[Planning] Mafiascum Site Championship Series

[Thestatusquo]

Hello Mafiascum!

Over the course of the last month or so we’ve been playing along and following 2023 Team Mafia. I don’t know about you, but I really enjoyed it and I felt like big site events like this are great for the community and super enjoyable to be a part of.

In addition to that I also got to thinking about other games and how they have tournament series which culminate a long period of time and events into one overall winner. One thing led to another and we’ve arrived at this idea: A tournament series for Mafiascum!

Basic Details

• 12 games over the course of the year, spread out across the queues. See Game Details for more info
  
• Players will receive points based on how well they do in those games. See Scoring Details for more info.
  
• Top 7 games are scored for each player. This means you do not have to play every game to have a chance to win. Players are still allowed to continue playing after their 7th game to try to raise the scores they have.
  
• Games go into the queue as normal, sign up is first come first served.
  
• The last 4 games of the year will be anonymous alt games, this is to remove perverse incentives from the leaderboard changing how people play. Identities in these games will not be revealed until after the event. Players are not allowed to hint at or reveal their identity at the discretion of the mod
  
• At the end of the year I will donate cash prizes to distribute to the top 5 players

Scoring Details

Town Scoring

• +1 for being on a correct elimination
  
• +1 point for correct vig shot
  
• +1 Survive at endgame
  
• +2 Nightkilled by scum night 1 or 2
  
• +0 Nightkilled by scum which directly leads to the win condition being achieved (i.e. lim puts it to 5:4 and scum night kills you that night to win the game)
  
• +1 Nightkilled by scum any other night
  
• +3 Win the game

Scum Scoring

• +1 point for ever miselimination while you are alive
  
• +1 point for surviving at endgame
  
• +3 win the game

Event Rules

1. All site rules apply. If you break site rules in this event such that you have to be disciplined by site staff you will be removed from the game you were playing and blacklisted from subsequent events.
   
2. Scores will be determined on a slot basis and will be given out to the player in the slot at the end of the game. If you get replaced you will receive no points and the points will go to the player who replaced you in the slot.
   
3. Publicly speculating on who is playing in an alt game is against the rules.
   
4. Revealing who you are in an alt game is against the rules.
   
5. If in the judgment of me or the mod you have deliberately attempted to out a players alt or your own you will be removed from contention for the event.
   
6. Players who accidentally alt slip will be replaced out of that slot.
   
7. Your participation in this event and individual games is at the sole discretion of me and the mods of the game. We reserve the right to deny any player for any reason if we think it would be disruptive to the game or the event.

Game Details

There will be 12 games in this event. They will be distributed (relatively) evenly amongst the large theme, large normal, mini normal and mini theme queues, depending on moderator availability.

The cadence will be as follows:
Game one goes into signups.
Game one fills.
Game one completes
Game two goes into signups.
Etc

The game that goes into signups will never be of the same type as the game that just finished.

If each game averages a month to play, this means the event will complete in about a year.

I personally will probably mod 4-5 of these games, but if you’re interested in designing and modding a game for this event please reach out and let me know! Modding a game does not preclude you from playing the other ones, though I will be heavily involved to the point where I will not be playing.

Prizes

What’s a competition without some prizes? I am going to personally be donating prizes to give out to the top performing players.

First Place
One Hundred Dollars!

Second Place
Fifty Dollars!

Third Place
Thirty Dollars!

Fourth Place
Ten Dollars!

Fifth Place
Also Ten Dollars!

Sixth-Everyone else:
A Firm Handshake!

A discussion on the scoring system

Scoring mafia games is hard. With this system my basic approach was to attempt to construct something relatively simple that succeeded in giving a rough approximation to how well you have contributed to the game. As such, I have tried to boil down the most basic but also high value actions one can accomplish as both town and scum without getting into a lot of miniscule details of play which are hard to quantify with points and also would be likely to make me lose my mind while scoring them.

