Role Claims: there's a lot

[Dragon Slayer]

I've noticed recently that there have been more massive roles claims in games at early times (when there was still a good amount of people left). Has anyone else noticed the general increase in role claims? The increase in the amount of them is also making them seem more hard to believe.

-DS

[bigbenwd]

maybe thats a good thing? adds a new thing into the game

(ps that was said to me from macros is your sig )

[Dragon Slayer]

Yeah, so he was telling me on AIM.

[bigbenwd]

what, you guys were talking about me behind my back?! *runs out crying*

[Wacky]

Perhaps mods are choosing themes which are possibly limited in scope, so this strategy could work?

[Dragon Phoenix]

Early role claims are a degradation of the game. This game is about trying to figure out from the posts, voting pattern and night choices, who is most likely to be scum.

If you want to play a game that:
[1]with a bad set-up is an automatic win upon role claiming,
[2]with a good set-up reduces to whose role (real or fake) sounds most believable,

that's fine; just don't call it mafia.

[Scalebane]

I completely agree, Dragon Pheonix. I recently played in Justice League mafia, and I didn't like it very much, due to the fact that the townies were the 7 league members and the 8th townie was aquaman. The mafia (or SK in my case) didn't have a chance when forced to roleclaim, due to the fact that there wern't any more roles left to claim.

[shadyforce]

I completely disagree Dragon Phoenix.

The whole game is based around trying to convince others of your innocence and if you have to tell them bits about yor role, or even make up a role to do that then it's part of the game. Part of acting suspicious is not acting in character with your claimed role. This leads to tactics being used a lot, being more careful rather than just saying townie.

Also there is more of a challenge for mafia to have mutually cooperating roles, yet doing it in such a way as to not incriminate each other if any of them get caught.

And to refuse to call this new style mafia is plain stubborn and clinging to the old school way of doing things. You have to realise that mafia like everything else evolves and games that don't evolve and stay the way they are tend to disappear cos people get bored of them.

[Dasquian]

As someone who's been inducted via a lot of role-heavy games, I have to agree with DP. Although I think it's still largely "mafia" in structure and style, a game full of roles lacks the subtlety of more vanilla games. In such games, people tend to be strung up on the quality of their role-claim, or being tripped up by what they lie about or the actions of another role. It's still fun, and it still requires deductive reasoning and looking at the posting styles, but it's a bit easy when you know someone was lying because they claimed townie in an all-role game, or because they claimed a role and it was a bit too similar to yours.

While agree that there's a lot of skill involved I think it's largely luck that you pick a "safe" role-claim, and that you identify the powerful roles early. In contrast I think vanilla games are

all

about the voting patterns, alliances, reactions to pressure, etc, which I think is at the heart of Mafia.

[CaptainBlicero]

Yeah, I've found myself thinking about this a lot recently. I definitely agree with DP. As I see it, the problem is that we have a lot of people joining the boards who don't understand how to play Mafia. I don't mean that they don't know how to bold their votes -- I mean that they wouldn't know what to do with themselves in a Vanilla Mafia game. Everyone should be able to defend themselves without resorting to: "Don't lynch me, I'm a ____." but this is definitely not the case.

Shady - You are definitely correct that Theme Games are an evolution of the game, but you're missing DP's point. He's not saying that games with roles are "not Mafia" (notice that he himself mods many Theme Games, and there's even the board saying: "There's no simple townies in a DP game"). What he's saying is that early mass role claims defeat the whole purpose of the game. If there's a huge role claim early on, all that does is "test the mod." If the mod's setup is good, then the mafia should be able to pick off the powerful roles, cover their own asses, and go for the win. If the setup is bad, then the mafia will lose outright. Either way, the skills that are vital to Mafia (analyzing vote patterns, catching missteps, "reading" other players) go straight out the window as everyone sits down and tries to guess which roles the mod would put into the game. Does it take smarts to figure that out? Sometimes yes, sometimes no... but it doesn't take Mafia skills.

[shadyforce]

I think early role-claims are just another way of playing your role.

If it works for you, good for you, if not, you lose.

If the set-up is bad, it's the mod's fault, not the system.

[PolarBoy]

There's the rub shadyforce. That strategy only works if the setup is bad, but there's no way of knowing whether or not it will work until after you've tried it. So the only logical strategies for the town are to always mass role-claim, or to never mass role-claim.

The way I see it, you can destroy a good game by mass rlole-claim, but you can also make a bad game workable by not doing it. It's really a win-win situation.

[shadyforce]

Well, that short post made more sense than all the long posts above it.

[Norinel]

So the only logical strategies for the town are to always mass role-claim, or to never mass role-claim.

In Mini 28, I got the role of one of the Three Little Pigs and assumed that the other two would probably be in the game. Getting them to come out, followed by a mass claim Day 1, pretty much identified scum as fast as we could lynch them. So I inferred from my own role that some early claiming would be useful.

And my opinion on heavy early claiming is pretty similar to my opinion on alignment notification- It sucks if it happens, so mods should know it can happen and design schematics with that in mind.

[Stewie]

Maybe it is time someone mods a second version of improbable role... don't look at me though

[Dragon Slayer]

There's now a poll. Vote.

-DS

[Norinel]

I didn't vote because I feel that they're a degradation to the game, but it's still mafia.

[cuban smoker]

See... this is tough for me. I like to play the game, but I sometimes like to beat the game. What I mean by this is that if the opportunity arises to use a strategy that will significantly better the town's chances, then I like to use it. I always try to steer clear of mass role-claiming... I don't think I've suggested it once (except for in C&C, but that's substantially different, and we're not allowed to talk about that here).

Why not mass role-claim? It's tough to put into words. You shouldn't be able to... but you shouldn't be testing the mod either. But if the game can be beat... you're not using optimal strategy by purposefully overlooking a winning play.

tricksy...

[Mr_Gnome_It_All]

I think there can be decent arguments both FOR and AGAINST it! However it's one of those things that just shouldn't happen too often, I think! Because depending on the setup of the game, it can make the game very confusing for the people who really don't know who's word to trust!

[ZONEACE]

Gnome what are those arguments that you think are FOR and AGAINST cause you seem to have something big there

[shadyforce]

What do you mean by something big Zoneace?

[Scalebane]

Shadyforce: I think he simply meant that Gnome seems to have substantial arguments for both sides which he believes are good.

I, as I said earlier, hate games in which roleclaims are a town win. period.

[Mr_Gnome_It_All]

I really don't know how substantial my arguments are, but one against it that might be a good one is that each time a mass claim occurrs and is succesful the more some players are going to do it and eventualy every game is just going to end up looking like this: Day one: everyone roleclaims, anyone who doesn't gets quickly lynched for "having something to hide"!

For it, on the other hand, some people would say that under the correct later game circumstances it can make it interesting trying to figure out which players are for real and which ones are faking their claims! One example of that is on MTGNews it came down to everyone roleclaiming in a game that had 2 masons, one was killed night 1 and we had two people clain to be the other! I looked at it as an interesting challenge to find the fraud! Unfortunatly we chose wrong and the mafia won immediatly after!

Like I said I dont know how substantial these are but they ARE arguments for and against it!

[Werebear]

There's room enough for both types of games here. That's why there's different forums.

[ZONEACE]

well gnome which do you think is best? BTW those are good arguments but yeah im just curious which you think is best