set yourself up to succeed, don't make your job any harder than it already is.
• Your players are the most important part of everything. However many people are playing, they are investing their time, their trust, and their happiness in you. It is both enjoyable and humbling to have these responsibilities, but keep in mind that everyone involved in this should come out of it having had as good a time as they can. This includes you, too, of course! Try to design game setups that people will enjoy discovering, and exploring, try to keep settings appropriate and enjoyable, and above all, try to stop bad sportsmanship before it begins, by being fair, accessible, and professional.

Role Standards

Got all that? Sweet! For the purposes of the chatroom and its current ability to support the game, the optimal number of players in a game is between 9-12. A game of 9 players that consists of 2 Predators and 7 Prey is considered to be "perfectly balanced", by general consensus, without taking any roles, role-modifiers, or other factors into account. A game of 12 players that consists of 3 Predators and 9 Prey is, likewise, considered to be very well-balanced. Although not a hard-and-fast rule - you should always seek to have at least 2 Predators (or one Predator and one Traitor) in a game of 9 or more players, and at least 3 Predators (or 2 Predators and 1 Traitor) in a game of 12 or more players. This ensures that - assuming the Predators can avoid being lynched, and the players Lynch every day but the 1st Day, a Game will generally last between 3-5 Days - and thus, will typically stay inside 2-3 hours. This does not always work out, of course, but it is a good guideline to keep in mind.

Other notes about role standards:

• Keep in mind your 'ideal' number of days, and balance the number of nightkill-capable roles to match. You don't want to add extra Preds, but there are other roles that can perform Nightkills, which help ensure that a game with 12 or more players can still be kept a reasonable length, by adding a Vigilante or a Serial Devourer - or both, if you feel it necessary and balanced!
• Limit powerful abilities. By the same token as above, however, do not simply throw roles into the game without limitations. Roles such as the impossible-to-nightkill Commuter should be very limited-use, as they create a situation where the Predators can all-too-easily waste multiple valuable nightkills on a role that should, ideally, be used extremely tactically. Prey-or-third-party roles that can nightkill should have a limited number of 'shots'. Protective modifiers such as Bulletproof should expire after 1 (or, at max, 2) 'hits' on them, or be balanced for by counter-roles such as a Strongjaw.
• Only one role of a given type should be active for a given Faction, at a time. There should never be more than one of a given role active on a given side, at a time. This means that you should never have 2 Investigators/Cops, 2 Guardians/Doctors, or 2 Vigilantes active at once. It is permissible (and in fact, encouraged!) to have contrasting roles such as Private Eye and Spy (Prey and Pred Role Cops) in the same setup, or a Ranger in the same setup as a Scout (Prey and Pred Trackers) - but there should never be 2 roles that do the same thing, on the same side.
  • This also applies to roles that are merely a more or less powerful variant of the other - a setup should not have an Investigator and a Private Eye active at once, because these are both 'major' investigative roles, and a setup should not have a Guardian and a Bodyguard active at once. Sometimes, this is left up to your interpretation, and best judgment - for instance, it is both acceptable and fair to have both a Tracker and a Watcher on the Prey side, assuming all other things are balanced, but this deals with how 'fuzzy' the information provided by those Roles is. Generally, the more 'powerful' a role is, the more likely it should not have any other role on its side that does anything similar, and should be countered in some way by something on the other team.
  • It should be noted - full 'Protective' roles, such as Captor and Guardian, are extremely powerful, and should be sharply-limited in number. A Captor and a Bodyguard might be acceptable, because of how expendable a Bodyguard is and how Captor also has negative implications - but a Guardian and a Bodyguard would not be acceptable under any circumstances save for a very large game (15+).
• Backups should sometimes be weaker than the role they are replacing. If a backup is exactly as powerful as the role it's replacing, then the victory of having removed that role is blunted, with the obvious exception that any info that role collected is now gone. For a simple setup or game, this is not as big a deal, but more complicated games should consider limiting backups in some way - making them "x-shot", or having other limitations on usage, or debilitating role modifiers.
• Be very careful with 'dual' roles. This would be a role such as Ninja Scout - AKA a Pred Ninja Ranger - or any other role that is composed of two other subsidiary roles, or a role with a role modifier. These roles raise interesting challenges - such as, 'Can the role take an action in both of its capacities in the same night phase?' In our example, the question would be whether the player could perform a Nightkill, and also Track another player, in the same night, and would be further complicated by the question - if the answer is 'yes', and the player says they wish to become untrackable that night, is it the nightkill or their tracking, or both, that receive the Untrackable effect? You also must decide, in advance, how to handle that player being investigated by a Private Eye/Role Cop, as to whether the Role Cop gets both of the person's roles, or one or the other, and if so, which one. There are no hard-and-fast rules about this - except, be very mindful of how certain role combinations can be very powerful, make a decision about all these questions and details, and stick to it for your entire setup. Consider telling your players, if what you decide differs from the 'norm' you've seen played.
  • However, in general, you should make it so the player must decide which action, if they have multiple options, they take that night - and cannot do multiple actions (Nightkill and track, or track and commute) in one night. You should also make sure that the multi-title roles you create, with role modifiers or role mashups, do not have an overwhelmingly-powerful option. Such an option would be, for instance, a Strongjaw with as many uses of their ability as there are planned to be Days in the game, or any role paired up with an infinite-shot Commuter, nightkill-capable Prey or 3rd-party role, or the capability to 'recruit' others a la the Masonizer/Neighborizer.
• The standard number of 'uses' a powerful power-role gets should allow for the possibility it may be blocked, obfuscated or otherwise wasted. Following on from the earlier notes about making 'use-limited' roles, you should give players enough uses of these roles so that any possible impediments you've put in your setup, won't completely invalidate the point of them having said role. For games of 9 people, I tend to stick with 2-shots for powerful roles, at most, and for games with 12 people, I tend to go with 3-shots max. This ensures that use of these roles will remain tactical and thoughtful.
• Be mindful of how many power roles you assign. For any game not announced as 'Role Madness', or a 'Bastard GM' game, there should be no more than 1/3rd of total Prey players (out of the game-total, not the Prey-total) max that possess power roles, generally. This means in a 'balanced' 9-person game, no more than 3 Prey will have active Power Roles at any one time, with 1 Backup for one of the roles, generally. For 12-person games, you can get away with 4 or 5 active Prey power roles, but they should be balanced against one another and against the Pred's power-roles (where applicable.) This both keeps the night-game manageable and fast-moving, and helps to reduce 'swing', which is the propensity for a game's balance and flow to gyrate wildly when given roles are knocked out.
• Figure out all the ways your roles could bounce off of one another, and be prepared for it to happen. A Roleblocker blocks a Captor who jailed a Tracker who was tracking a Shinobi Scout that decided at the last minute to be Untraceable while tracking the Tracker - what happens? Yeah, it'll happen. (In a balanced setting, even - Roleblocker Pred, Captor Prey, Tracker Prey, Shinobi Scout Pred still leaves room for one more Prey role for optimal balance!) Be mindful of all the ways the roles you pick out are going to interrelate to one another. In the example I just gave, under the 'standard' rule (which is that all night actions resolve simultaneously) - the Roleblocker blocks the Captor, who thus is unable to Jail the Tracker, who thus Tracks the Shinobi, who is untraceable and so the Tracker is told the Shinobi targeted nobody that night, while the Shinobi is told that the Tracker targeted them. Keep this stuff in mind!

