Ethics: Kingmakers and Cults

[Seol]

If there's a tactic which could allow a draw, but risks a loss - a loss that would be inevitable if you didn't attempt the draw - you go for the draw. The cult is no less your enemy than the Mafia.

Of course, if that's contingent on the scum being trusted not to take advantage of an opportunity to win at night, I'd even go so far as to say it's unethical of them to follow through on their promises - by the rules of the game, they're duty-bound to lie, cheat and steal the win.

[Seol]

If "1)", you should help lynch the mafia. If "2)", you should try to get a draw.

What's 1 - the option where it's possible you get recruited, and thus have a chance of winning? In that case, yes, obv you play for the win.

(And if you're the mafia, you're ethically obliged to break your promise; and if you're the townie, you're ethically obliged not to punish the mafia for breaking his promise in an earlier game. But that's for later.)

On the latter comment, what do you mean by "punish"? Predicting others' behaviour based on past actions is fair game, IMO - grudges are not.

[Seol]

By 1) and 2), I meant the ones from my earlier post -- 1) means the "play for your win" ethic, 2) means the "play for your current team's win" ethic. Both seem self-consistent; you just have to agree on which one to assume. Mith seems to be assuming 2).

If alignments are mutable, you

have

to assume 2, I would think. Playing for your team's win is only seen as a primary motivation because it's analagous as play for your own win in most (ie, nonmutable alignment) setups. I can't see any ethical argument in favour of throwing away a personal win on the basis of mutable alignments.

For example, I'll cite Simpsons Mafia, where Aelyn was recruited by the cult but outed as having been recruited in a game where there was known to be a de-culter. Where do your loyalties lie there?

His play was to promise to betray the cult once he'd been converted, but steadfastly refuse to give anything away whilst he was cult. That's gotta be a pretty messy example as they go.

[Seol]

Yes, I meant you have to assume 1). D'oh.

To elaborate - if roles are mutable, then right from the beginning of the game your win condition is

actually

"win with the town, unless you're recruited, in which case win with the cult" - only, you're not told the second bit, although you can work that out as the game progresses. It's not as if people are always told full role functionality in their role PMs - I could cite backup cops or non-sane cops here. With a win condition like that, playing with the objective of changing teams seems to be a perfectly legitimate tactic to me.

[Seol]

Question 2 falls in between. From a game theory point of view, it asks how much a Win-by-changing-sides is worth relative to a "normal" Win/Draw. But from an ethical stand point, I think (hope) it questions what a "Win" even means.

This is defined by the mod, simple as that. Your original win condition is not gospel and it does not force loyalties on you - any loyalties are loyalties of convenience, nothing more. I would have no compunction in changing sides at the drop of a hat if I thought it would aid my chances of winning.

[Seol]

I disagree, Seol. When the mod designed the game, he assumed, he had to assume, that every player would do their best to make their side win.

Did he? Or did he have to assume that every player would do the best to make sure

they

won? I think different mods would approach that from different angles, but a good mod would have a game which isn't severely unbalanced by either approach.

If your win condition states "you win when all anti-town people are dead", then that is your goal, and you have to do your best to achieve it.

If your role PM says you're a cop, and you later find out that yes, you're a cop,

but

there are added details you didn't know about at first (namely, you're paranoid), then you'd be stupid not to take those added details into account when deciding your play.

If your role PM says your win condition is "win with town", and you later find out that yes, that is your win condition is win with town,

but

there are added details you didn't know about at first (namely, that a role out there can modify your win condition), then you'd be stupid not to take those added details into account when deciding your play.

Is it unethical for an SK to come out to a psychotherapist?

If the cult grabs you and brainwashes you, your side might change, but unless and until that happens you have to do your best to destroy the cult.

Do I? Why? What's wrong with being brainwashed?

Otherwise, if some townies started playing with the goal of joining the cult and then destroying the town, it would completly unbalance the game; I can't even imagine how you could balance a game with a cult if it's expected that some townies might or might not try to betray the rest of the town to help the cult at some point.

There are tactical reasons to play against the cult - in most situations playing into the cult is a highly risky strategy, and that's what balances it. But if it's not supposed to count as a win, then the person to tell us that should be the Mod. What counts as a win is the final scoreline, nothing more, nothing less.

[Seol]

If the cult grabs you and brainwashes you, your side might change, but unless and until that happens you have to do your best to destroy the cult.

