Dominion Strategy Forum
Miscellaneous => Forum Games => Topic started by: jotheonah on January 16, 2019, 08:17:22 am
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I’ve been brewing around some new RM games in my head, and one of them got to the point where I wasn’t sure it was mafia anymore, so I thought I’d throw it out to the group.
1. If Mafia doesn’t have a traditional NK, is it mafia?
2. If town’s wincon isn’t “kill all mafia” is it mafia?
I’m pretty sure that it’s definitely not mafia of you take away the town’s vote. Are there any other changes that would make a game definitely not mafia?
More info on Q1: Night actions are a MiniGames where scum makes meaningful choices that most likely result in a town member dying.
More info on Q2: There’s a group of VIP townies of which at least one has to live for town to win.
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We definitely have run setups as RMM that violated 1 (RMM42, RMM37, possibly some of the Dune games IIRC) and 2 (RMM21) each. I would say all of them were still mafia.
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Games without nights are something that I would say are on the verge of not-mafia.
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We definitely have run setups as RMM that violated 1 (RMM42, RMM37, possibly some of the Dune games IIRC) and 2 (RMM21) each. I would say all of them were still mafia.
In one of my first role madness games, one scum team didn't have a nightkill at all. But I seem to recall they were not happy about it when the game was through (even though they almost won)
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How about this: Scum has a nightkill, but no QT.
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We definitely have run setups as RMM that violated 1 (RMM42, RMM37, possibly some of the Dune games IIRC) and 2 (RMM21) each. I would say all of them were still mafia.
RMM21 didn't break 2 as far as I can tell, the town win con is "kill all mafia" even though the Mafia win con is just to kill the IC. The Kubo blitz games had white flags that modified the town win con though.
In one of my first role madness games, one scum team didn't have a nightkill at all. But I seem to recall they were not happy about it when the game was through (even though they almost won)
I played as NKless scum in the Buffy/Angel mafia and that game was a lot of fun IIRC.
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We definitely have run setups as RMM that violated 1 (RMM42, RMM37, possibly some of the Dune games IIRC) and 2 (RMM21) each. I would say all of them were still mafia.
RMM21 didn't break 2 as far as I can tell, the town win con is "kill all mafia" even though the Mafia win con is just to kill the IC. The Kubo blitz games had white flags that modified the town win con though.
Well it did fit this:
More info on Q2: There’s a group of VIP townies of which at least one has to live for town to win.
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How about this: Scum has a nightkill, but no QT.
We ran a version of this some time where scum was split into two 2-player QTs and each kinda controlled half a NK. I don't remember what game that was though. Mafia without any QT at all is pretty much just an emulation of RL mafia.
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We definitely have run setups as RMM that violated 1 (RMM42, RMM37, possibly some of the Dune games IIRC) and 2 (RMM21) each. I would say all of them were still mafia.
RMM21 didn't break 2 as far as I can tell, the town win con is "kill all mafia" even though the Mafia win con is just to kill the IC. The Kubo blitz games had white flags that modified the town win con though.
Well it did fit this:
More info on Q2: There’s a group of VIP townies of which at least one has to live for town to win.
Also the game where you were an IC who would die D6 and the game would be over for town. This was fun as well. Smallville I think that was?
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I need to reread all the crazy games you kids have run since I've been gone it looks like! I don't want to be derivative!
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What about the game where one townsperson controlled the lynch each day (Death Note mafia, don't remember the number)? That game had no town vote, but it still felt like mafia.
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Trying to set a framework here for what I would require from a mafia game.
- there need to be at least 2 factions with opposing victory conditions (town and mafia)
- members of the mafia faction have some nonzero amount of information on who their partners are (not necessarily everyone individually, but as a whole)
- there are Day phases during which players can post in a game thread, and during this there is a decision involving a significant amount of players to remove a player from the game (though this need not always be successful)
- there are Night phases during which some players may perform actions.
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I feel like it can totally be mafia when the scum don't have an NK at all, if you've ever read a Nightless game they are weird and have a different dynamic, but it still feels like mafia.
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- members of the mafia faction have some nonzero amount of information on who their partners are (not necessarily everyone individually, but as a whole)
I think this is really a big one. I would feel like a game with an Odd-night Serial Killer and an Even-night Serial Killer but otherwise the normal mechanics wouldn't really be mafia.
