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Hi all, before we sit down and play, games lets get some general rules down (we can edit these slightly obviously).
1) Only join a game if you plan on being active, we know situations can arise, but PLEASE only join if you will be active. Multiple issues of inactivity gets notated.
2) Read the game rules. THIS IS KEY, each rule set usually changes slightly based on who's hosting. The chances could be minor or major based on how much the game is reworked, make sure you are familiar to each games rule set or it can cause major issues.
3) Keep your role or role lists to yourself. Giving them to people without proving their legit, or because they are your friend can backfire and ruin games, play intelligently. Avoid giving lists to players not involved in the game, as they may give the info out as well.
4) Read this beginners guide by ace posted below
Beginners guide
+ Show Spoiler +
As for my tips for playing here they are straight from PM land and some others:
1.)Keep your story simple
Anytime some guy PMs me with a long post about a lot of things I'm usually very wary. If he'd truly want something it would probably be a really short message unless we've been talking for a while.
2.) You don't have to tell people your role
I pretty much do this every game. The only time in any mafia game anybody knew my role without me telling them was when MBH was a DT. You can be very effective without someone knowing your role. The less they ask the more trustworthy they are to a certain extent. It's also why I usually never ask people their role.
3.) Anytime somebody has an excuse as to why they couldn't post (like exams) write it down. Lo and behold in a few hours at least 10 more people will say they'll be inactive because of exams also. Always one of these guys is gonna be mafia. Always because if they wanted to start going after inactives 1 mafia hiding amongst a bunch of these guys means lots of innocent death without strong analysis.
4.) Make sure everyone talks. Quiet people are the first to get lynched. This makes sure that from the get go Mafia have to be involved in the town. Likewise from the Mafia point of view this works very well - if you are active early when you start giving out the bullshit pies only the smart people will pick up on it.
5.) Probably the most important rule of Mafia that most people just don't understand:
It's not what you know, it's what you can convince people to believe. This is really where the Mafia game is won and lost and people just don't get it. In this game you are a mafia mayor and I know this because I read it correctly. Does it matter? Not really, because now I have to convince the town that you truly are. Likewise we all know quickstriker and JeeJee are innocent but in the grand scheme of things it means shit - people believe they are guilty. Once you get people to believe certain things about other players you can start either dividing the town and standing back silently watching them devour each other as mafia, or as a townie bring them all to focus on a few people. The idea is all the same - persuasion is much more powerful than outright facts. If you can lie skillfully or find a crucial mistake to exploit while keeping a straight story people will often trust you easily unless they are smart enough to be objective (coming next).
6.) Reading objectively. This really means learning how to ignore the emotions and fluff in a post and picking out the key information and coming to a conclusion. Doing this you would start to ask yourself some basic questions and realize that a lot of the posts you see can be easily broken down to find major holes. Qatols posts were good - they were good enough to paint him as supportive to the town's plight. Of course I read them objectively and realized that they weren't. He didn't have anything on QS and JeeJee except misguided townies.
7.) Don't revenge accuse. If someone calls you mafia, don't turn around and claim they are mafia unless you are sure. Revenge accusing is just bad as now the town can't see the facts of an argument and it's just some guy mad/paranoid he's painted red. It's also bad because if they are both innocent the Mafia can keep the town focused on these 2 players all the time.
8.) Read posts from the past. Anytime someone dies, you should go back and skim all their posts. If the town is doing bad instead of skimming you should scrutinize them feverishly.
9.) when sharing information everyone doesn't need to know everything. If you're talking with someone privately keep them on a need to know basis. Same goes with the town. A bunch of clueless people are much more dangerous than 1 sane individual. If you tell them too much or too critical info it WILL be misused. Slowly give people more information based on their reactions to past info.
10.) Change your playstyle or at least keep it ambiguous but not threatening. This is obvious.
11.) Not a tip, but partial discussion of what happened this game with so many townies:
Mafia talks to someone through PMs thats innocent (Player X)
Player X starts posting mafia influenced information to the town actively.
People question his stupidity. Problem is he's so active you can't really do much without wanting to lynch him as a town for fear of his stupidity spreading to other players (who probably got Mafia poisoned mouths too, ugh).
Player X is also adamant because not only does he take offense to being called wrong, but the Mafia probably made him feel that those ideas weren't theirs but "his own". So he argues even though he is wrong but doesn't know it.
Player X gets lynched, flips innocent, town has lots of new innocent suspects and no one knows the mafia fucked Player X because Player X was too proud to admit he got his "ideas" from Mafia. The Mafia just stay quiet and watch the new circus.
