Mafia Policy Review

[Amelia]

And i honestly don't see how we can put rules to change it, what are you going to put there, every confirmed villager must have spreadsheet access or something? It's not something we can change in policy review, so we can't do anything about it in this thread anyway. (I could actually talk about my experience in Zelda Mafia / Morrowind mafia, but that should come in a later thread).

Now what makes anonymous mafias different from non-anony mafia? In my opinion (and the reason whyh i stopped joining small games), mafias do not need to false claim in anony mafias, which honestly is all the difference. In small mafias, someone will ask to be the contact, and then it becomes the matter of weeding out the false claims.

In big mafias, even if someone is a mafia but did not false claim, he can still use his abilities effectively and not get lynched "just because his claim was slightly off". That i feel is the main attraction of the anony mafias.

Ok, moving on, neutrals. I feel that if neutrals have accomplished their objective they should be instantly taken out of the game. Instead of being given the ability to stay around and poke here and there, neutrals should complete their job and move off (think Broly, not Babidi). Of course, if you want to stay around a bit more before finishing your objective, then it's a risk you take to get killed.

CWCs, the amount of winning conditions i saw in YCI that said "if you post in a thread with..." was a bit depressing. Is it even possibile to make CWCs for everyone in the game though? Remember in the original Mafia Mafia, at least half of the people had different win conditions, but then things happened like Evan betraying his team for the diamond, WER / Mekkah not doing anything except giving their support to the winning team. CWCs need to be experimented with a lot more before we can actually reach a conclusion whether
1) It is actually implementable
2) It is balanced
3) It is fun.

Hmm i think that's about it for now, and this is honestly a good step in the right direction (Thanks Shiv for posting it, Mekkah for forcing him).

Edit: @ SDS
I remember an old old mafia long time ago where villagers cannot plan outside, i can't remember which one was it though. I think doing it again will help to solve the problems.

 

[Earthworm]

stuff about anonymous mafia being able to claim mafia and have nothing happen

I agree with this and I have come up with a couple of ideas as to how to fix this.

1) Normal lynches no longer target the anonymous aliases but target the Smogon aliases instead.

This means that nobody gets 'namekilled' at night and I don't think anyone ever had a problem with being 'namelynched' so it should solve the problem. A counter-argument to this is that the village leaders can come out with their Smogon aliases and claim whatever important role they have legitimately and the mafia can't take advantage of this information. However I don't think this is such a huge problem because the mafia will have hookers to prevent the roles, etc.

If this was implemented I'd also support having roles that change the lynch to anonymous alias lynching instead.

2) A larger portion of roles target Smogon names instead of aliases than the current portion.

I don't really like this idea because it is hard for me to think through (i.e. which roles should this be applicable to and on which sides? What shifts the balance too much and how do you avoid giving one side an advantage? etc) but I'm sure it could be a good idea if someone really good at building mafia games up tried this.

I had a third idea but it was terrible so I deleted what I had wrote about it.


As for the 'all I'm doing is being commanded' thing, you should just target who you want unless whoever you're being 'commanded' by gives you good reason to target the person you're targeting. You should all play independently to an extent, probably to the 'beyond reasonable doubt' extent trust-wise. (sorry if I phrased that badly)


Everything else looks OK, but just so I'm clear, what you said about extra nicks mean you can't use nicks that aren't anyone on either the alias list or the player list to communicate without telling the other person who you are or what?

Now what makes anonymous mafias different from non-anony mafia? In my opinion (and the reason whyh i stopped joining small games), mafias do not need to false claim in anony mafias, which honestly is all the difference. In small mafias, someone will ask to be the contact, and then it becomes the matter of weeding out the false claims.

Obviously they don't 'need' to, it just provides an advantage to the side if they do. This seems to me like laziness!!

 

[porygon3]

About finding out the names of characters not in the game, I heard a pretty cool role from someone a while back that I don't think has been used. Basically it is a mafia member who has a role like "at the end of each night, you find out the name of 1 character not in the game", and it would be a reasonable character not something like frogfucius lol. I don't know how good this can be in a theme with fewer characters, but if it was like Mafia Mafia or something there would be a ton of possibilities.

