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[mcmcsalot]

Yeah going okay. Keen for a game. What about you?

Things are going great! Had a second kid a couple years ago and finally through all the baby years. Watch a lot of dnd and am potentially going to start dm’ing for some people online. Still don’t have huge patches of free time all together which dnd kind of needs which is what made me think of mafia!

[Jimmmmm]

In what way do you watch DnD? Something similar to this: https://www.youtube.com/@VivaLaDirtLeagueDnD ?

Are the similarities to the experiences of playing DnD and playing Mafia? To what extent is DnD a game and to what extent is it an interactive story?

[mcmcsalot]

In what way do you watch DnD? Something similar to this: https://www.youtube.com/@VivaLaDirtLeagueDnD ?

Are the similarities to the experiences of playing DnD and playing Mafia? To what extent is DnD a game and to what extent is it an interactive story?

I watch all of the Dimension20 dnd series on dropout which is a subscription service with tons of sketch comedy shows as well as actual play like DND and other various talkback and discussion shows regarding ttrpg’s.  It’s available at https://www.dropout.tv/dimension-20-new

Dropout is the rebranded company which was formerly CollegeHumor who did lots of sketch comedy on YouTube in the early 2000’s. I like the dnd they run because they’ll all the players are cast members first and players second if that makes sense. The goal is to create an entertaining and comedic story using the medium of dnd.

The similarity between dnd and mafia for me (other than the fact that they are both storytelling games) is that the “rules” of the game are in place so that the players are able to create the game and be surprised by it at the same time. The highest highs of mafia for me are always when I’m really lost in the game and feel like a sneaky scum lurking in the shadows or crusading as a townie to genuinely find you fellow townies and protect each other and when you post that hammer waiting for the flip or hoping your night action goes well, all to see the results and sail to victory or morn defeat.

I also feel like mafia and dnd are similarly co-operative. Especially in a good community like we had here, I am almost always impressed and excited for the other team and a game well played in a loss I’m mafia and dnd is similar where you really are rooting for everyone to make cool moves.

Lastly both games are a great way to converse and express yourself and aspects of your personality in a safe social environment. I love talking to people about quite literally anything if I or they are passionate about it and it’s hard to make up a reason to have that conversation irl but role playing games provide a reason to talk about nothing and anything for hours.

Oh also I guess both mafia and dnd can sorta be as much game or storytelling as the players want. Like you can run a super immersive Mafia game with an important storyline and flavor that hints at the intentions of the players or you can play a largely striped down flavorless blitz game all about the mechanics of the game. Dnd you can run totally role play with no combat at all, it can be played totally in the theatre of the mind where you are visualizing everything or you can run a game on a board and with lots of combat and strict adherence to player movement and use miniatures and play a very mechanical dnd game.

[Jimmmmm]

A couple of years ago I played a fair bit of IRL Blood on the Clocktower, which is basically a Mafia variant. The major differences from what we would consider normal are:
-The evil team consists of one Demon (who does the NKs) and some Minions - Town only needs to kill the Demon to win (although there are ways around this such as effectively a backup).
-Private conversations are allowed and encouraged.
-Each Day has a discussion phase then a voting phase in which the Storyteller leads a specific nominate-then-vote procedure.
-No flips.
-When you die you lose your role power but can continue in discussions. After death you have a single vote for the rest of the game.
-Everyone has a role power (from a publicly known list), which generally results in a lot of information and misinformation going around. Due to this, the game tends towards the Deduction part of Social Deduction, wherein players have to work out the possible scenarios that could lead to the currently claimed information, and then pick between them.
-Some roles and modifiers leave some discretion to the Storyteller (mod) as to how to resolve them (for example if you're Drunk or Poisoned then your role doesn't work, but you don't know that it doesn't work, so the Storyteller might need to decide exactly what wrong information to give you). In general, the Storyteller aims to help the "losing" team and increase the likelihood that the game will go to a final 3 or 4.

In general it works pretty well and has a more controlled chaos than the yelling matches that Social Deduction games with a rowdy group can devolve into.