Mafia Rule Updates Discussion Thread

[implosion]

What is the purpose for the new rule on trust tells? Was there an influx of reports?

More or less, yeah. I'd say the impetus for this is essentially that there have been multiple cases recently that, in our opinion, pass the "smell test" for being trust tells (in particular, we think they are harmful to game integrity) but that the previous rules on trust tells didn't adequately address. So elucidating the existing rules is an attempt to better clarify how they're problematic so that people can avoid them and so that we have something to point to when calling something that we believe hurts the game, a trust tell. As Davsto correctly pointed out this is very tricky to get right because there's a lot of subtlety and potential for disagreement in regards to what a trust tell is. As a result, if something is not extremely obvious or if we think the person in question doesn't think they're committing a trust tell, we're unlikely to jump straight to a ban, since a warning should be enough to help course-correct.

Trying to distill the points that are being made here, I think the core issue is essentially at what point a trust tell becomes a problem. The new rule attempts to address this here:

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.

You could add "the tell being detrimental as one alignment" and "the reason for committing the tell specifically being to try to gain a meta advantage" to that list. Yes, it's very wishy-washy about where the line is: this is because the concept of trust tells can't really be nailed down very well. In practice, the way that we're going to enforce this is to look at something and ask ourselves, "is this harming the integrity of the game, or is it likely to do so if it continues". The contradictions in the post about what is or is not a trust tell are because the examples are things that

could

be trust tells if they're in a context where they have a lot of these features.

To look at some of the examples that people listed:

A perfect example of this is the recently completed subreddit uPick.

In that game, I pointed out that in three years, I'd never been active as scum before.
If I was town, then by the revised rules that'd be considered a trust tell.
Because it was pointing out a truthful thing about my play that has a long long history of having been true.

As town, in the last three years, I've been rather passionate and incredibly invested in my towngames;
As scum, in the last three years, I've had fuckall of anything done--but not because of any deliberate effort.
It's just that I was struggling in those scumgames and not struggling in those towngames. But it was still a very very very strong trend, lasting over the course of MULTIPLE years.

Like, I personally believe that hard bussing is bad for Mafia. Therefore, except under extreme circumstances, I'm not gonna do it. And I don't see it as a threat to the game's integrity to say as much.

I understand that establishing a track record of not bussing then gives me more credibility on a scum wagon than someone without such a record, but that's just a natural consequence of playing a game many times with the same people, and that advantage will remain regardless of whether I'm allowed to say it or not. It's not something that can just be legislated away, unfortunate though that may be, and attempts to do so just restrict legitimate arguments from being made.

The examples described here are solidly okay to do, and to talk about in the context of self-meta. For the former, there's no implication that the behavior is going to continue forever (or even for any length of time) because it's basically being framed as an incidental observation about one's own play. For the latter, the "except under extreme circumstances" implies it may be broken, and (as far as I'm aware, though I could be wrong) you haven't argued that you

can't

be scum because you'd have to have been bussing across multiple games. Framing can matter.

To address mastina's never-fakeclaiming-as-scum tell specifically, and why we believe it is an example that's over the line: it is a tell with a long history across a huge number of games, that it is claimed will, at least in some sense, never be broken. It is very centralizing because it is brought up so frequently. It is typically framed (or we've seen it framed) as intentionally avoiding certain options, rather than an incidental observation about how you play the game. It is typically framed as "I will never do this". Ultimately, we've looked at examples of it happening and we believe that on net, over time, it is harmful to game integrity. Avoiding these aspects of it (i.e. not framing it in this way, essentially treating it as an incidental aspect of the way you play the game that has no guarantee of categorically being true) would significantly lower the negative impact on game integrity that we believe it has.

[implosion]

Do not use cryptography, invisible text, or otherwise take any action that attempts to create a private communication channel in plain sight to communicate with some but not all players in a mafia game.

What is the intent behind this rule change? What kinds of posts are now not okay? Is vaguely referring to things now not ok?

Example: "Hey, remember how we got that person eliminated in game x? I think we're seeing the same thing here"

Would that post be allowed? Is it near the line?

Nah I think this is literally just finding ways to communicate in the game thread that can’t be fully parsed as English things being said unless you have specific information that’s private.

For example, sending messages with a cipher that only one player knows the key for, or telling someone like “we should push a vote against the player whose name ends with the 15th letter in the PM that I sent you nine days ago”. Your example is obtainable by someone else that looks at that other game, so it should be fine.

And for what it’s worth, that was on the list of things that the majority of mods had on their individual rulesets already (in fact, I know that I have it on mine and have force replaced a player for it).

Generally yes, this. What Dunnstral posted is fine, these examples violate the rule because they're trying to convey something to another player in a way that no one else could possibly figure out what is being said.

now on the size limit for large games, i would prefer if the option to run games at high player counts was still available, but perhaps qualifying under Special Games? as far as where that limit goes, would 25-28 be an acceptable limit?

I think we'll wait for the thread specific to that change to discuss this, just to limit the scope of this thread a bit.

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.

To clarify, is using the Online status of other players as proof that you aren't scum with them, unacceptable?
(In my opinion, it should be.)

Not certain what's being asked here - how would online status be used as proof of this?

Thank you to the Listmod team for their work on these updates. They look great besides one small thing:

Can my name be replaced in the outdated ongoing game discussion examples?

Done.

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I want a mod to address my post because I still don’t see how saying you’ve never done something in a game before constitutes a trust tell. So if someone hypothetically had a prior no bussing meta as scum and truthfully states that they’ve never bussed, sure we know that they can break that meta at any poing including the hypothetical game they’re currently in if scum but how is that a trust tell?

