Mass Mafia

[bdwhoX]

Now I may just be crazy but I had the idea of a mass mafia game that had a huge amount of players (in the area of 50). It would have to have multiple mafia (3 groups of 3) and multiple cops (5). The numbers I gave are only estimations, I was wondering if anyone had tried this before and was wondering what you thought about this idea?

[JechtMurray]

Bad, bad idea. It just would not work. I don't have time to list all the reasons, but I'd say 30 is the most you'd ever get on this site, and even then it struggles to keep it going.

[Seol]

Megamassive Mafia.

Starts with 4 games of 12 players, each of which has 3 Mafia in. When the game hits 6 players, it merges with another game.

So, you play for a couple of days, whittle the town down, then merge the first two and the second two games, whittle the town down some more, merge again, and finish up.

All of which is being kept running smoothly by nice, tight daylimits.

[mikeburnfire]

Oooooh, that sounds interesting Seol.

[Mastermind of Sin]

erm, the idea of a massive game isn't bad, it's just that we don't have enough to do it.

and yeah, seol, that would work, a lot like tricities mafia

[JechtMurray]

Megamassive Mafia.

Starts with 4 games of 12 players, each of which has 3 Mafia in. When the game hits 6 players, it merges with another game.

So, you play for a couple of days, whittle the town down, then merge the first two and the second two games, whittle the town down some more, merge again, and finish up.

All of which is being kept running smoothly by nice, tight daylimits.

An example of something that would work. Lumping 50 people into a single game would be... pretty bad.

[BabyJesus]

Now I may just be crazy but I had the idea of a mass mafia game that had a huge amount of players (in the area of 50). It would have to have multiple mafia (3 groups of 3) and multiple cops (5). The numbers I gave are only estimations, I was wondering if anyone had tried this before and was wondering what you thought about this idea?

it was tried in civil war mafia, but the mod gave up becuase he was not getting all the night choices and participation.

[mith]

Seol, that's basically how Neighborhood Mafia worked (except the Mafia weren't confined to a single neighborhood). Town was way too strong, but it was a decent idea in theory (and as MoS said, there have been similar games run since).

I also ran a tournament with several small games and the survivors playing in a final game (I'd run that differently now, particularly the "survivors" bit).

I ought to get the GL archive back up/organized.

We had a few huge games on the GL. Largest I can find at the moment was 50. You'd need very tight deadlines to try something that big here; this was one of the very early games (11) and we didn't waste a lot of time with long discussions.

Balance is tricky with large games as well. 3 families of 3 in a 50 player game is very much in the town's favor I'd guess, even without pro-town power roles.

[Seol]

Seol, that's basically how Neighborhood Mafia worked (except the Mafia weren't confined to a single neighborhood). Town was way too strong, but it was a decent idea in theory (and as MoS said, there have been similar games run since).

I suspected it wasn't an original idea, but I couldn't be bothered to research it. Balancing it must be tricky... 'cos the ideal setup's about halfway between making each 12-man balanced and the overall 48-man balanced. I think. I'm not sure, though.

I also ran a tournament with several small games and the survivors playing in a final game (I'd run that differently now, particularly the "survivors" bit).

Yeah.... surviving to the end isn't really the best guage of good play.

We had a few huge games on the GL. Largest I can find at the moment was 50. You'd need very tight deadlines to try something that big here; this was one of the very early games (11) and we didn't waste a lot of time with long discussions.

Discussions are pretty much inappropriate until you get down to 20 or so, I'd say. Before that, it's just vote and watch patterns.

Balance is tricky with large games as well. 3 families of 3 in a 50 player game is very much in the town's favor I'd guess, even without pro-town power roles.

I think it'd want to be a single Mafia, or possibly two Mafias with only one in each starting game.

[Yosarian2]

Yeah...civil war mafia was a lot of fun, though, it was really a shame the game died like that. The hard thing with 50 people would be enforcing parcipitation.

If there was something like one mafia of 12 people and 38 GG's, or something simple like that, then you could strictly enforce rules like "anyone who doens't post in a week=modkill", and a few modkills wouldn't really mess up the balance much; and perhaps have "plurality voting" rules (whoever gets the most votes lynched, no majority needed). After seeing civil war mafia, I think it could be done.

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

I can see a 50 player game working with a smaller group of players being able to vote.