I think this ends up being mostly a decent job of implementing that idea. There’s lots of areas that town and scum do that could theoretically give points and we could spend a lot time going down the rabbit hole of thinking through every PR scenario that could happen and assigning points values to them but its not clear to me that this would actually end up giving us a more valuable or likely to be accurate approximation of game impact than just the simple system I am laying out here.

In order to test this out I went ahead and scored the team mafia games that just ended using this rubric and this is the results that came out

PYP Scoring

Mith 7 points
LLD 6 points
Bella 6 points
Staeg 5 points
Marashu 5 points
Ythan 5 points
Menalque 5 points
Cephrir 3 points
Imaginality 3 points
Rad 3 points
Alisae 2 points
Datisi 2 points
JJH 2 points

Large Theme Scoring

Dunnstral 8 pts
Frozen Angel 8 pts
Pink Ball 8 pts
Thestatusquo 8 pts
Black 2 pts
Feysal 2 pts
Firebringer 1 pt
Ircher 0 pt
DragonEater70 0 pt
Drixx 0 pt
GuyInFreezer 0 pt
Klick 0 pt
Kuribo 0 pt
Save The Dragons 0 pt
Titus 0 pt

Micro

Aureal 6 pts
Morning Tweet 6 pts
McMenno 6 pts
NorwegianboyEE 6 pts
Doctor Drew 6 pts
Dessew 4 pts
Furtiveglance 4 pts
Korina 0 pts
Bianco 0 pts

Mini Normal

Drippinggoofball 7 pts
Shirou 6 pts
Ausuka 6 pts
Malakittens 5 pts
Aisa 5 pts
Xofelf 5 pts
ydrasse 5 pts
Mastina 3 pts
DeasVail 3 pts
freedom 3 pts
kowahbunga 3 pts
ItalianoVD 3 pts
DKKoba 2 pts

Mario

HighPrincessErinys 8 pts
Cerberus v666 4 pts
Fate 3 pts
Cat scratch fever 2 pts
Adorable 2 pt
Jingle 1 pt
Radical Rat 1 pt
Wgeurts 1 pt
Porkens 0 pts
Petapan 0 pts


Overall these line up pretty well with what my thoughts on these games are. There are some players who individually I would quibble (I dont think peta played a 0 pt game in mario, for instance) but in aggregate I think the scoring system has a good job of picking up the correct results.

I'm open to feedback on it obviously, and I would love to hear from you.

(much love to LLD for initial brainstorming session on the scoring system. A lot of these ideas were stolen from her whole cloth)

Next Steps

So what do we need to do now?

I don't foresee this starting for at least a few months. People need some time to breathe after TM and we have logistical things to figure out.

Broadly I am interesting in things in a couple different main categories.

1. Feedback on the scoring
   
2. Feedback on the structure
   
3. People who are interested in modding a game or two over the course of the year
   
4. This isn't necessary but obviously if someone else also wants to donate to the prize pool I won't say no
   
5. Are you interested? Is this something you would like to play in?
   
6. Do people think this strikes the right balance between rewarding people who go all out but letting people have time to not play mafia and live their lives/Still be competitive without having to grind out every single game?

Please let me know! I'm really excited about this and I hope you are too!

[Alisae]

Ego

[Black]

You've already heard a lot of my feedback but I want to ego this and reiterate that I'm completely in love with the idea! I'll leave the mech stuff to smarter people but I'm in full support here

[Ydrasse]

Me idea
shea just do the big works
ego

[Datisi]

ego

[Thestatusquo]

Me idea
shea just do the big works
ego

Ya actually what i did was tunnel into ydras mind and steal all the words that were there and write them down.

[T-Bone]

Eggo

[schadd_]

sure i'll plan to mod some for this

[Alisae]

I recommend the setup I ran for this game if ur looking for open suggestions. I also really liked PYP while playing it in TM

[Ythan]

Cool ego

[Alisae]

Ythan wins MSCS

[Lady Lambdadelta]

Ego, and happily helped in this <3

[Thestatusquo]

I have created a server for people who are interested in modding games for the event.

