Flip-a-Coin Mafia?

[Pudd'nhead Wilson]

As much as I hate to start new threads (and I'll probably start two of them) I can't find another thread to put this discussion under. ;So here goes:With the advent of Backwards Mafia, an interesting new thing has been brought before the public: a mafia game where all the logic and character study in the world won't get you anywhere--and where that's the point of the game ;As one player so aptly put it, the good guys may know that they're the good guys, but they can't prove it. ;An innocent townie can study all the posts he wants--to no avail. ;He might as well just flip a coin. ;This is much like a mafia game where no one knows what their role is: they just send in their kill/protect choices and hope that when the dust clears they were on the right side all along. ;Or a game where no roles are revealed, ever, even after someone is lynched. ;Without the ability to know anything in the game, all a player can do is read the posts and guess. ;My first question is: do these games really count as Mafia? ;I mean, shouldn't Mafia be a game of skill, and not a lottery?

[Antrax]

I basically agree. I didn't like any of the games which tried things like mafias don't know each other (which meant there was no way on earth to deduce one from the other, because they truly didn't know each other). I don't think that's mafia at all. For a game of mafia to be mafia, you need a group whose purpose is to kill everybody not on their group. The members of that group should know each other and be allowed to communicate without people outside their group hearing those discussions. However, having a backwards mafia isn't such a bad idea -- read the GL Bladerunner mafia, which I think is the game I liked the most since I started playing. In that game I was part of the replicant group, which everybody in the town was led to believe were the enemy. mith exposed me on the first day (he was the Bladerunner) and I spent the entire game proving to people we weren't evil, and that the real bad guys were a different group altogether. I don't think the game was unfair for any of the players in it -- although I must say the replicants' job was a very hard one. Antrax

[Artist Formerly Known as]

Themed Mafia is seriously fecked. ;Backwards is the last themed game I'm going to be involved in in any capacity. ;In regular Mafia, two of the most important strategic factors involved are:1) ;You know what roles there are and what they do. ;Who has them is the only thing you have to figure out. ;Basically, you know what the feck you should be doing: lynching Mafiosi, serial killers, and arsonists.2) ;Coming out with your role shouldn't be something that happens frequently; the cop coming out should be one of the game's critical moments, not something that happens the first round and barely matters.I'm going to continue to play Backwards; I signed up for it, after all. ;Fortunately, it looks like I'll be dead soon.

[OcularGold]

Quote I spent the entire game proving to people we weren't evil, and that the real bad guys were a different group altogether LIAR

[mith]

Artistetc., yeah, I've been thinking the same thing, lately. Most Theme games don't tell you what roles you can expect, and sometimes there is an unfair advantage to people that have read/seen whatever it is based on. The only exception I can think of off the top of my head is dethy's DD games, which were excellent IMO. Something I've been considering for my next game is to provide a list of all roles or abilities, but include a rule that no one can reveal their role. Don't know how well it'd work though.

[Macros]

i think the joy of themed games is making roles for the characters, but making their roles so twisted, the advantage of knowing the bok.theme is that you've heard the names before, and maybe have a rough idea of thier alignment

[jeep]

I'll throw in my ;0.02.  Summay: Antrax, I agree with you.  AFKAD, I disagree with you, however, I'm glad to hear that you are going to follow through with your commitment.  mith, I'm not convinced of the rule that doesn't allow you to reveal roles.Now for the details, you can read if you want, I didn't send much time organizing my thougths, just responded to other comments in the thread:*sigh*  I shouldn't post this, but since it was already brought up:First: In backwards, there was never any rule that said that mafia members were on the side of the town.  It was a proposal put out by one of the players.  Just because the town believed that person doesn't make it true.  (AFKAD, you claimed godfather, so if you are telling the truth, you clearly have more information than the rest of the town.)  The title of 'backwards' made people believe it.  It's not a sure thing though.  It may very well be a flop of a game, but we'll have to play it out to be sure.  However, with a few players already sure it will flop, I think the game has little chance unless they really do play to the best of their abilities.  Heck, I'm convinced that Star Wars mafia on GL will flop because of the troublemakers not being able to win. ;But I will still play the game to the best of my ability since I signed up. ;However, I'll be more careful the next time I sign up for The Master's games to check them out mroe carefully. ;I think he spent too much time working on the theme and left game balance out.Second:  I'm certain that logic and character study WILL be involved in backwards.  You will just need to look at it slightly differently.  It's like playing give-away checkers instead of checkers.  Both have excellent strategic possiblilities, and most of the concepts carry over, you just need to do it in 'reverse.'Third: Backwards is different than the GL-Konfusion type game.  More information is bound to surface to help everyone figure out what is going on. ;Fourth: mith, the point of themed games is to add a little different flavor.  It is ce

