Recommend me a mafia game!

[Judge Sam]

Someone point me to a good mafia game with sign-ups soon I really want to play! I have terrible luck with picking them out myself haha. Here's what I'm looking for:

- relatively fast days, no longer than 5 days (2-4 days preferred)
- relatively normal game nothing insane
- not a game where everyone or more than half is some super power role
- not a game with a pokemon, dragonball z, hannah montana theme
- cardflip has to be ON alignment has to be revealed on death


That's it! Unfortunately I really had high hopes for psychopathgame.proboards.com/index.cgi but I am about to be lynched first in a mini-game and they just all are asking each other about what the 13th letter is in their role PMs. I'm sure all the games there aren't like that but the guy who started that is an administrator! You'd be modkilled for that in 90% of mafia places and for good reason. I guess that place just isn't for me lol.

Give me an idea or if you see a good one with sign-ups post it here.

[DC]

I clicked the link and saw Matt's SN. I guess that's where he's hiding out.

[Ellis]

Aug 26, 2009 13:58:24 GMT -5 DC said:

I clicked the link and saw Matt's SN. I guess that's where he's hiding out.

Yeah, he is. That's also where I'm usually at when I'm not here.

Sometimes the penalty for including arabic numerals in a post is to have to write your next three posts entirely in haiku. That's enough to "get" me. But yeah, the games are usually role-heavy, so maybe not for the hon. J. S.

[Judge Sam]

yeah he was in that same mini-game and said he played the main game but hated somebody there lol. don't know the story. haven't talked to him since i didn't accept him for spies 6. (other people need a turn!)


playing that game reminded me of your unknowing-cheat with soraya about both being cops haha. when that happened three years ago i had no idea forbidding that was standard but even knowing almost nothing about mafia i figured it out pretty quick. and yet these people have spent 5 pages asking each other what is the 17th letter in your role PM and posting aiojdfio234jiojadfj using a hash code to 'prove' that they both got the same pm. classy + fun.


I told them they should all go post the timestamp on the role pm they got, since it's likely the mod copied/pasted the scum pms consecutively in a row at the start or end, maybe they'll go do that to continue their uber-logical discoveries haha. I mean I get that a lot of internet types play mafia, and these people prefer to play mafia as a hyper-rational logic puzzle. For them the whole game is all A implies B except when C intersects with D and find which role contradicts the other and I'm a math major, I met tons of those people, but I just don't get it. I play more for the social aspect of discovering who is lying and yes the contradictions are a part of it but not the whole thing! Mafia is about finding the liars through accusations and discussions not taking a look at your role PM and asking others how many capital letters there are in it.

[Ellis]

Aug 26, 2009 14:17:59 GMT -5 Judge Sam said:

yeah he was in that same mini-game and said he played the main game but hated somebody there lol. don't know the story. haven't talked to him since i didn't accept him for spies 6. (other people need a turn!)


playing that game reminded me of your unknowing-cheat with soraya about both being cops haha. when that happened three years ago i had no idea forbidding that was standard but even knowing almost nothing about mafia i figured it out pretty quick. and yet these people have spent 5 pages asking each other what is the 17th letter in your role PM and posting aiojdfio234jiojadfj using a hash code to 'prove' that they both got the same pm. classy + fun.


I told them they should all go post the timestamp on the role pm they got, since it's likely the mod copied/pasted the scum pms consecutively in a row at the start or end, maybe they'll go do that to continue their uber-logical discoveries haha. I mean I get that a lot of internet types play mafia, and these people prefer to play mafia as a hyper-rational logic puzzle. For them the whole game is all A implies B except when C intersects with D and find which role contradicts the other and I'm a math major, I met tons of those people, but I just don't get it. I play more for the social aspect of discovering who is lying and yes the contradictions are a part of it but not the whole thing! Mafia is about finding the liars through accusations and discussions not taking a look at your role PM and asking others how many capital letters there are in it.

Well that annoyed me at the start, but normally hosts have ways to deal with this kind of thing so that it doesn't happen too much. Randomized role PMs, etc.

It's not so much that that sometimes bugs me, rather the fact that the players tend to use far, far too much "convention" in their thinking, often without going into the reasons behind it. Exploiting this was how I was able to go throughout the game with basically nobody suspecting me (one person did early on, but he changed his mind over the course of the game, and never actually voted me). I wrote a HUGE post on this subject, so this one comes with a "wall of text" warning. It does reference specific parts of the game, but nothing particularly dense. It was posted in a PM to the host of the game and later on the spoiler boards, but unfortunately those seem to have been locked and I don't have the password.

...I'm trying to keep all my thoughts public with the scum, but I'd like to say one thing privately because it's more of a general point and it's been bugging me for ages now.