Please keep in mind this server only exists for coordination and scheduling, it is not for discussing or reviewing games.

If you're interested at all in modding games during this event please join and if you know approximately when you'd like to mod let us know so we can throw you in a slot.

Here

[Umlaut]

Ergo

[Aisa]

I think I personally find the idea of a cash prize this high a little... strange? awkward?

I don't know that there's an actual logical reason for this but I'll try to explain why I would find the ~ vibes ~ tricky to navigate.

Spoiler: Aisa's feelings

I think I'd prefer if first place were like $10 or $20. I think in this case the vibes are more "bet you suckers a tenner that you won't beat me in the final game" and I'm into that. Another way to put it would be that if I took part in the event, and I had the last two games to go and it looked like I was actually in the running to win, I would feel that $10 would be a Safe And Wholesome amount to care about. I could say something like "YOU'RE SCUM AND IF YOU THINK I'M LETTING YOU MAKE AWAY WITH MY TENNER WELL YOU'RE DEAD WRONGG!!!" and I

think

this would be an appropriate joke.

Whereas $100 is a Not Insignificant Amount Of Money and I'm not sure I would... know how to behave towards it? Do I act like I want to win it? But all of a sudden jokes like the above don't seem completely appropriate anymore, and generally my gut is signalling to me that I need to use Tact. Ok, so maybe I just pretend the prize not there and play the game like normal. But... it is there?

Maybe I'm just not sure about the idea of a monetary incentive in general. [Insert cliché about how I play mafia for fun and money would make it too serious].

I want to emphasise I don't know what's right or wrong. I'm... sharing how I feel to start a conversation. Others may feel differently in which case I encourage them to share their thoughts. In particular can see people thinking $100 is appropriate for an event of this size / length.

[Thestatusquo]

I think I personally find the idea of a cash prize this high a little... strange? awkward?

I don't know that there's an actual logical reason for this but I'll try to explain why I would find the ~ vibes ~ tricky to navigate.

Spoiler: Aisa's feelings

I think I'd prefer if first place were like $10 or $20. I think in this case the vibes are more "bet you suckers a tenner that you won't beat me in the final game" and I'm into that. Another way to put it would be that if I took part in the event, and I had the last two games to go and it looked like I was actually in the running to win, I would feel that $10 would be a Safe And Wholesome amount to care about. I could say something like "YOU'RE SCUM AND IF YOU THINK I'M LETTING YOU MAKE AWAY WITH MY TENNER WELL YOU'RE DEAD WRONGG!!!" and I

think

this would be an appropriate joke.

Whereas $100 is a Not Insignificant Amount Of Money and I'm not sure I would... know how to behave towards it? Do I act like I want to win it? But all of a sudden jokes like the above don't seem completely appropriate anymore, and generally my gut is signalling to me that I need to use Tact. Ok, so maybe I just pretend the prize not there and play the game like normal. But... it is there?

Maybe I'm just not sure about the idea of a monetary incentive in general. [Insert cliché about how I play mafia for fun and money would make it too serious].

I want to emphasise I don't know what's right or wrong. I'm... sharing how I feel to start a conversation. Others may feel differently in which case I encourage them to share their thoughts. In particular can see people thinking $100 is appropriate for an event of this size / length.

Your feelings are valid and i appreciate you sharing them.

From my end i think that 100 dollars is definitely of an appropriate level for the amount of time and effort that a person will have put into this event in order to win it over the course of a whole year and i promise you that the amount of money is not an amount that it matters for me to spend in this way or i wouldn't want to do it.

If it makes you feel better in terms of playing for it you can either a) opt out of prizes. In this case i will pass down the prizes you would have won to the person below you and move everything else down one slot. Or b) i am happy to make a donation in your name to the charity of your choice instead of the prize going directly to you.

