2 questions: never-ending story & non-English player

[Emollient]

Hi there, I'm new.

I decided to register after reading on the wiki that Mafiascum is "more focused on analysis and logic than on most sites". There's a question I wanted to ask.

I never played Mafia. I usually get bored quickly when I play games (although this game, Mafia, feels really appealing, intellectually). But I like creating board game rules and small video games, and I was wondering, do you know if there exists a never-ending version of Mafia, face-to-face or online? Has anybody created such a game? What I mean is, new players would be entering the game potentially every day, and players would earn points differently, depending on which side they're on. Town people get points when they get rid of a scum. Mafia people get points when town people mistakenly vote out a townie. Then there's a hi-score table, and you just... try to reach the top of the hill. Rules could be different but, you get the gist. What do you think?

Another question, while I'm at it. English is not my mother tongue, and even though my English is decent (I hope!), I tend to think that I could not actually read "through" the lines... you know, getting all the subtleties you probably need to be an enjoyable team member. Should I look for a Mafia group in French? Or is it possible to play decently, even when you're not a native speaker?

Thx for your time

[Datisi]

Or is it possible to play decently, even when you're not a native speaker?

as a fellow non-native english speaker, you'll be fine! a lot of players here aren't native speakers, and i haven't noticed that impact their play or performance much.

there probably are some subtleties in text that might be missed at first, but playing the game without noticing them is very much possible, and you get used to them and start noticing them fairly quicky. so i'd say don't let that worry you!

[Ythan]

as a fellow non-native english speaker, you'll be fine! a lot of players here aren't native speakers, and i haven't noticed that impact their play or performance much.

We just selected this poster right here over all the native English speakers to represent us in an intersite competition on another English language board I don't think it's much of a handicap.

[Ythan]

Also welcome!

[Gamma Emerald]

I remember there being a thread about an endless mafia game a while back
The issue would be eventually you probably run out of people to join in unless a) stable new player flow or b) dead players get allowed back in at some point

[Ythan]

If you're gonna let dead players back in make them make a big visually obvious first post whenever they rejoin to make it easier to distinguish segments of their iso belonging to different roles.

[Gammagooey]

Hi Emollient!

In regards to a "never-ending game", I don't think it exists as you've described it, but there are a few games that have gone for "biggest/longest game" - Firebringer's Masochist mafia had year-long deadlines (viewtopic.php?f=3&t=78083) and as a result had a lot of messing around and people checking in once every several weeks/month or so. Chess Mafia (viewtopic.php?t=9621) lasted for almost 2 years with a bunch of replacements, and wound up being more collective chess playing than mafia.
There's some other ultra-long games listed on the Records page of the wiki ( https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Records ) if you wanna check - I personally tend to avoid joining the games I think might become gigantic since they become very difficult to read/look back through and make well-informed choices on who to vote out, but there are definitely people that thrive in the super-long games (or at least get a lot of enjoyment out of them)

The game as you described is mostly do-able I think? But there'd be a few issues, with probably the biggest just being people losing interest and dropping out and how to deal with that (do you modkill+flip them, does it count as voting them out, do you replace them, do their points go to whoever replaces them if so, etc.). Another would be that the high score table would need to only update for players when THEY get voted out/removed from the game, otherwise you could track who's town/mafia just by checking the differences in scores between eliminations. (Unless you start modifying how people get points depending on their role or the specific person/people voted out, but adding more complexity is going to make it harder to keep track of for both the mod and the players and probably makes it less fair and less "mafia vs town", though that isn't necessarily a bad thing)

We've also done Team Mafia competitions (https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Team_Mafia) where 3-5 people join up as a team and play in simultaneous separate games against others that have joined up together, sharing info+thoughts with each other and trying to win all of their games which I think works better than one never-ending game in most aspects, particularly in giving people a reason to keep playing to the end of the games and being able to rate/rank the teams at the end of the series of games without having the rankings themselves influence who gets voted out in-game.
Similarly, on EpicMafia (before the site got shut down), they used to run ranked tournaments over the course of around 2 real-life weeks - you could join up to 5 ranked games per day, and you got points based on how likely it was for your team (either town or mafia) to win that setup - a perfectly balanced setup would give 50 points to whichever team won, whereas a slightly town-sided setup might give 58 points to mafia if they won but only 42 to town if they won. And then when the first player hits 2000 points, the tournament would end at the end of that day and award first/second/third places to the players with the top 3 amount of points scored for that tournament. Obviously that works a lot better for rapid-paced chat mafia than it would with our games that generally last a month or longer, but if you're just looking for ways to compare people playing mafia competitively it can be done in a bunch of ways!

[Emollient]

Hi Datisi, Ythan, Gamma Emerald, and Gammagooe. Thanks for welcoming me.

