wD Mafia Master Post
Forum rules
This is an area for forum games. Please note that to support mafia games players cannot edit their own posts in this forum. Off Topic threads will be relocated or deleted. Issues taking place in forum games should be dealt with by respective game GMs and escalated to the moderators only if absolutely necessary.
This is an area for forum games. Please note that to support mafia games players cannot edit their own posts in this forum. Off Topic threads will be relocated or deleted. Issues taking place in forum games should be dealt with by respective game GMs and escalated to the moderators only if absolutely necessary.
wD Mafia Master Post
Mafia on webDiplomacy
Like Diplomacy, mafia is a game of strategy, conversation, manipulation, and skill. On webDiplomacy, it is a commitment that often requires daily attention for a week or two at a time. If you are interested in playing mafia on webDiplomacy, you are in the right place. This is the master post for mafia, which includes links to ongoing games and sign ups as well as past mafia games and a comprehensive starter guide for those that have not played before.
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For GMs:
Please copy and paste the rules in this post into your OP, or link this thread in your OP if you prefer. These rules are standard in all webDiplomacy mafia games. If your setup necessitates the removal of or a change to any of these rules, please discuss it with me in advance and we will be able to work that out.
If you need to copy and paste former game thread links into your OP, you can find the appropriate text here.
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Ongoing Mafia Games:
Mafia Game Bot
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Mafia Council:
The mafia council is a body of select skilled, veteran mafia players on webDiplomacy who may serve in an advisory role to GMs or as the appealing body for certain disputes that cannot be resolved by the GMs of a game. Their predominant responsibilities include, but are not limited to, tracking the lineup of GMs in upcoming contests, ensuring that all GM volunteers have a preliminary gameplan, theme, and setup that makes sense, and making sure that all GMs have a co-GM to assist them prior to the beginning of their game. They are also the working advisement body for any urgent, in-game matters that the GMs cannot agree on or solve otherwise, or any urgent matter within the webDiplomacy mafia community at large. Any decision or declaration made by the mafia council is final and all players and GMs are expected to adhere.
The current council consists of Tom Bombadil and dargorygel.
Prospective GMs should have at least one brief conversation with the council prior to their game start.
Any issue requiring escalation above the mafia council will be handled by a site administrator.
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Standard Mafia Rules:
The rules change slightly in every game depending on the setup and the preferences of the GM. Please read the OP of the game thread.
1.) The GMs reserve the right to adjudicate individual scenarios that arise during the course of the game at his or her discretion. GM decisions are final.
2.) The GMs reserve the right to establish additional rules pertaining to their game and setup.
3.) All players are forbidden from posting screenshots of their role PMs.
4.) All players are forbidden from using encryption unless explicitly allowed by the setup.
5.) All players are forbidden from using non-sanctioned PMing.
6.) All spectators and players who have been eliminated are forbidden from posting on all comment threads related to the game notes.
7.) All players are forbidden from cheating.
9.) All players are required to play to win and are not allowed to attempt to sabotage their team.
9.) Players and/or teams may not concede the game in public.
10.) No players or spectators may +1 a player's post. It is permissible to +1 a GM post.
11.) All players must adhere to any and all game requirements or GM requests.
12.) All players must follow the typical webDiplomacy rules and forum rules.
13.) Any issues, concerns, or complaints should be directed toward the GMs only. For concerns that require escalation beyond the GMs, contact the mafia council.
14.) Violations of these rules may carry a penalty at the discretion of the GMs and the mafia council.
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A Guide to Playing Mafia on webDiplomacy
New to mafia? Have played mafia but not on webDiplomacy? Please read this!
Originally written by President Eden.
Part I: Mindset
Foreword
Most people do not have the correct mentality to play and improve at mafia. That’s okay. Most people don’t have the correct mentality for lots of things. If you just want to play for fun and don’t care what happens then you can feel free to skip this entire section or maybe even the entire guide. But if you want to be competitive and get better, then this is crucial and core to getting any better at anything.
Before understanding anything that’s written you have to understand the correct mentality. This mentality will carry you through mafia as well as any game or situation that involves other people. Regardless of how much you know or you think you know, it means nothing unless you’re willing to try to improve.
Subset I: Responsibility
So how do you improve? You have to always blame yourself and take responsibility for your misplays. It's pretty obvious why: you don't have control over who your teammates are and how they act, so focusing complaints and postgame criticism on other people is a fruitless exercise. Who knows if you'll ever be on the same team as them again, let alone that they'll do the same thing? You are the common denominator in all of your failures, and likewise you are the common denominator in all of your successes. Therefore, the most consistent path to improvement is to FIX YOUR OWN MISTAKES FIRST and worry about others' second.
Things I am NOT saying:
1. It is only my fault that I lose.
2. If I win then I did fine.
3. If I had played without the errors that I noticed, I would have won.
Mafia is a game with a lot of statistical noise, as you'd expect of any game focused on behavior. Sometimes no matter what you could have done differently, you lose. But focusing on that isn't going to help you improve.
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Subset II: Objectivity
So now you're rereading M1 trying to find your mistakes. How do you do this? You be objective.
Well, Eden, what the hell does that mean? Of course you have to look at things detached from your immediate personal feelings on the matter, but an important part of -- for self-improvement, THE important part of -- objectivity is to recognize an optimal decision given a certain set of non-luck-based parameters and to ALWAYS MAKE THAT SAME DECISION IN THAT SAME SITUATION. You could be playing poker, get the same five hands in a row. If you're playing objectively, you determine the optimal play and you play it, and you don't let yourself be swayed by it not working the first few times. Over the long run, luck works itself out, and if you're playing objectively you will come out on top.
So how's this tied to mafia? Simple: Your teammates and their play, the distribution of roles, even some of the decisions made in a given game of mafia are luck-based, and play a critical role in the outcome of a game. Objectivity means that you can parse through the noise, figure out where you specifically made a mistake as opposed to luck breaking against you, and strive to correct the mistake you made for subsequent games. You'll find that despite the formats, roles and team distributions, certain players will consistently excel and certain players will consistently fail. Luck plays a part, but there is a foundational difference between these players that accounts for the disparity in their successes. Learning to recognize the source of that foundational difference is the key to self-improvement.
“...the right play is the right play regardless of outcomes. Objectivity is the ability to make a decision 5 straight times, lose 5 times because of it, and still make it the 6th time if it's the right play.”
Subset III: Respect
So you're rereading M1 objectively, trying to sort out where you made a mistake instead of someone else. You're doing your best, but to be honest, it's still hard. "Was it my fault for getting tunnel vision on this townie and getting him killed, or was he really just acting shady and I was justified in seeing it that way?" "Did the town really catch me as a mafia, or did they just get lucky in misinterpreting something I said?" The most fundamental obstacle to being objective is learning proper respect for your opponents; underestimating them, or even overestimating them, will lead you to attribute certain things that were within your control to factors beyond your control, and thus hinder self-improvement.
The best example I can think of from the game was that krellin overestimated abgemacht in trusting him. He consistently gave abgemacht a higher degree of benefit of the doubt when abgemacht came under suspicion, out of meta knowledge that abgemacht, as an engineer, was likely to be thinking carefully and logically about whatever situation was under discussion. He's not wrong; abgemacht WAS carefully considering his situation. But abgemacht would do this regardless of alignment, and krellin allowed abgemacht to slip into his blind spot by chalking up differences of opinion to abgemacht seeing something he didn't, instead of abgemacht misrepresenting or distorting information to serve the mafia's agenda. I'm actually glad that the game broke this way, because I think overestimating your opponent is an easier mistake to correct than underestimating; overestimation is an excessive amount of FEAR, where underestimation is an excessive amount of PRIDE, and it's a lot easier to stop being afraid of people than it is to stop being prideful. When it comes down to it, if someone's being shady, don't make excuses for them. Press them on the points about which they're being shady and make them explain themselves. If you're satisfied, great, your foundation for being satisfied has improved. If you're not satisfied, even better, you're probably onto a mafia. Either way, proper respect for your opponents' capacity to manipulate and lie to you is crucial to recognizing where you made a mistake in your play, and therefore where you need to improve.
“Lying is a cooperative act. A lie has no power by its mere utterance. Its power emerges when someone else agrees to believe the lie.”
Part II: Foundations
Foreword
Mafia is a game of persuasion characterized by competing factions with different information and numbers. These create different incentives for town and mafia behavior which form the fundamental dynamic of the game: a hunt in which the town are attempting to find the mafia before time runs out and the mafia win. By analyzing the differences in each faction's information and numbers, we can construct a sound profile of town and mafia behavior to develop in subsequent sections on the town and mafia game.
Subset I: Information
The amount of information that individual players have regarding the state of a given game is typically different, depending on how the roles are designed and the conditions of the format. However, it is always the case that the mafia have more information about the game state than the town. They already know the answers to the town's puzzle. The town, obviously, do not know the identity of anyone that isn't themselves (again barring specific role-related circumstances). The town players start in a state of ignorance and seek to solve the puzzle, while the mafia start in a state of knowledge and seek to prevent the town from solving the puzzle.
This creates the following differences in incentives:
1. Town players have to ask questions to learn other players' alignments. Town have to solve the puzzle in a limited amount of time before the mafia win. Thus the impetus on town is to be proactive, asking other players questions that lead in a particular direction in order to determine whether or not a player is a specific alignment. Mafia players don't have to ask questions to learn other players' alignments, so their attempts to emulate town in doing so will look comparatively forced and have less direction than those of town players.
2. Town players will have a naturally evolving picture of the game state as time goes on. As town players continue to get more information and talk to more people, their understanding of the players' alignment changes. Consequently, towns favor a dynamic game where changes in reads are logical, but frequent; they're naturally capable of talking about why their reads change. Mafia players cannot have an evolving understanding of the game state because they start with complete information about the game state, and consequently they favor a static game where changes in reads are infrequent. Any attempt to discuss changes in reads is necessarily artificial and again, comparatively forced compared to the town players.
Subset II: Numbers
The two factions in mafia are defined by their numbers and their different objectives. Town players have superior numbers and need only catch the mafia before their time runs out; mafia players have inferior numbers and need to survive.
This creates the following difference in incentives, with two key exceptions discussed afterward: Town players have nothing to hide and aren't afraid of dying. This doesn't mean that they won't fight to stay alive, but all else being the same town players have nothing to hide, while the mafia do. This stems in part from their information asymmetry discussed in Subset I, but it also has to do with numbers: townies ultimately know that their death, whether through nightkill or daykill, isn't a significant impediment to their faction's victory, and they play like it.
This manifests in a number of ways: townies aren't afraid to confront people, ask questions and get into arguments, because they have no special knowledge to be exposed and they naturally discuss their suspicions; townies tend to give more definite reads and commit to particular positions, because for them deriving information from those positions, and making other players commit to similar positions, is more valuable than appearance; even more subtle things like language choice, post flow and frequency change when you don't have anything to hide.
Of course, the mafia play the opposite way; they tend to avoid confrontation and arguments because they don't gain information from them and they stand to lose a lot if they come out of the argument poorly; they tend to be more equivocal in their reads and more reticent in committing to particular positions, because it gives the town information and reduces their ability to be flexible in seeking miskills; their language choice, posting frequency and decisions on when to engage and when to disengage are more controlled and reserved.
The two key exceptions to the above:
1. KILO. Short for "Kill or Lose," this is the situation where the town only outnumber the mafia by one player. At this point, essentially all bets are off; town has a significant degree of information by now, and every player, town or mafia, has an overriding survival instinct, because the town lose if they misfire. Typically you can't derive anything about a player's behavior at LYLO because the town and mafia's incentives are too closely aligned.