[imaginality]

1. Feedback on the scoring
- seems pretty workable

2. Feedback on the structure
- is it total points scored or average points per game?

- the top 7 games cut-off might be too high, especially if the scoring is total points, depending on levels of interest - for example if say 25 people are interested and game size is average 13 then most players won't get to play 7 games which makes it fairly moot. Maybe top 5 games?

-also, if there's a lot of interest in this then maybe each game after the first should allow an extra couple of days of signups and then if it ends up oversubscribed, people who didn't play the previous game get preference? E.g. if a 13p game gets 16 ins but the last three ins are from players who didn't play the previous game, then the finalised player list is players 1-10 and 14-16.

5. Are you interested? Is this something you would like to play in?

- Yep!

6. Do people think this strikes the right balance between rewarding people who go all out but letting people have time to not play mafia and live their lives/Still be competitive without having to grind out every single game?

- As mentioned if it's total points then top 7 games seems a bit high

[Thestatusquo]

1. Feedback on the scoring
- seems pretty workable

2. Feedback on the structure
- is it total points scored or average points per game?

- the top 7 games cut-off might be too high, especially if the scoring is total points, depending on levels of interest - for example if say 25 people are interested and game size is average 13 then most players won't get to play 7 games which makes it fairly moot. Maybe top 5 games?

-also, if there's a lot of interest in this then maybe each game after the first should allow an extra couple of days of signups and then if it ends up oversubscribed, people who didn't play the previous game get preference? E.g. if a 13p game gets 16 ins but the last three ins are from players who didn't play the previous game, then the finalised player list is players 1-10 and 14-16.

5. Are you interested? Is this something you would like to play in?

- Yep!

6. Do people think this strikes the right balance between rewarding people who go all out but letting people have time to not play mafia and live their lives/Still be competitive without having to grind out every single game?

- As mentioned if it's total points then top 7 games seems a bit high

Yeah it's hard to come up with a number that makes sense. I was thinking of upping the number of games to 15 and doing top 7 games with a max number of games you're allowed to play of 10 maybe?

Don't want to end up with a tie. Though i do need to come up with a tie break system regardless.

[fireisredsir]

i think the idea sounds cool and well thought out and i think it should happen

i agree that demand for playing might make things tricky if more people want to play than there are slots. maybe an early gauge of how many would want to participate might help guide things, and/or a lower priority in sign-ups given to people who have reached the minimum, as suggested

i also was really excited to play and then noticed the money thing. i don't really think i have a solution for that. but also expressing i guess some feelings of weirdness around that and i wouldn't really know how to handle the situation and might rather just not play. i don't really think you should change anything either though since it probably adds to the fun/excitement for most people and it is a generous offer to the community

[fireisredsir]

the scoring system might affect how people play

specifically, incentive for being on a correct elim (and no negative for being on a wrong one) may make people more likely to want to be on the wagon of whoever is being limmed

i don't really think this is the end of the world? but it probably changes the shape of games at least a little bit

[Thestatusquo]

Yeah we are definitely aware that there are incentives created by the scoring system.

We think that this is pretty unavoidable. Almost any point system you come up with is going to give incentives for certain behaviors such that it probably changes how people play a bit.

We've tried to mitigate that by 1) fundamentally only rewarding things that are fundamentals of winning a mafia game and 2) making the highest incentive being winning the game.

This means that while it is strictly speaking better to be on a wagon than off it if the wagon is inevitable, that consideration does not override the consideration that if you're wrong on the wagon you're more likely to lose the game and therefore not going to score that well.

I thought about the possibility of negative points but i think it ultimately ends up just incentivising different stuff rather than fixing the problem.

My expectation is that this scoring system will change people's behavior a little bit at the margins but that it shouldn't be correct for people to change their behavior drastically because of it

[Thestatusquo]

i think the idea sounds cool and well thought out and i think it should happen

i agree that demand for playing might make things tricky if more people want to play than there are slots. maybe an early gauge of how many would want to participate might help guide things, and/or a lower priority in sign-ups given to people who have reached the minimum, as suggested

i also was really excited to play and then noticed the money thing. i don't really think i have a solution for that. but also expressing i guess some feelings of weirdness around that and i wouldn't really know how to handle the situation and might rather just not play. i don't really think you should change anything either though since it probably adds to the fun/excitement for most people and it is a generous offer to the community

Also

I think I personally find the idea of a cash prize this high a little... strange? awkward?