OK, so before the whole me-trying-to-frame-KidV <my note: a townie who suspected me early on when I tried to get him lynched>-and-him-riding-my-ass-for-it situation got going, we had another minor disagreement. I said that there were situations and games in which a vanilla claim early on might be beneficial to the town as a whole. (I've posted my reasoning to Idle, and I hope he put it in the "Mario" spoiler thread although I never checked afterwards.) In other words, the rule that early vanilla town claims are bad for town is not universal, although it would almost certainly apply in games like this one.

Y'see, I'm primarily a poker player, in every sense of the term - I go to lots of live tourneys and on occasions have won quite a lot of money. And one of the first things you need to learn about poker is that there are no absolutes, you have to make your judgement on the situation as it is in each hand with the people involved.

For example, throwing money at the pot with the worst hand in hold'em poker (7-2o) is the tactically correct move if you believe that by doing so, you can make everybody else involved in the pot fold and give you their money. Novice players would throw this hand away from any situation without a second thought; but an expert player studies each situation, hand and opponent individually, and can make snap judgements about opportunities to get his opponents to fold the best hand and call with the worst one. You have to know which players can be pressurized and bullied into folding their good hands, which will call your bets regardless of how weak their hand is, and which ones will bet wildly in an attempt to bluff you off the pot if you show any weakness whatsoever. The point is, how you play depends on the situation and your assessment of your opponents just as much as it depends on the cards that you're dealt (which are largely a matter of luck anyways). Weak players just play their cards and ignore these elements.

But when you think about it, this applies to mafia as well - more so in many respects. Weak players talk about "scumtells" and "strategy" as though they're somehow universal (an attitude that I'm quite happy to "buy into" if I'm scum - after all, it makes it that much easier to fool people, which right now I seem to be doing an okay job of.) Parzival <town-aligned player and role-switcher> is a prime example. Let me quote a post from him from day two:


Quote:

"I'm not voting Mr. SE <confirmed investigated scum> yet since I want to make sure we have a long day of discussion. Although we need it to make up for the loss of two masons the 'sure thing' lynch isn't all that great either since it won't generate much useful."


This sort of attitude seemed to prevail for many of the non-scummy players. It immediately causes me to ask: why exactly do the town need a long day of discussion? In a normal situation I'd go along with this attitude as town, but this isn't a normal situation. There's an automatic predetermined lynch, which means that even if a scum were to out himself in public thread by pure accident (hell, it happened in "Arkham Nights" IMO, it could happen again here!) the town wouldn't be in a situation to do anything about it, unless there's a vig about (remembering that Zeriel <part-vig role> had just been killed off the night before).

In a situation like that the prime concern should be to make 100% sure that the scum don't get any useful information about power roles, threatening players, etc. Forget the rush to get as much info as possible out into the open; each game day is five real days long, are you saying that's not enough time to do it when we actually have a chance to lynch someone based on what we find? This seems to me so obvious that it's almost unworthy of comment. And yet, when I wrote it out and posted it in the scum board, it looked unbelievably scummy even to me. Can you imagine the reaction from certain quarters? "ZOMG somebody wants to stop daytime discussion! They must be scum!"

And if this seems like over-reacting, re-read that post on the scum board where I speculate that Rysto <someone I correctly guessed was a cop based on his actions in day 2> might be a cop because he's acting exactly the same way as he did when he was cop in "Arkham Nights", a game in which we cooperated fairly closely as town. There's a reason I wrote it then: because I barely noticed him until his actions (or rather, lack of them) on that specific day. I'm not saying that I didn't get lucky, but I am saying that if the town had lynched Ed cleanly and without any fuss - which is counter-intuitive but IMO makes a helluva lot more sense - it would never have occurred to me that Rysto might be a serious threat.

The irony is that Parzival himself claimed to have redirected Rysto onto someone "interesting", which would've most likely (knowing Parzival) meant either the reveal of an actual scum, or the clearing of a powerful townie.

BTW I've also in this game mentioned "reads" of Hal, Hoopy, and Roxis. I also have a read on, but haven't specifically mentioned, Aubby. (Suffice to say that if I were town, I'd be 100% opposing his lynch. Like I said, "indecisiveness =/= scum." That's especially true in his case.) All of those reads are 100% genuine, and they're things that I'm certain I would have picked up on even if I were town in this game.

Let's take Hal <win-condition changing lone serial-killer - this was pretty much the only thing I got wrong in this game!> as an example. When he started speculating on the different capitalization of the mason role PMs, even though I 110% disagree with this as a means of identifying scummy players, I don't think it's anti-town because it's fairly characteristic of what I've observed from Hal when he's been in pro-town roles. Whereas if a few other players - Roosh for example - came up with this kind of reasoning, I'd be baying for their blood if I were town.

But to go back to generalities - I think it's wrong to rely upon things that are "always" true, because there's usually cases when they turn out not to be. Generally speaking, conventions have become conventional for a good reason - which is why, in 90% of cases, I'd be agreeing with KidV that early vanilla town reveals are a very bad thing for the town. That's not to say that there aren't exceptions, or that a clever player can't take advantage of the predictability that they provide. This is why so many new players here seem to get booted early (and you know I've got Aubby <townie who quit and was replaced by Chuchura, who was lynched the next day> in mind here). Because people, both scum and weak townies, are quick to jump on their ignorance of what's become the "accepted" ways of doing things, and mark those actions as "anti-town". What gets lost here is that the point of the game isn't to lynch the people who are "anti-town", it's to lynch the scum. And far too often the scum can put up a much better "pro-town" screen than the actual townies can.