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Like Traitor or SK are fine in conjunction with an actual mafia team that you can hunt for interactions for, but I feel like without that element it's just a mafia-like game.
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- members of the mafia faction have some nonzero amount of information on who their partners are (not necessarily everyone individually, but as a whole)
I think this is really a big one. I would feel like a game with an Odd-night Serial Killer and an Even-night Serial Killer but otherwise the normal mechanics wouldn't really be mafia.
We have had that though.
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- members of the mafia faction have some nonzero amount of information on who their partners are (not necessarily everyone individually, but as a whole)
I think this is really a big one. I would feel like a game with an Odd-night Serial Killer and an Even-night Serial Killer but otherwise the normal mechanics wouldn't really be mafia.
We have had that though.
It's kind of fine as a one-time surprise in a closed setup, because you still play that as if it were regular mafia. (Although I think it wasn't really a successful experiment) It would be very different with an open setup.
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- members of the mafia faction have some nonzero amount of information on who their partners are (not necessarily everyone individually, but as a whole)
Is it mafia if the mafia faction has only one player?
How about if the size of the mafia faction is unknown (closed) but turns out to have only one player?
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Trying to set a framework here for what I would require from a mafia game.
- there need to be at least 2 factions with opposing victory conditions (town and mafia)
- members of the mafia faction have some nonzero amount of information on who their partners are (not necessarily everyone individually, but as a whole)
- there are Day phases during which players can post in a game thread, and during this there is a decision involving a significant amount of players to remove a player from the game (though this need not always be successful)
- there are Night phases during which some players may perform actions.
This sounds almost right for me.
1. Multiple "teams" playing to mutually exclusive win conditions.
2. At least one team with more or different in-game knowledge than the others.
3. Some form of set interaction period during which players attempt to socially deduct what team players are on and deal with them in a manner appropriate to their win condition.
I think that might be it for me. Within these, you could create sub-rules or explanations, but those seem like the overarching requirements.
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Trying to set a framework here for what I would require from a mafia game.
- there need to be at least 2 factions with opposing victory conditions (town and mafia)
- members of the mafia faction have some nonzero amount of information on who their partners are (not necessarily everyone individually, but as a whole)
- there are Day phases during which players can post in a game thread, and during this there is a decision involving a significant amount of players to remove a player from the game (though this need not always be successful)
- there are Night phases during which some players may perform actions.
This sounds almost right for me.
1. Multiple "teams" playing to mutually exclusive win conditions.
2. At least one team with more or different in-game knowledge than the others.
3. Some form of set interaction period during which players attempt to socially deduct what team players are on and deal with them in a manner appropriate to their win condition.
I think that might be it for me. Within these, you could create sub-rules or explanations, but those seem like the overarching requirements.
Is Secret Hitler also Mafia?
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Yeah, why not.
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Damn, we were playing it in the wrong board!
But it's not unreasonable, the game does feel very similar to mafia.
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I dunno. I feel like ashersky just describes social deduction games, but to me mafia is something more specific, and a big point in that is (a) progressive player elimination based on group decisions, which Secret Hitler does not have. (b) people being able to perform certain actions secretly, which Secret Hitler has very little of (only during legislation period).
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I dunno. I feel like ashersky just describes social deduction games, but to me mafia is something more specific, and a big point in that is (a) progressive player elimination based on group decisions, which Secret Hitler does not have. (b) people being able to perform certain actions secretly, which Secret Hitler has very little of (only during legislation period).
This.
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Mafia is a game where an uninformed majority root an informed minority from amongst their midsts.
Giving the mafia a nightkill isn't fundamental to what mafia is, but is a really good design decision whenever you are designing a game where an uninformed majority root an informed minority from amongst their midsts. It's like.. if someone made a game kind of like tennis, volleyball, ping-pong and badminton, and that game departed from all three of those games in deciding that rather than have special restrictions on how the ball is served, the first volley of the game can be administered in whatever way the starting team likes, you'd very strongly suspect that is a bad design decision because of characteristics inherent to how these games work. But you wouldn't decide it's no longer in that family.
I don't have a strong opinion on whether having 2+ people in the mafia faction is a quality difference or a category difference however. I lean the former.