Also for CWC, I partly agree with whoever said they should be a little different than what they should do, I think his example was a rogue whose CWC was "stalk the right person". I think mine in FE mafia was pretty well done though. While it didn't try to make me do something else, it did put pressure on me to kill the right person and before I die. If it had been a typical "you win if the village wins and izuka is dead" it wouldn't have been nearly as good.

 

[Shiv]

just saying one quick thing about people being "pawns", will reply to the rest later.

fact is, at one point in time, gmax himself was one of those "pawns" and so have most users been. the onus is on YOU to take initiative and show that you can hold your own. so many people have come up now who can play mafia well and they've only come up because they were proactive, not reactive.

if you sit back and tell gmax 'im inspector, ill do whatever you want', why would he divulge information to you, especially since its not like your proactively going around doing stuff?

don't blame it on getting a village role, blame it on you not wanting to do that stuff.

 

[Jackal]

at first i thought EWs idea of lynching smogon names was brilliant... however, I dont think this helps at all, as it still forces you to have a false claim if you are mafia.

if there is a smart village leader, which there hopefully is, he will literally talk to every single user and ask for a claim. If I am Jackal the mafia leader I suddenly need a claim or I will be lynched. Even if I do give a claim, im safe for a bit until they ask for my alias. At which point I dont give it then they lynch me by name or I do give it, they inspect me because as a big name player if I am a villager I am a huge asset to the village, then they find out im mafia as we are taking out straight up moles finally so yeah. Lose-lose for the big names.

As the creator of anon mafia I can acknowledge that the one true flaw is that you can come out and say you are mafia and get lucky by the alias -> smogon name role not hitting you (a la hip last game). This is a small price to pay for the security that is needed with the aliases.

As for anyone who is saying "I want to do x to play mafia the way it is supposed to be played" all I can say is are you serious. We have mafiabot on irc to play mafia the way it is 'supposed' to be played. All it is is a glorified guessing game. With the big games we have evolved forward and forward and the strategy needed in each game is more and more (pending the game is balanced which even though I emphasized after zelda is much much much trickier than people realize). The game me and dak are starting up tomorrow will emphasize this point of strategy more than ever.

And lastly to all you people whining about being a pawn...you realize it is in your own hands to not be a pawn right? FFS in yci mafia a neutal (me) was essentially 100% running the village behind everyones backs (i never came out and said "look at me, the village leader", I just let other people say that (gmax, ew, rev, lesm) so they would take the fall and not me). Granted I moled pretty flawlessly but when I gave people orders I was almost never questioned, except by the players I consider good.

Take billymills for example. In DBZ he was terrible. He took matters into his own hands after me and mekkah tried to make him stop, and he made decisions on his own, most of which were bad. But I think he learned from them, and now is a pretty decent mafia player. He always is curious as to how things are operating, although now he realizes that other peoples insights might be better than his own at times. The POINT is dont fuck over your team but dont just sit back and take orders. It is not hard at all to get involved, even if your team has a "leader". In FE mafia cyzir and Jedil planned the whole FUCK TIGER lynch without me, the leader of their faction... and it was a brilliant plan. For that one simple move I now consider cyzir a good mafia player. Becoming a big name isnt what friends you have, it is how well you play.

I think that is all for now!

 

[LonelyNess]

I actually really like the "lynch by Smogon alias" idea. I think it eliminates all of the problems I have with the anonymous system. I just want people to be held accountable for poor play... also, Amelia, why should the mafia get to operate at 100% efficiency just because they -don't have- to make a fake claim due to the broken anonymous alias system? If anythng that goes against the very spirit of mafia that the mafia is supposed to not be letting themselves be known as mafia...

Take dak for example in Simpsons mafia, he said on multiple accounts to us that he wasn't even going to bother fake claiming anything to the village leaders since he "wasn't leading the village so they know I'm mafia anyway." How retarded is that that he can not display any of the qualities of what we would consider a "good mafia man" (sneakyness, infiltration, being discreet) and yet he can pretty much dominate the game... for the sole reason that he has an anonymous alias.

at first i thought EWs idea of lynching smogon names was brilliant... however, I dont think this helps at all, as it still forces you to have a false claim if you are mafia.