Example Setups & Balance Notes

Here are some setups, and notes on why they are or aren't 'balanced'. Note that these setups are the absolute simplest you can run - for any game that is not a 'newbie' game or a learning game, you should feel free to spice up things, but can still tell players that you are running a setup based on one of the setups or setup-groupings below.

Guns & Syringes

9 Players, consisting of:
2 Standard Preds
1 Investigator
1 Guardian
5 Vanilla Prey

Balance Notes: This is probably the most basic and common setup in all of Mafia history. While it suffers from a glaring balance problem if the Investigator claims Day-1, and is thenceforth protected by the Guardian while conducting investigations, this can be addressed by making one of the Preds a Roleblocker or a One-Shot Strongjaw, if you feel your players are likely to do this. This setup is fair and balanced because the number of starting players and possible role-actions are balanced against one another - all things being equal, random chance means that it is unlikely either of the Preds will be outed on the 1st Night, nor that either the Cop or the Doc will be Nightkilled night-1. Of course, if either of these happen, it can throw off the balance. This setup is based on the Original Newbie setup on Mafiascum.

The C9 Quartet

9 Players, consisting of one of the following:

1 Standard Pred
1 1-Shot Strongjaw Pred
1 Investigator
1 Guardian
5 Vanilla Prey

or

2 Standard Preds
1 Investigator
6 Vanilla Prey

or

2 Standard Preds
1 Guardian
6 Vanilla Prey

or

2 Standard Preds
7 Vanilla Prey

Balance Notes: This set is adapted from the C9 setups on Mafiascum, that were created in response to the balance issues with the Original Newbie setup. It should be viewed as an array - its strength is in its uncertainty. If you intend to use any one of these setups, you should simply say you are running one of the C9 Quartet - it is the uncertainty as to whether there is an active Investigator, or Guardian, or the possibility for the Preds to circumvent that protection, that should prevent the Day-1 Investigator claim which can seriously throw off the game for the Predators. Other than that, the night actions are still very well-balanced against one another, although the first of these setups has the potential to create an 'unwinnable game' for the Prey if near-Lylo expires and the Strongjaw still has their one unblockable Nightkill left. Likewise, the last setup should be used with care - ideally, it is only and completely someone's behavior while voting and discussing that should ultimately out them, but a game with zero power roles has no defense against inexperienced players being their own worst enemies.