Mafia: Theory Discussion

[Samadhi]

I believe discussion regarding Mafia is fruitful. As Mafia is Games specific I believe this is the forum for it. This is where the most people interested in the game will see the discussion.

Here's a list of the questions asked so far. Everyone feel free to ask more or answer any of the ones you see. Please contribute your 2¢!

• What's the best tactic to ensure victory
  
• Why Mafia? Why not Yardie or Triad or something?
  
• What's your opinion on deadlines for days and nights?
  
• If a nighttime deadline is imposed, should the moderator make random choices for non-respondents, ignore them, or extend the deadline?
  
• What can be done about deadbeat players?
  
• Should a person stop playing as soon as s/he realizes s/he's lousy at this type of psychological games? Or given a certain number of games (say 100) you think that something will finally rub on to him/her?
  
• What is the best role to try and fake? What does it depend on?
  
• Should non-mafia lie about their roles to prevent being considered a target? Whats the best way to go on about this?
  
• What is your dream mafia role?
  
• As mafia do you think it's better to just react if one of your family members is attcked or to lead the town to prevent this from happening? Also how should the mafia cooperate without being obvious?
  
• What do you consider your best-played game?
  
• Is there a tendency for veterans to gang up and snuff newbies?
  
• Do you like playing or modding better?
  
• Do you like being on the side of the mafia or the town better?
  
• What are some of the more interesting roles you've seen in games, and any suggestions for others?
  
• What about favorite Seial Killer motivations?
  
• What's a burgler?
  
• If you design a themed mafia, with special roles, how can you tell if it's balanced?
  

[This message has been edited by Samadhi (edited 08-14-2002 08:04 PM).]

[Porro]

What's the best tactic to ensure victory

[Agamemnon]

Why Mafia? Why not Yardie or Triad or something?

[Quailman]

What's your opinion on deadlines for days and nights?

If a nighttime deadline is imposed, should the moderator make random choices for non-respondents, ignore them, or extend the deadline?

[Amb]

Can you please post a Working link to the rules. Miths site is still down or inaccesible in NZ for some obscure reason and I really want to read the rule

*Desperate*

[Werebear]

What can be done about deadbeat players? Should there be a rule that anyone who doesn't post for three days, or three pages, or something, is out? One of the great things about AIM or RL mafia is that you can't just be quiet and lurk, if we could have SOME sort of similar thing here - hopefully something that will also prevent "What, I posted the word 'huh' three pages ago, see, I'm contributing" syndrome too. Impossible? Not for clever minds like the ones that lurk here!

Werebear

[PuzzleProdigy]

Werebear: Read Verbose Mafia. It worked quite well.

[CrystyB]

Should a person stop playing as soon as s/he realizes s/he's lousy at this type of psychological games? Or given a certain number of games (say 100) you think that something will finally rub on to him/her?

[Internet Stranger]

Oh great master and venerable mafia lord:

What is the best role to try and fake? What does it depend on?

Should non-mafia lie about their roles to prevent being considered a target? Whats the best way to go on about this?

[Eykir]

What is your dream mafia role?

[Chuck]

Here are the Princeton Mafia rules for face to face play: Mafia Rules

[Werebear]

First rule: Try not to fake a role that exists. Right, Macros? He faked Dr. Nick in the Simpsons Mafia, but as soon as the real Dr. Nick was revealed, Macros was lynched. In the hobbit mafia, I was planning to pretend to be Bombur, but was killed by BilboToFry before that could happen - but the role amazingly existed. I would have been lynched anyways.

You want to fake a role that the town loves or tolerates, and the mafia are either afraid to kill you, or don't think you're worth it. In Simpsons Mafia, sOOthsayer actually was Apu, but as roles go, it would have been the perfect faking role (if you were immune to one type of attack). His role: if he was attacked, he had a percent chance of survival. If he survived, he could reveal who attacked him through the camera in his store. The mafia were afraid to kill him, as he could reveal who they were, and the town didn't give him a second thought. I was the serial killer, I pretended to be Groundskeeper Willie, I was looking for town members to try and keep them from being lynched. Of course, I never found any. I was too busy killing them off. But the mafia were looking for the cops, and the town was looking for the mafia, so I was left alone until the cat put me in the catapult. *laugh* That help any?