Are you serious? You don't want to have to fake claim if you're mafia / wolf???? THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT. You're not supposed to be able to win as mafia if you're not fake claiming and infiltrating and causing dissention in the village. What a joke statement.

 

[Jackal]

did you even read what I said? read the next paragraph, it is pretty clear that being FORCED to have a false claim BREAKS the game.

you are still treating mafia in the traditional sense. well news flash...

traditional mafia = guessing game (who is mafia)
the way it has evolved on smogon = strategy game (how do we kill the mafia)

this is how we play. guessing is novelty at best, and like I said if you had read my whole post which i dont think you did, can still be played 24/7 on #fluodome.

 

[Accent]

I thought I'd give my opinion on this matter, even if I'm not an experienced smogon mafia player, I'm very familiar with IRL mafia and my job involves making rules, and it gives an outsider point of view.

First of all, a quick word about anonymous mafia: one of its flaws that I've heard of on IRC and that is being talked about here is that players don't use their aliases as much as they're supposed to: they simply collect information on IRC, which is made easier thanks to the alias system, and then try to figure out who is who. We could put some kind of special posting restriction in these games: post at least one short paragraph (I don't know, 4-5 lines?) each day, explaining your strategy, your thoughts about the current state of the game, why you chose to lynch who you lynched... You can always bluff. It would spawn longer discussions and make guessing who is who easier, thus limiting the number of players claiming safely on IRC.

Now on to a more general topic:

The feeling I got from the two games I played until now (28WL, where I'm dead, and Trollfest) is that mafia is not a game anymore on Smogon. It's a competition. Now I have quite special views on how games in general should be played and what should their content be, but for me, the most crucial aspect of a game is the fun that each player gets. In some games, being part of a team is really fun, and in some of these games, being only a pawn is OK because you can really feel that team spirit, and you can feel like you made the big plan possible by helping in your own tiny way. But this is for real games or sports - ie, being the one who makes a decisive pass in soccer, being sacrificed to allow teammates to move on in paintball... - and we're on the internet. What makes this style of play even remotely conceivable here is that Smogon is a really strong community, some members are friends in the real way, not the internet way (even though they might not have met irl), so most of the players trust each other. But I'm new and becoming the pawn of someone I haven't even heard of because he simply asked isn't something I'm willing to do (and, LN, if that makes me the worst mafia player ever, I hope I'll never get good).

So, how do we change mafia so that it becomes a game again? I'm not saying that we should do that for every game: I'm sure some players enjoy the competitive aspect of mafia, enjoy the fact that it can be played almost like a war between two or more factions who have to play their cards wisely. But this isn't what I like in mafia. I like the social aspect of the games: relaxing, laughing, trying to come up with the most clever lie to avoid being caught, trying to explain the obvious clues that an other player let slip to your inapt teammates... What makes that impossible currently on Smogon, is the over-complication of the rules, and of the games as a whole.

One simple example (I'm going to list examples from now on, it doesn't mean they all should be changed, it's just to show how far Smogon mafias have strayed from the essence of the game): the role PMs. When I first got my first role PM, my first reaction was "what.the.fuck is this?". I mean, they're funny and all, but the fact that they require you to make an equally complicated and elaborate PM in order to make a false claim plausible is proof that they're too much - at least for me.

I could also talk about the existence of items (I'm excited about X-Men because there are no items), the fact that there are often more than 2 factions, the posting restrictions, the overabundance of power roles, the complexity of said roles (the moles being an example, but not the only one)...