2. Power roles. Although town players SHOULDN'T play like they have something to hide when they draw power roles, they often DO anyway. It's a natural impulse: you have a unique ability that threatens the mafia, so of course you don't want to advertise it so you don't get killed immediately and let your team down. This is counterproductive, for reasons I'll discuss later, but suffice to say that town PRs may throw a wrench in this.
Subset III: Profiles
To recap the preceding subsets...
TOWN
* Town players are relatively more proactive, and there's a relatively clearer direction to their questions and logic, than their scum counterparts.
* Town players make reasonable but frequent changes to their reads as a result of gaining information about the game state and the subsequent evolution of their understanding of the game state.
* Town players aren't afraid of dying and have nothing to hide, which manifests in town players being very willing to argue their points, confront people with whom they disagree, and take definite positions on the guilt or innocence of certain players.
MAFIA
* Mafia players are relatively more reactive, don't naturally ask questions about the game state, and when they do ask questions the direction of those questions is relatively less clear than their town counterparts.
* Mafia players make infrequent changes to their reads as the situation necessitates; their understanding of the game state doesn't evolve as the game progresses, and so they both naturally tend towards, and prefer to establish, a more static game dynamic, compared to their opponents.
* Mafia players are naturally more defensive and secretive than town as a result of their different win condition, which manifests in mafia players being relatively unwilling to get in protracted arguments with town players, relatively nonconfrontational in general and relatively less likely to take definitive stances on someone's guilt or innocence, compared to town.
Subset IV: Basic Principles
Here are some concrete pointers to improve your game regardless of alignment.
1. You don't have to claim, or fakeclaim, or tell anyone your role at all. There are a few circumstances involving power roles where you should more or less always claim, but mostly role claims are doomed to be unhelpful in the first place; either you're vanilla town in which case you truthfully roleclaim vanilla town or you're not vanilla town and you're probably incentivized to claim vanilla town anyway to avoid standing out. As a corollary, outside of aforementioned policy situations where you always claim, rolefishing should be avoided because the results of your search can only help the mafia by giving them greater control over the night actions.
2. Make sure everyone talks. Contrary to popular belief, while quiet players are anti-town in the sense that their silence doesn't leave other players anything to use to build on, frequency of posting and alignment do not have a significant correlation. As town and as mafia it's important to get quiet posters talking; town players need to hear from them so they can clear them, and mafia posters want them talking because quiet players who aren't proactive tend to be less attentive and therefore more prone to making an exploitable mistake in their comments.
3. Read objectively. Mafia being a behavioral analysis game, you can bet that the vast majority of arguments brought forth in the game are not ironclad. Even the best of cases have some holes in them that are covered with intuitive reads or other nonlogical sources of information. Be sure to read through every post to pick out the key highlights of a case or argument against someone. This is the key to making sure your kills go through and stopping kills you don't like.
4. Reread old posts. That's where all your data is. Present developments are important, but it's also critical to look at what dead players said, who the major players in a given day were, what the major events were, etc. Once you can construct a mental timeline of the major events and players in a given day, you can start doing serious analysis of other players by looking at their ties to those events.
5. Everything is need-to-know. It's important to make sure that you communicate clearly your reasoning for stating a given read and for changing that read, but it's also important to make sure that you're efficient with the analysis you try to present. If you don't think a particular event is important to your read on a player, don't try to incorporate it into your analysis. Give only what your audience needs to know. This trait will tend to help mafia more than town, because it gives mafia room to present a case that deliberately excludes key details; but if you're open and forthright when other people question you about excluding a detail they think is key, then you should be able to avoid suspicion as town.
6. Play to win regardless of your alignment and don't worry about your meta. As this group continues to play games together, certain meta trends will arise. It will be tempting to make purposeful alterations to your game in order to succeed; some players will intentionally talk less and choose to be unproductive as town to provide cover for their scum game, some players will choose not to put in the work to emulate their town game as scum in order to make themselves more obviously town when they draw town. Avoid this temptation. In the long run, there is no negative impact to one side of your mafia game by improving the other.
7. Don't play scared. This should come naturally as town, but some players, particularly town power roles, will be unwilling to play as fearlessly as a town player would be expected to play, because they feel that their special powers either entitle them or obligate them to prioritize survival over scumhunting. Do not do this. Huge props go out to all three of the town power roles in M1 here: krellin, Fasces349 and Thucydides all did a superb job of playing confidently and assertively and in my mind did a good job on the behavioral front of masking their identities as power roles by refusing to allow their special abilities to compromise their fearlessness. And on the mafia side, you can't play scared either, or else you'll be caught in a town full of fearless players. I don't think the M1 mafia had a problem with playing fearlessly, so props to them too. Remember, you either have nothing to hide, or you're trying to emulate someone who doesn't.
8. Occam's Razor. Default to the explanation with the fewest moving parts, and depending on alignment, suspect or cast doubt on people who don't. The simplest explanation isn't always correct, but it's often enough correct as a starting point. Determining what constitutes the "simplest explanation" varies from game to game, but in general you want to minimize the use of recursive logic explanations (known as WIFOM, or "Wine In Front Of Me"; c.f. Princess Bride) and explanations that involve players deliberately acting in opposition to their win conditions or incentives.
9. Appearances are more important than fact. This one is CRUCIAL. Mafia is a game of discovering the truth *and* convincing people that your narrative is the truth. In mafia it often boils down not to whose answer is RIGHT but whose answer others BELIEVE is right. You might have picked out the entire scumteam by Day 2, but if your posting is erratic and you don't explain yourself, no one's going to believe you and frankly, it doesn't matter if you "caught" them at all. The reason appearances matter here is because mafia are fully capable of telling the truth as well as town. More important than WHAT is said is HOW something is being said. Mafia will tell the truth and provide objectively correct analysis; they're reading this guide too, after all. What has to be considered is whether or not that analysis is driving toward a coherent, pro-town direction.
Part III: Town Play
Subset I: Principles
So you've rolled town in your next game of mafia, and you're ready to go catch mafia. ...How do you do it?
The first thing is that you need to signal to your teammates that you're on their team. You don't even have to know who they are to do this; as long as THEY know you're on their team, you're in a good position, because you can start to develop solidarity with your fellow townies and solve the puzzle. The first priority, then, is to establish your innocence. Once you've established your innocence, you'll want to start finding mafia, using our profile of the typical mafia player. As you're investigating and building your case, you'll also want to focus on posting productively, at a rate that is fast enough to force the mafia to keep up and avoids inactivity and stagnation but slow enough to avoid crowding out older messages due to excessive posting. When you have a case, present it coherently and efficiently. Then rinse and repeat until you catch the scum.
So the rough road map we're looking at is...
1) Establishing your innocence
2) Posting productively and generating cases
The section will conclude with a discussion on power roles and how to play them.
Subset II: Establishing Your Innocence
Remember, mafia is a game where it's important not what you know, but what you can convince others to believe. It's important to ensure that you are a credible player who others can trust to be honest and insightful in making your arguments. If you can convince people that you're innocent, you've laid the foundation for a successful town game.
The benefits of establishing your innocence are pretty obvious.
1. Establishing your innocence gives you a credible platform to push the town agenda of developing frequent, productive posting and pressuring suspects to find scum. Townies are justifiably mistrusting of everyone to start the game; establishing your innocence allows townies to trust you and saves you time from defending yourself against accusations of manipulating the town to the mafia's advantage.
2. Establishing your innocence gives the mafia an uphill battle in trying to discredit you when you do get on the right track in suspecting them. The mafia's primary weapon in their conquest of a town is their ability to trust one another, and to exploit individual townies' inability to trust each other by capitalizing on mistakes and blowing them out of proportion, setting up viable kill targets; establishing your innocence gives you some degree of latitude with the town should you make a mistake, and makes the mafia more reticent to get into a knock-down drag-out fight with you over your reads, which makes them less able to counter your reads when you do start to catch mafia.
3. Establishing your innocence gives the town a better chance of catching scum by reducing the number of viable miskill targets. Especially near the end of the game, when you only have one or two mafia left out of seven or so total players, multiple townies confirming their innocence has a substantial effect on the town's ability to catch mafia. More passive mafias tend to get steamrolled late simply because all of the townies did a good job of establishing their innocence and were able to use process of elimination to kill off the scum.
So we've talked a lot about what establishing your innocence can do for you. Now it's time to talk about how to do it, right?
Almost. First we're gonna talk about what, then how. Specifically, let's talk about the profile of an obviously town player; once we establish what this is, how to become one follows pretty intuitively.
The town benefits from clarity above all else. Specifically, of its individual members:
1. Clarity of Word
2. Clarity of Direction
3. Clarity of Intention
Clarity of word involves the mechanical aspects of your posts. Are they concise and do they make the point you want to make in a coherent, easily-processed way? Can people easily understand what it is you're saying? Your posts need to be long enough to get to a useful point without being winding and losing their direction. You can achieve this with two simple processes. First, don't post just to post. Frequency is important, but you have to have a purpose to your post. Make sure there is a clear point to what you're saying. Second, when you finish typing up a post, before you submit it, reread it to make sure that you can follow your own point easily. If you can't, delete and start over. If you can, go through with a fine-toothed comb and cut out as much extraneous verbiage as you can before posting. Economy of word is crucial to convincing people that what you have to say matters and that they should be reading your posts.
Clarity of direction involves the content aspects of your posts. Is it clear what you want out of the town for this turn? Is it clear to specific people you're addressing what it is you want out of them? Direction can be anything, you can be pressing a specific person for reads, talking about power role policy, trying to convince the town at large to kill someone, whatever; the point is to have a point and to make sure your point is productive. Once you've got a point, you're halfway there; clarity of word will help you make that point coherently, and clarity of intention will help you convince people that you're coming from the right place. Again, like with clarity of word, make sure there's a clear point to what you're saying. Another important aspect is being decisive. Don't be wishy-washy, don't give people reason not to believe you in your own posts. Mafia is a game about convincing people that you have the answers. If your posts clearly indicate that you don't believe in yourself and your direction, why the hell should anyone else? Make sure that you offer your own opinions and conclusions and do so without equivocation or waffling.
Clarity of intention tends to arise from the first two, but takes the question a step further. Is what you're doing in line with what a town player should be doing? Do your questions and arguments clearly work toward establishing the town's agenda of creating a productive posting environment and catching mafia? You need to make sure not only that your direction and phrasing is clear, but that both of them are coming from the right place. Make sure that your lines of inquiry and suspicion are leading toward a coherent end goal, and that that goal is pro-town, and you'll have demonstrated clear, pro-town intention and thereby established innocence.
Subset III: Posting and Reading Strategy
Alright, so you've established your innocence. Excellent! Now it's time to find scum. You're first going to do that by reading the thread carefully, and then by posting competently.
First, reading and rereading. When you've got people online you wanna talk to, feel free to get into a conversational frame of mind instead of a more formal, message board mentality. People are much better at spotting false emotion and deception than they are at consistently producing it, so the more "in the moment" you can get your suspects to play, the better your read will be. Conversational back-and-forth puts mafia on the spot and makes it hard for them to keep their story straight.
