Rule Posts Consolidation Thread

[AniX]

In addition to the Forum Rules and Guidelines, the Mafia List Moderator team occasionally provides further clarification as to what constitutes a violation of Game Specific Rules. These posts will be made as general announcements for a period of time after creation and will also be consolidated here.

Should you have any questions or need further clarification, please reach out to a Mafia List Moderator directly (onsite or via Discord, both listed here).

Table of Contents

• Clarification on Discussing Ongoing Games
  
  
• Clarification on Player Replacements
  
  
• Out Of Game Influences

[AniX]

Discussion of Ongoing Mafia Games is Not Allowed

Recently we have had a spate of people discussing ongoing games. Though this has led to a record number of ongoing game bans, there may be a perception that there is some wiggle room when it comes to discussing ongoing games. This post is to tell you that there is not.

It does not matter if you are dead.
It does not matter if you don't think it will affect a game.
It does not matter if you aren't in the game.
It does not matter if you are posting about a game taking place on another forum or posting about an MS game on another forum.
It does not matter if you are moderating the game in question.

Discussing ongoing games by quoting or otherwise referring to an ongoing game is forbidden. There is no clever way around this rule. Don't try.

If you are unsure whether something violates the rule against discussing ongoing games, please don't hesitate to contact a listmod.

THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOU

Discussing ongoing games may result in a full game ban. This will mean that you are force replaced out of all your games, and you will not be allowed to replace back into them at the end of your ban. Further bans will be far harsher, including and up to a permanent ban from the site.

Game Moderators: Take IMMEDIATE action.

Game moderators are expected to step in and take immediate action when players discuss ongoing games in the game thread -- at least a public warning in the thread not to discuss ongoing games. This is not optional for the game moderator. You may not, as a game moderator, allow people to discuss ongoing games in your thread unless the other game allows for it explicitly in the rules.

Exceptions

There are two primary exceptions.

Communications with authorities

You may PM, DM, or otherwise contact the game mod(s), listmods who aren't involved in the game, and admins who aren't in the game. Likewise, listmods and admins will sometimes discuss ongoing games for administrative purposes.

The Game Allows Outside Communication

Where a game allows communication, it may be allowed. This must be EXPLICITLY stated in the rules (and as a listmod, we'd appreciate it if game mods would give us a heads up when this is the case).

Please note that a game mod may allow communications about his or her OWN game to be discussed elsewhere, but he or she may

NOT

allow discussion of other ongoing games in their thread.

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This isn't a hard rule to stay on the right side of the line on. The listmods would like to never have to take action again. Please don't try and toe the line on ongoing games.

[AniX]

A Reminder of Replacement Rules

1.

All

replacement requests (replacing in or replacing out) must be done via PM with your moderator. Once the moderator has acknowledged (publicly or privately) that your replace out request has been received, you may not rescind the request. There are no exceptions to this rule.
2. Telling other players to replace out is strictly prohibited.
3. Publicly threatening to replace out of a game is strictly prohibited.
4. After you have sent the replacement request to the mod, or the mod notifies you that you are being replaced, you may not post in the game thread.

The decision to replace out should be based solely on your inability to play the game you are replacing out of.

Do not replace out based on your alignment or create a pattern of replacing out as a certain alignment. This creates an out-of-game influence and could be considered a trust tell. If you find that you are creating such a pattern with your decisions to replace out, even if unintentionally (e.g. you dislike playing a certain alignment and find it hard to play to wincon), it is your responsibility to stop joining games until you can correct it.

Do not replace out of a game in order to gain a mafia-related advantage, whether the advantage is in that game, in any other game, or not specific to a game. Examples of situations that qualify as gaining a mafia-related advantage include:

• Replacing out so that others in the game are more likely to think your slot is town-aligned
  
• Replacing out when you think you will lose a game so that it does not count as a loss for your record
  
• Replacing out of one game so that you can learn another player's alignment to gain an advantage in another game you are playing with them

This is not an attempt to prohibit replacing out of games. The purpose of this rule is to eliminate metagaming, whether it is by making threats of replacing out to create the impression of emotional distress or by telling someone to leave the game to do the same. As we have stated in other public announcements, mafia functions on a social contract. Faking out-of-game emotional reactions to manipulate other players is similar to faking out-of-game personal crises for the purpose of manipulation. We expect our players to treat each other with basic decency. Everyone is here to play a game. Social manipulation will take place within the context of the game. There is enough ugliness in the world already, let's not create more in this space for the purpose of a minor edge within a game at the expense of other's emotional well-being.

If a game moderator wishes to deviate from these rules, it must be approved by the list moderator and

must

be explicitly stated in their rule set. Implications of a rule change do not count.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q: What if the game moderator force-replaces me but I want to replace back into the slot?
A: You must PM the moderator.