There are more little things I usually do during a game that Im sure I forgot. But those first 10 are usually good enough to get you through a game.
Other tips
Tips on how to play
+ Show Spoiler +
1 . Just because you are a blue/red role does not mean that you should try to hide in order to avoid getting noticed. In fact, this is generally a huge indication of your role. Acting differently than you have in previous games or being really active on the site while not being active in the thread is an easy way to get caught.
2. If you haven't done so already, read the previous games. This is an easy way to get better quickly. At the very least, please read 1 game before playing. For the first few games have a role list handy and just look at how people play their role. If you want to get into behavioral analysis, try to guess roles based on posts as the game goes along.
5) If you are ever in doubt, or need help, feel free to PM a veteran player, or host for help.
If anyone else can think of some notes to add, let me know and I will toss em in.
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Points that should be added:
1.Just because you are a blue/red role does not mean that you should try to hide in order to avoid getting noticed. In fact, this is generally a huge indication of your role. Acting differently than you have in previous games or being really active on the site while not being active in the thread is an easy way to get caught.
2. If you haven't done so already, read the previous games. This is an easy way to get better quickly. At the very least, please read 1 game before playing. For the first few games have a role list handy and just look at how people play their role. If you want to get into behavioral analysis, try to guess roles based on posts as the game goes along.
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Sydney2287 Posts
I wonder what everyone's opinion is on having mandatory voting. (People who don't vote are modkilled). I'm for it, but I can understand that sometimes people just cannot make it to the thread in time for a day. Though that is easily solved by giving them 1 missed vote leeway per game.
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Canada7170 Posts
On May 12 2009 12:07 Bockit wrote:
I wonder what everyone's opinion is on having mandatory voting. (People who don't vote are modkilled). I'm for it, but I can understand that sometimes people just cannot make it to the thread in time for a day. Though that is easily solved by giving them 1 missed vote leeway per game.
I agree with this.
Also, if any forseeable circumstances arise, people can simply PM the game moderator (but don't lie to him/her, seriously guys/gals).
Actually, I'm not going to play a game without modkills of some sort.
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United States2186 Posts
I think the best option is mandatory modkills on missed voting. The exceptions are;
1 night of leeway to miss.
If you publically/pm the host that you'll be gone ahead of time it should be fine. People have external stuff, it happens. But if you just leave repeatedly with no notice then off with the head.
Judgment of course, so obviously if say for example Pyrr is posting a ton for the first few days and contributing loads, then goes afk for 2 days then comes back, he doesn't deserve to be modkilled. If on the other hand person x (all 100 of them who do this) goes afk because he got townie for the whole game then die die die.
As for next game, from my understanding, Qatol wants to host and Pyrr was a possibility if we were to have a second game as well.
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Although modkilling works, its usually inactive townies who go inactive, hense if like 10 townies get modkilled, the chances the mafia know instantly whos blue raises.
One idea that has been mentioned recently was forced voting. People who don't vote count as -1 votes to a vote target, so you always need a majority of people voting to successfully kill things. so the town will kill inactives themselves, as will mafia for voting.
Forces town to get rid of inactives, and forces mafia to not hide in them, as they can get pegged for it.
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BC, what do you mean they count as -1? I say if they don't vote we kill them. Regardless of role. Its very simple. Maybe if they don't vote within 2 days if you think that's too harsh.
Can you elaborate on the above idea though?
Edit: It seems to me that you are suggesting that those who don't vote subtract from who the town is voting for lets say they were trying to lynch me and 8 town voted for me but there are 5 inactive, so I get -5 votes so I only have 3? That seems to be helping the mafia more then weeding out the IA's
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I like Ver's idea. I don't understand BC's at this point. Do you mean inactive's subtract 1 from every vote? That would essentially just make it so a majority would have to vote but be really confusing. The town would kill inactives but the mafia wouldn't. The mafia could just vote.
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The problem with the inactives counting as a "no lynch" vote is that it becomes the town's burden to control the inactives. You're basically punishing the town because people are inactive. This can be done, but I don't see how to balance that without giving the town a lot more KP.
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I really don't think modkilling is the way to go. I often just don't know which way I'm going to end up voting and the variable day/night transition times often prevent me from voting. Inactivity based on boredom hits town much more than mafia, but inactivity based on IRL commitments and other un-game related factors should be roughly equal.
