New Experimental Concepts for Mafia Games

[Seven Deadly Sins]

"sucks for you"

I hate to sound like a dick, but it's the only 100% fair and objective way to decide between two players. Randoming is dumb, preset priority lists are dumb, etc.

[Mekkah**]

Alternatively, you could make everyone start out with the same priority (for example, five). The moment you win a tie on an item through sending your PM first, your priority is lowered, and the moment you lose a tie, it is heightened again. This way you won't consistently lose these ties if you're in a bad timezone, or the opposite.

[Aura Guardian]

Why not let them be simultaneous, and a double target causes no one to get it? That way, it is still fair and objective, while time zones are not an issue.

Although, changing update time by 8 hours each time with multiple hosts at different time zones could also work. Just my two cents.

EDIT: ninja-ed by Mekkah wielding a better idea. Oh, well. Seconding Mekkah's suggestion.

[Objection]

Originally Posted by Fat Seven Deadly Sins

"sucks for you"

I hate to sound like a dick, but it's the only 100% fair and objective way to decide between two players. Randoming is dumb, preset priority lists are dumb, etc.

Discrimination based on something that is irrelevant to the game itself is anything but fair.

[Da Letter El]

to somewhat avoid that, deadlines could be set every 32 or 40 hours. it makes it so that the time of the update shifts 8 (or 16, depending on your perspective) hours each time, which should accommodate just about everyone, not to mention mix around priority a little bit, although even that still isn't perfect, since some people are always on, versus others not, etc. then again, that rewards participation and activity in a sense, which i suppose has its merits.

[Seven Deadly Sins]

BETTER IDEA ITT:

(note: stolen partially from mekkah's idea)

Whenever you pick up an item, your "item finding priority" goes down by 1 since you're carrying all this shit. This improves things by making it more likely that people without items will get them. In the case of equal priority, "first PM rules".

[Pidge]

This really isn't a concept about a whole game, but instead of hosts helping you make a fake role PM, all role PMs should just be poorly written. They can include typos, be all lowercase, be written in various formats, have commands for night actions in different formats, be very short/long, etc. The point is that it's easier to fake PMs, while hosts don't really have to worry about making a PM with a typo causing someone to be lynched. Argument against this is that PMs are a part of the game that the mafia have to overcome by faking.

[Mekkah**]

The warning "the hosts can make typos" should be enough for people not to lynch based on them. If they do try, it's their loss if it goes wrong (and I believe this happened recently). I always try to keep my PMs simple and hardly ever go for consistency.

[Exarius]

The game you are thinking is Star Wars Mafia 2. Village lynched their own god damn inspector due to him standing up for leading and having a pisspoor role PM, which everybody said is a fake. Until he died, and, um, really had that PM.

[Amelia]

That item mafia might get me interested enough to rejoin mafia, just saying :P

[Thorns]

Originally Posted by Fat Exarius

The game you are thinking is Star Wars Mafia 2. Village lynched their own god damn inspector due to him standing up for leading and having a pisspoor role PM, which everybody said is a fake. Until he died, and, um, really had that PM.

no it was because of my masterful play

[Exarius]

Yeah, your fake was just so bad that everybody bought it for being written by the host.

[Thorns]

yeah pretty much!

[jigglypuffers42]

Well, this thread hasn't seem much action in a while, but I had an idea and thought I would post it here:

Corruption mafia:

The game starts out with only 1 mafia member, and the rest is all one village. That individual mafia member can, on even nights (including n0) corrupt their target. Their target will turn into a mafia member and join the corrupter. On odd nights, the original mafia member can make a kill. The corrupted keep their roles but change alliances.

[UncleSam]

Originally Posted by Fat jigglypuffers42

Well, this thread hasn't seem much action in a while, but I had an idea and thought I would post it here:

Corruption mafia:

The game starts out with only 1 mafia member, and the rest is all one village. That individual mafia member can, on even nights (including n0) corrupt their target. Their target will turn into a mafia member and join the corrupter. On odd nights, the original mafia member can make a kill. The corrupted keep their roles but change alliances.

What you're basically suggesting is one Converter wolf and a village. The problem with a mafia like this is that it could literally be over by D1 with minimal luck involved (all the inspect has to do is inspect the Converter, once the mafia cannot convert any longer it's basically game over if there aren't many mafia members/wolf members). Also, an odd night kill only simply isn't enough.

If you are suggesting a converter mafia, there have been such games before, and it could work. I just don't think it would work with only one converter.

Also, given that this has been done before, it's not exactly "experimental". Of course, the flip side to this is that this concept has been successful before, so there isn't any reason it couldn't succeed now.

Just my cent and a half.

[FinnRagetti]

Originally Posted by Fat jigglypuffers42

Well, this thread hasn't seem much action in a while, but I had an idea and thought I would post it here:

Corruption mafia:

The game starts out with only 1 mafia member, and the rest is all one village. That individual mafia member can, on even nights (including n0) corrupt their target. Their target will turn into a mafia member and join the corrupter. On odd nights, the original mafia member can make a kill. The corrupted keep their roles but change alliances.

Dittoing UncleSams sentiments on team size. Try making a 2 member team at the start. 1 killer, 1 recruiter. If killer dies, then recruiter can kill/recruit.

[General Spoon]

How about a game that ends at a set deadline (the game is over at the end of day/night X)? It would either have points accumulated through actions and goals (don't think it'd work too well), or it would have points that are transferable via death and other means. And the team with the most points in the end would win. It would require some work to make it balanced what with the town faction being larger than the rest and all.