Outside of this, though, you should be taking a pretty careful, deliberate approach to reading the thread. It's actually a good idea NOT to read the thread post-by-post in chronological order; especially if other players are taking up the conversational idea I mentioned above, you're going to find yourself going through a lot of posts without really getting anywhere concrete. Instead, read with a "zoomed-out" perspective; skim through conversations, stopping only if something catches your eye as particularly suspicious, and try to get a quick read on whether the people involved are town or mafia and move accordingly. If you start reading through every single post looking for suspicious things, you're going to find suspicious things in every post. Skimming is a good way to check your own natural mistrust as a townie of the other players. Look for key identifying features like who's controlling the flow of the discussion and where they're taking it, who the major actors are, and what the motives of the players might be in asking particular questions or pushing particular reads. In particular with this last one, ask yourself: "What town objectives is this player attempting to achieve with this post? What scum objectives?" Far more often than not, posts that fall in line with town motivations come from a town perspective, and the same for scum. If you see a post in isolation that looks to be pushing a scum objective, ask first, accuse later. If you've got multiple posts that are doing this, and the answers you get to your asking don't satisfy you, then pull the trigger and make a case.
As far as posting strategy, the same characteristics that allow you to establish your innocence should come out in your posting and allow you to be effective in making your points and pushing your reads. Be clear in word, direction and intent. Condense your thoughts and reorganize sentences to fit a more natural logical progression.
One key area newer players struggle with is asking good questions. Too often newer players will post the very noncommittal "So X, what do you think of Y?" questions and get nowhere as a result. These questions suffer from a lack of direction because X doesn't know what the asker is looking for with respect to Y. Instead of asking X what he thinks of Y, we can make this question much better with some simple modifications. "So X, do you think Y is town, and why or why not?" This requires X to commit to a concrete position -- Y is town or Y is not town -- and provide at least superficial reasoning as to why. The asker can then look at X's reasons and, if unsatisfied, ask questions about those reasons. Follow-up questions like "Alright, now what about Z, is Z town and why/why not?" are great as well because the asker gets X thinking about Y in comparison to Z, which inspires not only comparison questions about how the two are playing but thoughts about whether Y and Z are on the same team.
No matter what you ask, remember to try to predict the answers you would expect town or scum to have to your question. Remember the old legal adage: Never ask a question you don't already know the answer to! Even if your prediction for the answer is wrong, it's important to try to predict it. If your mark answers the question as you'd expect a particular alignment to answer, good, you've got something to work with. If not, explore it more.
Subset IV: How To Be A Good Power Role
The first thing you should do as a town power role is to strip away the title. "Power role" carries an arbitrary implication of extra importance, as though you suddenly have some reason to play differently. Don't do this. Think of yourself as just another townie with an ability, and play like it. Don't get self-preservational because you're worried about letting your team down.
Avoid claiming if you can help it of course; mafia typically have a strong incentive to get rid of you and while you shouldn't get preoccupied with survival, there's no reason to throw away your ability by getting killed early, either. Good times to claim are (a) if you're about to be killed, (b) when you're at KILY (kill or lose; scenario where there's only one more townie than mafia), or (c) when you have important information about the game state that's worth giving up your anonymity over.
Part IV: Mafia Play
Subset I: Principles
OK, so you rolled scum instead. Now that the town knows how to be super-towny you're gonna get steamrolled and it'll be game over, right? No! Here's how you play the mafia side of the game and succeed.
As the mafia it's important to recognize that you're playing a stall game. Time is mostly on your side, not the town's. The key to playing the mafia side successfully is having a good temporal understanding of the game. Time is on your side in terms of numbers and pressure; as the game goes along townies must be increasingly accurate in their kills despite the mafia faction having a larger proportion of the town to dissuade people from those correct kills. However, time is against the mafia in one big respect: information. As the game goes on, the town get more information which allows them to make more accurate reads and kills. Therefore, the mafia's top priority is denial of information.
Scum play a more reactive game; instead of having a set "formula" like the townies do (establish innocence => ask good questions => pressure suspects => make good cases => kill scum), scum adjust to the play of the town. It does no good for example to suggest that scum emulate good townie play in a game where townies aren't playing well, because then they stick out as being "too" townie and eventually people wonder why they haven't been nightkilled. Scum want to blend in, which requires flexible reaction to the individual game instead of a formula. Instead, this section will be more topical in nature, dealing with various happenings that mafia need to be able to deal with.
Subset II: Team Dynamics
The first thing to do whenever your scumteam starts out is to feel one another out in the scumchat for play style differences and approaches to the game. Successful scumteams typically have a roughly 50/50 split between players who are relatively active and players who are relatively quiet. The active scum are referred to occasionally here as "misdirectors," while the quiet scum are "deep threats."
You need at least one ringleader, who's going to get involved with the town, attempt to steer kills and spread disinformation to disrupt the town's progress. Ideally you'll have a minimum of two such players so that they can riff off of each other and support one another as needed; it's a lot of pressure being the lone scum attempting to steer the town, so having a second one on-board helps a lot.
That said, active players tend to get killed early, and consequently active scum tend to get killed eventually for not being nightkilled. Thus it's also important that the mafia have at least one player and ideally two who can remain out of the spotlight, look reasonably townie but not rock the boat, and come out of the inevitable death of the misdirectors looking clean. This is where your more quiet players come in, they're already accustomed to lying low so they're excellent candidates for this. If your team has member-specific powers instead of faction-specific, you'll want to adjust accordingly.
If you have nothing but active players, this can be a boon simply because you're able to crowd out the active townies with a few nightkills and break any ability of the town to get you killed; but having a lot of active scum is a big risk because increased activity tends to lead to increased information being given to the town and increased risk of getting caught. On the other hand, scumteams without any active posters are typically doomed to failure; with no one running smokescreens and misdirection to throw off the town, the town tends to get organized and steamroll.
Once you've divided up roles, you'll typically want to give the primary deep threat shotcalling power. You'll organize the team's general strategy around getting this primary deep threat into the endgame, so you'll want to let him or her call the shots on who to engage, how, and why; on who to kill; etc. This makes the team more efficient and reduces the chance of a scum player going "lone wolf" and trying to make something happen on his own (which usually doesn't end well for the mafia).
Subset III: Posting Strategy
In general, just try to look like your understanding of the game state is evolving. Don't be static with reads, hold on too long to old material, etc. Respond to things as they're happening and try to be sensible about it. It's okay to be wrong; townies are all the time. Just make sure it makes sense when you are wrong.
In particular, remember to post misleading analysis. This goes double if you're a misdirector, as that's your exact job title. You have to make bad cases against townies but make them look like they're not intentionally bad. This isn't as hard as it sounds; the townies don't know the difference unless you're really obvious about it. Make cases like you would as town, look for people who agree and try to persuade them to push with you like you would as town, but if they start to take over and do most of the legwork, step aside and let them be the most outspoken proponent of your kill. Townies tend to have a kneejerk reaction where they kill the most outspoken proponent of an incorrect kill; if you let it be another townie, you've got another kill seeded, which might lead to another outspoken townie getting killed later, etc. Let the town do your dirty work if they start to come to your side of things!
Be careful with engaging vocal townies, especially ones who are being townread. Typically when you're trying to get the kill you want as scum, you want to start by persuading people who are inclined to agree with you, and build up a coalition of voters who aren't going to push back hard against you. Once you've got a reasonably sized group for the size of the game ready to kill your guy, then you can afford to engage the more vocal townies with the help of your newly-recruited supporters.
Don't forget to have active conversations with your scumteam on the thread, too. One of the easiest ways to catch the quiet partners of active scum is when you notice, on rereading, that occasionally active scum will talk to everyone BUT their quiet partners. So especially, make sure your misdirectors have substantial interactions with the deep threat, so you don't lose your deep threat to a simple mistake like this right off the bat.
In general, don't rush to correct mistaken assumptions or faulty logic unless it's being used to catch a teammate. No one's going to know that you noticed the faulty logic if you never say anything about it. You may be tempted to make these kinds of corrections to get town credit. Avoid this. Mistaken assumptions lead to faulty premises and bad information, which means that the longer you allow it to sit before it's discovered, the less time the town has to act on correct information.
In sum: remember to engage teammates, let the townies run with their own mistakes unless they're incriminating a parter, work to mislead the town actively, and feel free to violate any of the above at your leisure to win a particular game, because above doing all of this, scum win by being unpredictable.
Subset IV: Dealing with Accusations
The reality is that you will be accused of being scum in a game and at some point it will be true. If you're accused, then remain calm and address the holes in your opponent's case. Short of being mod-confirmed there will be holes in the case; cases are never truly ironclad. Don't get flustered, don't get angry at your accuser, just demonstrate briefly why you're town and move on to accusing other people. If it looks like you're going down then avoid saying anything that would tie you back to your teammates; if you can't think of anything to say that wouldn't, don't say anything.
On the other hand, if it's a teammate, you've got a difficult decision ahead of you. Where possible, always try to raise an alternate case against someone else, and avoid weighing in on the case against your teammate. If directly asked, answer according to the specific situation and try to find an excuse not to vote for your teammate if you can without being obvious about it. Your best chance of getting your teammate off the hook is to make a better case against a townie. If it looks like your teammate isn't going to get off the hook then you might want/need to bus them depending on how the situation looks.
Avoid busing teammates if you don't have to do it. Town credit is incredibly ephemeral in this game; you might think you're set for life after leading the charge against a teammate, but the reality is that if you don't continue producing then your goodwill with the town will evaporate. There are some circumstances near the endgame where it's appropriate to bus; for example, if one of your misdirectors is getting a little heat and you're one kill away from LYLO, it's okay for your deep threat to spearhead the kill of the faltering misdirector, because that will probably buy enough time for the deep threat to win. Remember, while you want to avoid busing where you can, you don't have to have everyone survive, either; you only need to make sure that at least one player survives to the endgame, and as long as the team wins, that's all that really counts.
Subset V: Nightkill Strategy
This is typically pretty subjective and depends a lot on the individual game state. In general I operate on the principle that townies are fundamentally insecure about their reads and can be dissuaded from pursuing their reads with enough pressure on other players. Therefore, I like to shoot players whose most recent reads imply a game state that I like. The results are somewhat counterintuitive, because it means I start off by shooting people who are nearly universally townread and think I'm town. They're some of your best supporters to pocket. Why do this? Because a corpse can't change its mind. You go into the day with the confirmed townie not only saying you're town but being unable to change his mind, you're looking pretty good. Furthermore if someone's pushing on you but not doing a good job of it, they look really bad when one of your supporters ends up dead. Some people go the opposite way, though, and they like to shoot people who are on the right track and accusing scum. This has another advantage -- a corpse can't argue with you, after all -- but it can leave you at risk if other townies see this and start putting the pieces together.
The main principle to being successful with nightkills is the same as with everything on the mafia side of the game: time is on your side, so be thinking ahead and plan your moves out before they happen. Kill people before they get too far on the right track to derail. Hit likely townies who are saying things you like so that they don't get a chance to change their minds. Whatever you do, make sure your kills are staying ahead of the curve.
