RPGHQ Mafia #1: the First One - SIGNUP THREAD

[Tweed]

You had to be there.

Doctors protecting doctors, yeah, I've been there.

[logincrash]

Rusty brought up a question that's been bothering me as well.

I didn't disable spectators being able to rate posts, unsure if I should. Might disable it for ghosts.

I'm reading the thread. Would me reacting to it unduly influence the game?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Rusty brought up a question that's been bothering me as well.

I didn't disable spectators being able to rate posts, unsure if I should. Might disable it for ghosts.

I'm reading the thread. Would me reacting to it unduly influence the game?

The concern was more about dead players trying to pass information from the dead threat to their team in the game thread via reactions.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Wouldn't that lead to the cop getting blasted the same night he confirms a mobster publicly?

That is a risk assessment up to the cop. If the cop believes that are multiple different groups of scum with night kills at their disposal, and/or few to no doctors or JOATs to protect the cop at night, then yes the there is a high chance that the cop would die within 1 or 2 nights of publicly claiming to be the cop. Generally, a cop outting themselves to get a scum lynched and then getting NKed is a good trade. Sometimes however, cops will out someone and then - due to a combination of psyching out the scum team or unlucky hits on doc protects - the cop might live for an unusually long time, which can be fatal for scum if he manages to confirm much of the playerbase, leaving few players left to focus on by process of elimination. But other times, people are suspicious of each other (egged on by scum) and do not believe the cop, and wind up lynching someone else rather than the person the cop claimed was guilty (usually you should lynch the guilty claim to get this mystery out of the way. If the lynchee flips town, then it is assumed that the person who claimed a guilty verdict on them was lying and then becomes a lynch target for the next day). In more advanced games, guilty/innocent results can be tampered with. Ie, a scum roleblocker can redirect a cop's investigate power on X to Y, but the cop doesn't know that he got redirected unless there was another player like a tracker or a watcher or saw that happen. Or there are scum JOATs who can make a player flip as a different alignment, ie the cop gets a guilty on a scum player but the scum JOAT uses an action on their teammate so when he gets lynched, he flips town, incriminating the cop so the cop probably gets lynched the day after. It can get pretty elaborate.

As town needs to act on proof produced by roles, how do we share information without divulging our roles?

There are soft claims and hard claims. A hard claim would be "I am the cop, I investigated X Y Z people on night 1, N2, N3, etc". And then there are soft claims where you could just say "Val is scum" without much elaboration at that time. Maybe he's a watcher who saw Val visit Kalarion on the night that Kalarion died. Maybe he's a cop. Maybe he's a seer who asked the dead thread. But there is usually hesitance by the playerbase to just go along with a soft claim, and sometimes people will swing their votes onto the claimee trying to pressure him to give more info. Some people are persuasive enough that they can soft claim and just remain unfettered for a long time, relying on other people to read between the lines and suspect what they might be in the hopes that scum don't think they are as high priority of a TPR (town power role) to kill. Scum are usually looking to kill cops ASAP, so if they know someone is a VT or a low priority town role, they might let that person live for a while knowing that they have a greater chance of hitting the cop if they go after the remaining players.

[Jordy]

Good to see that rusty finally found a use for the dice roll

[Acrux]

@Val the Moofia Boss - what are the rules on UNVOTING? I've never played in a game where that's allowed. Once you made your vote, that was it. No takebacks. So, is it just the time limit? Or a certain # of unvotes?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

@Val the Moofia Boss - what are the rules on UNVOTING? I've never played in a game where that's allowed. Once you made your vote, that was it. No takebacks. So, is it just the time limit? Or a certain # of unvotes?

You can change your vote so long as no player has hit the threshold to be automatically lynched, which is when day ends and people are supposed to stop talking. So if it takes 4 votes to lynch and someone gets 4 votes, then unvoting after that won't do anything and the player will still be lynched.

[rusty_shackleford]

Tangerine has been lynched. He was a mafia goon.

Is it standard in Mafia to state the role of a person that died?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Tangerine has been lynched. He was a mafia goon.

Is it standard in Mafia to state the role of a person that died?

In the groups I played in, it was standard up until a few years ago, when it was decided it'd be more interesting if the flips were hidden. That way there would be more room for the other players to try to claim things, whereas veterans can likely deduce the remaining roles. Sometimes there are coroner roles that can investigate the corpse of a dead player to determine their role/alignment, and sometimes even take their powers.

[Stack of Turtles]

Tangerine has been lynched. He was a mafia goon.

Is it standard in Mafia to state the role of a person that died?

Yes. It's called a "flip".

[DemoGraph]

Night 1 will end in 24 hours on 7 PM PST March 3rd

The long dark is upon us!

[Jason Bright]

Well that was interesting.

[Tangerine]

Tangerine has been lynched. He was a mafia goon.

Is it standard in Mafia to state the role of a person that died?

Yes. It's called a "flip".

Not a fan of it. It gives townies a lot of information for free.

[Acrux]

I think the game really needs more than seven players.

[rusty_shackleford]

I suspect* the game is probably over, so I'll state that I won't play again. There is no way to prove I am not cheating and me leading the village to take out a mafia on day 1 can easily be interpreted that way(despite me doing it via a random roll.) I would rather not play and there be zero doubt than possibly cause any animosity.
I apologize to @Tangerine , and the other mafia player(s? My guess is there was only two mafia, or one has been very silent), if I caused any unintended offense. I cut myself off from all permissions that would have allowed me to cheat but I can not prove any of this as I am the server administrator.

---

I hope watching us play has at least encouraged others to join in for the next game.
I will continue to offer all the technical support Val needs to run the game, however.

