EPT
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It's time again to for me to reflect on the mafia games that I've played over the past 1000 posts. Again, I have to recommend that you give it a try if you haven't already. We run multiple newbie games each month or you can jump right into a normal game. You can check out the mafia subforum here.
If this post somehow doesn't put you to sleep, you can view my previous mafia posts here:
1k Post
2k Post
3k Post
With every game, I'll try to bring up a theme that stood out or something that I learned from my experience. Be sure to take my newbish thoughts with a grain of salt
BC's Arkham City
Role: The Riddler
Theme: Don’t allow your own tricks to be used against you!
While playing as the Riddler in Arkham City was pretty entertaining, I felt quite foolish
Resistance 2 - Tunnel Rats
Role: Spy
Theme: Adopting a new play style takes practice
In general, I find myself playing quite similarly as mafia. I usually try to act as town as possible, without actually dictating the events of the game early on, while valuing my own life over that of my teammates. Playing scum in a Resistance Game however required a more aggressive strategy. In order to ensure the mafia team had control of the game early on, I attempted to bully myself onto a team. What I found, however, was that I was making newbie mistakes by playing overaggressive. I forced myself to push bad logic and committed myself to opposing certain players, which limited my options later on.
Game of Thrones Mafia
Role: Vanilla Townie
Theme: Smurfs are held to different standards
I decided to give my first shot at smurfing in Game of Thrones Mafia. I had created the smurf account about a year in advance and would post on it every once and a while to prevent it from being completely obvious that I was a smurf. It probably helped that the smurf name was Oberyn, considering the theme of the game.
On day one, for whatever reason, I was unable to post much and returned to a town that was seriously considering me for the lynch. In other games, a day one lynch would not be much of a concern due to the common policy of not killing of a vet on the first day. This has always seemed a little silly to me, but that’s for another discussion. As a smurf, I was no longer given a free pass and had to dig myself out of a hole.
What I ended up doing was reading through the list of filters and making a comment on every player, of varying degrees of vagueness. Under normal circumstances, I would never have been able to get away with posting something like this, but in this case, playing the newbie card worked out.
Something else that I noticed was that I had a lot less influence on the lynches. There were several instances where I was flat out ignored or talked down to, based on my perceived lack of experience. I found it interesting to see how much ones reputation impacts how they are treated by others.
Holy Roman Empire Mafia
Role: Count Von Dooku
Theme: Take Advantage of a Forgiving Town
Ever since seeing Amber’s dog role in Pick Their Power, I wanted to experiment with a self-imposed post restriction as mafia. Caller’s Holy Roman Mafia seemed like a perfect opportunity to give it a shot. In the past, there have been players who have had post restrictions, but none quite as limiting as forcing to communicate in a series of barks. I was quite amused how much time the town spent trying to decrypt Amber’s post and how easy to was able to get by without contributing. I ended up smurfing as The_Bard, while posting only using song lyrics.
The plan was to gauge how useless I could make my posts until the town started to get annoyed to the point of killing me off. It appeared that I had hit the jackpot with this group of players and was able to fit right in with the rest of the trolls and lurkers. On a side note, the post restriction was quite difficult to pull off. I probably spent more time looking for lyrics to use, than actually reading the thread.
By day three to four, it became apparent that the town was going to be less tolerant of my antics. My goal was to continue on the with post restriction, but also include a few sentences in normal text in order to appease the town. I was quite surprised to see how willing the town was to disregard the last three days of nonsense if I agreed to change my ways. In the end, I had managed to live the longest among my scum buddies, while contributing the least.
I certainly think things would have gone differently if a more pro-town environment had been established early. I would have been forced to shape up immediately if I had been pressured earlier in the game. One of the hardest things to do is to force a player to contribute. You can list their name time after time, but it takes cooperation from the entire town to actually do something about it. This becomes much more difficult when you have five different lurkers to choose from. As a town lurker, not only are you making it difficult to judge your own alignment, you are likely making it easier for others to blend in as well.
Magic the Gathering Mini Mafia/Age of Empires Mini Mafia
Role: Mono Blue Control (Town)/Mongolians
Theme: Playing as a Hydra makes you lazy
Being able to bounce an idea of a player you can trust can be helpful, but I’ve also found that I tend to put in less effort as a hydra. Knowing that there is another player who is posting in the thread and handling votes and night actions can be somewhat demotivating. For example, in MTG Mini, my partner gonzaw was extremely active in the thread and did a good job at putting us in a favorable position. While I was reading the thread, my posts were pretty limited simply due to the fact that I had little to add to what my partner had already said. I still have no idea how the mechanics of Age of Empire worked, although to be fair, I don’t think many people did. However, by having Wiggles coordinate most of the alliance and night actions, I think less of my attention was focused on the game than it would have otherwise. It’s quite possible that I’m just a bad partner. While playing with hydras isn’t something I’d want to see in every game, it’s a nice change of pace every once and a while.