Q: What if it's in their rule set that I am allowed to replace back in if a replacement hasn't been found yet?
A: Unless their rule set explicitly states that you may post in the thread after you have been notified that you are being force-replaced, you may not post in the thread.

Q: What if someone is causing me real emotional distress?
A: If someone is creating a hostile environment in game, outside of the normal bounds of mafia, report their posts.

[AniX]

Out of Game Influences

There have been a number of cases recently that have related to out-of-game influence (OGI). We want to clarify a handful of situations related to different kinds of OGI, and exactly why certain actions are unacceptable.

1. Invoking trust tells.
   
   
   Trust tells have long been a point of confusion, and for good reason - they are one of the most subtle rules we have, and if you don't understand them it's not even clear why they'd be a problem. They act as a form of OGI typically by allowing a player to assert themself as town more strongly than would normally be possible. The subtlety around trust tells comes mostly from their distinction from acceptable self-meta. Self-meta turns into a trust tell when there is an explicit or implicit statement that it would never be broken, or that it would only be broken extremely rarely. Important here, and a distinction from how we've handled things in the past, is that we are extending this to include cases where the person is not intentionally building up a trust tell, but is instead simply pointing out a pattern in their meta that they never intend to break. For example, the following may all constitute trust tells depending on context:
   
   • "I will never lie using red text."
     "I have never faked a guilty as scum."
     "I will always claim my real role."
     "I never bus as scum."
   Context is very important here. If a relatively new player says that they've never fakeclaimed before, this is not a problem - however, if a player with many dozens of completed games points out the same thing and says that they never fakeclaim
   as a policy
   , then every game where they don't lie about this policy increases the credence of their claim. After a certain point, this becomes an unfair advantage because statistically, the more times in a row someone has told the truth about something, the more likely it is that they will always tell the truth about it.
   
   There are a variety of factors that each push something toward being an unfair trust tell: history of having followed the tell, specifically stating that the tell will never be broken in the future rather than merely stating that it's been followed up until now, an explicit advantage (such as being more plausibly town) being gained by people believing the tell, the tell being about very specific behavior, and so on. However, none of these individually are necessary for something to be a trust tell.
   
   If you wish to refer to your own meta, as a rule of thumb, do not speak in absolutes. We obviously cannot (and do not want to) punish someone for
   having
   some of these policies (e.g., if you believe that it is never correct to bus as scum, or don't want to fake a guilty, we can't make you). In these cases, you simply cannot discuss behaviors like this in discussion of your own meta. If someone else brings up something that may qualify as a trust tell for you, you can say that you've never done the behavior in question, but you cannot say that you have a
   policy
   of never doing it. This is not a perfect solution, but we don't believe that a perfect solution exists.
   

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2. Exploiting or attempting to gain an in-game advantage using game/site rules.
   
   
   It may not be obvious why this is problematic, or why it is a form of OGI. One way to see why it is OGI is that enforcement of rules is a separate function from gameplay, and arguing about rule enforcement in a forum that is meant for gameplay (a game thread) can have a weight or authority behind it that can easily be entangled with regular gameplay arguments. This kind of OGI can come in different forms, including:
   
   1. Pretending to break a rule.
      
      
      When someone pretends to break a rule in a game and there is no action taken subsequently because they did not actually break a rule, other players may speculate in-game whether the lack of action was game-relevant - and indeed, the original user is often intending for the lack of action to appear game-relevant. Players might believe that a game moderator is less likely to take action on particular rule violations when the offender is one alignment versus another. In some cases, the user pretending to break a rule may impact game integrity by doing so. For example, a player who pretends to take an action that would get them modkilled, who is then not modkilled, could argue that the game moderator did not want to modkill their slot because of their alignment or role.
      
      This is why we treat pretending to break a rule as if the rule had been broken.
      
      
      
   2. Using or attempting to find loopholes in game/site rules that are technically within the rules but break the spirit of the rules.
      
      
      The rules that are in place are there to preserve game integrity as much as possible and provide an even playing field for all players. If someone finds a loophole in one of the rules that is still technically allowed but breaks the spirit of the rule, that can impact game integrity and provide an unfair advantage. Breaking the spirit of the rules is still breaking the rules, and will be treated as if the rule was broken even if it wasn't "technically" broken.
      
      
      
   3. Using or threatening to use a site/game rule to prove something is true (or false).
      
      
      This includes taking or threatening to take any action that would get your slot modkilled or force replaced; or any other rule-breaking action taken or threatened with the aim of "confirming" yourself or your in-game statements. For example: threatening to post your role PM unless other players do what you say; posting your role PM so that you will get modkilled, removing your alignment-related motivations and therefore compelling other players to trust what you say before the modkill occurs; and threatening to post your role PM to create similar conditions in which other players would be compelled to trust you because you are willing to take an action that would lead to being modkilled.
      
