Game idea: Mafia + trading/gambling

[serrapaladin]

So I've been pretty into the idea of public opinion and markets recently, so I had the idea of investigating these mechanics in Mafia. At the simplest level, I envisage something like a Mish-Mash game running parallel to a game of Mafia, where people can trade/gamble on the true alignments of players. This would require participants to tackle the quantitative nature of their reads and certainty (albeit in a game they are spectating).

A market could be implemented through a currency, but I'm thinking a sufficiently fine-grained barter system would do. So, say, everyone has 100 tokens corresponding to each player in the game of Mafia (so 900 in a 9p), which are worth $1 if that player is scum, and $0 if they're town. Then offers could be made (or removed) in a thread for proposed trades, and if someone accepts an open trade, it happens. On hammers, offers are wiped. If there's interest, play could continue over a series of games.

I think the more players participate, the more interesting the group dynamics would become. I think a lot of people here enjoy reading/following games they're not in, but the strong ban on discussion of ongoing games means there's little social aspect to this.

Would anyone be interested in playing something like this? And has anything like it been done?

Comments would be appreciated.

---

Practically, what are the rule- and tech-related aspects here? The Mafia game should probably be unaffected, so the trading topic would need to be private from those players, so probably a private topic with players wanting to play being invited? I hope if the game of Mafia is explicitly coupled to the trading game, that would be fine by the rules - would the trading part be counted as a Mish-Mash game or something? What about just attaching a game like this to a newly starting Open game - so long as the topic is private?

[The_Jester]

Whenever there's gambling involved, count me in

[RadiantCowbells]

This is how you get cheating and grudges.

[The_Jester]

True, looking at the CS:GO betting community, it can get very toxic.

[serrapaladin]

I don't mean real money, but framing things in dollars is more enticing than arbitrary internet points.

[RadiantCowbells]

I knew what you meant. It still induces cheating and grudges.

[Randomnamechange]

Varsoon is probably planning to do it, except with various gambling syndicates possessing PTs

[serrapaladin]

I knew what you meant. It still induces cheating and grudges.

Why would this be more pronounced than in a normal game of Mafia? There's still the sitewide ban on discussing ongoing games except where explicitly allowed, and I'm not convinced people would want to break that to get ahead in either of the games.

Con Mafia was admittedly a bit gimmicky, but that had an unregulated MD topic and QT, which lead to trolling, but not really cheating.

[Accountant]

50 ways for this to go wrong and only 1 way to go right