If that's the case, then the real burden for our next game should be trying to get everyone involved from the outset. We can either give pretty much EVERYONE a role (albeit a watered down version of the current roles), or we can keep the games small with players who are known to be active.
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Oh hi secret mafia forum.
I'd love to keep playing mafia games, but the last thing I need is another time consuming distraction at work.
I've always liked the idea of giving everyone some type of watered down role. It's quite depressing to be green. 
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Ok, the last game has motivated me to add something to this thread. (Also, I think we should be continually adding little tidbits of advice for new players.)
If you survive a hit, tell everyone about it! (Assuming the game doesn't have something funky like 2 rival mafia families.) The mafia already know they hit you and that you lived. Why hide that information from the town?
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If you're playing a game in which mafia don't know each other (but can use role checks), and you're mafia, be very careful about which PMs you reply to.
"yo mannn I just used my role check today to check you, and you came back as mafia too, I was trying to figure out how Caller wrote clues and I guess I got it (or got lucky rofl) just PM me back so we can get this mafia death machine rolling, the sooner we organized the better. If you don't want to PM me back yet, I suggest using your power and checking me too."
You should _never_ reply to something like the above PM. Could've been sent by a fellow mafia, or by a townie who was spamming you. How can you tell what the sender is? By role checking them. Which means that the townies can just spam everyone with PMs and force mafia to waste a ton of nights role checking to see if it's safe to reply to a PM.
When is it safe to reply to a PM from someone claiming to be mafia? When you get something like this:
"Hey man, I'm a rebel just like you. DO NOT REPLY TO THIS PM BEFORE YOU CONFIRM I'M A REBEL. Next night I will hit [name of inactive player], when he shows up dead at daybreak you'll know it was me who killed him. You can make sure because the clue should link to me in some way."
Townies can spam you with this kind of PMs too, but you can tell they're not legit when the target doesn't come up dead. A vigilante can in fact promise to have someone come up dead the next day and make good on that promise, but he's using up his one hit which he could've used to kill a mafia instead. If the promised person comes up dead, look at the clue left behind and make sure it links to the player who PMed you or his profile- if the checks out, you can be sure whoever promised you to kill that person was in fact responsible for the act, and probably a fellow mafia. Use your discretion to figure out if he could be a vigi, and how much info you should trust him with.
It's a messy and time-consuming method, but there's one thing that no one can do like a mafia: Killing people at night. This is the safest way to coordinate, although it's really damn slow. It's possible to coordinate more quickly by having all mafia PM to a single other mafia, but you'd need
a) Someone who is publicly and more or less demonstrably known to be mafia, and
b) Who lives through the night to be able to confirm fellow mafia members through the hit list.
Since Vigis can kill off a roleclaiming mafia during the night, this method is hardly foolproof- but it's probably worth trying anyway in a big game.
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Ok new new tip: if you are mafia and happen to be in control of the hits, don't dance around the blue players. If you know that LTT is a blue, kill him. It doesn't matter if you think you can control him. Kill him. Leaving blues alive until the end game will come back to bite you.
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United States2186 Posts
On analysis: when trying to find mafia, do it one at a time rather than trying to analyze every single player in the game. I made that mistake in my first game too, and I did very poorly in it. It's simply too difficult and too ambitious to focus on finding every mafia. Concentrate on one person, or two if there's a double lynch.
Also, a key difference between the top players and the majority is the mindset. So far as I can tell, most players here simply go with the flow. They read their pms and the thread and react to what happens. That's it. They are a victim of the tide of the game. Thus if the mafia control the flow of the game, they win, because the town is at the mafia's mercy. That's how we won in mafia 7, and we won in such a way that nobody besides Ace understood how.
The distinction is that the top players are actively looking for mafia. I know I probably reread the thread at least 10 times during a game. This might be out of reach for some people as I read extremely quickly, but at the very least everyone innocent should routinely go through all of one person's posts OBJECTIVELY, and try to see what their intentions are.
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I preferred my way of playing when i did: Do what i want and don't analyze anyone, unless i was a detective, then find out who someone was and talk to them. (+ Hax find ver first night)
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Bumping this post too, the next Mafia game that's run if I don't mod it is going to have a new format. We've been using an inferior format for 2-3 years now and based on activity and player skill it just isn't working out.
From now on in my games but hopefully adopted in other mods' games:
1.) For anything except large games (40+ players) all voting is done in the game thread. In an effort to improve the general ability of everyone this is a must. The ability to see the votes right in front of your face will probably go a long way in making everyone better.
I'll be using the voting format of games I modded on another site: ##vote: player name. Also I'll allow people to unvote as it makes things more explicit. No abstaining because...
