Pragmatic Mafia Idea

[Ogianres]

I have been pondering recently about the possibility of a mafia set-up based around people trying to save their own skins. It has most of the basic roles of a standard 20-25 game, and are as follows:
Vig [maybe over-eager]
Doc
Cop
Mafia
As well as the non-standard masonic cult (with limitations on recruiting explained later)
however, it has no normal townies, but instead, the staple role is something along the lines of: [NOTE: "[]" means maybe or possibly changeable]

You are a

Pragmatic Citizen

. All this talk about organized criminals is a bit dangerous, and you don't want to get involved in this. People who get in the way of violent criminals end up dead, and people who don't stay okay. You don't need to worry about protecting your neighbor, he/she should worry about protecting themselves. You know the Coalition of Concerned Citizens want these miscreants arrested, and that's dangerous. Of course, the CCC might also want

you

arrested if they think you are working for the lawbreakers. Or worse, one of the more fanatical citizens might take more drastic measures to ensure that you aren't a threat to other people. You are going for self-preservation, and will do whatever it takes to ensure it. You win if you survive to the end of the game.

The masonic cult is something like this:

You are a member [the leader, NOTE 1] of the

Coalition of Concerned Citizens (or CCC)

. You have learned that a group of dangerous lawbreakers is currently involved in serious crimes that have occured in town, and your organization won't stand for it. You feel it is the coalition's responsibility to turn in these dangerous criminals to the police. You also feel that you should organize others into driving out these criminals, but be careful, most citizens in the area are jaded and selfish, and might not want to join the CCC. Your organization chooses someone to send out to try and recruit someone every [other] night. You win when all of the town threats are eliminated.

NOTE 1: I feel that if the pragmatic citizens are given the abilty to choose whether or not to join, then the masonic cult should start out a little larger. Basically, it would make sure that they aren't completely screwed if the players don't want to join them.
The vig, doc, and cop are all anit-mafia-aligned, in a sense. I think having an over-eager vig might seem a bit, um, mean, but it might force a bit more balance in the pragmatic citizens.
Basically, this whole set-up is based around the idea of mistrust. A person could be confirmed as a pragmatic citizen, but it doesn't mean you aren't working with the mafia. The cop is slightly nerfed, in that his investigations can be worthless. However, this can be remedied if he and another power-role are recruited as masons and can coordinate night abilities.
I can understand if people find flaws in the mechanics, which I would love to hear about. I was only concerned with the basic idea behind this set up when I was coming up with it.

[Jack]

hmm I think all the pragmatic citizens would choose to join the coalition.

[Mr Stoofer]

Roles that have survival as their win condition suck.

[Glork]

Roles that have survival as their win condition suck.

QFT.


According to my wiki stats, in 42 completed games, I have survived a whopping eight times. Needless to say, most players don't survive a Mafia game... especially a large one.

EDIT: I think it's even worse when it's a game-wide mechanic. See Lights Out 1 for details. (You can just see the comments at the end of the game. Notice, too, that LO2 axed this mechanic because of the post-game reactions.)

[Elephant Hell]

I got killed in a recent game (different forum) right after outing a powerful Cult (they had extra abilities and bonuses) at the beginning of day 2, and it's pretty annoying that, because most roles included a Survivor clause, I lose automatically despite taking out the main threat to the town. As several other people have already said, games with all roles having survivor clauses really suffer in quality.

[Zindaras]

Survivor clauses are stupid as town, in my opinion. I simply choose to ignore them. It's too much of a hassle to try not only to catch scum and survive at the same time. They counter each other too much.

[Ogianres]

Survivor clauses are stupid as town, in my opinion. I simply choose to ignore them. It's too much of a hassle to try not only to catch scum and survive at the same time. They counter each other too much.

Well, one of the fundamental aspects of the pragmatic citizens is that they aren't town-aligned, unless they want to be. Seems to be a pretty unanimous feeling that survivors suck, so what if this was just a set-up for a bastard mod game? I just thought it would be interesting to contemplate ramping up distrust and backstabbing in the already mistrustful environment of a mafia game.

[Mr. Flay]

RPS Mafia had, in theory, three independent factions that didn't know their own members. While not a perfect analogy, almost all incarnations of this idea have suffered from the weakness that comes from not having the ability to sacrifice yourself for the greater good of the Uninformed Majority. I'd think that the first step to be taken by them would be to band together all of the pragmatists, as Jack said. Nothing else makes sense, if that's an option, and then your mechanic is defeated.

[Yosarian2]

Survivor clauses are stupid as town, in my opinion. I simply choose to ignore them. It's too much of a hassle to try not only to catch scum and survive at the same time. They counter each other too much.

Well, one of the fundamental aspects of the pragmatic citizens is that they aren't town-aligned, unless they want to be. Seems to be a pretty unanimous feeling that survivors suck, so what if this was just a set-up for a bastard mod game? I just thought it would be interesting to contemplate ramping up distrust and backstabbing in the already mistrustful environment of a mafia game.

The problem is, is that if you have to survive to win, you can't get lynched, and you can't get nightkilled, and those are both higher priorities to you then catching scum. If you post something that someone thinks is a scumtell, you could get lynched. If you do something to make yourself look like a confirmed innocent, or do something to make the scum worried, you might get nightkilled. Ergo, the correct move for a survivor type role is to post very little, just barely enough to not get attacked for lurking. When a huge percentage of the town has a strong motivation to basically do as little as possible, the game crawls along, goes nowhere fast, and either dies or is just incredibly boring.

[bigAl]

The problem with survivors is that there are there are so many ways to lose. If you're starting at night, you could get night killed and lose even before making a post...