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Previous Mafia Threads:
M1015
GMs: Durga, Foxcastle
M58
GMs: Jamiet99uk, dargorygel
M1014
GM: Hellenic Riot
M57
GMs: Fluminator, dargorygel
M1012
GM: Foxcastle
M56
GM: Squigs44
M1011
GM: Jamiet99uk
M55
GM: worcej
M1010
GM: Chaqa
M54
GM: Nephthys
M53
GM: Chaqa
M1009
GM: Foxcastle
M52
GM: Kitsune
M51
GM: worcej
M50
GMs: Chaqa, emc^42
M49
GM: RagingIke297
M1008
GM: yavuzovic
M48
GM: ND
M1007
GM: Foxcastle
M47
GM: Nephthys
M46
GMs: Jamiet99uk, worcej
Mafia 1007
GM: Foxcastle
M45
GMs: e.m.c^42, Percy Williams
Mini Mafia Invitational
GM: brainbomb
M44
GMs: ND, dargorygel
M43
GM: Jamiet99uk
M42
GMs: Squigs44, worcej
M41
GMs: Tom Bombadil, brainbomb
Mini Mafia IV
GM: yavuzovic
Mafia Invitational
GMs: Durga, worcej
M40
GMs: Foxcastle, brainbomb
Cultafia
GM: ND
Tiny Hunt 1
GM: WarLegend
M38
GMs: RagingIke297, WarLegend
M37
GM: ND
M36
GM: Tom Bombadil
M35
GMs: DemonRHK, Tom Bombadil
M34
GMs: Hellenic Riot, RagingIke297
M33
GMs: Jamiet99uk, RagingIke297
M32
GMs: brainbomb, Tom Bombadil
M31
GMs: captainmeme, peterlund
M30
GMs: Durga, peterlund
M29
GMs: bo_sox48, dargorygel
M28
GMs: ND, brainbomb
M27
GMs: Durga, dargorygel
M26
GMs: Jamiet99uk, Chaqa
M25
GMs: VashtaNeurotic, captainmeme
M24
GMs: DemonRHK, MoscowFleet
M23
GMs: ND, Chaqa
M22
GMs: ghug, DemonRHK
M21
GMs: Jamiet99uk, captainmeme
M20
GMs: Fluminator, Yoyoyozo
M19
GMs: Chaqa, VashtaNeurotic, captainmeme
M18
GMs: bo_sox48, wjessop
M17
GMs: Hellenic Riot, Durga
M16
GMs: TrPrado, ND
M15
GMs: DeathLlama8, captainmeme
M14
GM: y2kjbk
M13
GMs: Chaqa, Fluminator
M12
GMs: wjessop, Espi
M11
GMs: Valis2501, ghug
M10
GMs: ND, captainmeme
M9
GM: y2kjbk
M8
GM: Hellenic Riot
M7
GM: VashtaNeurotic
M5
GM: bo_sox48
M6
GM: Chaqa
M4
GM: VashtaNeurotic
M3.5
GM: Chaqa
M3
GM: President Eden
M2
GMs: captainmeme
M1
GM: President Eden
Like Diplomacy, mafia is a game of strategy, conversation, manipulation, and skill. On webDiplomacy, it is a commitment that often requires daily attention for a week or two at a time. If you are interested in playing mafia on webDiplomacy, you are in the right place. This is the master post for mafia, which includes links to ongoing games and sign ups as well as past mafia games and a comprehensive starter guide for those that have not played before.
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For GMs:
Please copy and paste the rules in this post into your OP, or link this thread in your OP if you prefer. These rules are standard in all webDiplomacy mafia games. If your setup necessitates the removal of or a change to any of these rules, please discuss it with me in advance and we will be able to work that out.
If you need to copy and paste former game thread links into your OP, you can find the appropriate text here.
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Ongoing Mafia Games:
Mafia Game Bot
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Mafia Council:
The mafia council is a body of select skilled, veteran mafia players on webDiplomacy who may serve in an advisory role to GMs or as the appealing body for certain disputes that cannot be resolved by the GMs of a game. Their predominant responsibilities include, but are not limited to, tracking the lineup of GMs in upcoming contests, ensuring that all GM volunteers have a preliminary gameplan, theme, and setup that makes sense, and making sure that all GMs have a co-GM to assist them prior to the beginning of their game. They are also the working advisement body for any urgent, in-game matters that the GMs cannot agree on or solve otherwise, or any urgent matter within the webDiplomacy mafia community at large. Any decision or declaration made by the mafia council is final and all players and GMs are expected to adhere.
The current council consists of Tom Bombadil and dargorygel.
Prospective GMs should have at least one brief conversation with the council prior to their game start.
Any issue requiring escalation above the mafia council will be handled by a site administrator.
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Standard Mafia Rules:
The rules change slightly in every game depending on the setup and the preferences of the GM. Please read the OP of the game thread.
1.) The GMs reserve the right to adjudicate individual scenarios that arise during the course of the game at his or her discretion. GM decisions are final.
2.) The GMs reserve the right to establish additional rules pertaining to their game and setup.
3.) All players are forbidden from posting screenshots of their role PMs.
4.) All players are forbidden from using encryption unless explicitly allowed by the setup.
5.) All players are forbidden from using non-sanctioned PMing.
6.) All spectators and players who have been eliminated are forbidden from posting on all comment threads related to the game notes.
7.) All players are forbidden from cheating.
9.) All players are required to play to win and are not allowed to attempt to sabotage their team.
9.) Players and/or teams may not concede the game in public.
10.) No players or spectators may +1 a player's post. It is permissible to +1 a GM post.
11.) All players must adhere to any and all game requirements or GM requests.
12.) All players must follow the typical webDiplomacy rules and forum rules.
13.) Any issues, concerns, or complaints should be directed toward the GMs only. For concerns that require escalation beyond the GMs, contact the mafia council.
14.) Violations of these rules may carry a penalty at the discretion of the GMs and the mafia council.
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A Guide to Playing Mafia on webDiplomacy
New to mafia? Have played mafia but not on webDiplomacy? Please read this!
Originally written by President Eden.
Part I: Mindset
Foreword
Most people do not have the correct mentality to play and improve at mafia. That’s okay. Most people don’t have the correct mentality for lots of things. If you just want to play for fun and don’t care what happens then you can feel free to skip this entire section or maybe even the entire guide. But if you want to be competitive and get better, then this is crucial and core to getting any better at anything.
Before understanding anything that’s written you have to understand the correct mentality. This mentality will carry you through mafia as well as any game or situation that involves other people. Regardless of how much you know or you think you know, it means nothing unless you’re willing to try to improve.
Subset I: Responsibility
So how do you improve? You have to always blame yourself and take responsibility for your misplays. It's pretty obvious why: you don't have control over who your teammates are and how they act, so focusing complaints and postgame criticism on other people is a fruitless exercise. Who knows if you'll ever be on the same team as them again, let alone that they'll do the same thing? You are the common denominator in all of your failures, and likewise you are the common denominator in all of your successes. Therefore, the most consistent path to improvement is to FIX YOUR OWN MISTAKES FIRST and worry about others' second.
Things I am NOT saying:
1. It is only my fault that I lose.
2. If I win then I did fine.
3. If I had played without the errors that I noticed, I would have won.
Mafia is a game with a lot of statistical noise, as you'd expect of any game focused on behavior. Sometimes no matter what you could have done differently, you lose. But focusing on that isn't going to help you improve.
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Subset II: Objectivity
So now you're rereading M1 trying to find your mistakes. How do you do this? You be objective.
Well, Eden, what the hell does that mean? Of course you have to look at things detached from your immediate personal feelings on the matter, but an important part of -- for self-improvement, THE important part of -- objectivity is to recognize an optimal decision given a certain set of non-luck-based parameters and to ALWAYS MAKE THAT SAME DECISION IN THAT SAME SITUATION. You could be playing poker, get the same five hands in a row. If you're playing objectively, you determine the optimal play and you play it, and you don't let yourself be swayed by it not working the first few times. Over the long run, luck works itself out, and if you're playing objectively you will come out on top.
So how's this tied to mafia? Simple: Your teammates and their play, the distribution of roles, even some of the decisions made in a given game of mafia are luck-based, and play a critical role in the outcome of a game. Objectivity means that you can parse through the noise, figure out where you specifically made a mistake as opposed to luck breaking against you, and strive to correct the mistake you made for subsequent games. You'll find that despite the formats, roles and team distributions, certain players will consistently excel and certain players will consistently fail. Luck plays a part, but there is a foundational difference between these players that accounts for the disparity in their successes. Learning to recognize the source of that foundational difference is the key to self-improvement.
“...the right play is the right play regardless of outcomes. Objectivity is the ability to make a decision 5 straight times, lose 5 times because of it, and still make it the 6th time if it's the right play.”
Subset III: Respect
So you're rereading M1 objectively, trying to sort out where you made a mistake instead of someone else. You're doing your best, but to be honest, it's still hard. "Was it my fault for getting tunnel vision on this townie and getting him killed, or was he really just acting shady and I was justified in seeing it that way?" "Did the town really catch me as a mafia, or did they just get lucky in misinterpreting something I said?" The most fundamental obstacle to being objective is learning proper respect for your opponents; underestimating them, or even overestimating them, will lead you to attribute certain things that were within your control to factors beyond your control, and thus hinder self-improvement.
The best example I can think of from the game was that krellin overestimated abgemacht in trusting him. He consistently gave abgemacht a higher degree of benefit of the doubt when abgemacht came under suspicion, out of meta knowledge that abgemacht, as an engineer, was likely to be thinking carefully and logically about whatever situation was under discussion. He's not wrong; abgemacht WAS carefully considering his situation. But abgemacht would do this regardless of alignment, and krellin allowed abgemacht to slip into his blind spot by chalking up differences of opinion to abgemacht seeing something he didn't, instead of abgemacht misrepresenting or distorting information to serve the mafia's agenda. I'm actually glad that the game broke this way, because I think overestimating your opponent is an easier mistake to correct than underestimating; overestimation is an excessive amount of FEAR, where underestimation is an excessive amount of PRIDE, and it's a lot easier to stop being afraid of people than it is to stop being prideful. When it comes down to it, if someone's being shady, don't make excuses for them. Press them on the points about which they're being shady and make them explain themselves. If you're satisfied, great, your foundation for being satisfied has improved. If you're not satisfied, even better, you're probably onto a mafia. Either way, proper respect for your opponents' capacity to manipulate and lie to you is crucial to recognizing where you made a mistake in your play, and therefore where you need to improve.
“Lying is a cooperative act. A lie has no power by its mere utterance. Its power emerges when someone else agrees to believe the lie.”
Part II: Foundations
Foreword
Mafia is a game of persuasion characterized by competing factions with different information and numbers. These create different incentives for town and mafia behavior which form the fundamental dynamic of the game: a hunt in which the town are attempting to find the mafia before time runs out and the mafia win. By analyzing the differences in each faction's information and numbers, we can construct a sound profile of town and mafia behavior to develop in subsequent sections on the town and mafia game.
Subset I: Information
The amount of information that individual players have regarding the state of a given game is typically different, depending on how the roles are designed and the conditions of the format. However, it is always the case that the mafia have more information about the game state than the town. They already know the answers to the town's puzzle. The town, obviously, do not know the identity of anyone that isn't themselves (again barring specific role-related circumstances). The town players start in a state of ignorance and seek to solve the puzzle, while the mafia start in a state of knowledge and seek to prevent the town from solving the puzzle.
This creates the following differences in incentives:
1. Town players have to ask questions to learn other players' alignments. Town have to solve the puzzle in a limited amount of time before the mafia win. Thus the impetus on town is to be proactive, asking other players questions that lead in a particular direction in order to determine whether or not a player is a specific alignment. Mafia players don't have to ask questions to learn other players' alignments, so their attempts to emulate town in doing so will look comparatively forced and have less direction than those of town players.
2. Town players will have a naturally evolving picture of the game state as time goes on. As town players continue to get more information and talk to more people, their understanding of the players' alignment changes. Consequently, towns favor a dynamic game where changes in reads are logical, but frequent; they're naturally capable of talking about why their reads change. Mafia players cannot have an evolving understanding of the game state because they start with complete information about the game state, and consequently they favor a static game where changes in reads are infrequent. Any attempt to discuss changes in reads is necessarily artificial and again, comparatively forced compared to the town players.