Do I? Why? What's wrong with being brainwashed?

You have to do your best to destroy the cult, because your win condition says you're supposed to destroy all anti-town people.

And you cunningly snipped my "hidden wincon appendix" argument.

I'll repeat it in stronger terms, and see if you respond. Having a "win with town" win condition is effectively analagous to having a win condition of "You win with cult, unless you fail to get yourself recruited, in which case you win with town". It's not put like that in your role PM, but once you know there's a cult, you know that is

mechanically identical

to your true win condition. You have to derive that information, but that doesn't make it any less true.

As for the "game works better" argument, well, I agree it works better, but that should be reflected in amending the rules - which is exactly what happened. I can only think of one game run recently which had a "you have to be alive to win" rule, and I thought there was a good reason why it should be implemented in that game (I now think I was wrong). However, even if I thought the game worked better in a "win with teams" setup, I would play to survive if that's what the game told me I needed to do to win.

[Seol]

Is it unethical for an SK to come out to a psychotherapist?

According to many of the players in Married to the Mob, it apparently is. Or at least you better be sure that the psychologist actually is a psychologist and not scum making a wild role claim.

Oh, it might be tactically unsound, but I don't see how it's unethical...

[Seol]

(shrug) Well, if your initial win condition is "you win with the town", and the town does not win, then you failed to win with the town, and one could argue that you have therefore failed to meet your win condition and therefore lost.

Besides, from a flavor point of view, it just seems wrong to be play Star Trek mafia and decide to try to get assimilated by the Borg so that you'll win with the Borg. I'm not sure how the mod could lay that out in the rules, though.

Well, fundamentally, that's roleplaying. If you want to play that way, fair enough I guess, but that's not really how Mafia works as far as I'm concerned - it's an abstract framework, that's all. I don't see any merit in perceiving wins as losses.

It does beg the question of how cults should be used, though... personally, I think they're an absolute minefield of a role and should never be used.

(hint: this means my next game will feature a cult)

[Seol]

Seol, I'd like a bit of clarification. In your first post on Question 2, you said:

If there's a tactic which could allow a draw, but risks a loss - a loss that would be inevitable if you didn't attempt the draw - you go for the draw. The cult is no less your enemy than the Mafia.

But later you said:

I can't see any ethical argument in favour of throwing away a personal win on the basis of mutable alignments.

How do these statements fit together?

Simple. They're looking at different situations. The first case was looking at one where a personal win

was not available

, as is clear from the context:

If there's a tactic which could allow a draw, but risks a loss -

a loss that would be inevitable if you didn't attempt the draw

- you go for the draw. The cult is no less your enemy than the Mafia.

That's referring to the interpretation at that point that the cult does not recruit you post-lynch, because they win immediately, and you lose. In that situation, the cult is no less your enemy than the Mafia because it's equally impossible to win with either. If there is a possibility of winning with cult, then I'd consider that pursuing that possibility perfectly legitimate.

The cult is no less your enemy than the Mafia

in that situation

, because from your perspective at that point they're equivalent threats. I don't think that's

generally

true, though.

This is defined by the mod, simple as that. Your original win condition is not gospel and it does not force loyalties on you - any loyalties are loyalties of convenience, nothing more.

Why is the original win condition not gospel? There may be the possibility of a change at some point in the future, but I think implicit in the idea of a win condition is that the player will play for that win condition until told to do otherwise.

The original win condition is not gospel for one reason - you can derive that the Mod does not consider it gospel, because he's made it mutable. Part of Mafia is working out what aspects of the game mechanics are present that you are not aware of because of your role PM, and using them to your advantage - whether it be discovering that your investigation results are actually reversed, that you can reason based on the flavour and it's the roles based on blue cards who are scum, or that it's possible to win by changing my win condition rather than following the instructions in my role PM - once I realise that, I consider it an addendum to my role that the Mod simply hasn't explicity told me.

If the Mod allows me to win by changing my alignment, it is therefore sanctioned by the Mod as a potential tactic. I'm still playing within the framework the Mod provided, and playing within my role. I'm just reasoning beyond the text he put in my role PM, which I'm sure you'll agree is an absolutely fundamental aspect of Mafia.

As the idea of following your win condition as written being implicit, isn't the same true of trusting cop results? Yet, nobody would argue it's unethical to question your sanity as a cop. I really don't see where the parallel breaks down.