As I said to Mekkah personally and on warau, I'd like to see a game without all this complicated stuff that, for me, don't add a lot of flavour to the game or even take some away from it in some cases. I'm aware that I'm a bit too new to host, or co-host a game, but if an experienced host would like to see the rules I thought about for a game, I'd be glad to share them - playing mafia on a forum such as Smogon allows for a lot of possibilities, since most of the players are experienced and know what they're talking about, and I think it's a shame that the games are not as good as they could be in my opinion.

edit: I was writing while Jackal wrote his posts. So here, Jackal's an example of a player who likes the competitive part of mafia on Smogon. However, I don't agree with the fact that traditionnal mafia is a guessing game. Mafia on fluodome is indeed a guessing game, because there isn't time to think. You just have to guess and lynch. But with the rules used on fluodome (with some added flavour and innovation, I'm not saying we should cut everything), and more time to think and elaborate a plan, it becomes a game of deception and bluff, and it definitely has strategy involved, even if not as much as in current mafia games. But if you want strategy there's Risk.

 

[moi]

Why is everyone making it seem like only mafia enjoy the benefits of the alias system. I'm dissapointed that everyone has pretty much ignored what the village gains by such an alias system and pretty much think that if you're going to mention any benefits gained by the mafia you should also mention that which the village gains.

fucking accent and jackal stealth post me.

 

[LonelyNess]

did you even read what I said? read the next paragraph, it is pretty clear that being FORCED to have a false claim BREAKS the game.

Way to try and discredit my argument by saying "well you obviously didn't read my post."

you are still treating mafia in the traditional sense. well news flash...

traditional mafia = guessing game (who is mafia)
the way it has evolved on smogon = strategy game (how do we kill the mafia)

I'm fine with this, but if we're actually going to be changing the aim of the game to "how do we kill the mafia" rather than "how do we find out the mafia" then the games need to be rebalanced in order to give the village an actual fighting chance. Because right now, the village is essentially guessing... which you seem to be so adamantly against.

And if you're so upset that you're a good player who gets picked on and inspected all the time, then how about hosts stop giving the good players all the great roles? Punish people for name inspecting / killing by giving the good players vanilla villager roles, or shitty mafia roles (like an item finder or something...). If people start to think that anybody can have any role, then they'll stop name inspecting and start actually strategically using their roles.

this is how we play. guessing is novelty at best, and like I said if you had read my whole post which i dont think you did, can still be played 24/7 on #fluodome.

You're right, guessing sucks ass... but the anonymous mafia system only helps the mafia stop guessing, not the village... which is an unfair advantage.

 

[dak]

i don't have much time atm so i am trying to keep it short:

the majority of people are misguided by the fact that we are still calling the games we play 'mafia'. the last games of mafia we played was harry potter mafia 2 and its clone star wars mafia.

what we are now playing should be considered a whole new metagame, 'smogon mafia' compared to what we now label as 'classic mafia'. those two do not really share much in common at all anymore. i like to think we have transcended the system of 'classic mafia', personally. like jackal said, our system is more of a strategy game than blind guessing, we work with facts and information, not mere assumptions. we do have to make educated guesses at times, but never without any reasonable basis. aliases, items and complex role add so much to the game.

i don't really know what accent is talking about, i find the current games (especially apoc and dbz) to be much much much more fun than the ones we played a year and a half ago, saw and harry potter. the game has evolved so much that we really should invent a new name for it to avoid confusion.

'the very spirit of mafia' is a bullshit concept, because we are not playing mafia in the first place, so this arguement should not be brought up


edit for ln: how is village 'mostly guessing', you have been a villager 1 time so far. i have been village leader many times and whenever i was, our faction was the first with a (near) completed spreadsheet. the collaboration between mafias and/or neutrals or the use of dickens type roles fucked us over in the end, they were obliterating us to the point that information was useless. yci was the weakest village play-wise i have ever seen, every other village except simpsons has dominated the game at one point, this has never happened here, because of bad play. i even told you guys you have a mole but werent able to get rid of it. this is not a fault of the system, this is an example of bad play

 

[Jackal]

Accent, I completely respect where you are coming from, but I think your whole post can be summed up by my simple statement in the post above yours.

Guys, we are not playing traditional mafia any more. The last time we played a traditional forum mafia was Harry Potter 2 (subsequently starwars but that was just HP2.1). Mafia Mafia was the dawn of whatever game we now play that we still call mafia for lack of a better name, but it.is.not.mafia. Zelda mafia cemented the form of the game we currently play, and Apoc perfected it (or as close to perfection as we have been).