      
      
   4. Publicly accusing other players of breaking rules.
      
      
      Whenever someone publicly says that another player has broken a rule, there can be implications on that player's alignment based on which alignment would benefit from the rule being enforced. This is especially true in borderline cases, where for example if someone pushes for a modkill on a slot that borderline broke a rule, and that slot later flips scum, it can lead to a reason to read the accuser as town for an out-of-game reason (because rule enforcement is separate from gameplay). Other examples include accusing other players of not playing to win condition and accusing other players of exploiting rules themselves.
      
      If you believe another player in a game you're playing has broken a rule, you should contact the game moderator (if the rule broken is a game rule) and/or report the post (if the rule being broken is a site rule).

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3. Exploiting or attempting to gain an in-game advantage by exploiting forum software.
   
   
   Similar to exploiting game/site rules, forum software is not meant to be used as an in-game tactic. Using any aspect of the forum software to attempt to prove or confirm yourself or your statements can also hold more weight than regular gameplay arguments and harm game integrity. This includes tactics such as: setting your online status to show your most recent login and not logging in for the entirety of the night phase to "prove" that you did not submit any night actions; registering with a username with non-alphanumeric characters and using this to "prove" that you could not be mafia because you would not be able to be added to a mafia PT; etc. You are allowed to make statements about when you or other players were or were not online, as long as you do not attempt to use the forum software to prove it.
   

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4. Having information that not all players have access to and is not required to be provided to you by the setup.
   
   
   If you have information related to the game you're playing that is not publicly available and was not required to be provided to you by the setup, you must tell the moderator and request replacement. It doesn't matter if you don't think the information is important or useful - any degree of asymmetric information about a game that comes from outside the game can give an advantage. If you notice something that was posted publicly about a setup in a place such as the signup thread, a thread about the setup, or even a thread in general discussion, that's fine. However, you must divulge information relating to the setup of a game that you're playing that comes from private conversations with the moderator or setup designers or reviewers or anyone else with inside information, posts in public places that have since been edited or removed, places that all players might not have access to (such as the Discord server or the Speakeasy), private topics not related to the game in question, or any other source that would not be equally accessible to all players in the game.
   
   This applies equally to moderators: you may not talk about your setup in a place where some but not all players can see (except when doing so is a part of the setup or a game mechanic). If you do talk about your setup with players, you must ensure that any information you divulge is made public.
   

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5. Discussion within a game about future behavior on the site.
   
   
   There is a wide range of behavior that might be classified as OGI in this area around threats, bets, bribes, and promises, and as such, ultimately many cases will be judgment calls because we can't possibly anticipate every case. The line that we have decided to draw for when this behavior is unacceptable is one that we use in many other cases: whether or not it breaks game integrity. When we say that game integrity is broken, we typically mean that an advantage has been gained or information has been provided with veracity beyond what the rules of the game should generally allow. Here are a few examples:
   
   • "Please don't play with me again after this game is over."
     "I feel like we're working well together, we should hydra at some point."
   These messages are acceptable, because they do not tangibly break game integrity, even though they discuss future events. We still recommend against making statements such as these inside games, because it is very easy to accidentally stray over the line.
   
   • "If you don't accept Z, then I don't think I'm willing to play with you again."
     "If you're on board with me about Z, then I feel like we're really working well together. Maybe we could hydra at some point."
   These messages are not acceptable. Some examples of things that Z could be are "me being town", or "my read that player X is scum" - anything that has an implication about in-game behavior, particularly as a threat or promise. There are two ways in which these behaviors can break game integrity. First, they can create an unfair pressure on the player being talked to to agree with Z, because there are implied out-of-game consequences to agreeing or disagreeing with Z. Second, they can create unfair veracity for the claim being made, particularly in the case where Z is something like "me being town". If a player is willing to imply that their out-of-game behavior would change in response to another player's read on them or someone else, it can make it unfairly hard to doubt that that player is telling the truth. This is because there is a tangible difference between lying about in-game behavior, and lying about out-of-game behavior.
   
   This also includes bets, bribes, and promises that involve out-of-game consequences or rewards. For example:
   • "I'll delete my account if I'm wrong."
     "If I'm wrong about X, you can pick my avatar for the next month."
     "If you vote with me, I'll buy you pizza."
   Again, these kinds of out-of-game consequences/rewards can create an unfair element of veracity to the in-game statements being made, making it unfairly hard to doubt that the player is telling the truth because they are promising tangible outcomes.
   
   Because it bears repeating, even the first examples that we will not moderate in isolation can easily stray into game-impacting territory. If, for instance, it is clear from context that those statements are tied to another player's current or future behavior in the game, rather than something like play styles that clash or mesh well together, they could still threaten game integrity. These statements are best left for after the game.