The point we're trying to make with the rules update is that it's very context-dependent. With no other context, "I have never bussed" is fine. But there are contexts in which it could be a problem. If you say "I have never bussed" and point to dozens of scumgames and point out how you have literally never voted for a scumbuddy in any of them, then yes, this

could

be the game that you break it. But if the pattern has been followed for dozens of games, it becomes very unlikely that this will just happen to be the game in which it is broken, and so the tell becomes extremely powerful. Over time, if the player points it out over and over, this kind of thing looks increasingly like the player in question is cultivating this tell so that they can use it as a meta lever, whether or not that's their explicit intent, even if the player believes bussing as scum is generally a bad idea.

Our primary concern ultimately isn't whether some behavior is technically a "trust tell"; it's whether we believe it harms the game. Often the reason trust tells do this is because they're an attempt to use meta to

prove

something in some sense beyond a reasonable doubt, rather than simply using meta to

argue

something. This is why framing can matter a lot, as it can be the difference between an argument for something and an attempt to prove something.

The best option is probably not to mention the read in game unless you have non-ongoing-related reasons that you can use to support it

So I had an expectation of a player being able to correctly read me in part but never implicitly or explicitly stated/referenced anywhere in that game I was currently in, at least partially based off of a game that was ongoing att that we were both dead in. They asked me to back this up and I decided not to do that for obvious reasons. Is there a way I could have responded to the questions without violating game rules?

The best things to do here are either (1) not mention the read at all, or (2) come up with some in-game reasons (or reasons based on completed games) that you can use to substantiate it.

You're certainly still allowed to vote for such a read and provide whatever justification or lack thereof you want for that vote, so long as it's not obviously alluding to an ongoing game. This isn't ideal, but the reason we need to be so stringent in what counts as an ongoing game reference is that even an accidental slip that something references an ongoing game can potentially directly imply the alignments of multiple players in that game.

This post specifically states that saying you’ve never faked a guilty as scum (but it could also be town) are oog but nowhere does it say it’s unnaceptable to say that so long as you don’t mention alignment.

"I have never faked a guilty" and "I have never faked a guilty as scum" can both, again context-dependently, qualify as trust tells. More than that, the former directly implies the latter - it's not important that alignment is

explicitly

mentioned. The former is equivalent to saying "I've never faked a guilty as scum and I've never faked a guilty as town", and claiming to have never done something as town is a non-issue, so it's really saying the same thing in terms of being a trust tell. If you have a long history of accurately following one of these statements without deviation, and/or point out the tell frequently, and/or claim that you never intend to break the tell, those are all factors that make it look more like a trust tell. But again, it's very hard to give an explicit hard line, and even if we don't think something qualifies as a "trust tell" on some technicality, it still could qualify as problematic OGI. Our goal with moderating these kinds of borderline trust tells will be to point them out without any real sanctions at first.

[implosion]

Let's say you have a 2016 Creature in play who consistently makes no effort as scum. He also was never personally the person to point out in games that he was not willing to put in effort as scum. He is still going to end up meta cleared, but he is going to face no consequences because he isn't personally making any claims regarding his met a.
All that this rule change does is shift the responsibility for clarifying that your alignment is clear for meta reasons to someone else, and at a sufficiently high level of mafia play and general exposure that is something that can be generally assumed to happen.

I think what you're describing here is sort of like a fundamental limitation underlying the genre of competitive social deception games. There's a fundamental point at which the only solution to this problem is telling the player in question to play better as scum, because them playing so poorly as scum degrades the metagame. But we don't really want to be the kind of place that places such a singular emphasis on competitiveness that we'd go so far as to officially sanction someone for playing poorly. Like LLD said, what we're trying to solve with this rule is a different kind of problem, which we believe is easier to solve than this one.

I feel like in the lategame of a game I am very aware of how my game has diverged from how I would play as scum and I am able to point all this out - this isn't necessarily a trust tell because I attempt the same thing in a mafia position - but I'm afraid that the trust tell update might sorta prevent me from self defending via self-meta/etc.

I'm not sure where the line is drawn because for example, a common reason I pull out is referencing actions that have occurred I claim I would never allow to happen when I am mafia - granted its a pretty complex series of events and I am telling the truth when I am town - but it's not like a simple "i wouldnt claim VT as scum" kinda deal.

What you're describing here sounds solidly fine, I think. if you're referencing specific events from the game you're in and cross-referencing your meta to justify why those events wouldn't have happened, that's fine as long as you're not pointing to a persistent specific pattern across multiple games. Another side of this is that if I'm interpreting this correctly, the way you're using the word "never" here is different from the way it's used in a typical trust tell, because you're not saying that there's some specific action you'd never engage in, you're saying that the game as a whole would never play out in a particular way.

[implosion]

I'm not just arguing this to be pedantic. I've played in games where players have not posted well beyond the period of time that they should be replaced because the mod knows they're actually still playing the game but just not interacting with it. If you have no tools to point out that a scum player is deliberately doing this because they are tactically not posting outside of games on the site they can basically get away with murder because by the letter of your rules no one can point that out.

Like Lilith said, it's fine to point out that a player hasn't posted in a very long time specifically within this game, and to call them scum because of this. It's also fine to do this even if you've noticed they're being active in other games, or even if your actual reason is because they're being active in other games. After all, thought crime isn't crime, and we can't police the actual reason for you doing something, just the action itself. The problem just comes from referencing activity in other ongoing games, because there's always some risk of leaking info.

Also, if a mod is doing this (not replacing a player because they know the player is "still playing but not interacting"), that is very bad modding practice. If a mod does not search for a replacement for a slot in a timely manner after they fail to respond to a prod, or not prodding in a timely manner, and especially if you think that they're doing it because they know that player is lurking scum, that's an issue that you should let us know about because they may be leaking alignment info. And even if they aren't, it's still bad practice.