(Aside: Would the Townie in question ever receive the new win condition anyway? If the Mafia is lynched, the Cult wins the instant that the Townie is recruited. He comes into a Cult that has in some sense already won.)

That's the context I was considering in my first statement. For the second, I'm imagining a hypothetical undefined situation where I

can

win as cult.

Right, we can continue this discussion, but let's go to a real Kingmaker question.

Question 3: 3 Player Endgame

1 SK (must kill every night, unused one-shot protection)
1 Mafia (must kill every night)
1 Townie

With the draw ruled out, how would you, Unfortunate Townie, go about choosing the winner?

Arbitrarily. A win is impossible, so I no longer have an interest in the game - my actions no longer effect my result. And yet, my actions determine the winner, so my decision can only be made for non-tactical reasons. Therefore, I'm playing favourites whoever I choose - so I'd go with whatever I felt like doing at the time, and not consider the decision one I had any responsibility for. Rather, that is the fault of whoever lost for leaving themselves exposed to an arbitrary decision by myself in endgame. Neither

deserves

the win, but one of them got lucky.

[Seol]

Hmm.

Well, I really do like the idea of cults and such; I think they work really well in mafia, and even just the possibility that there might be a cult in a specific game adds all kinds of interesting complexity to it.

So, if I was designing a game, and I wanted to set it up in such a way so that you would try your hardest to make the town win as long as you were town, and then to try to get the cult to win once you were converted, how would you suggest I do that? The idea suggested before (to decree as mod that some wins are worth "more" then others in this game; for example, starting as town and winning as cult is worth less then starting as town and winning as town) would work, but it seems a bit ungainly. Is there any better way to do it?

I'm not sure it's necessary. I can't think of many get-myself-recruited scenarios that are plausible. I would very, very rarely consider playing into the cult as townie, purely on a tactical basis (and those situations where I would are generally ones where I'd pretty much lost otherwise anyway). Whilst I think the ethics of the situation are interesting, I don't see it being a downfall of game design featuring cults.

Furthermore, any ways you amend cults (such as Thok's suggestions) aren't likely to affect people's decisions in that game, simply because people have to make assumptions on how the cult works (another danger in the tactics of cult-coveting - what if my perceptions about the amendments to my role PM are incorrect? What if the "cult" is actually just the name of Mafia Group #2? That would be a pretty savage bastard-modding venture ) and the effect your changes will have on their perception won't actually be realised until postgame analysis, when it'll simply be a drop in the cult design metagame ocean.

[Seol]

fadeblue: So if you do get (say, unintentionally) recruited by a cult on day 1, and you and the cult carry out an amazing victory, you think you should get less of a win than the cult originator because you failed your original task?

(shrug) And if you're the SK and get killed night 1, you lose. It's unfortunate, sure, but I don't see anything wrong with giving a player "less" of a win because they got unlucky night 1. Stuff happens.

That's a perfectly reasonable position to take, as a mod. If that's your position, design the game to reflect it.

Or one could go farther, and just say right in the rules in all your games (even the ones there isn't a cult in) "Your job is to make your side win. Telling the town who your scum mates are because one of them annoyed you,

This is, IMO, completely unacceptable behaviour - but it's behaviour that's covered by the "ethics in Mafia are defined by playing for the win" principle. In this case, a player is deliberately harming his team-mates, [iand his own[/i], chances of winning the game. Therefore, unethical.

or helping a cult win in exchange for getting recruited, is very poor sportsmanship and is strictly against the rules".

See, I don't see that it

is

poor sportsmanship. It's within the rules as they currently exist, it might damage the chances of other players' victories but that's a common theme amongst Mafia roles, and it shows lateral thought and innovation. If it became a problem with games and was causing imbalances, then maybe it would be a problem worth solving. Can anyone cite a single game that was damaged or undermined by a pro-town player playing into being recruited?

We are, I believe, talking about a previously unprecedented event which looks like it's in the grey area of what some people believe to be ethically acceptable. That's the point of debates like this. I can quite clearly see why the idea appears unethical.... but then, murdering people in their sleep isn't normally considered ethical either. Hell, if we take the original situation as proposed and allow a recruitment postlynch, the situations our character faces are:

1) Get killed.
2) Join forces with a religious nut, get rid of the murderer before he kills you, and live in peace thereafter.

What's unethical about situation 2?

