Vigilante is tough. I know DSX has successfully protected somebody once; not sure how many others have.
And believe it or not the mafia chatroom was born as a result of that assassination prevention. It caused a union between powerful "town" roles which subsequently started a cyber friendship which lasts to this day. I hope it does at least. (^_^)
Of course it does, Mr. AWOL. :P
Hope the jobs are going well.
It has caused quite a few cyber and cyber to RL friendships. It's great.
Sorry for the delay in posting. There are a few things I'd add, as someone who's been running and playing Mafia online for... around 6 years.
I've heard some opinions in the chat (in addition to that here) that the game is imbalanced. While some of Meowselsworth's options are non-traditional, I believe they're fairly balanced. Here are some things to consider:
- Mafia don't know each other: this weights the game VERY strongly in the town's favor. However...
- The game is weighted in the Mafia's favor by virtue of their being unknown, but this is balanced by the town outnumbering the Mafia significantly.
- Mafia have their own "detective": this is a pretty strong weight in the Mafia's favor.
- Multiple town detectives: this weights the game in the town's favor.
- The detectives/butcher have a chance of being wrong: this affects both sides, and could be argued to weight the game either way.
- Mafia find out who they are if they try to kill each other: again, a weight in the Mafia's favor.
- Crime boss weights the game in the Mafia's favor.
- New players, generally, weight the game in the Mafia's favor. There are some complicated reasons for this, about which you should feel free to PM me, but I assure you that it's almost always the case.
- Inactive players weight the game in the Mafia's favor.
- Killing someone the first round weights the game in the Mafia's favor.
Obviously, there are a lot more weights in the Mafia's favor in the above list; this doesn't mean that the game is imbalanced. In fact, while the games I run are usually balanced using different weights, I think Meowselsworth has done an excellent job balancing her version of the game.
One last thing: just because someone turns out to not have been a special role doesn't mean you shouldn't listen to their logic and suspicions. This game isn't just about lynching people at random and hoping you got the right 29%; it's about observing behavior and speech patterns and putting them together with voting history to puzzle out who people are.
I don't think this one was unbalanced at all, there were some factors outside of the game that conspired to bring down the mafia. Such as lag making Tina's vote late and an ooc role giveaway most prominently, those unfortunately made it rather clear who was mafia. We still had a chance, but mistakes were made, it's not a balance issue. As Clarence pointed out it is quite well balanced; although the townfolk do seem like they might have some sort of Paizo god on their side.
I thought it was kind of funny that other than Hamish, our mafia characters were really just trying to do what was best for the town, they maybe broke the law sometimes, but it was to keep the town from going under and helping people out. Now this town's destroyed, and first thing Thadius wants to do is move to Sinclair for a new mafia hunt and start the whole thing over. Bringing down one town wasn't enough for him?
True since if it had got to 4-4 town-mafia split. Then I would have just offered to keep everyone alive & prosperous under Mafia rule.
And poor Tina's mum never got her pie.
Unbalanced? The town's people were killed mostly by lynching. The only reason the town won was luck. The mafia kept it all going by showing they were regular townspeople and it worked to keep people from figuring things out more easily.
The rp is what kept people wondering and it worked.
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Town really won due to an unclear rule needing to be clarified.
Also, the reversal of position by Hamish should've been a clear indicator that he was Mafia. Unfortunately, I think there were quite a few PMs flying about without any tells in game. I feel that this is an exploit of the rules that wouldn't happen in a home game and there should always be a tell.
All I'm saying is that this is the 7th in our series of Mafia games with our core group. I've been a player since the very first game, all of which use (or a variation of) our current rules system. In that entire time the Mafia have only won once.
I will agree that there are many good points made for and against the topic of balance but the results don't lie. A 6-1 victory for the good guys to me indicates there is an issue here.
I think there should have been a higher proportion of mafia to town, that's about all I would change... In Cold Star, there were 2 mafia and 15 town, with one of the mafia stopping participating. I made it to the last round, but that was an improbable happening, the odds made it rather unlikely.
Core Wars had a similarly low proportion. I've been trying to get closer to 1/3 mafia, which I think would be balanced. This one was slightly less than that (4/15 mafia).
PBP allows analysis of patterns that you don't get at the table, and organization increases the odds of the town, so both the extra analysis, PMs, and clique culture lead to an unbalance in the favor of the town. In those 7 games, Hamish, was it only the first game, that would have lacked the the same organization among the players, where the mafia won?
