Commonly Asked Questions on Mafia Theory

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Post Post #150 (ISO) » Sun Dec 18, 2016 3:52 pm

Post by LicketyQuickety »

In post 149, Not_Mafia wrote:Nothing should be compulsive
Interesting. That would mean a different game then.
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Post Post #151 (ISO) » Sun Dec 18, 2016 3:54 pm

Post by Ircher »

I disagree with Not Mafia.

Some roles should be compuslive, specificly, Visitors should be compuksive otherwise players would never use the ability.
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Post Post #152 (ISO) » Sun Dec 18, 2016 3:58 pm

Post by LicketyQuickety »

In post 151, Ircher wrote:I disagree with Not Mafia.

Some roles should be compuslive, specificly, Visitors should be compuksive otherwise players would never use the ability.
You're missing something tho.. As a hider, if you don't hide, that opens you up to be targeted. I just think that because hider can hide behind Scum and die because of it means it should be compulsive.
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Post Post #153 (ISO) » Sun Dec 18, 2016 4:13 pm

Post by Ircher »

I said nothing about hider specificly. I just said some roles pught to be compulsive by default.
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Post Post #154 (ISO) » Sun Dec 18, 2016 4:15 pm

Post by LicketyQuickety »

In post 153, Ircher wrote:I said nothing about hider specificly. I just said some roles pught to be compulsive by default.
My mistake, sorry.
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Post Post #155 (ISO) » Sun Dec 18, 2016 9:05 pm

Post by Infinity 324 »

The fact that hiders die when they hit scum is the whole point pretty much. It acts like a cop if you crumb your target
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Post Post #156 (ISO) » Fri Dec 23, 2016 9:11 am

Post by drealmerz7 »

I love the compulsive modifier, it should be used more!
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Post Post #157 (ISO) » Fri Feb 24, 2017 11:26 pm

Post by Shadow_step »

What result should a follower get if they target a JK?
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Post Post #158 (ISO) » Sat Feb 25, 2017 12:57 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

In post 157, Shadow_step wrote:What result should a follower get if they target a JK?
Normally it's ruled as "protective + intefering". Admittedly, that doesn't leave much guessing as to what the role was.

In Normals, a Follower actually sees a "jailkeeping" action being performed; it's a category of its own there. (This might or might not have been intentional, but it certainly helps to resolve arguments.)
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Post Post #159 (ISO) » Sat Feb 25, 2017 8:09 pm

Post by Shadow_step »

Thanks. In non normals, MOD discretion can be used right?
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Post Post #160 (ISO) » Sun Feb 26, 2017 11:13 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Indeed, in queues other than Normal, Open, and Newbie (and there are no Followers in Newbie games at the moment), it would be up to the mod as to exactly how they wanted their Followers to work. (Although returning something very out of place, like "communicative", would likely be treated as bastard.)
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Post Post #161 (ISO) » Mon Mar 20, 2017 9:02 pm

Post by dw_ »

Is the mafia factional kill compulsive?
I help run some games on another website. Typically we've made it non-compulsive but we've run into issues with a 4-player MyLo where town's best play is to no lynch to coerce the mafia into killing at night, and the mafia's best play is not to kill to coerce town into lynching from the four living players resulting in the game stalling.
I had a brief search but could find no documentation on the subject.

Apologies if this is not the correct place to ask this.
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Post Post #162 (ISO) » Mon Mar 20, 2017 11:02 pm

Post by Cheery Dog »

The factional kill is not compulsive, unless it's something that is demanded by the setup in particular.

Generally a stalled game like that will either have a 'Happily Ever After' or a 'Rocks Fall; Everybody Dies' ending to it, because nobody is wanting to make that move after a few phases.
One of the factions will either decide to risk it for the win, or they'll all settle for the draw/lose.
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Post Post #163 (ISO) » Tue Mar 21, 2017 4:45 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Most non-role-madness setups benefit from a compulsive Mafia kill (nearly all the situations in which the Mafia would choose to no-kill imply that something is broken in either the current state of the setup or in the win conditions; the 3:1 standoff is a common example). However, making the kill compulsive is not standard.
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Post Post #164 (ISO) » Thu Apr 27, 2017 3:36 am

Post by Radical Rat »

I personally hate compulsiveness as an actual mechanic, as I feel it limits the strategies that can be used by scum factions and/or PRs, particularly in closed games.