So once people can wrap their head around the fact that we are no longer playing "mafia" in big games (I have never played in or followed a small game so I dont know about those), we can eliminate those arguments and move forward in our policy review.

PS: I am not opposed at all to the people interested in traditional mafia starting up traditional mafia games in Circus Maximus (small games, 50 players and traditional wont work lol people are too smart for that now, unless you get all new users and history repeats itself). But dont try to meddle into our new era games with the traditional stuff.

One last thing, within Accents post (which was good just misguided as he definitely didnt understand the distinction I just made when he posted that) was a stroke of brilliance.

Anonymous mafia is being watered down by irc. GP put those posting CWC in yci to encourage posting on aliases, which is 100% the right idea, he just went about it the wrong way. I agree 110% we need to utilize the aliases properly, not just as a means to vote and hide. If someone can figure out a way that we can use these aliases properly, THIS would be the next step in evolving our mafia games. Of course talking on irc under our aliases is the 100% fix, but im not sure this is plausible at all.

One last thing: for anyone who signed up for viva la mafia. BE ADVISED: this game of mafia will not be traditional OR "advanced". It will be a third genre of mafia even more complicated than the previous two and will be entirely experimental. I also think it has the potential to be the most fun. But yeah if you are looking for a traditional game / arent ready to adapt to a completely new ruleset, you may want to reconsider if you want to play.

I really am not trying to intimidate anyone, you will be fine as long as you read the rules of our game, but its just a disclaimer.

 

[Jackal]

LN...

the village in yci was never guessing. You and the other villagers were left guessing because I was moling you guys and not giving you any information...the information in these games is there you just have to find it. My spreadsheet, and GP can attest to this was DONE except for EIGHT aliases by n4, and I was acting as a villager at that time. It was safe to assume at least 6 of tose 8 aliases were mafia, and hey hey hey looking back this holds true! There is no guessing at all if you know what you are doing.

And giving good players bad roles wastes their skill lol... when a host creates a really creative role filled with potential, why would they give it to a below average user who wont know what to do with it? We are good players for a reason, we have proven ourselves. A host wants to see creative shit happen. I maintain that even though my role in YCI was broken, 80% of the userbase would not have been able to win with it just for a lack of skill. I agree that the best users shouldnt always be given the absolute best roles, but to give them a "vanilla villager" role is absurd. OH WAIT, there are no more vanilla villager roles anymore because we are not playing traditional mafia anymore... we are playing, as dak said, "smogon mafia"... where EVERY role plays a part.

 

[Accent]

A little copypasta, I think you missed my edit Jackal.

I was writing while Jackal wrote his posts. So here, Jackal's an example of a player who likes the competitive part of mafia on Smogon. However, I don't agree with the fact that traditionnal mafia is a guessing game. Mafia on fluodome is indeed a guessing game, because there isn't time to think. You just have to guess and lynch. But with the rules used on fluodome (with some added flavour and innovation, I'm not saying we should cut everything), and more time to think and elaborate a plan, it becomes a game of deception and bluff, and it definitely has strategy involved, even if not as much as in current mafia games.

Now, if what you're trying to achieve is something different than mafia, which seems to be the case, then I'm fine with that, but yeah, you should find a name for it because it is misleading and it will lead some players to play differently than they'd have if they knew the aim was so different. In fact you could also make a tutor system for these games. But I may be going too far now.

Now that I know that you're indeed purposefuly trying to establish new rules for a new game, or have succeeded in establishing them already, my thoughts have changed. I'll follow Viva La Mafia with more interest knowing that (even if it is a "third genre").

But I still think that there should be "tradionnal mafias" going on in Circus Maximus, because it really is a different style of game and there's already Smogon Mafia, Risk and Diplomacy games going on - if you're not into strategy, there's not much for you.

 

[Mekkah]

Just for the fans of "normal" mafia: SevenDeadlySins was talking about hosting a NOC (No Outside Communication) game of ~19-20 people. If you're a fan of how most mafia games are played (and how irl mafia is played) and you have the honor to adhere to those rules, I'd recommend waiting for that.