The first game saw a victory for the Mafia. Or Mafia equivalent. Which is a shame as I never DID get my damn dream off the ground...
In those 7 games, Hamish, was it only the first game, that would have lacked the the same organization among the players, where the mafia won?
Yes. This is correct.
Just my opinions on the matter; I can't claim to be an expert or anything, and since my playing experience isn't entirely comprehensive, my understanding of things might be faulted.
6-1 is not actually a very damning statistic if you think about it, especially given the sheer number of close calls that there have been over our game history. It's a little hard to get specific about it since the rules and circumstances for each game were different. However, I do agree that mafia were slightly disadvantaged in this particular ruleset.
Mafia don't know each other: this weights the game VERY strongly in the town's favor.
From what I can tell, the mafia are well aware of one another's identities in most classic renditions of the game. Asides from making sense from a fluff/roleplay perspective, this makes teamwork more practical for the mafia. Otherwise, both the mafia and lynch vote mechanics really work against them. For the mafia vote in particular, this necessitates the Crime Boss role, since the mafia cannot coordinate by default. Of course, the role was nerfed this time around.
Mafia find out who they are if they try to kill each other: again, a weight in the Mafia's favor.
Tying in with the previous point, I actually see this as more of a disadvantage for the mafia. A turn spent identifying another mafia member is more often than not a turn spent not killing a town member. By virtue of the role rules being readily open information to the characters, rounds that resolve without a mafia kill basically advertise that the mafia have spent the round meeting up.
A lot of this of course, is assuming that we are sticking with these more "vanilla" rules for future incarnations, or if we are going to experiment with more potentially unbalanced (but more often than not interesting) variations.
I'll just say too, in the first game (with the Mafia win). Waltz & I found each other relatively early and gave away no hints in our (3 or 4)PM's, which were mostly OoC. They also allowed us to co-ordinate our kills and deceive the Good-guys.
But many of the games have been down to 1 decision, super close. I'd also rather have the game slightly in favour of the town, so that they can make occasional mistakes.
Interesting. As far as I could see, the Crime Boss' vote was probably the only one that counted, making it far from nerfed. In the Ballroom game, the head assassin got 2 votes instead of being the tie breaker.
This one was very close and would have been entirely different in other circumstances.
When we've played in RL the mafia have always been aware of each other, but very rarely ever had special roles. Not knowing your fellow mafia members is a big disadvantage, but does seem to even out with a couple of special roles and as close to a 1/3 ratio as you can get. Also as far as I've seen in the PBP games there's always at least someone who is disqualified for no activity and they're generally a townie. It's not something that should be counted on for balance, but is an advantage for mafia.
I've only played in the two, but I'd say this one was definitely more balanced than Deathmatch, even then it went right down to the wire, and the only reason town won in the end is because it was impossible to assassinate the trigger finger.
This time, in the beginning, it almost looked unbalanced in favour of mafia as we very nearly took a flawless win. After I missed on the Hamish vote things went downhill fast. Even so if I hadn't gone out gallivanting on round end night I'm pretty sure I could have convinced Clara to change her vote so we'd tie, assassinate someone, and win the day.
I thought Tina was the other mafioso until she said 'but you'll vote for me anyway' which totally confused me. Then I thought Coraline was just playing it safe and quiet and Tina was the protector.
Coraline was just being clueless. :)
So who did the investigators (detectives and butcher) investigate each round, and what did they find?
Clara's votes for assassination were: Hamish (to either kill quick [detective] or test [mafia]), Geoffry Jacks [blood brother], Duke Leto [protector], Coraline [suspected townie], Getika [suspected protector - great bluff on that, darn you!], and Coraline [too late!].
Yes, Crime Boss is still a powerful role without it being a double vote. The frequency of mafia getting ties is rather large, and most of the time when there is agreement between two or more mafia members, they agree with the crime boss anyways.
I think this game was balanced, relatively speaking and there were moments where victory could have occured. Mafia doesn't get as much leeway in terms of mistakes as the town does in these games, unfortunately, so mafia have to be extra cautious. I think the most I would have done to change this is:
1- Define the times properly. 6:00:00 MST voting ends.
2- Add one more mafia member for 1/3 split.
3- I was toying with the idea of mafia having foreknowledge of one another, it strengthens the mafia side a lot, but with the town information roles being probabilistic, too big of an edge might not be good. This game, all of the detective abilities were successful just by fluke, but they aren't always.