Subset II: Numbers
The two factions in mafia are defined by their numbers and their different objectives. Town players have superior numbers and need only catch the mafia before their time runs out; mafia players have inferior numbers and need to survive.
This creates the following difference in incentives, with two key exceptions discussed afterward: Town players have nothing to hide and aren't afraid of dying. This doesn't mean that they won't fight to stay alive, but all else being the same town players have nothing to hide, while the mafia do. This stems in part from their information asymmetry discussed in Subset I, but it also has to do with numbers: townies ultimately know that their death, whether through nightkill or daykill, isn't a significant impediment to their faction's victory, and they play like it.
This manifests in a number of ways: townies aren't afraid to confront people, ask questions and get into arguments, because they have no special knowledge to be exposed and they naturally discuss their suspicions; townies tend to give more definite reads and commit to particular positions, because for them deriving information from those positions, and making other players commit to similar positions, is more valuable than appearance; even more subtle things like language choice, post flow and frequency change when you don't have anything to hide.
Of course, the mafia play the opposite way; they tend to avoid confrontation and arguments because they don't gain information from them and they stand to lose a lot if they come out of the argument poorly; they tend to be more equivocal in their reads and more reticent in committing to particular positions, because it gives the town information and reduces their ability to be flexible in seeking miskills; their language choice, posting frequency and decisions on when to engage and when to disengage are more controlled and reserved.
The two key exceptions to the above:
1. KILO. Short for "Kill or Lose," this is the situation where the town only outnumber the mafia by one player. At this point, essentially all bets are off; town has a significant degree of information by now, and every player, town or mafia, has an overriding survival instinct, because the town lose if they misfire. Typically you can't derive anything about a player's behavior at LYLO because the town and mafia's incentives are too closely aligned.
2. Power roles. Although town players SHOULDN'T play like they have something to hide when they draw power roles, they often DO anyway. It's a natural impulse: you have a unique ability that threatens the mafia, so of course you don't want to advertise it so you don't get killed immediately and let your team down. This is counterproductive, for reasons I'll discuss later, but suffice to say that town PRs may throw a wrench in this.
Subset III: Profiles
To recap the preceding subsets...
TOWN
* Town players are relatively more proactive, and there's a relatively clearer direction to their questions and logic, than their scum counterparts.
* Town players make reasonable but frequent changes to their reads as a result of gaining information about the game state and the subsequent evolution of their understanding of the game state.
* Town players aren't afraid of dying and have nothing to hide, which manifests in town players being very willing to argue their points, confront people with whom they disagree, and take definite positions on the guilt or innocence of certain players.
MAFIA
* Mafia players are relatively more reactive, don't naturally ask questions about the game state, and when they do ask questions the direction of those questions is relatively less clear than their town counterparts.
* Mafia players make infrequent changes to their reads as the situation necessitates; their understanding of the game state doesn't evolve as the game progresses, and so they both naturally tend towards, and prefer to establish, a more static game dynamic, compared to their opponents.
* Mafia players are naturally more defensive and secretive than town as a result of their different win condition, which manifests in mafia players being relatively unwilling to get in protracted arguments with town players, relatively nonconfrontational in general and relatively less likely to take definitive stances on someone's guilt or innocence, compared to town.
Subset IV: Basic Principles
Here are some concrete pointers to improve your game regardless of alignment.
1. You don't have to claim, or fakeclaim, or tell anyone your role at all. There are a few circumstances involving power roles where you should more or less always claim, but mostly role claims are doomed to be unhelpful in the first place; either you're vanilla town in which case you truthfully roleclaim vanilla town or you're not vanilla town and you're probably incentivized to claim vanilla town anyway to avoid standing out. As a corollary, outside of aforementioned policy situations where you always claim, rolefishing should be avoided because the results of your search can only help the mafia by giving them greater control over the night actions.
2. Make sure everyone talks. Contrary to popular belief, while quiet players are anti-town in the sense that their silence doesn't leave other players anything to use to build on, frequency of posting and alignment do not have a significant correlation. As town and as mafia it's important to get quiet posters talking; town players need to hear from them so they can clear them, and mafia posters want them talking because quiet players who aren't proactive tend to be less attentive and therefore more prone to making an exploitable mistake in their comments.
3. Read objectively. Mafia being a behavioral analysis game, you can bet that the vast majority of arguments brought forth in the game are not ironclad. Even the best of cases have some holes in them that are covered with intuitive reads or other nonlogical sources of information. Be sure to read through every post to pick out the key highlights of a case or argument against someone. This is the key to making sure your kills go through and stopping kills you don't like.
4. Reread old posts. That's where all your data is. Present developments are important, but it's also critical to look at what dead players said, who the major players in a given day were, what the major events were, etc. Once you can construct a mental timeline of the major events and players in a given day, you can start doing serious analysis of other players by looking at their ties to those events.
5. Everything is need-to-know. It's important to make sure that you communicate clearly your reasoning for stating a given read and for changing that read, but it's also important to make sure that you're efficient with the analysis you try to present. If you don't think a particular event is important to your read on a player, don't try to incorporate it into your analysis. Give only what your audience needs to know. This trait will tend to help mafia more than town, because it gives mafia room to present a case that deliberately excludes key details; but if you're open and forthright when other people question you about excluding a detail they think is key, then you should be able to avoid suspicion as town.
6. Play to win regardless of your alignment and don't worry about your meta. As this group continues to play games together, certain meta trends will arise. It will be tempting to make purposeful alterations to your game in order to succeed; some players will intentionally talk less and choose to be unproductive as town to provide cover for their scum game, some players will choose not to put in the work to emulate their town game as scum in order to make themselves more obviously town when they draw town. Avoid this temptation. In the long run, there is no negative impact to one side of your mafia game by improving the other.
7. Don't play scared. This should come naturally as town, but some players, particularly town power roles, will be unwilling to play as fearlessly as a town player would be expected to play, because they feel that their special powers either entitle them or obligate them to prioritize survival over scumhunting. Do not do this. Huge props go out to all three of the town power roles in M1 here: krellin, Fasces349 and Thucydides all did a superb job of playing confidently and assertively and in my mind did a good job on the behavioral front of masking their identities as power roles by refusing to allow their special abilities to compromise their fearlessness. And on the mafia side, you can't play scared either, or else you'll be caught in a town full of fearless players. I don't think the M1 mafia had a problem with playing fearlessly, so props to them too. Remember, you either have nothing to hide, or you're trying to emulate someone who doesn't.
8. Occam's Razor. Default to the explanation with the fewest moving parts, and depending on alignment, suspect or cast doubt on people who don't. The simplest explanation isn't always correct, but it's often enough correct as a starting point. Determining what constitutes the "simplest explanation" varies from game to game, but in general you want to minimize the use of recursive logic explanations (known as WIFOM, or "Wine In Front Of Me"; c.f. Princess Bride) and explanations that involve players deliberately acting in opposition to their win conditions or incentives.
9. Appearances are more important than fact. This one is CRUCIAL. Mafia is a game of discovering the truth *and* convincing people that your narrative is the truth. In mafia it often boils down not to whose answer is RIGHT but whose answer others BELIEVE is right. You might have picked out the entire scumteam by Day 2, but if your posting is erratic and you don't explain yourself, no one's going to believe you and frankly, it doesn't matter if you "caught" them at all. The reason appearances matter here is because mafia are fully capable of telling the truth as well as town. More important than WHAT is said is HOW something is being said. Mafia will tell the truth and provide objectively correct analysis; they're reading this guide too, after all. What has to be considered is whether or not that analysis is driving toward a coherent, pro-town direction.
Part III: Town Play
Subset I: Principles
So you've rolled town in your next game of mafia, and you're ready to go catch mafia. ...How do you do it?
The first thing is that you need to signal to your teammates that you're on their team. You don't even have to know who they are to do this; as long as THEY know you're on their team, you're in a good position, because you can start to develop solidarity with your fellow townies and solve the puzzle. The first priority, then, is to establish your innocence. Once you've established your innocence, you'll want to start finding mafia, using our profile of the typical mafia player. As you're investigating and building your case, you'll also want to focus on posting productively, at a rate that is fast enough to force the mafia to keep up and avoids inactivity and stagnation but slow enough to avoid crowding out older messages due to excessive posting. When you have a case, present it coherently and efficiently. Then rinse and repeat until you catch the scum.
So the rough road map we're looking at is...
1) Establishing your innocence
2) Posting productively and generating cases
The section will conclude with a discussion on power roles and how to play them.
Subset II: Establishing Your Innocence
Remember, mafia is a game where it's important not what you know, but what you can convince others to believe. It's important to ensure that you are a credible player who others can trust to be honest and insightful in making your arguments. If you can convince people that you're innocent, you've laid the foundation for a successful town game.
The benefits of establishing your innocence are pretty obvious.
1. Establishing your innocence gives you a credible platform to push the town agenda of developing frequent, productive posting and pressuring suspects to find scum. Townies are justifiably mistrusting of everyone to start the game; establishing your innocence allows townies to trust you and saves you time from defending yourself against accusations of manipulating the town to the mafia's advantage.
2. Establishing your innocence gives the mafia an uphill battle in trying to discredit you when you do get on the right track in suspecting them. The mafia's primary weapon in their conquest of a town is their ability to trust one another, and to exploit individual townies' inability to trust each other by capitalizing on mistakes and blowing them out of proportion, setting up viable kill targets; establishing your innocence gives you some degree of latitude with the town should you make a mistake, and makes the mafia more reticent to get into a knock-down drag-out fight with you over your reads, which makes them less able to counter your reads when you do start to catch mafia.
3. Establishing your innocence gives the town a better chance of catching scum by reducing the number of viable miskill targets. Especially near the end of the game, when you only have one or two mafia left out of seven or so total players, multiple townies confirming their innocence has a substantial effect on the town's ability to catch mafia. More passive mafias tend to get steamrolled late simply because all of the townies did a good job of establishing their innocence and were able to use process of elimination to kill off the scum.
So we've talked a lot about what establishing your innocence can do for you. Now it's time to talk about how to do it, right?
Almost. First we're gonna talk about what, then how. Specifically, let's talk about the profile of an obviously town player; once we establish what this is, how to become one follows pretty intuitively.
The town benefits from clarity above all else. Specifically, of its individual members:
1. Clarity of Word
2. Clarity of Direction
3. Clarity of Intention
Clarity of word involves the mechanical aspects of your posts. Are they concise and do they make the point you want to make in a coherent, easily-processed way? Can people easily understand what it is you're saying? Your posts need to be long enough to get to a useful point without being winding and losing their direction. You can achieve this with two simple processes. First, don't post just to post. Frequency is important, but you have to have a purpose to your post. Make sure there is a clear point to what you're saying. Second, when you finish typing up a post, before you submit it, reread it to make sure that you can follow your own point easily. If you can't, delete and start over. If you can, go through with a fine-toothed comb and cut out as much extraneous verbiage as you can before posting. Economy of word is crucial to convincing people that what you have to say matters and that they should be reading your posts.