I don't know that there's an actual logical reason for this but I'll try to explain why I would find the ~ vibes ~ tricky to navigate.

Spoiler: Aisa's feelings

I think I'd prefer if first place were like $10 or $20. I think in this case the vibes are more "bet you suckers a tenner that you won't beat me in the final game" and I'm into that. Another way to put it would be that if I took part in the event, and I had the last two games to go and it looked like I was actually in the running to win, I would feel that $10 would be a Safe And Wholesome amount to care about. I could say something like "YOU'RE SCUM AND IF YOU THINK I'M LETTING YOU MAKE AWAY WITH MY TENNER WELL YOU'RE DEAD WRONGG!!!" and I

think

this would be an appropriate joke.

Whereas $100 is a Not Insignificant Amount Of Money and I'm not sure I would... know how to behave towards it? Do I act like I want to win it? But all of a sudden jokes like the above don't seem completely appropriate anymore, and generally my gut is signalling to me that I need to use Tact. Ok, so maybe I just pretend the prize not there and play the game like normal. But... it is there?

Maybe I'm just not sure about the idea of a monetary incentive in general. [Insert cliché about how I play mafia for fun and money would make it too serious].

I want to emphasise I don't know what's right or wrong. I'm... sharing how I feel to start a conversation. Others may feel differently in which case I encourage them to share their thoughts. In particular can see people thinking $100 is appropriate for an event of this size / length.

Your feelings are valid and i appreciate you sharing them.

From my end i think that 100 dollars is definitely of an appropriate level for the amount of time and effort that a person will have put into this event in order to win it over the course of a whole year and i promise you that the amount of money is not an amount that it matters for me to spend in this way or i wouldn't want to do it.

If it makes you feel better in terms of playing for it you can either a) opt out of prizes. In this case i will pass down the prizes you would have won to the person below you and move everything else down one slot. Or b) i am happy to make a donation in your name to the charity of your choice instead of the prize going directly to you.

I don't know if you saw this or not, not sure if it helps you re:that.

[schadd_]

some thoughts

• it's probably not lost on you that one game/month is wildly optimistic. my 17p francisco lindor game opened for signups feb 3rd, filled mar 20, started mar 21, and finished may 19 (with 7 players surviving !!!). the micro from team mafia took a month and two weeks to finish. realistically you can take action to tighten these numbers as a mod: shortening deadlines, having backup moderation (and like setting gcal notifications and whatever lol) so that you get phases done closer to exactly when they're supposed to, et cetera. maybe the games fill faster, especially if there's this wad of money hanging over them, though i wouldn't count on it (my game also filled kind of phenomenally slowly in any case). i also think that signups for the next game should be open after the previous game goes down to 5 players or less, unless it seems reliable that signups for this happen faster than a week.
  
  somehow when i first read this i thought that the 5 best games counted instead of 7, which i actually think is preferable (in conjunction with keeping 12 games instead of 15). in particular, i think that this event works better if we aim to see it finishing sooner rather than laterㅡpeople leave the site and/or stop wanting to play, and the whole thing operates on the confidence of the players that "eh, i can stick with this thing for that long." the number 12 is conceptually glued to the idea that it would last a year (even if that literally could not happen ever on gods green earth) and i guess my instinct is that its just a better number. i imagine the thing really grinding to get done with 15 games.
  