[Tangerine]

I suspect* the game is probably over, so I'll state that I won't play again. There is no way to prove I am not cheating and me leading the village to take out a mafia on day 1 can easily be interpreted that way(despite me doing it via a random roll.) I would rather not play and there be zero doubt than possibly cause any animosity.
I apologize to @Tangerine , and the other mafia player(s? My guess is there was only two mafia, or one has been very silent), if I caused any unintended offense. I cut myself off from all permissions that would have allowed me to cheat but I can not prove any of this as I am the server administrator.

---

I hope watching us play has at least encouraged others to join in for the next game.
I will continue to offer all the technical support Val needs to run the game, however.

No offense was taken and I never thought you cheated, though I was tempted to quote one of your posts about cheating in multiplayer games for a laugh.

[Acrux]

I'm sorry you won't play again. I certainly don't suspect you of cheating in any way, and thought you were a good foe. I think there were a confluence of factors:

the small number of players
Tangerine getting targeted by the randomizer
New player confusion on some of the rules

Coming from the scum side, there are a few things I think could be reconsidered for future games:

If there's going to be a small number of players, I wouldn't have any specialty roles. Given how this one played out, I don't think it would have ultimately affected the outcome if Bhaalspawn was the cop or not (I took a 50/50 chance, as I thought it was Spellsword!), but having confirmation of someone that early when there are only two scum does make for a quick game.

I also think that with a small number of players you might consider prohibiting public dice rolls for voting. It does take away some of the "social deduction" part of the game if someone points to an "objective" reason like that. I can probably be swayed on that, but if you hit a target on the first day with it - well, we saw how it played out! To expand on this: if you're a townie, there's no reason NOT to vote for that person unless you are the target. The best play for the target in that case is just to do his own RNG roll. OR try to convince everyone the person who made the RNG roll is mafia. But rusty played really well in doing perfect townie things (convincing against no lynchs, etc.) that was an uphill task.

I second that I hope more people will sign up for the next game!

[Tangerine]

To add to the list:

Have either ties are handled by lynching the first to hit the value OR roles are revealed on death, but not both. Having both in play really limits the strategies scum can use.

[Bhaalspawn Jr]

I had fun and will sign up to the next one.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

To add to the list:

Have either ties are handled by lynching the first to hit the value OR roles are revealed on death, but not both. Having both in play really limits the strategies scum can use.

For ties, what alternative do you have in mind? Sudden death where players have to vote between the two tied candidates?

[Tangerine]

Other deduction games I've played had ties result in no lynching, so the focus moves on to convincing at least one person to flip. I haven't played with that sudden death mechanic, but you'd have to have a tie breaker in mind if there are an even number of voters.

[Acrux]

To add to the list:

Have either ties are handled by lynching the first to hit the value OR roles are revealed on death, but not both. Having both in play really limits the strategies scum can use.

Yeah, I've never played in a game that announced a "flip" like that. I wonder if it's more common in forum games?

I was planning my strategy for day 2 when that was announced and was basically going, "welll, ****, what do I do now?"

[Jordy]

Why did Acrux get lynched? Val says that he conceded?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Why did Acrux get lynched? Val says that he conceded?

There were only two mafians, Tangerine and Acrux. Tangerine had bad luck and got lynched the first day, and Rusty was saying he was going to go after Acrux the next day. Bhaalspawn the cop decided to investigate Acrux and got a guilty. Acrux got 2 of the 3 votes needed to lynch him, and then was posting here in the signup thread as if he had given up, so I decided to just get on with it.

[rusty_shackleford]

The heart of the dice guided me

[Jordy]

Why did Acrux get lynched? Val says that he conceded?

There were only two mafians, Tangerine and Acrux. Tangerine had bad luck and got lynched the first day, and Rusty was saying he was going to go after Acrux the next day. Bhaalspawn the cop decided to investigate Acrux and got a guilty. Acrux got 2 of the 3 votes needed to lynch him, and then was posting here in the signup thread as if he had given up, so I decided to just get on with it.

Rusty asked if a cop could use their ability and Bhaalspawn said he was the cop and that he found Acrux to be guilty. Bhaalspawn could have been lying and not been the cop though, is that right?

[rusty_shackleford]

Why did Acrux get lynched? Val says that he conceded?

There were only two mafians, Tangerine and Acrux. Tangerine had bad luck and got lynched the first day, and Rusty was saying he was going to go after Acrux the next day. Bhaalspawn the cop decided to investigate Acrux and got a guilty. Acrux got 2 of the 3 votes needed to lynch him, and then was posting here in the signup thread as if he had given up, so I decided to just get on with it.

Rusty asked if a cop could use their ability and Bhaalspawn said he was the cop and that he found Acrux to be guilty. Bhaalspawn could have been lying and not been the cop though, is that right?

Acrux pretty much threw in the towel and admitted he was mafia here iirc, so just pretend he jumped out a window rather than get knifed by a guy throwing dice to decide who to hang from a lamppost

[Acrux]

Why did Acrux get lynched? Val says that he conceded?

There were only two mafians, Tangerine and Acrux. Tangerine had bad luck and got lynched the first day, and Rusty was saying he was going to go after Acrux the next day. Bhaalspawn the cop decided to investigate Acrux and got a guilty. Acrux got 2 of the 3 votes needed to lynch him, and then was posting here in the signup thread as if he had given up, so I decided to just get on with it.

Rusty asked if a cop could use their ability and Bhaalspawn said he was the cop and that he found Acrux to be guilty. Bhaalspawn could have been lying and not been the cop though, is that right?

Yes, 2 of 3 votes needed, and I was being targeted by someone claiming as a cop. He could have been lying, but rather than drag out what was the likely outcome I quasi-conceded here.

LDG would likely have voted for me as well (she'd been following rusty's lead), so I ended, actually hoping wemight be able to start a new game sooner.