Clarity of direction involves the content aspects of your posts. Is it clear what you want out of the town for this turn? Is it clear to specific people you're addressing what it is you want out of them? Direction can be anything, you can be pressing a specific person for reads, talking about power role policy, trying to convince the town at large to kill someone, whatever; the point is to have a point and to make sure your point is productive. Once you've got a point, you're halfway there; clarity of word will help you make that point coherently, and clarity of intention will help you convince people that you're coming from the right place. Again, like with clarity of word, make sure there's a clear point to what you're saying. Another important aspect is being decisive. Don't be wishy-washy, don't give people reason not to believe you in your own posts. Mafia is a game about convincing people that you have the answers. If your posts clearly indicate that you don't believe in yourself and your direction, why the hell should anyone else? Make sure that you offer your own opinions and conclusions and do so without equivocation or waffling.
Clarity of intention tends to arise from the first two, but takes the question a step further. Is what you're doing in line with what a town player should be doing? Do your questions and arguments clearly work toward establishing the town's agenda of creating a productive posting environment and catching mafia? You need to make sure not only that your direction and phrasing is clear, but that both of them are coming from the right place. Make sure that your lines of inquiry and suspicion are leading toward a coherent end goal, and that that goal is pro-town, and you'll have demonstrated clear, pro-town intention and thereby established innocence.
Subset III: Posting and Reading Strategy
Alright, so you've established your innocence. Excellent! Now it's time to find scum. You're first going to do that by reading the thread carefully, and then by posting competently.
First, reading and rereading. When you've got people online you wanna talk to, feel free to get into a conversational frame of mind instead of a more formal, message board mentality. People are much better at spotting false emotion and deception than they are at consistently producing it, so the more "in the moment" you can get your suspects to play, the better your read will be. Conversational back-and-forth puts mafia on the spot and makes it hard for them to keep their story straight.
Outside of this, though, you should be taking a pretty careful, deliberate approach to reading the thread. It's actually a good idea NOT to read the thread post-by-post in chronological order; especially if other players are taking up the conversational idea I mentioned above, you're going to find yourself going through a lot of posts without really getting anywhere concrete. Instead, read with a "zoomed-out" perspective; skim through conversations, stopping only if something catches your eye as particularly suspicious, and try to get a quick read on whether the people involved are town or mafia and move accordingly. If you start reading through every single post looking for suspicious things, you're going to find suspicious things in every post. Skimming is a good way to check your own natural mistrust as a townie of the other players. Look for key identifying features like who's controlling the flow of the discussion and where they're taking it, who the major actors are, and what the motives of the players might be in asking particular questions or pushing particular reads. In particular with this last one, ask yourself: "What town objectives is this player attempting to achieve with this post? What scum objectives?" Far more often than not, posts that fall in line with town motivations come from a town perspective, and the same for scum. If you see a post in isolation that looks to be pushing a scum objective, ask first, accuse later. If you've got multiple posts that are doing this, and the answers you get to your asking don't satisfy you, then pull the trigger and make a case.
As far as posting strategy, the same characteristics that allow you to establish your innocence should come out in your posting and allow you to be effective in making your points and pushing your reads. Be clear in word, direction and intent. Condense your thoughts and reorganize sentences to fit a more natural logical progression.
One key area newer players struggle with is asking good questions. Too often newer players will post the very noncommittal "So X, what do you think of Y?" questions and get nowhere as a result. These questions suffer from a lack of direction because X doesn't know what the asker is looking for with respect to Y. Instead of asking X what he thinks of Y, we can make this question much better with some simple modifications. "So X, do you think Y is town, and why or why not?" This requires X to commit to a concrete position -- Y is town or Y is not town -- and provide at least superficial reasoning as to why. The asker can then look at X's reasons and, if unsatisfied, ask questions about those reasons. Follow-up questions like "Alright, now what about Z, is Z town and why/why not?" are great as well because the asker gets X thinking about Y in comparison to Z, which inspires not only comparison questions about how the two are playing but thoughts about whether Y and Z are on the same team.
No matter what you ask, remember to try to predict the answers you would expect town or scum to have to your question. Remember the old legal adage: Never ask a question you don't already know the answer to! Even if your prediction for the answer is wrong, it's important to try to predict it. If your mark answers the question as you'd expect a particular alignment to answer, good, you've got something to work with. If not, explore it more.
Subset IV: How To Be A Good Power Role
The first thing you should do as a town power role is to strip away the title. "Power role" carries an arbitrary implication of extra importance, as though you suddenly have some reason to play differently. Don't do this. Think of yourself as just another townie with an ability, and play like it. Don't get self-preservational because you're worried about letting your team down.
Avoid claiming if you can help it of course; mafia typically have a strong incentive to get rid of you and while you shouldn't get preoccupied with survival, there's no reason to throw away your ability by getting killed early, either. Good times to claim are (a) if you're about to be killed, (b) when you're at KILY (kill or lose; scenario where there's only one more townie than mafia), or (c) when you have important information about the game state that's worth giving up your anonymity over.
Part IV: Mafia Play
Subset I: Principles
OK, so you rolled scum instead. Now that the town knows how to be super-towny you're gonna get steamrolled and it'll be game over, right? No! Here's how you play the mafia side of the game and succeed.
As the mafia it's important to recognize that you're playing a stall game. Time is mostly on your side, not the town's. The key to playing the mafia side successfully is having a good temporal understanding of the game. Time is on your side in terms of numbers and pressure; as the game goes along townies must be increasingly accurate in their kills despite the mafia faction having a larger proportion of the town to dissuade people from those correct kills. However, time is against the mafia in one big respect: information. As the game goes on, the town get more information which allows them to make more accurate reads and kills. Therefore, the mafia's top priority is denial of information.
Scum play a more reactive game; instead of having a set "formula" like the townies do (establish innocence => ask good questions => pressure suspects => make good cases => kill scum), scum adjust to the play of the town. It does no good for example to suggest that scum emulate good townie play in a game where townies aren't playing well, because then they stick out as being "too" townie and eventually people wonder why they haven't been nightkilled. Scum want to blend in, which requires flexible reaction to the individual game instead of a formula. Instead, this section will be more topical in nature, dealing with various happenings that mafia need to be able to deal with.
Subset II: Team Dynamics
The first thing to do whenever your scumteam starts out is to feel one another out in the scumchat for play style differences and approaches to the game. Successful scumteams typically have a roughly 50/50 split between players who are relatively active and players who are relatively quiet. The active scum are referred to occasionally here as "misdirectors," while the quiet scum are "deep threats."
You need at least one ringleader, who's going to get involved with the town, attempt to steer kills and spread disinformation to disrupt the town's progress. Ideally you'll have a minimum of two such players so that they can riff off of each other and support one another as needed; it's a lot of pressure being the lone scum attempting to steer the town, so having a second one on-board helps a lot.
That said, active players tend to get killed early, and consequently active scum tend to get killed eventually for not being nightkilled. Thus it's also important that the mafia have at least one player and ideally two who can remain out of the spotlight, look reasonably townie but not rock the boat, and come out of the inevitable death of the misdirectors looking clean. This is where your more quiet players come in, they're already accustomed to lying low so they're excellent candidates for this. If your team has member-specific powers instead of faction-specific, you'll want to adjust accordingly.
If you have nothing but active players, this can be a boon simply because you're able to crowd out the active townies with a few nightkills and break any ability of the town to get you killed; but having a lot of active scum is a big risk because increased activity tends to lead to increased information being given to the town and increased risk of getting caught. On the other hand, scumteams without any active posters are typically doomed to failure; with no one running smokescreens and misdirection to throw off the town, the town tends to get organized and steamroll.
Once you've divided up roles, you'll typically want to give the primary deep threat shotcalling power. You'll organize the team's general strategy around getting this primary deep threat into the endgame, so you'll want to let him or her call the shots on who to engage, how, and why; on who to kill; etc. This makes the team more efficient and reduces the chance of a scum player going "lone wolf" and trying to make something happen on his own (which usually doesn't end well for the mafia).
Subset III: Posting Strategy
In general, just try to look like your understanding of the game state is evolving. Don't be static with reads, hold on too long to old material, etc. Respond to things as they're happening and try to be sensible about it. It's okay to be wrong; townies are all the time. Just make sure it makes sense when you are wrong.
In particular, remember to post misleading analysis. This goes double if you're a misdirector, as that's your exact job title. You have to make bad cases against townies but make them look like they're not intentionally bad. This isn't as hard as it sounds; the townies don't know the difference unless you're really obvious about it. Make cases like you would as town, look for people who agree and try to persuade them to push with you like you would as town, but if they start to take over and do most of the legwork, step aside and let them be the most outspoken proponent of your kill. Townies tend to have a kneejerk reaction where they kill the most outspoken proponent of an incorrect kill; if you let it be another townie, you've got another kill seeded, which might lead to another outspoken townie getting killed later, etc. Let the town do your dirty work if they start to come to your side of things!
Be careful with engaging vocal townies, especially ones who are being townread. Typically when you're trying to get the kill you want as scum, you want to start by persuading people who are inclined to agree with you, and build up a coalition of voters who aren't going to push back hard against you. Once you've got a reasonably sized group for the size of the game ready to kill your guy, then you can afford to engage the more vocal townies with the help of your newly-recruited supporters.
Don't forget to have active conversations with your scumteam on the thread, too. One of the easiest ways to catch the quiet partners of active scum is when you notice, on rereading, that occasionally active scum will talk to everyone BUT their quiet partners. So especially, make sure your misdirectors have substantial interactions with the deep threat, so you don't lose your deep threat to a simple mistake like this right off the bat.
In general, don't rush to correct mistaken assumptions or faulty logic unless it's being used to catch a teammate. No one's going to know that you noticed the faulty logic if you never say anything about it. You may be tempted to make these kinds of corrections to get town credit. Avoid this. Mistaken assumptions lead to faulty premises and bad information, which means that the longer you allow it to sit before it's discovered, the less time the town has to act on correct information.
In sum: remember to engage teammates, let the townies run with their own mistakes unless they're incriminating a parter, work to mislead the town actively, and feel free to violate any of the above at your leisure to win a particular game, because above doing all of this, scum win by being unpredictable.
Subset IV: Dealing with Accusations
The reality is that you will be accused of being scum in a game and at some point it will be true. If you're accused, then remain calm and address the holes in your opponent's case. Short of being mod-confirmed there will be holes in the case; cases are never truly ironclad. Don't get flustered, don't get angry at your accuser, just demonstrate briefly why you're town and move on to accusing other people. If it looks like you're going down then avoid saying anything that would tie you back to your teammates; if you can't think of anything to say that wouldn't, don't say anything.
On the other hand, if it's a teammate, you've got a difficult decision ahead of you. Where possible, always try to raise an alternate case against someone else, and avoid weighing in on the case against your teammate. If directly asked, answer according to the specific situation and try to find an excuse not to vote for your teammate if you can without being obvious about it. Your best chance of getting your teammate off the hook is to make a better case against a townie. If it looks like your teammate isn't going to get off the hook then you might want/need to bus them depending on how the situation looks.
Avoid busing teammates if you don't have to do it. Town credit is incredibly ephemeral in this game; you might think you're set for life after leading the charge against a teammate, but the reality is that if you don't continue producing then your goodwill with the town will evaporate. There are some circumstances near the endgame where it's appropriate to bus; for example, if one of your misdirectors is getting a little heat and you're one kill away from LYLO, it's okay for your deep threat to spearhead the kill of the faltering misdirector, because that will probably buy enough time for the deep threat to win. Remember, while you want to avoid busing where you can, you don't have to have everyone survive, either; you only need to make sure that at least one player survives to the endgame, and as long as the team wins, that's all that really counts.