It's good to hear that players who don't natively speak English are not uncommon here, and can even be chosen as representative of MS. It says something. Really makes me wanna give it a try. Now when I read game threads I barely get 10% of what is said, but I guess I just need to get used to the lingo. So for now I'll keep reading newbie games for a little while. I'd like not to be a complete idiot on my first game.



About the endless Mafia, which I now call "Open City", I have something quite specific in mind. You probably know what a Mud is. Open city would be an hybrid between Mafia and an oversimplified Mud. There are different places in the city. Players may have side missions, but the aim of the game is still to find out who's who. There are roles, but not an overload of hundreds of roles, just a few carefully selected ones.

Dead players can immediately play again with a new character. When you start again, the game engine gives you a fresh character with a role (randomly chosen, but with a 20% scum / 80% town probability, or so). You choose a name for your new character, maybe a short description, and there you go. You can go politics, and try to become the mayor, or go scarface and try to become the godfather. Or both, obviously. In this game, being the godfather really means something... you know, this guy has been an efficient town member for 6 months, he runs things, he's done so much for the town community... except he's scum. See?

The hi-score table is indeed updated only when characters die. As long as your character is alive, your score apparently doesn't change. When your character is finally eliminated, your player score is updated, counting as explained earlier.

I think the loss of interest might be mitigated as the player CAN see his/her own score rising as other people get eliminated. Other players can't see your score, but you know you're progressively climbing the hill, trying to reach the top. Also, plots and side missions could help keeping it intense.

No mod needed for housekeeping (scores, lims, ...etc), a game engine takes care of it. Mods are still needed to tame human wickedness though.

That's a very young idea I'm working on for a few days, so I'd gracefully welcome any thought/suggestions...


Now, I'm going back to studying Mafia game threads. See you soon in one of those newbies...

[Emollient]

Guys, the more I read the game thread, the more I'm excited, impatient, curious... and a bit intimated too! I keep reading. I'll also need to see the glossary before I queue in.
I can see why you like it.

[Irrelephant11]

All of us were intimidated in our first game! Don't let that stop you. Once you've finished a game or two that feeling starts to fade

[Emollient]

OK let's do this.
I'm in

[Emollient]

Best to ask, so... may I open a new thread to discuss the "endless" Mafia variant I referred to as Open City, please? I'd like to talk about which PR (if any) might be interesting, describe the project more precisely, get feedback of course, and maybe devlog a bit as I design & implement it. Also, if it's ok to do so, where is it best to start this thread?

[Gammagooey]

Mafia Discussion (this forum) is probably the best place for a thread like that - making a new thread would be fine or you could start by just putting details in here until you have it a bit more fleshed out since it sounds like it'd be a pretty lengthy project.

Once you get far enough along to have details that you'd want to be private (like the specific starting power roles for town/mafia you want to be in the game rather than broader things like what types of PRs could work well for the format), you can post in the setup Review thread here (viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5379) to ask for a few people that wouldn't be playing to give it a closer look and then request by PM to a listmod (anyone with a Green colored name in the Queue forum, like lilith2013 or Something_Smart) that they make a Private Topic for further discussion in the Private Topics forum that only you and your chosen reviewers would be able to see.

[Emollient]

Thank you
I'll put details right here for now.

The main characteristics of the "Open City" Mafia variant is that players can leave the game or enter the game anytime, and the game never ends, as explained above. My first concern, during the last few days, has been to look for a solution to a very simple problem:

If an eliminated player, who played as scum, decides to play again immediately, he/she/they would have knowledge of who's who, and could ruin the game. Intuitively, I thought that the "Anonymous Mafia" variant would help here: if everyone plays through an Alt, no problem. Then I realized that it didn't solve the problem at all, because when entering the game again, the player would find the same Mafiosi sitting around the table, still playing with the same alts. Easy targets.

For a moment I thought I was screwed. The only way was to "reset" the game as soon as a Mafia player is busted: the Mafia would become another (random) group of players, and the game would go on. But it wasn't satisfying, because I wanted to keep my idea of a real Godfather, an evil mind beyond suspicion, who could keep the role for months or even years. Then I found what I was looking for. Here.

It's a pyramid.
When a player enters the game, the player is randomly assigned an alignment, like throw a die and get 6, you're Mafia, else you're Town. If you're Mafia, an existing Mafioso recruits you, but anonymously, through a mafia-pseudonym. You don't know the real identity of your recruiter, and you don't know the identity of the ones who recruited your recruiter, and so on, up to the top of the pyramid. But when time has come for YOU to recruit a new Mafioso, you DO know your recruit's real identity. And when your recruits also recruit fresh members of the pyramid, you also know their identities.

What that means is, if you get busted, chances are high that all of those Mafiosi you recruited (directly or indirectly) might fall too if you play again as Town. Which is quite realistic! Town now wants to bring down big heads, because they know that the organization is more likely to fall like dominoes.

