Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Dsell]

After a couple of fun games of The Resistance tonight, one of my friends had what I think is a terrific idea: expand mafia to include a timeline more like forum mafia. Play a game of mafia over many days, with all interactions being fair game. Each day could be a normal day and night occurs each night. There would be one mandatory meeting for all living players each night to vote and lynch, followed by a couple hours where the mafia can discuss via text, etc and discuss their target, which would be sent to the mod the same night.

I think it would be important to prevent the mafia from essentially having daychat by forbidding them to discuss the game in private. Other than that, I really want to hear your suggestions. Would it work? What numbers would work best? Any roles or specific formats we should think about including? Any other special considerations for a game of this type?

We're pretty sure this is gonna happen soon, we thought the forum would be the perfect place to work out the details!

[popsofctown]

Go ahead and let the mafia daytalk.  Forbidding daytalk is a tradition based on the original face-to-face version of the game, but it doesn't have enough merits to be considered definitely superior to allowing daytalk.  It doesn't make the mafia overpowered; in fact, when I'm mafia and I'm allowed to daytalk I use it very sparingly, I'm fairly certain using it immerses me in the scum psyche more and makes it harder to say the right things in public.

The enforcement difficulties going on here push things over the edge, if you're in real proximity with a person facial expression can communicate more than human speech, even if the players are honest and want to adhere to your rule.  If I hang out with Alice in private after Alice makes a very major scumslip my disappointment in Alice will be difficult to disguise whether or not I use English.


Be sure to use a powered down town for face to faceness. 

Throw a governor in, that's pretty fun.

[Jimmmmm]

I don't think it would be the worst thing to just let everyone alive chat privately whenever they want outside of the official Day. I mean, Neighbours aren't all that powerful, so why not just let everyone be Neighbours? Maybe you want to take that into consideration for balancing purposes. Obviously Cops become more powerful if they can chat privately with their Town results. It might be fun for players to interrogate other players throughout the course of a RL day, then come back to the group with the result. I think restricting the game to certain times almost defeats the purpose of playing over multiple RL days. Sounds fun though!

[Dsell]

I don't think it would be the worst thing to just let everyone alive chat privately whenever they want outside of the official Day. I mean, Neighbours aren't all that powerful, so why not just let everyone be Neighbours? Maybe you want to take that into consideration for balancing purposes. Obviously Cops become more powerful if they can chat privately with their Town results. It might be fun for players to interrogate other players throughout the course of a RL day, then come back to the group with the result. I think restricting the game to certain times almost defeats the purpose of playing over multiple RL days. Sounds fun though!

Yeah, the idea is that essentially everyone would be neighbors. All interaction, not just interaction when everyone is present, is on the table. Because this is actually a pretty significant boost for town, I guess it makes sense for mafia to have daychat too. It does simplify things!

What should the minimum number of players be?

[popsofctown]

7 is the minimum that ever works in forum mafia.  You'll want 9 though, that's going to be best, 7 man mafia tends to suck.

[sudgy]

7 is the minimum that ever works in forum mafia.  You'll want 9 though, that's going to be best, 7 man mafia tends to suck.

I've played three person mafia.

[Ozle]

7 is the minimum that ever works in forum mafia.  You'll want 9 though, that's going to be best, 7 man mafia tends to suck.

I've played three person mafia.

Isn't that pretty much Win/Lose/Banana?

[sudgy]

7 is the minimum that ever works in forum mafia.  You'll want 9 though, that's going to be best, 7 man mafia tends to suck.

I've played three person mafia.

Isn't that pretty much Win/Lose/Banana?

It's Town/Mafia/Jester, and nobody can refuse to vote, and you can't vote yourself.

[Dsell]

We have 5 people who I'm pretty sure will play, plus we can ask at least a few more if they're interested. I think 9 would be ok to shoot for.

[Kirian]

7 is the minimum that ever works in forum mafia.  You'll want 9 though, that's going to be best, 7 man mafia tends to suck.

I've played three person mafia.

Isn't that pretty much Win/Lose/Banana?

It's Town/Mafia/Jester, and nobody can refuse to vote, and you can't vote yourself.

I have a better than 50% win rate playing 1-player Mafia.

[Ozle]

7 is the minimum that ever works in forum mafia.  You'll want 9 though, that's going to be best, 7 man mafia tends to suck.

I've played three person mafia.

Isn't that pretty much Win/Lose/Banana?

It's Town/Mafia/Jester, and nobody can refuse to vote, and you can't vote yourself.

"Isn't that pretty much Win/Lose/Banana?"

[Dsell]

So the ultimate decision of what roles are gonna be in the game will be up to the mod (which is not me), but do you have any other suggestions for roles? Governor sounds like a good idea, Doctor and Cop are classics (although I personally dislike standard Cops), I'm sure several other roles are good for face to face games. I may look at Werewolf for inspiration. Any specific setups people would suggest for a small face to face game? We are striving for some balance between town and mafia.

[manda2014]

As the friend mentioned in the original post, also keep in mind that the game will mostly be people who have only ever played (or even observed) mafia as a party game, and have played a few games of The Resistance.

[Tables]

I would avoid cop, and other direct allegiance checkers. The ability for a cop to check someone and then tell them he's found out they're clean is far more potent than you might first expect. I've played in a lot of OC (outside contact) mafia games on forums, and almost always, cops will lead to a form of town leader who tells everyone else how to play. You might well avoid that problem because of it being more like a party game and inexperience, but it's still a danger.

[manda2014]

So we officially have seven people in to play (with a small chance we can get two more). What is the best ratio of roles to vanilla town for seven (with "vanilla" in this case meaning neighbor)?

[Tables]

2 mafia, 5 town is without a doubt the way to go. Town must lynch correctly 2 times out of 3. That's not a good position for them to be in, so they need some kind of power(s) to make up the difference. I would probably go for 1 fairly strong role or 2 weaker ones.

For 9 player, 2 mafia and 7 town means town has to lynch correctly 2 out of 4 times. That's a much stronger place to be, so a game with no roles would probably be close to balanced. I would maybe consider adding something on each side (e.g. a mafia roleblocker and a weak town role, or a Godfather and a cop) but not much more than that.

[manda2014]

Which roles would you suggest? I think we're gonna have three setup known to everyone from the outset. Dsell suggested d doctor as 1 strong town role. Thoughts?

[Archetype]

Doctor and then Mafia Roleblocker should work out alright.

[soulnet]

We played 5-person flash-Mafia and was pretty fun, though quite different from the actual game. There was actually 6 of us and the coordinator was assigned randomly each game. There were two Cops, one Mafia, one Doctor and one Townspeople, but Cops asking for another Cop are answered positively.

[manda2014]

At the end of day 1: dsell is lynched, even after claiming doctor with no one counterclaiming.........

[Dsell]

At the end of day 1: dsell is lynched, even after claiming doctor with no one counterclaiming.........

Yay. Me.

[Archetype]

At the end of day 1: dsell is lynched, even after claiming doctor with no one counterclaiming.........

Yay. Me.

But were you the Doctor?

[Dsell]

At the end of day 1: dsell is lynched, even after claiming doctor with no one counterclaiming.........

Yay. Me.

But were you the Doctor?

Yes, yes I was.

[ashersky]

At the end of day 1: dsell is lynched, even after claiming doctor with no one counterclaiming.........

Yay. Me.

But were you the Doctor?

Yes, yes I was.

Sounds about right.

[mail-mi]

We're doing this at school.