 

[jumpluff]

snip

fe

anyway i don't think we need to invent a new name, people just need to realise what we're playing isn't mafia

(also @jackal #fluodome mafia is broken by pms and notice but eh)

 

[Seven Deadly Sins]

What mekkah said.

(and even if you like smogon "mafia" please sign up and don't break the rules because i think it will give a lot more insight into how mafia should actually be played)

 

[Accent]

In fact Smogon Mafia is now closer to Chess than mafia. And even closer to that game, I can't remember its name, where you have an army of troops with a power value ranging from 1 to 9, and you can't see your opponent's troops' values (it was named Field Tactis in 42 All-Time Classics on the DS).

edit: Stratego.

 

[Outlaw]

In fact Smogon Mafia is now closer to Chess than mafia. And even closer to that game, I can't remember its name, where you have an army of troops with a power value ranging from 1 to 9, and you can't see your opponent's troops' values (it was named Field Tactis in 42 All-Time Classics on the DS).

edit: Stratego.

This is not the problem of the system, it is more of a problem of the player base.

 

[Accent]

I'm not saying it's a problem at all, I just wanted to point it out as it may help finding a better name than "Smogon Mafia".

 

[Brain]

did you even read what I said? read the next paragraph, it is pretty clear that being FORCED to have a false claim BREAKS the game.

Not necessarily. If all villagers have the same role, false claiming is trivial. For instance: all villagers could have a "beat up" night role, if three or four villagers gang up on the same player then that player dies. That might be an interesting game where false claiming is entirely trivial.

Regarding aliases and smogon names, we could have games where every player has two lives: their alias and their smogon name. A night action or a lynch could target either an alias or a smogon name, but a player would only die if both their alias and their smogon name are killed. Each day, there could be one lynch using aliases and another using smogon names. I think that system could bring an interesting twist. A similar option would be to give every player two aliases.

First of all, a quick word about anonymous mafia: one of its flaws that I've heard of on IRC and that is being talked about here is that players don't use their aliases as much as they're supposed to: they simply collect information on IRC, which is made easier thanks to the alias system, and then try to figure out who is who. We could put some kind of special posting restriction in these games: post at least one short paragraph (I don't know, 4-5 lines?) each day, explaining your strategy, your thoughts about the current state of the game, why you chose to lynch who you lynched... You can always bluff. It would spawn longer discussions and make guessing who is who easier, thus limiting the number of players claiming safely on IRC.

The problem is that the players know each other so much that they could guess who's who just from their writing style, meaning that players would have to be careful to disguise it (which is not trivial). If you just post to lynch or you post memes or one-liners, it's fine, you can't really identify someone with that, but if you have to type paragraphs...

One simple example (I'm going to list examples from now on, it doesn't mean they all should be changed, it's just to show how far Smogon mafias have strayed from the essence of the game): the role PMs. When I first got my first role PM, my first reaction was "what.the.fuck is this?". I mean, they're funny and all, but the fact that they require you to make an equally complicated and elaborate PM in order to make a false claim plausible is proof that they're too much - at least for me.

I agree with you 100%. I think that flavor needs to be toned down significantly if not outright removed.

For the rest, I think that if you want to host a more traditional mafia there would be some interest.

Anonymous mafia is being watered down by irc. GP put those posting CWC in yci to encourage posting on aliases, which is 100% the right idea, he just went about it the wrong way. I agree 110% we need to utilize the aliases properly, not just as a means to vote and hide. If someone can figure out a way that we can use these aliases properly, THIS would be the next step in evolving our mafia games. Of course talking on irc under our aliases is the 100% fix, but im not sure this is plausible at all.

The host could pre-register all aliases on IRC with the same passes as on the forum. Of course, the problem is that idiots might log in to them with their real addresses, forget to modify their ident, let CTCP time give away their timezone (an easy pitfall), etc. so there should be an easy, very well thought-out and heavily emphasized tutorial about hiding your identity on IRC. Alternatively, someone could host a modified IRC server that guarantees anonymity (or use an existing one, I found http://fau.anarplex.net/ but I didn't try it out).

This said, I'm not sure why anyone would log in to IRC under their alias rather than just make up a random name and thus hide *both* their alias and their smogon name...