Now when a new player gets 6 and must be recruited, choice is left to the oldest member of the Mafia. Either the Mastermind chooses to recruit the new player directly, or he/she/they chooses to ask one of his/her/their recruits to recruit the new player. Then this person has to make the same choice: recruiting directly, or ask a recruit to recruit the new member. And so on down to the bottom of the pyramid.

I'm working on this post for more than an hour and half, but I'm not sure the description above is clear, well explained, and easily understandable. So my first step is simply to ask: does it make sense? How does it sound?

[MegAzumarill]

I don't think it solves the problem for the most part.
You take away some of the "Informed Minority" aspect that makes mafia fun.
You can still be outed through no fault of your own as mafia if your recruiter, who you don't know, dies.

[Emollient]

Mmmh I believe it rather

adds

to the "informed minority" aspect of the game. Indeed, the higher you are in the hierarchy, the more you know. All Mafiosi can still communicate together, from the top to the bottom of the pyramid. But information is power: if you're the Mastermind, you can really pull all the strings like a puppeteer; if you're rookie scum of course, at first you mainly do what you're told, walking in the dark, but you will progressively access higher levels of the Family, hopefully up to the top. Seems fair. And if your recruiter falls, even though you're in danger, it doesn't necessarily mean you're out too. You

can

still survive... if you play tight. What do you say?

[MegAzumarill]

I mean it doesn't encourage people to play if there's a one in 6 chance they could be at risk to die through no fault of their own by rolling scum. In fact it may encourage players to try to be elimmed if they roll scum so they could play town.

Secondly it makes sure that the kind of long term mastermind will never actually exist. It incentivises eliminating older players because once you hit the oldest mafia, town can eliminate basically everyone that is evil assuming those people return. At some point all initial players will die and if they rejoin the game is effectively permanently ruined.

What would happen if either side won the game? What if no mafiosos exist anymore or all town members die off?

[Emollient]

If all Mafiosi get eliminated, or if all Townies get eliminated, I think the game should reset. Everyone becomes Town, except one player who becomes Mafia. Then the game continues as usual. It would allow Mafia to rebuild as a tree structure.

I see your point, so I'm evolving the concept a bit, you tell me whether or not you think it helps:

Maybe it should be an Anonymafia after all. Every player, even Town, plays through Alts. A new "fresh" Alt is created when a player enters or re-enters the game. Mafiosi also have their "Mafia-pseudonym" as explained above. It would allow certain tactics, like entering the game

as scum

and saying, "hey, I've been scum on my last character, I know a part of the Mafia", and lim a few Townies.

I think it solves a part of the problem, but there's still the question of the oldest player. Town could decide to eliminate the oldest player, just because he/she/they is the oldest player. Maybe the Mastermind should have the possibility to go submarine: disappearing for a few days, and then reappearing with a new Alt, pretending to be a new player. Not sure it solves it though.

Edit:
Note the oldest player is not necessarily the Mastermind. There's still an 83% probability he/she/they is Town.

Edit:
Completely out-of-topic, I know, but I just need to shoutout on the the rooftops... I'm in love! Her name's Yana. Perfect match, perfect girl for me, I just found a slice of heaven, right there. Life is strange. It's about Hope. Sometimes we forget that we never know what comes next, and what comes next can be pure magic.

[Enchant]

I saw some forums who naturally tried... Not exactly this, but fitting.

They roleplayed characters, part of which was "Evil" and tried to kill everyone else. It was infinity game though, if Good taked uppedhand, new players just replaced, some part of them are "Evil", and vice versa.

Evil didn't know other evil though, they must deduced it though playing and could't knew for sure. Basically it was sandbox and can't be called mafia in direct way.


It died fairly fast, due specifics, disinterest and "Why you killed me uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh" which turned in just killing for grudges.

[Emollient]

Was the "evil group" able to communicate privately?

[Enchant]

Idk i didn't participate.

[MegAzumarill]

If the game is going to reset at some point, probably disallow rejoining and market it as a game that people can join in at any time.

[Emollient]

Like... people can join in anytime, but only once?
MegAzumarill, how would you enforce that people don't rejoin, if anybody can join anytime?

I don't think it would reset often. Actually, it should never reset. It's just a backup plan, plan B just in case it would happen... It's meant to be played by more or less 100 players concurrently (yeah optimistic), on a dedicated (automated) platform. Once launched it should not reset, or if it does, it's every once in a decade.

If the "evil group" (in that game you're talking about Enchant) doesn't have a private communication channel, indeed it's not even Mafia.
But in Open City, every Mafioso can always communicate privately with any other Mafioso.

[MegAzumarill]

I was assuming you were talking about this in a context of mafiascum, not in general.
Not sure what to say about a larger picture, with some refinements the pseudonym thing could work.

[Emollient]

Ah OK, I understand.
In Mafiascum, I don't know but I guess it would be a hell for mods, wouldn't it?

Anyway it still needs a lot of work, refinements... thoughts!