Werebear

[crackerjack]

*agrees with werebear*

I faked Dobby in Harry Potter on the first day and was lynched. Should have faked someone useful if I was going down anyway. Actually, I was snape, but didn't know I had a specific role. I was just told I was a bad guy. I might have been able to work something with Snape since he was good in the book.

I guess the question is then if you have to fake a role, where's the balance of picking someone that is likely not already a character, yet one that's believable (werebear you should be able to answer this one...Willy!)

[Samadhi]

Q: What's the best tactic to ensure victory
A: Stay alive:p

Q: Why Mafia? Why not Yardie or Triad or something?
A: I don't know anything about those games, they're probably good games. But mafia has intrigue, strategy, name calling, all the finer things in life.

Q: What's your opinion on deadlines for days and nights?
A: Day deadlines should IMO only be imposed when discussion has stagnated. If no deadline is imposed the town will rarely spring to action and lynch someone. That would make the day last forever and that will kill a game.
If nighttime choices are not received in a timely manner then I will impose a deadline. Night should not take more than a couple of days. Much of the town has nothing to do during night, they can't even post. A long night is at least as deadly to a game as a long day. If choices are not received by the deadline I will usually make a random choice. At times I extend the deadline, but it's situationally dependent.

Q: Can you please post a Working link to the rules.
A: Mith's site is inaccessible everywhere. Chuck's post looks good.

Q: What can be done about deadbeat players?
A: I HATE, HATE, HATE, HATE, HATE, HATE lurkers. I refuse to win by not participating. Yes, speaking up puts you at risk, but it also means you're playing the game! Lurkers are pieces of crap, IMO. They drag the game down and obviously don't have the skill to actually play and win. LAME!
Then there are people who apparently have the time to read the thread but not time to post. This does not help the game either. I know people have their real lives to deal with but if you don't have time to play, step aside!
What I'm starting to do is replace people after a period of silence. I also try to watch how much they are actually posting. If they are not, IMO, posting enough I will ask them if they can start posting more and that if they don't think they can, I replace them.
Of course, this can lead to confusion. So I'll have to watch that too.

Q: Should a person stop playing as soon as s/he realizes s/he's lousy at this type of psychological games?
A: It all depends on whether you're having fun or not. If you suck but you (and the other people) are having fun, why stop? Similarly, if you are really good but you aren't having fun, why play?

Q: What is the best role to try and fake? What does it depend on?
A: Claiming doctor is easy to fake and may keep you alive. Every one does it though so it may not. No matter what choose a role that can't be easily denied by another player (mason). If your chosen role involves night choices, have these ready. It's also a good idea to choose a role to fake at the beginning of the game and post accordingly. In themed games that have roles with specific names, Google!

Q: Should non-mafia lie about their roles to prevent being considered a target? Whats the best way to go on about this?
A: Lie? No. I have seen good roles lynched because the player lied. I would simply try not to give a hint as to what my role is. If I act like the cop it's far more likely that the several members of the mafia family will figure it out before the doc does. Just post like regular.

Q: What is your dream mafia role?
A: Well, it's always nice to have a role that can't be killed at night.

[rOver]

Actually I wanted to ask this on mith's site but then it went down.
As mafia do you think it's better to just react if one of your family members is attcked or to lead the town to prevent this from happening? Also how should the mafia cooperate without being obvious?

One more thing. I've seen excellent mafia hunters strugle when they actually have to play mafia. They are often hesitant or just fail to produce their usual results and quickly become suspicious.
So how do you (or did you since I hear you no longer play on this name) played in these situation and have you actually been able to use your reputation to your advantage?