  
• was about to type out something to the effect of "i think anonymous games are slow to fill but i haven't paid attention to any of them" and was aghast to find out that 13p anonymous mini themes seem to fill in about a week. still, i think it should be made easy for players to log
  n
  games played without having to play an alt game, because i imagine that some percentage of people just have no interest in them at all. there was a while where i didn't notice the alt game clause in the OP & i had a concern about the last few games, that people could openly complain about how people play when there is very cut and dry money on the line, which IMO necessitates like 2 or 3 or maybe 0 alt games, especially since perverse incentives in general will happen in every game regardless. i'm speculating blindly about how much of a chore they are for people so i would propose making a poll about this.
  
  
• i spent a lot of time thinking about point values. in short, my suggestions are: get rid of scoring for vig shot, all NKs other than 1 point for N1/N2, scum surviving at endgame; add 1 point for winning the game as either alignment; limit players to 10 games played out of 15 (or 7 or 8 out of 12), which can maybe be amended to "only the first
  n
  games count" if games struggle to fill. i'm just gonna click post now and plan to defend these later

[Thestatusquo]

appreciate the feedback. I strongly disagree with some of it, but I'm still digesting.

[Thestatusquo]

mmm, let me just go through it in order while I am thinking about it.

1) Yes, its not lost on me. I think the original cadence I posted in this thread is bad and probably shouldn't be the actual cadence. It's probably correct to open signups for the next game while the current game is ongoing. I am a little unsure about when the best time to do this is exactly, but we probably shouldn't wait for a game to end to start the next one. Most of the players in the current game will be dead by the time the game is in late game (somewhere between day 3 and day 5?) and probably thats when we should open signups. Endgames aren't usually the most post intensive also so its not like people still alive in that game would be particularly constrained from joining a new one.

2) I think that the problem with 5 games (and really 6 to I think.) is that it ends up being way too likely that the tournament ends in a tie. I will be implementing a tiebreaker system just in case anyway, but I would really really really prefer to not use it. One of the things that I think really sucks about team mafia is that it invariably comes down to some sort of tie breaker scenario where you're trying to differentiate between a bunch of teams with the same score who objectively are all kind of similar. Given the structure of that event there isn't really a fix I think, but I think the fix here is that by making it a larger number we allow for more granularity and thus less chance of not having a winner using the scoring system. I understand that its going to be a bit of a trek, but its kind of intended to be that way. I think part of the beauty of doing the system the way I think I will eventually decide to do it (15 games, 7 scores count, and I had decided on a max of ten games already I think per player) is that you don't HAVE to engage with the whole event to have a good chance to win, you just have to engage with a little less than half of it. That means we don't have to have the whole players playing the event the whole time. We can have people coming in and out of it, or maybe someone learns about it halfway through and is like oh thats cool and plays the last 7 events. This structure I think makes it LESS of a grind for the players than it otherwise would be. By making the number of games smaller you definitionally increase the percentage of the event of the game that players have to engage with, and given that the way we are adding games is by running games simultaneously at the beginning and end of the event, that gives the players a lot of options for how to engage with the system on their own terms.

3) I don't love the idea of anonymous games but I think they're an unfortunate necessity. I think the incentives of the tournament outweigh the incentives of the game play too clearly when people know exactly who they need to beat and by what amount such that the game stops being a mafia game for a lot of people and starts being about how do I stop x from getting more points than me. I think the anonymous nature of the latter part of the tournament serves that purpose and also serves the purpose of people not knowing exactly where they stand/where others stand such that it makes the reveal of the winner more interesting.

I think this is another argument for more games though, by the way. One thing I didn't like about the original number was I was talking to HPE in the discord and it mentioned that playing anon games would be hard for it because of the distinctive pronouns it uses, which made me think about how, while yes you can technically fit in all your games without ever having to play an anon game, that means that you are forced to play almost every single other game in the event, which really limits player agency. My thought was that adding more games allowed players to have more choices with regards to this.

I also think that increasing the number of games just increases the number of players who get a chance to play which I think is kind of important. Less games just means less space for people to play who want to.

My reaction to most of your suggestions about scoring is kind of a "but why?" so I'll wait to hear your rationale for it before responding.