The Root of Toxicity in Mafia Games

[Dannflor]

I feel like a large part of mafia versus other team based games like League or something similar is the aspect of of getting your team to work together. Like, that's an actual core part of the gameplay and you can accomplish it in a way that something like League (or any other team based game) doesn't really allow.

I think that's something that people ignore sometimes? Or rather, when people try to engage in that aspect of the game it usually devolves into toxicity, which makes sense because anger is the easiest emotion. But I think treating it as a space where you

can

cultivate relationships leads to both more pleasant and successful games. Being nice to people is generally more persuasive than being mean to people, which is useful for getting people to work together and do what you want—which is useful as both town and scum!

[Dannflor]

policy lynches are playing to win future games in most cases which is against the spirit of the game

[Dannflor]

grayer area because you can make a good argument for why it's the best way to win the current game

and then it just also has the side effect of potentially affecting future games

I feel like when it's more about the future games with less care about the current game is when it becomes problematic. Like with your policy I'm sure you make an exception every now and then if you happen to be hard town reading a player who hard defends scum. Or if there was literally an innocent on the player in question, to take it to an extreme example, you wouldn't lynch them either.

[Dannflor]

Do you think win/loss records and the quantification of “good play” leads to more toxicity?

I think to truly answer this question you need to define what is toxicity. Is toxicity being right/wrong, or is it a personality clash? I personally think toxicity has a bit of being right/wrong, but in general weighs more heavily on being a personality issue.

Depends how you define toxicity

I think a decent minority of MS thinks that my general playstyle is toxic just for being what it is without me having to say a word against anyone in the game.

In that sense, sure. In traditional sense, no.

I think the word toxic starts to lose its meaning when it's applied to "this playstyle that rubs me the wrong way" versus like

actual toxic behavior towards other people

[Dannflor]

Spoiler: :(

VC 1.BLACKLIST

Dannflor (1): popsofctown

Not Voting:

Dannflor

With 2 alive, 1 to make Dannflor sad

Deadline: (expired on 2020-02-23 00:36:42)

[Dannflor]

[Dannflor]

The most common paths to scum wins that I see in games are one where a significant faction of town scumread each scum but at least one scum had at least a few townies who hard townread them and defend them, and in the end town lynches people no one really thinks is going to flip scum as a compromise because the people hard defending wear out the people with correct scumreads until they give up on that read.

See: Shoshin, Volpe, but this is actually more common in games without me because I have no issues brute forcing a scum lynch over the objections of whichever townie hard defends them

this is how alisae v pine was won

[Dannflor]

because then ppl have to admit rc is good at mafia