[Samadhi]

Act as you normally would. Sort of. I try to completely forget that I'm mafiascum during the day. How I react to one of my family members being bandwagoned depends on the bandwagon. If the family member has acted foolishly and the bandwagon has merit then I will join. If it doesn't I'll attack one of the bandwagoners.
As far as cooperation goes, I don't. In fact, it's best to vote differently than your family members do. This helps confuse the townspeople.

I really was never widely known as a mafiahunter. I was more known as a sneak. I wasn't famous I was INfamous. As mafia I've won or come near to winning many times. This infamy would keep me alive when I wasn't mafia because I was still suspicious just by being me. My mere presence took the heat off the mafia so they didn't want to kill me. However, this meant countless hours of useless arguments. Back and forth with nimrods who wanted to vote for me just because I'm Samadhi. Currently when I play I don't experience that. It's refreshing.

But for the mafiahunter gone bad? Well, if there's more than one family, no problem. Plenty of people to target. If it's just your family and you aren't able to argue your way out of a lynch you might just have to take one for the team.

[mith]

Yeah, I always try to forget that I'm Mafia. I stab my family in the back all the time.

Sometimes, especially with newer players, I find that it helps to figure out during the night who everyone will vote for, assuming nothing major happens. Like, I'll be after player A, and Mafiascum B will be after C, and Mafiascum D will be kinda quiet and join whichever gets biggest, while E will avoid bandwagons all together. It helps keep the family from all voting for the same player when they don't know any better.

Since the title is still "Ask Samadhi" though...

What do you consider your best-played game?

(same question to anyone else that has been around long enough to have one )

[Flash Bazbo]

I haven't played yet, but I'm still learning. Is there a tendency for veterans to gang up and snuff newbies?

[Werebear]

Not in the games I've seen, actually, people love killing off the veterans. It's a wonder Mith gets to play at all.

Why did I choose Willy? He was believable, to an extent. I picked a character that I didn't think the mod would have bothered to put in, and gave him skills that were mediocre, but also believable. When you're done creating your fake character, step back and think: Would a mod consider using this character? Would the mafia want to kill him off? Would the town lynch him anyways, if his role was revealed?

Hobbit I picked Bombur. He was a character everyone knew, but I figured he wasn't major enough to actually be included. I included a special ability for him when I wrote him - at a random time, I would "fall asleep" for a night, and there would be no night kills, but the cops also could not investigate, etc, etc... of course, I was whacked before I could use him, which was funny, because Bombur was part of the game.

Does this help?

Werebear

[Samadhi]

Q: What do you consider your best-played game?
A: Discworld. My team won and I manipulated people pretty good in that one. Although, 24? (another one by DP) would be a close second. Lost that one though.

Q: Is there a tendency for veterans to gang up and snuff newbies?
A: Not really. But there's almost zero chance of a random bandwagon rolling over one of the veterans. People like myself and Antrax just aren't going to get lynched without a good reason. The same can't be said for a newbie. This may have something to do with our ability to argue as opposed to our "seniority."

[sketchwick]

Do you play under aliases?

sketchwick

[Samadhi]

You don't? Your name in RL is Sketchwick?

[sketchwick]

If I'm playing Magic...I guess. And if I ever do stand up again.

New question: do you play under more than one alias? (excluding games where the mod gives everyone an alias)

sketchwick

[Samadhi]

This isn't about those kind of questions Sketchwick. Do you have a question regarding strategy?

[Elayne]

quote:

---

What do you consider your best-played game?

(same question to anyone else that has been around long enough to have one )

---

Do I count? If so:

Mafia 24 (played with L'lanmal as Trill): We were attacked first day and claimed to be a Clairvoyant. We were then able to "clear" someone each night and attack another good person...I think that might have been the first game were no mafia died.

My best game alone was likely 21. I had the masons healing me despite being accused by a proven cop (who was killed the night after he attacked me I think). I beleive Samadhi modded that one. Which leads me to my questions.

Do you like playing or modding better?
Do you like being on the side of the mafia or the town better?