Subset V: Nightkill Strategy
This is typically pretty subjective and depends a lot on the individual game state. In general I operate on the principle that townies are fundamentally insecure about their reads and can be dissuaded from pursuing their reads with enough pressure on other players. Therefore, I like to shoot players whose most recent reads imply a game state that I like. The results are somewhat counterintuitive, because it means I start off by shooting people who are nearly universally townread and think I'm town. They're some of your best supporters to pocket. Why do this? Because a corpse can't change its mind. You go into the day with the confirmed townie not only saying you're town but being unable to change his mind, you're looking pretty good. Furthermore if someone's pushing on you but not doing a good job of it, they look really bad when one of your supporters ends up dead. Some people go the opposite way, though, and they like to shoot people who are on the right track and accusing scum. This has another advantage -- a corpse can't argue with you, after all -- but it can leave you at risk if other townies see this and start putting the pieces together.
The main principle to being successful with nightkills is the same as with everything on the mafia side of the game: time is on your side, so be thinking ahead and plan your moves out before they happen. Kill people before they get too far on the right track to derail. Hit likely townies who are saying things you like so that they don't get a chance to change their minds. Whatever you do, make sure your kills are staying ahead of the curve.
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Previous Mafia Threads:
M1015
GMs: Durga, Foxcastle
M58
GMs: Jamiet99uk, dargorygel
M1014
GM: Hellenic Riot
M57
GMs: Fluminator, dargorygel
M1012
GM: Foxcastle
M56
GM: Squigs44
M1011
GM: Jamiet99uk
M55
GM: worcej
M1010
GM: Chaqa
M54
GM: Nephthys
M53
GM: Chaqa
M1009
GM: Foxcastle
M52
GM: Kitsune
M51
GM: worcej
M50
GMs: Chaqa, emc^42
M49
GM: RagingIke297
M1008
GM: yavuzovic
M48
GM: ND
M1007
GM: Foxcastle
M47
GM: Nephthys
M46
GMs: Jamiet99uk, worcej
Mafia 1007
GM: Foxcastle
M45
GMs: e.m.c^42, Percy Williams
Mini Mafia Invitational
GM: brainbomb
M44
GMs: ND, dargorygel
M43
GM: Jamiet99uk
M42
GMs: Squigs44, worcej
M41
GMs: Tom Bombadil, brainbomb
Mini Mafia IV
GM: yavuzovic
Mafia Invitational
GMs: Durga, worcej
M40
GMs: Foxcastle, brainbomb
Cultafia
GM: ND
Tiny Hunt 1
GM: WarLegend
M38
GMs: RagingIke297, WarLegend
M37
GM: ND
M36
GM: Tom Bombadil
M35
GMs: DemonRHK, Tom Bombadil
M34
GMs: Hellenic Riot, RagingIke297
M33
GMs: Jamiet99uk, RagingIke297
M32
GMs: brainbomb, Tom Bombadil
M31
GMs: captainmeme, peterlund
M30
GMs: Durga, peterlund
M29
GMs: bo_sox48, dargorygel
M28
GMs: ND, brainbomb
M27
GMs: Durga, dargorygel
M26
GMs: Jamiet99uk, Chaqa
M25
GMs: VashtaNeurotic, captainmeme
M24
GMs: DemonRHK, MoscowFleet
M23
GMs: ND, Chaqa
M22
GMs: ghug, DemonRHK
M21
GMs: Jamiet99uk, captainmeme
M20
GMs: Fluminator, Yoyoyozo
M19
GMs: Chaqa, VashtaNeurotic, captainmeme
M18
GMs: bo_sox48, wjessop
M17
GMs: Hellenic Riot, Durga
M16
GMs: TrPrado, ND
M15
GMs: DeathLlama8, captainmeme
M14
GM: y2kjbk
M13
GMs: Chaqa, Fluminator
M12
GMs: wjessop, Espi
M11
GMs: Valis2501, ghug
M10
GMs: ND, captainmeme
M9
GM: y2kjbk
M8
GM: Hellenic Riot
M7
GM: VashtaNeurotic
M5
GM: bo_sox48
M6
GM: Chaqa
M4
GM: VashtaNeurotic
M3.5
GM: Chaqa
M3
GM: President Eden
M2
GMs: captainmeme
M1
GM: President Eden
2
Re: wD Mafia Master Post
Join the mafia discord to insult Bo in real time
https://discord.gg/YKbrWJX
https://discord.gg/YKbrWJX
2
Re: wD Mafia Master Post
Hi all, Webdip needs a rep for Thingymans MU world mafia champs. I repped us last year and Id like to rep us again. I have a pretty good fan following on mu, im a regular there. If anyone objects I will yield as I did go last year. I can sub too. But just announcing my very keen interest in repping us again
6
Re: wD Mafia Master Post
do it, fake claim them to deathbrainbomb wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 4:08 amHi all, websub-par risk needs a rep for Thingymans MU world mafia champs. I repped us last year and Id like to rep us again. I have a pretty good fan following on mu, im a regular there. If anyone objects I will yield as I did go last year. I can sub too. But just announcing my very keen interest in repping us again
6
- dargorygel
- Site Moderator
- Posts: 6223
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Re: wD Mafia Master Post
So now the Peterbot has a sanctioned, official-sounding name. While I prefer, "Peterbot," "That Peterlund Thing," "The Amazing, Paper-Saving, Time-Saving, Hi-Tech Mafia Thing..." I suppose it is time for it to come of age. Thank you Peterlund!
3
Re: wD Mafia Master Post
So I will sit out M36 as self imposed punishment for dead posting dilly in m34.
And I accept a full lashing. I want you to not be gentle. My crimes are monstrous.
I bow before the council, dripping, ready to accept my flagellation
And I accept a full lashing. I want you to not be gentle. My crimes are monstrous.
I bow before the council, dripping, ready to accept my flagellation
Re: wD Mafia Master Post
AMENDED RULES TO WEBDIP MAFIA
INTRODUCTION
Mafia is an educated guessing game of epic proportions. The objective of the game (for the town majority) is to eliminate all the mafia members and or third party before they outnumber the rest of the town. Each player receives a role PM with a specific win condition. The game is typically active, so the thread will get big quickly. It is essential to read the thread and game instructions to play the game.
GENERAL RULES
0. The GM reserves the right to adjudicate individual scenarios that arise during the course of the game at his discretion.
1. All players must vote and post.
2. All players are forbidden from using non-sanctioned PMing, or copied mechanics.
3. DEADPOSTING
All spectators and players who have been eliminated are forbidden from posting on all comment threads related to the game notes. Dead players may not +1 or discuss the game with living players.
4. All players are forbidden from cheating, angleshooting or using OGI
5. All players are required to play to win.
6. Players and/or teams may not concede the game in public.
7. All players must not +1 other players' posts.
ELABORATION
0. Given a lack of omniscience, the GM cannot create a rule to resolve all possible scenarios pre-emptively. To compensate for this, the GM is permitted to resolve a given scenario however they see fit, within the remit of the rules listed above, in the interest of all participants. The GM will resolve all scenarios as closely as possible to the intention of the rules, and will present an explanation regarding the adjudication to the greatest possible detail (which does not compromise anything in-game) and as closely in accordance with the written rules as possible.
1. You MUST cast a vote at least once during each day phase. You may vote and then 'unvote' (see below) if you change your mind as the Day progresses, however you may not end the phase with an 'unvote' in place. Anyone violating this rule will be modkilled unless there are very extenuating circumstances. Ending the day with a vote on “No Lynch” is permitted. During each day phase, every player MUST make at least two game-related posts. The GMs will use reasonable discretion when applying this rule.
3. All in-game communications should be kept within the thread. Only GM endorsed QuickTopic threads can be used for communicating with one another outside of the main game thread; aside from this, there should be no other forms of private messaging between players. You may PM the GM with questions or instructions.
4. DEADPOSTING
Players who have been removed from the game are no longer playing the game, and will not be permitted to comment on it in private messages or comment threads. A special QuickTopic "God Thread" will be opened for individuals who wish to spectate on the game, or players who have been eliminated. Use this channel to discuss the game while it is still ongoing.
5. This is a catch-all rule intended to preserve the spirit of the game. If you are considering saying or doing something that may be against the spirit of the game, message the GM about it before saying/doing it and the GM will let you know whether it is allowed or not.
To clarify further: Players may not copy and paste any game related Mechanics. Players may not share personal correspondence between GM to player under any circumstances.
6. This rule simply means that your actions should in some conceivable way advance your win condition as stated in your role PM. This rule is somewhat subjective, because the difference between a mistake and sabotage is sometimes hard to determine; the GM will exercise caution and restraint in observing this rule. This also means that if you need to leave the game for any reason, you should not simply drop out, but should message me or the Co-GM first so we can determine the best course of action.
7. If someone wishes to concede defeat, they must PM the GM, or post in their relevant QT thread for the GM to check it over. Public concessions are not permitted.
8. You are not permitted to click the "+1" on any other player's in-game posts. Giving +1s to the GM, by contrast, is actively encouraged.
You may contact the GM in-game by writing ##CALL GM and then stating your question. The GM or Co-GM will answer if appropriate. This can also be done for vote checks, rule clarifications, or uncertainty and will be answered if appropriately phrased.
We will be using time.is for EOD and EON adjudication.
PENALTIES
The penalty for breaking one of the above rules is decided at the GM’s discretion, up to and including immediate removal from the game and/or sanctions from future games. Removal and/or sanction are instruments of last resort and will be used only if absolutely necessary. Sanctions such as future bans will be determined by the consensus of the active player base after the game has concluded. A player removed from the game may or may not have their role revealed on removal, depending on the circumstances surrounding their removal.
ROLE ACTIONS
If you are a Town Power Role or otherwise have any actions to take, please PM your action to the GM. Night actions will be processed at the end of the night and can be changed up to that point. The Mafia team may submit their individual night actions in the Mafia QT. The Mafia-Aligned role and Serial Killer may individually submit their actions to the GM via a PM.
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES
PLAYER SILENCES:
Players that have other participants on their mute list are asked to remove them for the duration of this game. Disputes stemming from outside of this game should not carry over into the gameplay. If they do, the GM reserves the right to address these issues and potentially remove or sanction players if it becomes a disruption.
FORUM SILENCES:
If a player is silenced on the forum by the site moderators/admins, an alternate will take their place for the duration of their silence. The silenced player will then have the option to take their position back over or leave it in the hands of the alternate. As long as the silence does not stem from actions involving the mafia thread, there will be no in-game sanctions for a forum silence.
REPLACEMENTS
A player wishing to drop out may be replaced at the GM's discretion. Players looking to sub out must inform GM privately.
Individuals wishing to serve as potential replacements must NOT join the out-of-game God QT. Replacement is not guaranteed.
TURN DURATION
This game’s Day phases will last 48 hours and Night phases will last 24 hours, unless cut short by in-game mechanics (e.g., hammer). Extensions may be granted at the GM’s discretion, but don’t count on it. Phase shifts will be at 5PM EST or 9PM GMT.
VOTING
There are three types of voting within this game: collective voting to execute perceived Mafia in Day phases, collective voting to end a Day or Night phase, and Mafia voting to kill town members in Night phases.
“Lynch” vote: The first level of voting is for whom you intend to kill. Notate this vote with a pair of hash symbols before your intended vote target. (e.g., ##VOTE ND) You do need to write out the player’s name in a legible way. If the GM cannot understand it then it can’t be counted. Two hash symbols followed by the word vote and the player name is a must for counting the vote. In the event of a tie during a lynch vote, no one shall be killed.
PLEASE NOTE: If you do not use double hashtags your vote will not be counted, for reasons of fairness but also because it is unlikely the GM will see your vote using the CTRL+F feature and this rule thus prevents vote miscounts.
