Anonymous Mafia

[Nancy Drew 39]

does it really remove meta from the game, though? people will try to match players to accounts. some will straight up claim their accounts in order to substantiate their claims - indeed, town might try to force a mass nameclaim on D1 and scum will have only weak incentives to lie. you end up with a game that's far from anonymous. you can try to ban these behaviors - identity fishing and claiming, but when it comes to softer forms of these behaviors (eg breadcrumbing your identity or voting based on secret hunches about a player's true identity), both mods and players are left in a fog when it comes to what kind of behavior is okay that leaves town playing disingenuously and the game feeling less enjoyable. meta is inescapable.

In the anonymous game I played on MU, that was disallowed, so were other players hinting at or trying to guess other players’ identities. If you neglect that stipulation, it defeats the entire purpose of making the game anonymous in the first place.

[Nancy Drew 39]

Well the idea is for all slots in all games to be anonymous. Eventually you'd get players claiming to be someone else if it were advantageous. The name claim wouldn't matter.

It specifically puts more weight on the actual game play of that game in particular. I personally feel like that's how mafia is supposed to be played. A clean slate every game.

Hypothetically if name claiming wasn't even a thing it'd be very interesting to see how a handful of these games played out compared to normal games.

I’d prefer it but it’s extra work for the mod, since they’re the one who needs to create all of the anonymous alt accounts.

[Nancy Drew 39]

It's impossible to enforce usefully. People will

still

try to make and use guesses about who's in a given slot to guide their decision-making and people will

still

try to breadcrumb or otherwise make obvious their true identities.

In turn, you'll have a hell of a time reliably distinguishing these activities from permitted behaviors. Furthermore, players will be forced to hide thought processes underlying their decision-making ("I can't say that I think mastina is this person and would never do this as town!") AND alter their own play to avoid mod suspicion that they're trying to out their main accounts.

Not true. The mod explicitly states this in the rules and will take appropriate means to rail in any offenders. That really isn’t all that hard. Yes, you wouldn’t be allowed to either rely on your own meta, or utilize meta in making reads, which would help you to become a better player in the long run.

[Nancy Drew 39]

Anonymous games seem scary at first but I really enjoyed not knowing who was who att. Anonymous games would be especially great for someone like RC, who gets NK’d early almost every damn game, as town.

[Nancy Drew 39]

I would also really enjoy having my actual gameplay scrutinized over my meta. As town, I tend to over rely on my meta and it trips me up as scum. If you’ve ever rolled scum with people who know your scumgame, it kind of sucks.

[Nancy Drew 39]

100% agree, that’s why I wish there would be more anonymous games on here. Some game, even require anonymity and can’t be played otherwise. The Ditto comes to mind, because one of it’s unique mechanics involves shapeshifting into another player and effectively taking over their slot.

[Nancy Drew 39]

Of course it is, you just pm the game mod who creates anonymous accounts. They wouldn’t even need to post anything more than the current # of players who were signed up.

[Nancy Drew 39]

Have you ever played mafia on this site?

People will absolutely play the meta game and out alts if they think it gives them even a slight advantage.

Not if the mod expressly states, that’s against the rules and they should also probably mention that in the sign up thread as well - that if you violate this rule, you may be force replaced.

[Nancy Drew 39]

but again, the rule is impossible to enforce adequately and requires doublethink for players to follow

I’ve played anonymous mafia, where that rule was

strictly

enforced and no one violated it, since no one wanted to be kicked out of the damn game. People WILL follow the mod’s rules, so long as they’re explicitly and clearly stated.

[Nancy Drew 39]

Not if the mod expressly states, that’s against the rules and they should also probably mention that in the sign up thread as well - that if you violate this rule, you may be force replaced.

If you have to have a mod rule that actively punishes claiming or things of that nature, you're probably running a flawed mechanic

It worked pretty well in the setup I played - at least that part of it anyway.

[Nancy Drew 39]

shrug

had this discussion enough times that i don't even really feel like retreading the same points. if you don't like meta then i hope you get to play in more anonymous games, let me know if you want me to mod one sometime (privately, obviously)

I don’t mind meta, I just think we deserve a choice. Not having meta/anonymous games, can be a really interesting/fun alternative. I would love to see more anonymous games on here - maybe even an anonymous games’ queue.

[Nancy Drew 39]

I like that and you bring up a great point.

you can say the same thing in the opposite direction.

When they created the game do you think they had one thought at all about the fact there would be similar patterns in interactions after a plethora of similar games?