[sketchwick]

I had planned on following up with questions about one's mafia strategy depending on how big a name one is...it seemed pertanent to know if you used multiple aliases to avoid the "vote samadhi, he's too good as mafia" thing.

sketchwick

[mith]

Elayne's questions:

I used to prefer modding actually, but my last few games haven't gone well since I've been so busy. So, recently, I've preferred playing (and I had a great run a while back that helped that ).

For the second question... I suppose I prefer being Mafia, because I always come up with some creative way to play it. This is mostly, admittedly, because I die early when I am Town usually. When I make it to an end game as a Townie I have all sorts of fun posting crap.

[Macros]

modding can be fun until one player starts bitching at you for a good 20 minutes about the same thing over and over

[mith]

It takes that long when you won't listen to me.

[Internet Stranger]

I was proud of myself in Dune maf (mafiascum.net) I had an awesome ability (pick a person at night and use their ability that night).

Just about everyone in the game had a once per game kill and made them into my personal assasination guild.

The end game had a few interesting gambits. Quercitron and I ended up accusing each other of our own roles. Meaning I accused Querci of being what my role was and Querci accusing me of what his role was. After all the arguements were set in place, he dropped the bomb and finally admitted his role and threw that whole round into a tizzy.

Luckily I had found a viable role not in the game to claim.

In the end, some of the one time killers banded together and figured they could win by just killing off all the suspected bad guys. Of course they were nicely surprised when they realized I had already used up all their kills for them.

[Samadhi]

Elayne's Questions
Which do I enjoy most, modding or playing.
Like Mith said it really depends. I like modding and when there are a good group of players it can be really enjoyable. I highly enjoyed Covenant and Bladerunner mafia and I feel the players deserve much of the credit for that.
I also like playing but not always. Playing partially depends on who else is playing but mostly depends on who is modding. If DP is the mod I know that part will be enjoyable (I'd like to say Mith too, but I get killed early every time! Invitational, WoT, Salem. Bah!) The other players have an effect on how I feel about playing but it is mainly the mod. There is nothing worse than the infinite night. Mods who do that should be read the riot act, if not lynched!
I love both but I get tired of both as well. So I take breaks. But I always come back!

Which side do I like, town or mafiascum.
I like being mafia in 2 mafia games. It's almost like a chess game against the other family in those situations. That's what I liked about DWorld mafia, I figured out exactly who the other "mafia" was and I convinced the town to lynch them because "then we'll have one less night kill to worry about." Bwahahaha!!
I don't like being a plain old townie.
I'm over being mafia in a one mafia game. It seems like I've been that 100 times.
I don't mind being on the side of the town, but I'm really not as good a mafia hunter as say Antrax is, I'm more of a sneak. Bah. Maybe I'll get better at being on the town's side if I get more roles that are!

Sketchwick
If I were using other aliases than Samadhi it may have something to do with ridiculous arguments with people who will go nameless.
But it would probably also have a lot to do with the Richard Bachman syndrome.

[Elayne]

quote:

---

There is nothing worse than the infinite night. Mods who do that should be read the riot act

---

What did you think of Verbose mafia then? The game went vairly quick as far as those things go....nights sometimes ended as soon as they started

What did you think of the other parts of verbose mafia? Mandatory posting? People having characteristics? No tradtional cops?

I still love the ying your yang line btw

[wordcross]

Just my two cents, although i haven't been in a staggeringly lot of games...

My list from least liked to best liked: (in general)
Regular Townie
Doc
Mason
Mafia
Cop
Mod

I need something to do with a mafia game. I can't stand being a regular old townie, because i have nothing to do at night, cannot figure anything out about people, and just generally have no real power. It's all well and good to claim a role that does, but unless you can deliver something to people, then you will probably seem suspicious.

Docs have something to do at night, but otherwise are not much better off than townies, excpet that if a mafia claims your role, then they likely get lynched if you die, which will keep them from killing you if they know you are that role.


Mason is good, because you at least know some other innocents if not have a power vested in your Mason group.

Mafia is fun, because you get to kill people. It also involves a good bit of tactical maneuvering since you want to kill cops/docs and you don't want to take heat by killing someone you are obviously at odds with. It's fun killing random people to mess with the minds of the overthinkers. Mwahahahaha!