And there's also the fact that IRC is idiosyncratic. If people IRC under their aliases I'll whip out my massive logs and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to narrow down their identity pretty well. All it takes is one misspelling or one expression that's typical of a person's writing (even if they do so rarely, they might be the only one to ever do it in the first place) and that person is fucked. Punctuation is a big hint too - everybody has slightly different but very recognizable habits for punctuation and it's hard to disguise that all the time, sometimes you don't even realize it.

Last but not least, if your connection drops, seeing "Jackal" and "XxX_GeRuDo_PrInCeSs_XxX" ping out at the same time is suspicious. Same goes for hours at which one is active.


This said, I think this is worth a shot: set up an anonymous forum and (find or set up) an anonymous IRC network. Ban talking about the game anywhere else than on the forums or IRC under the assigned aliases. See what happens. In fact, I think we could even do without the forums: just set up a channel with a bot that handles votes. People would have to type "vote user" in bold underline in the channel and the bot would tally it. The bot would periodically remind the channel of the tally and who voted who (it could do so every hour). The deadline would be automatic but I'd add a "vote barrage protection" where vote change or withdrawal is forbidden in the last hour before the deadline and it only ends when there's been 15 minutes without a vote. Logs of the public channel could be published on a webpage for viewing. I think this would be a nice system. I could program a solid bot for it in an hour. Plus, the bot could pester users that did not input a night action or did not vote, possibly handing out penalties automatically.

Remains the problem of disconnects and online hours, though. The IRC server would have to cover for them somehow. Perhaps all aliases could be shown as connected at all times... I'm not sure how I'd fix that problem, honestly, it's a huge pain in the ass. This said, it might not be such a big deal. If I see someone ping out on synirc I could easily just fake a ping out on the other server and reconnect at about the same time the other does, hence confusing anyone who'd attempt to draw a parallel.

 

[Thorns]

I have no doubt that IRC is removing some of the greatness of our large mafias. See Gmax's tactics in YCI (though he was godkilled for it) - making people cp the board index. He was also looking for people online when an alias posted, and because of this, the few times in which I posted, I did it on my iPod touch late at night.

Chatting on IRC under aliases would bring up the problem of 'hey, Bran Flakes just started talking now, and Thorns just logged on Smogon'. It wouldn't matter if all aliases were on concurrently.

 

[billymills]

I have no doubt that IRC is removing some of the greatness of our large mafias. See Gmax's tactics in YCI (though he was godkilled for it) - making people cp the board index. He was also looking for people online when an alias posted, and because of this, the few times in which I posted, I did it on my iPod touch late at night.

Chatting on IRC under aliases would bring up the problem of 'hey, Bran Flakes just started talking now, and Thorns just logged on Smogon'. It wouldn't matter if all aliases were on concurrently.

Stop complaining about Gmax's tactics. You know full well there are ways around this (you're already using them!).

People would definitely try to pretend to be other people. Hey look, Thorns logged into smogon, Fruit Loops, Bran Flakes, and Koko Crunch all JUST started talking!

 

[az]

you know how when we were kids (or younger kids) you'd make up some awesome game because you were tired of whatever the de facto default ball sport or game was?

and it'd last you like a lunchbreak or an afternoon or something and everyone would have an excellent time

then some little shit would bitch about a loophole in the basic premise, and suddenly your play time boiled down to rewriting the whole fucking thing with a d&d rulebook and more fucking subsections than chess

yeah

this isn't fun anymore

 

[Raikage]

I don't really want to argue about smogon mafia but I'm posting to say that dak and Jackal are correct on some aspects. Smogon and traditional mafia should probably be seen as two seperate games; ours is a lot more emphasized on role targetting and information gathering whereas classic mafia is based on debating and some amateur psychology more than anything else.

Of course, since I like traditional mafia a lot, I would disagree that smogon mafia is superior to traditional mafia but that isn't the point of this post! Just keep in mind that the two are separate and it's getting pointless to compare them to each other. For example, some people don't even want a village anymore since it's just become a big mafia that is separated. (like dak and Jackal).