Because at this point your playing another game altogether. When the player becomes self aware of their meta you're then playing the game in a way it wasn't intended to be played imo. You're manipulating how you'd respond to the game and it's events because of your history with the other players. You're actions have more so to do with things outside of the game than the game itself.

Now is that really even playing the game at all? Because the game is not your primary concern any more. Your history with the other players is. The game takes a back seat to that.

The real selling point to playing anonymous games, is to help to improve you as a player. Let’s say, a certain player wins almost all of their town games because they are excellent at applying meta but is shit at making non-meta reads, what happens to that same player as town in a game where he hasn’t any meta with any of the playerlist? That’s why having more anonymous games are important and ought to be encouraged. I also don’t think ideal sleuthing ought to be ideally based on if player X being “chatty” being AI, should be more impressive than player X is ___ alignment because their play is futhering a scum/town wincon, for example. Over reliance on meta, weakens you as a player, imo.

[Nancy Drew 39]

I can understand why some people find it intimidating but it’s a completely different kind of mafia experience than what most people are used to. It’s kind of fun, making reads where no one knows anyone’s meta but too many seem to be closeminded about it.

[Nancy Drew 39]

I think demand is there because look at how many alts there are

Not really the same thing. What makes anonymous mafia unique is, EVERYONE is anonymous. NO ONE has any familiarity with anyone else’s meta and the stricter the rules are about this aspect of this setup, the better. Sure, people will try to guess obviously but as long as they aren’t allowed to do it publicly - similar to the ongoing game rule - the better.

And yes, because the game I was in was anonymous, I did intentionally and successfully try to hide any blatantly obvious “Nancy” tells, which I don’t usually bother to do when I just play with an alt.

[Nancy Drew 39]

I meant demand over time, similar to how marathons tend to go

I have no real opinion on the idea itself other than it feels extreme to go this route to solve a problem. I'd probably join one for giggles eventually, but I have a feeling it would take a lot of time before towns learn how to scum hunt in this type of setting so I would wait for a few games to end first.

They learn to scumhunt by relying on things other than meta. I don’t see what exactly is remotely “extreme” about this at all. The best mafia players are unreadable by meta anyway, so this is ideally what all serious mafia players ought to be eventually striving for anyway. I’m not remotely opposed to meta reads but I want to strengthen other methods of scumhunting, which anonymous games essentially forces you to.

[Nancy Drew 39]

Hot take: power roles are there to prevent mL’s, not to find scum

I think pr roles are mostly for balance, as mountainous games are generally more scumsided.

[Nancy Drew 39]

It's an interesting concept but around 10% of the playerbase would play too obviously.

Flavor Leaf would be instantly recognizable for example.

This is kind of splitting hairs. It really doesn’t defeat the purpose of him playing in an anonymous game, even if some people figure it out. The very fact, that no one would be allowed to say this is FL, is the obvious point.

[Nancy Drew 39]

I’m not surprised at all by this, why should I be? I just think that over reliance on meta reads, weakens one’s abilities to rely on other methods of scumhunting.

[Nancy Drew 39]

I wouldn’t want to entirely do away with meta, I just want to improve at scumhunting. You know to my ultimate surprise, people actually read me similar to how they would in a regular game. I expected to be mislynched but that obviously didn’t happen.

[Nancy Drew 39]

It SEEMS like he's talking more about experience of the game rather than "meta" of oneself or a particular player.

Regardless, I appreciate you looking that up and mentioning it. Very cool.

It's a bit hypocritical for me to talk about how the game was meant to be played at creation... When I'm trying to apply that on a website in forums lol.

Regardless we have an opportunity to create a new unique experience that would be fantastic and it just isn't being done.

It’s neither unique or new to MU though, which is where I played my anonymous game but that game would be perfect for MS > MU, because they don’t have a lot of games with unique mechanics, that aren’t insane 12/12 mashes over there.

That particular game, HAD to be anonymous due to the supercool shapeshifting mechanic. Anyone who has any interest at all in experiencing that really interesting and fun mechanic, can only find it in an anonymous game, so people who are limiting themselves to meta-based games are cheating themselves out of experiencing interesting and unique mechanics, so maybe the detractors haven’t really taken that into account.

[Nancy Drew 39]

Psychology is vital to a game like mafia though.

When you play face to face, to people play with masks and voice changers?

Mafia was never a game that was 100% based on logic and reasoning in a purely textual context.

Especially as mafia, knowing how a certain individual/group will react to certain things is 95% to playing said faction.

You can’t have psychology without meta?

[Nancy Drew 39]

Ellibereth and Oversoul totally get it.

[Nancy Drew 39]

That’s from 2013. There hasn’t been a more recent one?