I'll post the vote record if people want when I get home.
That sounds like fun!
Apparently I made the wrong person change their mind about me being mafia, it was supposed to be Thadius reconsidering.
Tina's assassination votes were: Duke Leto [random], Coraline [suspected vigilante], Hamish[either detective or mafia], no vote (unexpected visitor at 10 to 6:00 made me late on everything this day),Jin[detective]
I think that's all for votes. I'm curious though Meows says that all detective abilities were successful, but Hamish said he had incorrect evidence that said Thadius was a blood brother, and incorrect evidence that Duke was a detective. I can't think of a reason he'd have to lie to me about that, or are you not counting the butcher in with detective abilities?
I'd just try to keep the rules simple and similar for next game.
We've had some complicate rules before and they are very tricky to balance - this one was very close to balanced.
Too many changes confuse me :P
3- I was toying with the idea of mafia having foreknowledge of one another, it strengthens the mafia side a lot, but with the town information roles being probabilistic, too big of an edge might not be good. This game, all of the detective abilities were successful just by fluke, but they aren't always.
I wouldn't mind trying this just to see how it works out.
Using this rule I'd probably say have 1 fewer Mafia and drop one of the special roles to balance things. If anything it will change the strategy of the game for the seasoned players who have been together for a while.
***ROUND 1***
Dan ATTACK The General (CRIME BOSS)
Tina ATTACK Duke Leto
Clara Cheeseowrthy ATTACK Hamish Cunningham
Hamish Cunningham ATTACK Thadius Lumpshire
0-25 is failure
"Jin" INVESTIGATES Hamish Cunningham 78 SUCCESS
Willard INVESTIGATES Dan Haworth 93 SUCCESS
Hamish INVESTIGATES Duke Leto 59 SUCCESS
Coraline PROTECTS Clara
Duke Leto PROTECTS Dan
ROUND 2
Vote:
Clarence votes Thadius
Clara votes Warren
Geoffrey votes Warren
Getika votes Warren
Hamish votes Warren
Coraline votes Warren
Tina votes Warren
Tina ATTACK Coraline Baker
Dan ATTACK Willard Wainwright (CRIME BOSS)
Clara ATTACK Hamish
Hamish ATTACK Duke Leto
Jin INVESTIGATES Thadius 58 SUCCESS
Willard INVESTIGATES Hamish WILLARD IS DEAD
Hamish INVESTIGATES Geoffrey Jacks 66 SUCCESS
Coraline PROTECTS Getika
Leto PROTECTS Hamish
ROUND 3
Thadius votes for Thadius
Clara votes for ABSTAIN
Clarence votes for Clara
Dan votes for ABSTAIN
Tina votes for Clarence McFadden
Hamish votes for Clarence McFadden
Getika votes for Getika
Coraline votes for Hamish
Clara ATTACK Geoffrey Jacks
Hamish ATTACK Duke Leto
Dan Haworth ATTACKS Geoffrey Jacks
Tina ATTACK Hamish
Jin INVESTIGATES Geoffrey Jacks 92 SUCCESS
Hamish INVESTIGATES Tina Wolfswift 7 FAILURE --> Identified as Mafia from the random list
Coraline PROTECTS Duke Leto
ROUND 4
Hamish votes for Thadius
Duke Leto votes for Thadius
Dan Haworth votes for Thadius
Thadius votes for Hamish
Clara votes for Hamish
Jin votes for Hamish
Coraline votes for Hamish
"Jin" INVESTIGATES Duke Leto
Hamish INVESTIGATES Coraline Baker
Duke Leto PROTECTS Dan
Coraline PROTECTS Jin
Hamish ATTACK Duke Leto
Dan ATTACK Duke Leto
Clara ATTACK Duke Leto
ROUND 5
Dan ATTACK Clara
Tina ATTACK Jin (Top of list randomizer)
Clara ATTACK Coraline
Jin INVESTIGATES Tina Wolfswift
Coraline PROTECTS Thadius
Dan votes for Thadius
Thadius votes for Dan
Jin votes for Dan
Tina votes for Dan
Coraline votes for Dan
ROUND 6
Tina votes for Coraline
Thadius votes for Tina
Clara votes for Tina
Coraline votes for Tina
Tina ATTACKS Thadius
Clara ATTACKS Getika
Coraline PROTECTS Clara
Round 7
Thadius votes for Clara
Coraline votes for Clara
Clara votes for Thadius
Coraline PROTECTS Thadius
This is the file I used to follow the game. All the investigations succeeded except for one, and that one was still true because of a quirk of the randomization process.