Something like an Oval Office Setup where there could be a small bloc of people who are actually responsible for voting during the lynch and then general elections with tight deadlines to replace the players on death and what not.

Having a large voting segment leads to a long day due to the high number of people needed to vote to lynch.

[warpdragon]

Checkmate mafia had 32, with 8 scum.

[Y]

Couldn't it work with 1/4 of the people to lynch instead of a majority? At least until you get to a manageable number...

[SpamWise]

How many were in Time Travel Mafia?

[Mr. Flay]

Discussions are pretty much inappropriate until you get down to 20 or so, I'd say. Before that, it's just vote and watch patterns.

It seems like the longer the game, the more it favors the town, since mafia have that much more voting patterns/lies/misdirections to get caught in. One reason newbie games are so tough is you only really get one chance to screw up, as a pro-town player. That'd probably be a balance factor as well.

[mlaker]

In real life mafia games usually the first few days are little to no discussion. I'd thought about doing this, but I dislike modding. I think if it was an invite or application game it would work.

[mathcam]

How many were in Time Travel Mafia?

There's been 3 time travel games so far, one full-size (20 or so) and two minis (12 each).

For another instance of a multi-threaded game, see Tuthrededmafya, where players in the different threads had the ability to move back and forth between threads. I'd make some changes if I were to do it again, to increase the motivation for moving.

The 50-player game is just a bad idea, and it has nothing to do with lack of players, or not getting participation from everyone. There's just a critical mass of players at which it becomes prohibitive to get anything done. It's impossible to maintain a conversation, and if you

didn't

have enough lurkers, it would be a full-time job to keep up with the thread.

Cam

[petroleumjelly]

*looks about*

Well, I know 50-player games have been done. Case in point, at Star Kingdoms (where I only play offhandedly, since nobody there cares for "conversation" so much as random lynchings and PMing each other during the day), there is a game right now being signed up for which is expecting 50+ players, with an open set-up with 4 seperate groups of scum.

Of course, it's still complete chaos. Votes without reasoning, deadlines at about a day each (utterly preposterous, imo), frantic IMs over AIM haggling with other players, but still fun in its own way. Although I will agree that lurkers and speedbumps do become problematic, although they are normally just modkilled for their insolence anyways.

[Yosarian2]

The 50-player game is just a bad idea, and it has nothing to do with lack of players, or not getting participation from everyone. There's just a critical mass of players at which it becomes prohibitive to get anything done. It's impossible to maintain a conversation, and if you

didn't

have enough lurkers, it would be a full-time job to keep up with the thread.

Cam

I don't know if that's a hard and fast rule...it wasn't really that hard to maintain a decent conversation in Civil War mafia. If you were willing to keep up with the game (and take notes, of course), it was a lot of fun trying to figure out who everyone was.

The problem with a big game in the style of Civil War Mafia or Checkmate is that there are just so many nightkills, the lynch hardly matters. Also, each vote seems to not matter very much at all anyway. Between those two factors, they tend to make the day game less important and intersting.

So what if there was a 50 player game, and the system was "At the end of 2 weeks, whatever 4 players who have the most votes get lynched." Now THAT would be interesting...one person might have a big bandwagon on him he's trying to defend himself against, but at the same time there's a fight between a person who has 4 votes on him and a person who has 3 votes over which one would be a better #4 lynch...that would open up all KINDS of stratigic voting options, and the amount of difference one vote moving from bandwagon C to bandwagon D could make would help encourage activity...hmmm...

[Fritzler]

So what if there was a 50 player game, and the system was "At the end of 2 weeks, whatever 4 players who have the most votes get lynched." Now THAT would be interesting...one person might have a big bandwagon on him he's trying to defend himself against, but at the same time there's a fight between a person who has 4 votes on him and a person who has 3 votes over which one would be a better #4 lynch...that would open up all KINDS of stratigic voting options, and the amount of difference one vote moving from bandwagon C to bandwagon D could make would help encourage activity...hmmm...

Agreed. I am planning my next theme game to be rather large (tenatively rapper's mafia), and wanted one larger, a fiftyish size game that got finished on this site, and I was going to do lynches somewhat like that.

[Drummer]

Ever read Jurassic Park? Heard of chaos theory? It usually holds.

[rajrhcpfreak]

Global Mafia?

[tidus_of_zanarkand]

I am so /in for insanely huge mafia. Let's see if I can keep up my record of being lynched/nightkilled nigth one.