[jigglypuffers42]

How about a game that ends at a set deadline (the game is over at the end of day/night X)? It would either have points accumulated through actions and goals (don't think it'd work too well), or it would have points that are transferable via death and other means. And the team with the most points in the end would win. It would require some work to make it balanced what with the town faction being larger than the rest and all.

It would either have points accumulated through actions and goals

I've seen multiple posts about this kind of mafia, but never seen a game go up about it. It could work, but it would require a long time to balance. Elaborate.

or it would have points that are transferable via death and other means

I'm not so sure that we could get that to work; how do non killers gain points then? Elaborate.


Repeating myself, this could be elaborated- if you're going to post something that has been posted before than have it stand out in some way. You would have to make it more specific to get replies on how it could work.

This could definitely be a great idea. If you're on #stark or #fluodome, come talk to me; I have an idea on getting this to work

[Fangren]

Okay, I just thought up a rather...interesting idea for a mafia game: one where nobody but the hosts know who is playing. I don't mean like an anonymous game, I mean a game that takes place entirely on smogon, but none of the players know exactly who got in and who didn't. The best they'd get would be a list of players who signed up in the thread (and I'm toying with the idea of allowing sign-ups through pms as well), and maybe they might know how many players are in the game too. Naturally, if somebody subbed out there wouldn't be a public note about it.

There are a few roles that would work with this set-up...for instance, a role that asks whether or not a certain user is in the game. Another would be a role that bring new users into the game, perhaps by subbing yourself out (like a game of tag).

It's meant to be a rather chaotic game, and hopefully a fun one...the teams would have to be balanced a bit differently, probably with a nerfing of the mafia or a strengthening of the town.

Edit: Also, those who never signed up in the first place can't get subbed in and are unaffected by roles unless they ask the hosts first.

[undisputed]

Hi. I was thinking about mafia concepts because I really like it here on Smogon. I actually independently came up with an idea similar to jigglypuffers42, just with a few different variations.

1. Have a lot of "villagers" and 3 neutrals that can convert people at night. But as a twist, you will get a role after you have been converted and infected someone. Kind of like a chain. For example, if I started out as converter, and chose "Player A" to be converted and put on my team, then Player A will be the next converter while I get a mafia role. No one knows each others roles to start out with. Then, as you get infected you will get roles like:
-Doctor: Basically a Inspector
-Tracer: Where you can track the spread of the converter. ie I find out that "player b" was infected by "player a" and can track the spread while they are alive at night.
-Killer obviously
-Body Guard
-Spies (maybe)
-Ill come up with more later

Anyway, if you're infected, you can't move to a new team, the converter will just fail. The village can group together with some alright roles and have a win condition, but can do nothing to stop the spread. Lynches would get interesting/chaotic with teams. Idk I think it could be a cool idea.

Also, sorry for bumping this thread if I wasnt supposed to/or if my idea is kinda of lame.

[jigglypuffers42]

Interesting.

Basically what you're proposing is a three village game with moving inspectors, and the game starts out with a recruitment phase. I have a couple of notes:

To get the game going, I would have a starting phase where the 3 three starting players choose 3 others to join there team. This will start out the game. Then, the 3 people gain roles, and the original becomes a converter who turns someone else into a converter etc. etc.

In addition, i would like to ask one question: when the person who currently has the ability to convert dies, the chain stops, right? In addition, let's say player a is converted to team one, and she becomes a tracer. If she is then converted to team two will they still become a tracer? Will people retain the same roles, with the exception of at the start of the game when they haven't even been converted yet?

[jigglypuffers42]

Sorry for the double post.

@fangren: I really dont know what to say about this. I'm just not sure it's practical. I don't know where to start, but let me try: it would cause for a majorly chaotic game that, without a public thread to post on, there could be no announcments by anyone other than god. Or would they be allowed to say they are playing on the thread? I'm just njot sure if it's practical

[undisputed]

I'm on my iPod so my post may not cover everything you asked, but I'll try. Basically the last person to be converted is the new converter. If the new converter is killed during the night, then the team's ability to recruit is stopped. Also, I think you asked about one team member being converted from another team. I would either say that that cannot happen or do something where that 2nd convertee can become a spy for their original team.

Also, expediting the process with like three recruits night 1 is probably a good idea.

[Fangren]

Originally Posted by Fat jigglypuffers42

Sorry for the double post.

@fangren: I really dont know what to say about this. I'm just not sure it's practical. I don't know where to start, but let me try: it would cause for a majorly chaotic game that, without a public thread to post on, there could be no announcments by anyone other than god. Or would they be allowed to say they are playing on the thread? I'm just njot sure if it's practical

...well, yeah, of course there would be a public thread that everyone would be able to post on, I don't recall ever saying that there wouldn't be one. It's just that, due to the uncertainty involved, you couldn't just trust anybody who said they were playing to be telling the truth (since I'd expect that at least one person on the sidelines would try and troll a bit, especially if they had the prospect of actually getting into the game at some point). In addition, you'd expect that the mafia would simply claim to not be in the game, so just going by how many people say they are in the game isn't quite going to cut it.

[vonFiedler]

I usually keep my experimental concepts close to the chest, what with wanting to do them myself and all, but this one is a little out there.

Mafia is already a hidden information strategy game, and we've seen one expert mafia where people picked their roles out of ones previously made. But what if Mafia was a game with a deck? Players could pick which cards they want in advance and each phase they would get a few cards they could use. It may sound far-fetched and like alot of work, but I am an experienced card game designer. I could whip up about a 100 or more cards pretty fast.

I'm already thinking about using an HP system like Acklow's FF3 mafia. For more variety, players would be restricted to one or two elements when making their deck. They could have more starting HP, or draw more cards per phase (though there would be a hand size limit).