Hell, as far as I can see, the pro-town win condition could be considered to read "get the town to the point where all threats are removed, and you can live in peace and safety thereafter". That fits for all cases where the scum roles are killing roles. That's one reason why I'd consider any "playing for the draw" in my games to qualify as a town win - Mafia aren't interested in drawing, whereas townies only really want the killing to stop. They aren't on a mission to do good - they just want to

survive

. Interestingly, a cult win

still fits with that principle

.

It does mean that the existence of cults undermines the town's motivation and possibility even capacity to play as a team. If that's something you, as a mod, are uncomfortable with, then feel free to find a solution. If it's something you're uncomfortable with as a player, then you need to be more flexible. Many roles will do unexpected things to you and/or other players. If you play Mafia, you will be betrayed, regularly. That's part of the game.

[Seol]

1) Get killed.
2) Join forces with a religious nut, get rid of the murderer before he kills you, and live in peace thereafter.

What's unethical about situation 2?

But nearly all games assume the townies don't care whether they survive; they just care whether or not the town gets rid of the murderers.

But

why

do they want to get rid of the murderers? I figure it's "so I don't get murdered!". That's why I said this:

Hell, as far as I can see, the pro-town win condition could be considered to read "get the town to the point where all threats are removed, and you can live in peace and safety thereafter".

Also, I don't see the cult as murderers.... at least, not in the situation I cited.

I still see it as a decision that individual mods can (and must) make. Either you tell players to play for their own win, which means the game gets polluted by weird incentives;

You're implying here that playing for the cross-win happens. Have you ever seen it? Hell, I have a cross-win on my record, but I've never seen it

played for

.

or you tell players to play for their current team's win, which means they can sometimes win by (deliberately?) playing badly and lose by playing well.

I don't think you should explicitly say either.

[Seol]

What I would do in this situation depends on the win condition of the cult/scum. Are they supposed to get just control of 50% of the town or more than 50% of the town?

I would probably go for a tie,

What do you mean, tie? You can't just agree a tie. You can vote for a lynch, or vote no lynch. After all, looking at it flavourfully, you're the townie and you've got the cult recruiter on one side and the scum with a gun on the other. You say "truce?". What'll they say? They'll say "sure", then kill you in the night. They're scum, after all, and vicious liars to boot.

You quite simply

don't have any power

over them, so you can't force them into any agreements. Therefore, as a mod, I'd disallow intentional draws, and consider any (forced or voluntary) stalemate situation a victory for the town.

[Seol]

I'm not talking about what the win conditions

are

, as far as I'm concerned if we're dealing with Mafia as a pure abstraction (my usual approach) the win condition as is already gives us our answer in respect of what's ethical (ie, play for the win). What I'm doing there is trying to peel back a layer, and try and work out what the win condition is meant to "mean", looking at it from a flavour/analogy to real life approach.

Why

, flavourfully, does the town have to kill the scum? Not because of ideals, or for revenge. No, the town wants the scum dead because they're a threat to the town. That's why people can still win with the cult - because they're safe in the cult after being recruited. And that's why I can see it being a legitimate choice for a townie.

OK, so it may be unethical for someone to join a cult to save their own skin and then ritually flay their old comrades, but then again it's unethical for people to go round stabbing each other with rusty knives, yet nobody would argue SKs would be unethical in submitting nightchoices. It's an

understandable and realistic

thing for a townie to do, and that to me is what

makes

it legitimate if we're approaching from a flavour angle.

[Seol]

What about townies trying to get themselves killed to avoid getting recruited by a weak cult? That makes perfect sense if you're playing for a personal win, but unlike getting recruited to survive, I don't see any possible flavor-based reason for it.

Martyrs. People who refused to change faith purely to guarantee their own survival, believing the cause of that faith was not just. Countless examples from history.

[Seol]

Run it and let it run; if the situation arises where surviving with the cult is clearly the best option, why wouldn't the town take it?

Because you don't want to flay your family in a satanistic ritual to appease the evil demons of the underworld?

You clearly haven't met my family.

Heh. OK, so why would they want to avoid being recruited by a weak cult, but not by a strong cult? (edit: this was in reply to Seol.)

That's the thing. I don't think getting yourself killed makes flavour sense at all. Being able to win when dead is a divergence from flavour in the name of improving the enjoyability and coherence of the game.

[Seol]

That's why I would put that line in my rules, and just make it illegal to betray your side for any reason, in any situation.

So I can win if I get recruited if and only if I did not act in such a way to encourage or enable that recruitment? Define that. What would elicit a modkill?