[unregistered]

I love jeep, have I mentioned that?  He is married so there is no point in trying to convince myself and him we should turn gay, he's having a baby so it looks like there is little chance he will adopt me, so I'm left to simply enjoy being his friend and knowing I always have someone on the planet who will be jonesing to play and discuss games as much as I do.  (Sigh) Hindsight is is 20/20, if I had my life to do over I'd a moved out to Seattle in '94 when it sounded like ANYONE could get a job at WotC.ANYWAY, back to mafia.  Joe made all kinds of excellent point but just to summarize I'd say that the important thing to remember is that themed mafia is not bad for mafia.I love reading the Dune thread, I'm only glad I have somone to talk to that is familiar with the books, otherwise I would be lost.  Likewise it drove me nuts to read the Bladerunner thread and people playing didn't even know who JF Sebastian was in the movie  Bladerunner and Backwards mafia are still in progress so I won't comment on them as far as game mechanics are concerned, but we should all look to this thread at their conclusion.Basically I don't care if a game on mafiascum I play is real mafia or not, it is a game and that is good enough for me.  What I am concerned about is being part of a community that plays and makes good games.  (BTW, what is Richard Garfield working on these days?)sketchwick

[jeep]

Richard Garfield is supposed to have worked on the Star Wars TCG that WotC put out. ;I hear it's good. ;I'll be trying it out on Tuesday. ;I have not heard what he is going to work on next. ;Wish I was in that loop. ;-JEEP

[Dragon Phoenix]

Themed mafia can be fun, even though you are not aware of the details of the movie/book/whatever that the mafia game is based on. When Samadhi ran his Covenant Mafia at GL, I managed to win it (as the last survivor of the evil side), even though I never read a single line of these books. I did do some web searches though, in order to come up with a plausible role at the right time.Making balanced games becomes increasingly difficult when you start deviating from the straightforward mafia/cop/doctor/townies formula. But it makes little difference whether your polymorphing scientist happens to go by the name of Rincewind as he did in my Discworld mafia.The mod must try however to make sure that the game lay-out does not suffer too much from the theme idea. A good example of how not to do things was the earliest plan for pokemon mafia at the GL where the would-be mod wanted to create a 12-person mason lodge..... ; There have been a large number of themed mafia games at the GL, I have played in many of them and enjoyed most.

[jeep]

DP, I agree with you. The theme needs to not interfere with the game. In fact, ideally, it should enhance the game. That is up to the mod. The thing I have a problem with is that Backwards mafia is being knocked because we don't know what's going on. Some assumptions are being made and people are saying things like "I quit" just because we don't know what's going on. I think this should be discussed in detail AFTER the game is complete.

-JEEP

[Luna]

But it makes little difference whether your polymorphing scientist happens to go by the name of Rincewind as he did in my Discworld mafia.

Yeah, I'm entirely in agreement with DP here. A theme game, really, is basically just a Mafia game with pretty costumes - it doesn't really matter whether your cop is called "the cop" or "Vimes" or what... I suppose one difference might be that in a theme game, players usually aren't given a list of roles in the first post, so all the mafia have to do is come up with a convincing-sounding role (like, say, Samadhi claiming to be Agnes Nitt in Discworld Mafia) and it becomes a game of "hmm, would the mods really have used that role?" rather than a game of "hmm, is his logic sound? - is he really innocent?" (It's possible to do that in a standard mafia game too - "I'm the mad scientist! It's a surprise role the mod didn't tell you about! Don't lynch me!" - but I guess themed games do make it easier.)

Also, I think it might be useful to have a distinction between Themed Mafia (e.g. Discworld Mafia, D&D Mafia, etc) which is basically a standard game with different role names, and Experimental Mafia (e.g. Backwards Mafia, Verbose Mafia, the upcoming Full Communications Mafia), which is when you're trying out something new and weird like "no-one knows what their role is" or "communication is allowed during the day" or whatever... I'm not sure which of these variations Duke is unhappy with. (maybe both?)

[Luna]

Oh yeah, also, with regard to what mith said about a rule forbidding players from revealing roles - I'm not too keen on that, because I think we'd end up with stuff like:

"Vote mole. But I can't tell you why."

"No, don't vote me! I'm... er... just don't vote me, ok?"

Which wouldn't be good.

I'm going to be running a themed game in a couple of weeks, and I was considering providing a list of roles in the first post, as in standard mafia - something like

"within this game, there will be:

3 mafia-style roles
2 cop-style roles
1 doc-style role"

etc, but without actually naming or describing the roles in depth. Anyone have any thoughts on whether that could work, or whether it's a terrible idea, or what?