Example being Mafia choosing not to kill, then using a Roleblock fakeclaim to push a lynch on a player who was previously a universal townread.
Or an SK who refrains from killing to hide the existence of an SK until ready to make their move.
Or on the Town side, a bus driver who chooses not to bus to allow other PRs to use their roles confidently.

Modifiers should only affect the actual ability/power of the role, not the player's agency.
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Post Post #165 (ISO) » Sun May 07, 2017 12:41 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

The problem is Mafia choosing not to kill in situations where they can't reasonably fake anything other than a no-kill, just to waste the town's time. That happens more often than it should.
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Post Post #166 (ISO) » Sat May 13, 2017 12:57 am

Post by drealmerz7 »

In post 165, callforjudgement wrote:The problem is Mafia choosing not to kill in situations where they can't reasonably fake anything other than a no-kill, just to waste the town's time. That happens more often than it should.
This is a strategic choice AND I don't see it as "wasting town's time" at all AND no NK is good for town.
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Post Post #167 (ISO) » Tue Jun 06, 2017 4:43 am

Post by callforjudgement »

No nightkill is not good for town in 3:1. Town will nearly always just no-lynch in response (and may well have no-lynched into the situation in the first place). So far, in every case I've personally seen, the scum eventually relented first, but I'm aware that other people have run into problems where this lead to a standoff that eventually had to be resolved by moderator intervention.
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Post Post #168 (ISO) » Fri Jul 21, 2017 1:30 am

Post by Fresh »

I'd like to ask a question for anyone willing to answer.

Say I choose target for motion detector. That target has an action but was roleblocked. Would the motion detector see that the target performed an action AND had an action performed on the target? Or just the second one since the first one was technically blocked?

Thanks in advance for anyone willing to clear up my confusion.
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Post Post #169 (ISO) » Fri Jul 21, 2017 2:18 am

Post by vonflare »

you would only see the roleblock. Similarly to if you were a tracker, you would see them going nowhere, because the roleblock prevents the action from even starting.
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Post Post #170 (ISO) » Fri Jul 21, 2017 7:35 am

Post by callforjudgement »

A motion detector is a binary role, so they just see "there was motion".

If you're using a role that's capable of detecting more information, such as a Tracker, the exact resolution isn't standardised as far as I know; some mods allow blocked actions to nonetheless be tracked, some mods don't. This doesn't seem to be standardised even in Normals (where it should be standardised). I'm going to ask the NRG for a ruling, because this is a clear omission in the current rules.
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Post Post #171 (ISO) » Fri Jul 21, 2017 11:06 am

Post by mastina »

In post 170, callforjudgement wrote:If you're using a role that's capable of detecting more information, such as a Tracker, the exact resolution isn't standardised as far as I know; some mods allow blocked actions to nonetheless be tracked, some mods don't. This doesn't seem to be standardised even in Normals (where it should be standardised). I'm going to ask the NRG for a ruling, because this is a clear omission in the current rules.
My standardization is dependent on the wording of the roleblock action.

If a roleblocker's role PM specifies "causes the action to fail", the player actioning will be seen visiting, because their action
happens
, it just has its effect fail.

If a roleblocker's role PM specifies "prevents the action", the player actioning will not be seen visiting, because their action is prevented from having happened in the first place.

This is why I am so adamant of moderators checking the exact wording of their role PMs. This is not semantics; there are actual distinct differences in effects from word choice.
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Post Post #172 (ISO) » Tue Apr 24, 2018 6:26 pm

Post by profii »

I just finished a game and wanted to ask a question following...

I was scum and one of my mates had the watcher PR

When we were deciding what to do, it seemed obvious that a successful Watcher result on town would be difficult to come by as the odds are very much against you - so - we decided to look at one of our own scum players so we knew if there was any possibility one of us had been copped (or any other PR etc) - this made fake claiming a bunch easier


Following the conclusion of the game we mentioned this and the town players were surprised and said clever ploy

Have we found a loophole or is this a fairly acceptable use of the power?

By team-watching I think we turned a potentially unlikely result into an always-useful result because by using watcher to “play defence” even a no result is really useful to scum

I know there are other risks such as no result due to role block but overall I think we created more power than anticipated
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Post Post #173 (ISO) » Fri Aug 10, 2018 12:05 pm

Post by Gustavo »

These all seem old. They still good guides?
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Post Post #174 (ISO) » Fri Aug 10, 2018 6:44 pm

Post by Lycanfire »

These posts are really old, mostly light reading to introduce people to mafia. The wiki was recently updated and makes for better studying material.
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