2.) Majority to lynch. This will probably be the biggest change for small and medium games. If you reach majority votes before the deadline you are lynched. This is to promote activity and help analysis skills. If the deadline is reached and there isn't a majority then it is a no lynch. Imo this change is probably the most important one to improve game flow.
3.) No more clues. It's come to the point where people have to admit clues just make people downright awful players. If you don't believe it ask yourself what players pin Mafia most often and how they've done it? With the exception of Camlito and MTF in one game with lots of support no one has ever been consistently able to use clues to get Mafia. No one. All the best players have done it with analysis of what's being posted. This clue nonsense is just bringing down the skill level. Read games like Mafia 5, 6, oh and especially 7. I think if anyone reads 7 after all this time has passed they'll get what I'm saying. Focusing on clues is such a bad habit it's making some of the newer players completely miss what the point of Mafia is: a mind game.
4.) From now on if you don't let a mod know you'll be going AFK ahead of time and for how long, you're mod killed and banned. Point blank. Standard game days are 48 hours minimum to account for this being an international site. Seriously, no one in the world is that busy to not take 10 minutes out to read a thread on the internet. No complaining about the thread being too long - most people on this website know how to read. This implies you also know how to skim posts, pick out what you need to know and keep going. No excuses.
5.) Elected positions are done for now. If we do have them they no longer should be immune to Role Checks. In fact role checks are going to be rare and instead I'll be using Alignment checks only for a bit. We have to teach people how to read others as well as the game itself. Pardoner if anything is the role I'd use and it's going to be hidden and unelected.
6.) With no more elected roles Bodyguards are going to be gone in their current form. If I use them it'll probably just be One per game, and in fact it would act like a Martyr role. I think the bodyguard mechanic has been misused by the players so badly that it's no longer even useful. Qatol told me himself and others tried to fix it with the Mafia subbing idea and it was great. Unfortunately I think we can all see removing them is the ultimate solution.
7.) The last thing I'll encourage is the use of some behaviors from Mafiascum. Like I said I think the way some of them play is the way the game should be played. So one of the behaviors I'm going to ask we start using in our games is Finger of Suspicion. This tactic, commonly labeled Fos is when you basically tell a player you think he/she is possibly scum but won't vote for them yet. This is to also promote discussion in our games.
Feel free to discuss all of this.
For new players, and even some vets, if you have questions on how I come to the conclusions I do in games, or figure things out, or why I play a certain way when I do also feel free to ask.
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No abstaining Was going to suggest this after this game.
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Yea, I've seen too many games ruined by abstaining. With Majority Lynch everyone has to play or their screwed. Ah well ^_^
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United States2186 Posts
1. I think this might be more counterproductive than anything because it fills the game thread with a lot more unnecessary posts. I'll bring this up again but having too many posts hurts the town considerably since good posts are ignored and people aren't forced to react to information. See day 1 of this current game lol, that was ridiculous.
2. Not really sure how this would play out or why it's better. Can you elaborate a bit?
3. I think having clue games every once in awhile is nice but I agree that. Just a minor correction though as Cam basically owned us singlehandedly in BC's 2nd game from day 2/3 clues and MTF got Vivi as well in Qatol's game, both of those solo. Otherwise yes, clues do make people dull and hurt the town more than help.
4. Yup can't agree more. After this game we are actually going to post the ban list instead of the just informal one that's passed around when something is hosted.
5. Ambivalent. The town screws itself often by lynching innocent elected roles since players gravitate towards them in bad ways, but how do we keep day 1 discussion? We don't want a repeat of the smurf game day 1, we don't want to put day 1 rolechecks back in and have ace vs folca or me vs qatol/you again. Elected roles are very very good at stimulating activity. Nothing wrong with leaving them aside if there's a replacement. Any ideas?
6. Yea bgs aren't a good role; the current system as qatol says works but still not that great. Unprotected offices kinda suck though.
7. Oh no oh no. I've read a fair number of mafiascum games and the primary problem that plagues them is that the town runs themselves in circles with useless info and way too much spam, and FOS is one of the primary reasons why (also lack of pm'ing aggravates this). WIFOM overemphasis is also another problem that just hurts the town more than helps (considering how often it is misused). Most of the games there are just painful to read because of these two factors.
Obviously inactivity hurts the town a ton but over activity and fluff is just as bad. It's a tricky thing to balance and imo the posting usefulness/frequency is one of the main reasons why games go in the direction they do.
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EPT