FTR I don't like that Aubby was being scapegoated on what seem to me to be very, very spurious grounds, although I doubt many people here would see it that way, but I hate it that he quit. These games get pretty intense sometimes and it's easy to forget how bad it can get when you're in a position like that. Last game I quit (for the first time ever BTW) but that was because I felt that, had I continued, I would have spoiled it for everyone else. Having said that, if the town actually lynch Chuchura today, they're losing it. (Let's hope they do then!) If it wasn't obvious enough that Aubby wasn't scum by the fact that he genuinely did not have a clue what was going on on Day 2 - a fact that nobody seems to have picked up on - then the fact that he then went and quit out of pure frustration should be a massive wake-up call to the townies about him. Sorry, but that is not the action of a guy who's got a support system of at least three scumbuddies behind him. That's the action of a guy who's out on his own and taking it badly. He could be PFK or town, but there's no way Aubby could ever have been scum based on his actions of the past day.

So what I'm basically saying is: there's a pretty good chance that the town are about to lynch the person who, to me, is the most obviously not-scummy player in the entire game. As scum, I kinda like that situation!

Moley out.

[Kirsten]

Acronym claiming of that sort is banned on a lot of mafia sites. I know the vast majority of moderators on MS don't allow it (for good reason) and it's a sitewide rule at MTGS.

I would recommend a simple game without a lot of crazy roles and none of that kind of play for you, Sam, but I'm ever in quest of that game myself. It's surprisingly harder to find than you would think.

[Jaya]

I actually enjoyed the first mini game I played at that site, Sam -- except that it seemed a little slooowwww-- can't remember maybe 3 day days and 2 day nights. 9 players: 2 mafia. Then either a town cop, a town doc, and a mafia roleblocker. Or one town role (doc or cop) and no mafia roles. Simple set up and just play.

I guess that's not that slow, but it seemed slow after playing Spies. And the difference is that even if the time between votes is the same, the amount of activity is so much less. With Spies, there is always a new post to read or someone new online to talk to.

[Donald]

Those requirements are not easy to match, Sam. Not these days at least.

[Judge Sam]

That sucks. I mean I know I am as guilty as anyone of adding too much crazy junk to the basic mafia game, though maybe not as game-breakingly as much as some. As a host it's just so incredibly tempting to add and add all these seemingly-cool ideas you come up with. And players with less experience hosting may add things that make the game less fun.

Any game is only as good as the people who play it really. I guess people think they have to 'stand out' and be memorable and the only way to do that is to introduce a crazy ill-thought-out mega-twist that doesn't really work out. Or some strange combination of several roles.

[Ellis]

Aug 27, 2009 11:33:10 GMT -5 Judge Sam said:

Any game is only as good as the people who play it really. I guess people think they have to 'stand out' and be memorable and the only way to do that is to introduce a crazy ill-thought-out mega-twist that doesn't really work out. Or some strange combination of several roles.

THIS IS WHAT WAS SO GOOD ABOUT SPIES 6. Lots of great little ideas, no one huge game-spoiling big idea.

[sluticia]

Omg but I would totally love a pokemon game.

[Donald]

I played in a pokemon game.

Took out a mafia who claimed Tangela and had the ability Wrap

Or something like that, it's been a long time. Basically he claimed an ability that is close to what Tangela has, but wasn't really what Tangela has. Yeah. He was totally scum :

[Mei Yun]

I don't understand why Sam hates Pokemon

[Georgia]

I played a Pokemon game once. Only because Tanner forced me to because he was hosting it.

I think themed/crazy games happen, because people get bored with playing the basic/classic setup. Or they've never played it before, so they don't know what that is. So they don't know how to play a game which isn't focused on role usage.


Though, I can't think of ever seeiing a forum mafia game last five days. o.O. Oh wait. Five game days, right?

[Khaled]

Aug 27, 2009 20:58:33 GMT -5 Mei Yun said:

I don't understand why Sam hates Pokemon

I don't understand why he hates Hannah Montana.

[Gretchen]

Aug 26, 2009 14:37:35 GMT -5 Kirsten said:

Acronym claiming of that sort is banned on a lot of mafia sites. I know the vast majority of moderators on MS don't allow it (for good reason) and it's a sitewide rule at MTGS.

I would recommend a simple game without a lot of crazy roles and none of that kind of play for you, Sam, but I'm ever in quest of that game myself. It's surprisingly harder to find than you would think.

I have no idea if Siqi has done the above nerdlike things, however you cannot get much simpler than FB Mafia. The link is below in my auto signature.

[EllBrelty]

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