Cop is great, because it is the most precarious and requires the most effort to live through. On the one hand, you can find out who the mafia are and have them killed off. But you have to be careful that they don't notice a trend in your accusations. Also, if you're in danger because you've been forced to reveal your role, you can get protection, but only if you've done well enough to convince the docs that you are who you say.

Mod is the best! You can make up all kinds of cool roles, and you know what's going on, so it's always amusing to watch the players try to figure out what's going on And there's always something to do, both day and night. The only drawback is that it's difficult to refrain from arguing with the players about what you feel should be obvious to them

And i have found that Mafia tend toward eliminating more experienced players to reduce the risk of being figured out. Lynchings don't really target either newbies or experienced players, although it is true that baseless bandwagons will usually not work on experience players.


Now for my question, what are some of the more interesting roles you've seen in games, and any suggestions for others?

personally, i enjoyed using an "evil doc" in the mafia game i modded in GLC the other day. Each night, they pick a person to save from lynching the next day, in hopes that they save mafia. Or, in multi family games, they could work like regular docs, only they hope to get the mafia to win.

And the Corrupted Cop is a neat idea i had, where he chooses one person each night, and for that night that person will appear to be the innocent if he's evil, or evil if he's innocent.

It would be interesting to see a game where everyone is evil. Then the mafia families would have to face off with each other, sprinkled liberally with serial killers and other evil roles.

[edit] okay, so this is more like two dollars, but i'm in an expansive mood [/edit]

------------------
I'm not an actor, but i play one on TV.
GLih8evilstuff: I hope you never call me, my caller ID would explode.

[This message has been edited by wordcross (edited 08-11-2002 10:03 PM).]

[wordcross]

What about favorite Seial Killer motivations?

[Samadhi]

Elayne:

Verbose was cool. It was good thinking. Some of the players went a bit hog wild though and I had trouble following it. I didn't have the time I would have liked to read all of it.

The mix of roles was cool and the characteristics bit was novel. It would have been easier to nail down the characteristics though if it hadn't been so verbose! I just couldn't figure any of the characteristics out. Could just mean I'm slow though

[Neo]

[shameless plug]
Samadhi, would you return to playing for GL Mafia?

[Werebear]

Playing the SK in Simpsons was a RIOT... you're both rooting for the town, because you don't want the mafia or other killers to get you, but then you're trying to kill the cops and docs, without duplicating kills. My favorite pick was Ocular Gold (Marge)... it was out of the blue, Ocular hadn't claimed a role, and the mafia and aliens killed Homer and Maggie the same night. *evil cackle* It wasn't the best round of kills, since by taking away one or two of the three, the others are kind of powerless, but it was immensely satisfying.

Werebear

[Macros]

i enjoy making roles for games, even though i do make mistakes when seting thier win conditions (see, i admited it mith, happy now? )
ine of the most fun htings is when peopple make good assumptions on the role set up, and are infact, miles off, its so hard not to lol in their face and thus inform them they are wrong.

[Samadhi]

What are some of the more interesting roles?

Well, DP usually thinks up new and cool roles. Burglar is cool. The ability thief IS mentioned sounded pretty cool (now I know how to pattern Rogue for my Comics Mafia). DP certainly knows how to make some good roles.

Roles that give you a hint at what is really going on are the most interesting. But keeping it mysterious is good IMO.

What about favorite Seial Killer motivations?

Motivations? Hmmmm. I liked Pietten's in Covenant mafia (I can't take credit for the idea, all Donaldson's). He wanted to kill one bad group (the ur-viles) but if certain good guys got in his way, too bad. Basically a good guy doing bad stuff. But in general I don't like SK roles. The win condition is pretty hard, most players don't get into it (unlike homicidal Werebear), so I try to keep it out.

Samadhi, would you return to playing for GL Mafia?
*blushes* Well, thanks but I never stopped.
If you mean return as Samadhi, doubtful.

[Elayne]

Neo: Gl mafia?