Hamish INVESTIGATES Tina Wolfswift 7 FAILURE --> Identified as Mafia from the random list
Isn't this an error? Tina was Mafia.
It's a random result that happened to be correct... not an error.
Yeah. I listed all the living roles and gave you one randomly from the list using the list randomizer on random.org. It just happened that because of a quirk that you got from the list Tina's actual role (I list the targeted person's role in the list, the only one I did not include was the Butcher).
Personally I think keep everything as it is for next game, except the 'Crime Boss' role. Maybe he could know the identity of 1 other Mafia, but it not be reciprocal?
But personally I was not a fan of the Crime Boss pretty much determining who was killed, especially with this many Mafia. It made others feel their Mafia votes were useless whilst piling pressure upon me (sure I could have no voted, but what if the others had too).
Anyway, sorry about those that fell to my gun/knife - I'm sure you'll have the opporunity to return the favour.
The Crime Boss role is more or less necessitated by the fact that the mafioso don't know one another. If each member votes for a different victim, then there has to be some kind of resolution. Otherwise the mafia would never get anything done. Granted, I agree that it puts too much power in a single individual's hands.
I'm still of the opinion that having everyone in the mafia should know one another. Alternatively, rather than have a Crime Boss, the mafia's victim could randomly selected from those who have the highest number of mafia votes.
That's usually how it was done. Random choice amongst the victims - which does make it harder to find killers pattern, although relinquishes some control.
If the mafia all knew each other, I would say that a tied vote would be resolved as a null vote in the same way as the town, so that the mafia would have to communicate and avoid a tied vote.
When the crime boss didn't take action, I just resolved the votes by choosing randomly from the highest.
I'm most likely going to keep things pretty vanilla if I'm the one running the next game, I don't want to mess around with things too much on my first attempt hosting the game.
If general consensus is that we'd like to try the next game with Mafia knowing each other I can certainly give it a shot. But I don't know how balanced it'll be the first time around.
Personally I think that'd be a bad idea, the Mafia knowing each other. I think basically everything the same, but no Crime boss.
K.I.S.
I probably should not be here as this is the Discussion thread but... I agree with Dan! :)
Well, this is a pre-next Mafia discussion. So glad to have you here.
Glad to be here. Ready and raring to go! :D
I don't think it's a bad idea in general, whenever we play in RL that's how it's been. But it seems to me that the PBP games have come a long way making adjustments as necessary to make things as balanced as possible in this style. Mafia knowing each other would mean we'd almost have to start from scratch again. I'd prefer to stick with the way we've been doing it so far, wanted to put the option out there in case there was high demand for a game where Mafia are known to each other.
Red Robert, you're more than welcome here as far as I'm concerned, I look forward to having you with us in the next game. Nobody feel shy about posting the more interest we have for the games the better. I'm looking to run the next one and it'll be the first game of any sort I've fun on Paizo, so any opinions or suggestions are certainly valued.
We could always run two at a time, one with different options and one with the old options.
And be sure to keep the personalities separate. ;)
We could always run two at a time, one with different options and one with the old options.
And be sure to keep the personalities separate. ;)
Ow! Just thinking about that hurt.
Oh, one thing I was thinking about. Is that what ever the theme that we don't necessarily have a 'locked-room' game. Our characters are free to roam, slightly further. I would have done it this game hence my suggestion of going to the kitchen but it seemed too suspicious - thus I declined in the end.
I want to play a game where the mafia know each other.
Just for the record...
I'm going to go ahead and hide this game, since it's completed — thanks for the fun, and be sure to let me know when the next one starts up!
I think I may do something more along the lines of werewolves, or maybe a which hunt kind of thing, something with a little more outdoorsy feel. I'm thinking a sort of town square where people gather to have meetings, form lynch mobs and all that fun stuff, but you're free to roam the village.
The vigilante is a tough role, on top of trying to deduce everyone's roles you're also trying to predict who the next target will be and stop the attack. It can feel like you didn't do your job when someone gets assassinated. Duke did you have an idea how we can make them less blind? I'm worried giving away any information they can actually use would make the roll too powerful.