Must Vote: At the end of the Day phase, all participating players must have their vote on a candidate although a vote to “No Lynch” is permitted. You may ##VOTE and then ##UNVOTE if you change your mind as the Day progresses, however you may not end the phase with an ##UNVOTE in place. Anyone violating this rule will be modkilled unless there are very extenuating circumstances. Ending the day with a vote on “No Lynch” is permitted.
Hammer Vote: The second level of voting is whether or not to employ the hammer mechanic. By default, days are set to 48 hours long, and nights to 24 hours long; however, players may instead elect to activate the hammer mechanic. Notate this vote with a pair of hashes before the word end. (EX: ##END). The day will end as soon as a majority of players are voting to endhammer the same player. If you are not able to vote before the hammer is dropped, you will not be penalized for failing to vote during that day. Night phases may not normally be hammered - any exception to this will be announced by the GM.
Mafia Vote: The third level of voting refers to Mafia members choosing their NK (nightkill) target during Night phases. The mafia members will use their separate QuickTopic thread to discuss this. Please make your votes in bold, like so: kill Zultar (< b > kill Zultar < / b >). Mafia NK will be decided by whatever role has the power to night kill. This may be voted on, but ultimately the mafia role with the killing power will conduct the kill and make the decision. Please see the mafia role descriptions for further information about how the mafia night kill power will be determined.
INTRODUCTION
Mafia is an educated guessing game of epic proportions. The objective of the game (for the town majority) is to eliminate all the mafia members and or third party before they outnumber the rest of the town. Each player receives a role PM with a specific win condition. The game is typically active, so the thread will get big quickly. It is essential to read the thread and game instructions to play the game.
GENERAL RULES
0. The GM reserves the right to adjudicate individual scenarios that arise during the course of the game at his discretion.
1. All players must vote and post.
2. All players are forbidden from using non-sanctioned PMing, or copied mechanics.
3. DEADPOSTING
All spectators and players who have been eliminated are forbidden from posting on all comment threads related to the game notes. Dead players may not +1 or discuss the game with living players.
4. All players are forbidden from cheating, angleshooting or using OGI
5. All players are required to play to win.
6. Players and/or teams may not concede the game in public.
7. All players must not +1 other players' posts.
ELABORATION
0. Given a lack of omniscience, the GM cannot create a rule to resolve all possible scenarios pre-emptively. To compensate for this, the GM is permitted to resolve a given scenario however they see fit, within the remit of the rules listed above, in the interest of all participants. The GM will resolve all scenarios as closely as possible to the intention of the rules, and will present an explanation regarding the adjudication to the greatest possible detail (which does not compromise anything in-game) and as closely in accordance with the written rules as possible.
1. You MUST cast a vote at least once during each day phase. You may vote and then 'unvote' (see below) if you change your mind as the Day progresses, however you may not end the phase with an 'unvote' in place. Anyone violating this rule will be modkilled unless there are very extenuating circumstances. Ending the day with a vote on “No Lynch” is permitted. During each day phase, every player MUST make at least two game-related posts. The GMs will use reasonable discretion when applying this rule.
3. All in-game communications should be kept within the thread. Only GM endorsed QuickTopic threads can be used for communicating with one another outside of the main game thread; aside from this, there should be no other forms of private messaging between players. You may PM the GM with questions or instructions.
4. DEADPOSTING
Players who have been removed from the game are no longer playing the game, and will not be permitted to comment on it in private messages or comment threads. A special QuickTopic "God Thread" will be opened for individuals who wish to spectate on the game, or players who have been eliminated. Use this channel to discuss the game while it is still ongoing.
5. This is a catch-all rule intended to preserve the spirit of the game. If you are considering saying or doing something that may be against the spirit of the game, message the GM about it before saying/doing it and the GM will let you know whether it is allowed or not.
To clarify further: Players may not copy and paste any game related Mechanics. Players may not share personal correspondence between GM to player under any circumstances.
6. This rule simply means that your actions should in some conceivable way advance your win condition as stated in your role PM. This rule is somewhat subjective, because the difference between a mistake and sabotage is sometimes hard to determine; the GM will exercise caution and restraint in observing this rule. This also means that if you need to leave the game for any reason, you should not simply drop out, but should message me or the Co-GM first so we can determine the best course of action.
7. If someone wishes to concede defeat, they must PM the GM, or post in their relevant QT thread for the GM to check it over. Public concessions are not permitted.
8. You are not permitted to click the "+1" on any other player's in-game posts. Giving +1s to the GM, by contrast, is actively encouraged.
You may contact the GM in-game by writing ##CALL GM and then stating your question. The GM or Co-GM will answer if appropriate. This can also be done for vote checks, rule clarifications, or uncertainty and will be answered if appropriately phrased.
We will be using time.is for EOD and EON adjudication.
PENALTIES
The penalty for breaking one of the above rules is decided at the GM’s discretion, up to and including immediate removal from the game and/or sanctions from future games. Removal and/or sanction are instruments of last resort and will be used only if absolutely necessary. Sanctions such as future bans will be determined by the consensus of the active player base after the game has concluded. A player removed from the game may or may not have their role revealed on removal, depending on the circumstances surrounding their removal.
ROLE ACTIONS
If you are a Town Power Role or otherwise have any actions to take, please PM your action to the GM. Night actions will be processed at the end of the night and can be changed up to that point. The Mafia team may submit their individual night actions in the Mafia QT. The Mafia-Aligned role and Serial Killer may individually submit their actions to the GM via a PM.
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES
PLAYER SILENCES:
Players that have other participants on their mute list are asked to remove them for the duration of this game. Disputes stemming from outside of this game should not carry over into the gameplay. If they do, the GM reserves the right to address these issues and potentially remove or sanction players if it becomes a disruption.
FORUM SILENCES:
If a player is silenced on the forum by the site moderators/admins, an alternate will take their place for the duration of their silence. The silenced player will then have the option to take their position back over or leave it in the hands of the alternate. As long as the silence does not stem from actions involving the mafia thread, there will be no in-game sanctions for a forum silence.
REPLACEMENTS
A player wishing to drop out may be replaced at the GM's discretion. Players looking to sub out must inform GM privately.
Individuals wishing to serve as potential replacements must NOT join the out-of-game God QT. Replacement is not guaranteed.
TURN DURATION
This game’s Day phases will last 48 hours and Night phases will last 24 hours, unless cut short by in-game mechanics (e.g., hammer). Extensions may be granted at the GM’s discretion, but don’t count on it. Phase shifts will be at 5PM EST or 9PM GMT.
VOTING
There are three types of voting within this game: collective voting to execute perceived Mafia in Day phases, collective voting to end a Day or Night phase, and Mafia voting to kill town members in Night phases.
“Lynch” vote: The first level of voting is for whom you intend to kill. Notate this vote with a pair of hash symbols before your intended vote target. (e.g., ##VOTE ND) You do need to write out the player’s name in a legible way. If the GM cannot understand it then it can’t be counted. Two hash symbols followed by the word vote and the player name is a must for counting the vote. In the event of a tie during a lynch vote, no one shall be killed.
PLEASE NOTE: If you do not use double hashtags your vote will not be counted, for reasons of fairness but also because it is unlikely the GM will see your vote using the CTRL+F feature and this rule thus prevents vote miscounts.
Must Vote: At the end of the Day phase, all participating players must have their vote on a candidate although a vote to “No Lynch” is permitted. You may ##VOTE and then ##UNVOTE if you change your mind as the Day progresses, however you may not end the phase with an ##UNVOTE in place. Anyone violating this rule will be modkilled unless there are very extenuating circumstances. Ending the day with a vote on “No Lynch” is permitted.
Hammer Vote: The second level of voting is whether or not to employ the hammer mechanic. By default, days are set to 48 hours long, and nights to 24 hours long; however, players may instead elect to activate the hammer mechanic. Notate this vote with a pair of hashes before the word end. (EX: ##END). The day will end as soon as a majority of players are voting to endhammer the same player. If you are not able to vote before the hammer is dropped, you will not be penalized for failing to vote during that day. Night phases may not normally be hammered - any exception to this will be announced by the GM.
Mafia Vote: The third level of voting refers to Mafia members choosing their NK (nightkill) target during Night phases. The mafia members will use their separate QuickTopic thread to discuss this. Please make your votes in bold, like so: kill Zultar (< b > kill Zultar < / b >). Mafia NK will be decided by whatever role has the power to night kill. This may be voted on, but ultimately the mafia role with the killing power will conduct the kill and make the decision. Please see the mafia role descriptions for further information about how the mafia night kill power will be determined.
Re: wD Mafia Master Post
Items removed: screen shots of role PM as copied mechanics pretty much covers this and it felt redundant. I dont think weve ever had anyone sharing role pm screen shots but that is just simply already listed.
Also encryption is not relevant to list as a rule here.
The rules we really need focus on are +1 and deadposting. Public conceding is very rare, and basically this rule list trims it a bit and takes up less space.
Also encryption is not relevant to list as a rule here.
The rules we really need focus on are +1 and deadposting. Public conceding is very rare, and basically this rule list trims it a bit and takes up less space.
Re: wD Mafia Master Post
The rules and elaboration of the rules is completely up to the GMs. The only rules I wrote here are a recommendation or a baseline.
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Re: wD Mafia Master Post
I just assumed at this point after 38 plus games if you count all the mini ones and discord that we maybe are copy pasting antiquaited stuff.
As it turns out I was mostly just trying to rewrite it to take up less space
As it turns out I was mostly just trying to rewrite it to take up less space
Re: wD Mafia Master Post
I think
"9.) All players must not +1 other players' posts."
is a little ambiguous. I think it should read "nobody involved in the game in any way may +1 a players' post". As is, it says nothing about spectators or GM's +1ing, which I think is potentially harmful.
"9.) All players must not +1 other players' posts."
is a little ambiguous. I think it should read "nobody involved in the game in any way may +1 a players' post". As is, it says nothing about spectators or GM's +1ing, which I think is potentially harmful.
1
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- Posts: 2282
- Joined: Fri Sep 29, 2017 3:35 pm
- Location: Locked in Bo_Sox's Basement
- Karma: 849
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Re: wD Mafia Master Post
There was a good amount of copy paste from what he had
Re: wD Mafia Master Post
Personally I don't really see an issue with living players +1ing posts, but once you're a spectator, it should not be allowed. I'll edit it though.Ezio wrote: ↑Sat Aug 11, 2018 5:00 pmI think
"9.) All players must not +1 other players' posts."
is a little ambiguous. I think it should read "nobody involved in the game in any way may +1 a players' post". As is, it says nothing about spectators or GM's +1ing, which I think is potentially harmful.
1
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- Posts: 2282
- Joined: Fri Sep 29, 2017 3:35 pm
- Location: Locked in Bo_Sox's Basement
- Karma: 849
- Contact:
Re: wD Mafia Master Post
A formal decision needs to be made, I don't think it's a huge deal if players +1 other players, but it could be used to influence the game in unwanted ways...bo_sox48 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 11, 2018 9:22 pmPersonally I don't really see an issue with living players +1ing posts, but once you're a spectator, it should not be allowed. I'll edit it though.Ezio wrote: ↑Sat Aug 11, 2018 5:00 pmI think
"9.) All players must not +1 other players' posts."
is a little ambiguous. I think it should read "nobody involved in the game in any way may +1 a players' post". As is, it says nothing about spectators or GM's +1ing, which I think is potentially harmful.
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