Aperture Mafia
Role: Kanti, Lord of the Black Flames
Theme: Behavioral analysis doesn’t always trump setup analysis
Nearly every game you will hear someone complain about setup discussion and how it doesn’t contribute anything to the game. While it’s true that certain aspects of a setup don’t require ten different people stating the same exact opinion, setup analysis is still a necessary aspect of games, especially those that are heavily themed. The important thing to realize is that discussion the roles and mechanics aren’t enough to establish yourself as town. As long as you are willing to share reads and opinions in addition to coming up with a strategy to take advantage of the setup, you should be in a good place on day one.
Focusing solely on scum hunting is only using half of the tools at your disposal. With setup analysis, half of the battle is coming up with a plan, while the other half is being able to properly execute it. This comes down to timing and getting everyone on the same page. A mass claim is useless if only a couple of individuals agree to it. An investigative claim on day two may not be quite as useful as one day four. Proper execution can leave the mafia team helpless, no matter how well they blend in, such as the plans carried out in Harry Potter Mafia or PYPI Mafia.
In Aperture, there were quite a few opportunities to take advantage of the setup. With the way items passed hands, it was possible to identify who was responsible for a kill based on who possessed a certain item. The inventor could have single handedly determined the outcome of the game. The series of events that led to the anti-town triple kill from my black flame role happened to be quite fortunate, but it never would have been possible without role and item discussion.
On a side note, my favorite part of this game might have been accidentally killing the same player two consecutive games. In Arkham City, RayzorFlash was victim to the riddler game, which I no longer had control over and in Aperture, he was unfortunate enough to visit the player I had set on fire. Sorry! <3
Bang Bang Mafia 2
Role: Vanilla Town
Theme: Hilarity will always ensue when everyone has a gun.
Yep.
Storm Mafia/TL Mafia LV
Role: Hider/Medic
Theme: Don't underestimate the danger of a paranoid townie.
The single most frustrating situation in a game has always been the inability to convince another player to share your own opinion when a subject appears clear as day to oneself. While this may apply to convincing the town that a certain player is scum, it is even more difficult to persuade players of one’s own innocence once they have made up their mind. Establishing oneself as town early on is extremely important, but there are always going to be games where this isn’t possible. Being active and open are of little value if you find yourself on the wrong end of several early game mislynches. A single misconstrued post whose intentions are twisted can ruin your creditability for the rest of the game. What can you possibly do to show that you are town if you are at a point in the game where the only evidence?
I have been guilty of being a “paranoid townie” on several occasions in the past. Once you start to see something a certain way, it can be extremely difficult to change your mind, despite an overwhelming amount of evidence. The confirmation bias leads you to distrust a player more and more, ignoring traditional logic. When this happens, it can drastically impact a game. There is nothing worse than seeing a game where there is a town player attempting to defend themselves from another town player and the other player responds someone along the lines of “lol quiet scum”.
In both Storm Mafia and TL Mafia LV I found myself in trouble against a town player who was convinced that I was anti-town despite my best intentions. Storm Mafia was probably one of my better town games in quite a while, but I failed to finish it out in the end. At endgame, only a town role blocker, a serial killer, and a hider (myself) remained. From my perspective, the identity of the serial killer was clear. However, despite the evidence that I had revealed from my investigative checks, I was unable to overcome the notion that I was third party. In TL Mafia LV, I put myself in a difficult spot by having a poor early game. It forced a medic claim and evidence of a save to turn things around, but the discussion still ruined a large part of the cycle.
It seems to me that the best way to deal with a paranoid townie is to emphasize the strong points in your defense. If you include too many reasons pointing to your innocence, the paranoid townie will latch on to the weaker reasons, attempting to refute them, while completing brushing off the stronger evidence. It is often easier to gain the support of the remaining town players, rather than convince the player who is certain of your guilt. If you are able to get the majority on your side, the paranoid townie may be forced to look elsewhere.
PTP3 - Pikachu's Revenge
Role: Clefairy
Theme: Getting killed night one is a real bummer
Nothing is more depressing than instantly getting picked off in a game you are looking forward to playing with an interesting role. I remember spending a couple hours to catch up with the thread and starting to put together my thoughts only to learn that I had been killed. Mafia players are jerks.
Hope you enjoyed! See you at 5k.
