Mafia Rules Discussion

[rah]

I had an idea for our Mafia games and I was going to post it in the thread but I realized it would be lost quite quickly. No one listens to the dead. And since i've spent most of the last two game in that state.............

So I thought I'd start a thread for a discussion outside of the gaming thread. Spamming this thread is not recommended.

Voting: A lot of people have expressed a desire for secret balloting to discourage piling. GMs do not want to deal with all the PMs. I can understand this having Modding one of the racing games. That one was only 8 players and it was a pain in the butt. I can also understand people wanting to post their. A lot of fun interaction occurs during the voting.

So I propose a compromise. When a game start, Let's say there are 20 villagers. The GM produces four lists. Each of which is a simple number substitution. I.E.
Pattern 1
Vote # player
01 02
02 04
03 06
04 11
etc.
Pattern 2
01 03
02 09
03 04
etc.
So the player assigned pattern 1 could post their selection of 02 and that would be a vote for player 04.
and a player assigned pattern 2 could post and 03 and would be voting for player 04 also.
Each player would be assigned one of four patterns. That should be enough to disguise who you are voting for but not create TOO MUCH extra work for the GM.

What do you people think?

What other rules are people interested in?

RAH

[Urban Ranger]

Secret ballot is completely doable with a little additional work. I am thinking just a simple voting form attached to a PHP script that stores the results in a text file. The only difficult part is validating the voter.

[Jamski]

Secret ballot is rubbish. The whole basis of the mafia game is the public vote. Without the public voting - its not a mafia game, its something else. I'm of the opinion that the reason the mafia game has been so successful and is now in its 13th version is the basic simplicity of the idea.

-Jam

[duke o' york]

I prefer the current system to be honest. Public voting and no changing of votes. This means that people will hve to defend themselves if they think they may become the victim of a docpile, and even pre-emptively defend themselves if a clue points suspicion in their direction. I admit that the docpiling is often unfair, especially in the case of the village's small Russian community, but this is the best system as far as I'm concerned.
rah, you always voted for the person who had just voted for you, but with your idea, then you'd never know.

[Jamski]

Do you like the clues? The idea was to cast vague ideas about to try and stop the blind docpiling. I think its kinda working. Or would you prefer to have more obvious clues in the story? I worry that makes it too hard for the mafia to win...
Whatever rules we use, there's always going to be someone not happy. I'm of the opinion that outlawing changing of votes was a good move - but I also miss it too. Perhaps it could be allowed under special circumstances (i.e. BEGGING the GM to let the vote be changed?) I dunno...

-Jam

[rah]

Yes, DOY, you are correct, I vote for those that vote for me. I only express a concept and wanted it discussed outside the game thread. I personally like public voting but sometimes the piling takes something away from the game. Without that option, people might take the time to look for the clues. (who am I kidding)

Any other rules discussions. Or ways to improve the game.

[duke o' york]

Well I'm afraid that in the current game I'm only voting for people who try to start a docpile on Spiffor. Now for all I know, Spiffor could be the mafia, and so I'm en route to having myself killed, but for some reason I have vowed to defend him against other wicked villagers, because he said he'd never vote for me either. This sort of alliance is probably against the spirit of the game too, but I'd imagine it's more common than you'd think, and HongHu was prepared to use it the end of a very memorable game, by committing suicide rather than murder Mr Purple Shoes. The only trouble with the current game is that the surviving players are all too often the same people every game, which is not ideal.

[Jamski]

New players and "dead" players deserve to get voted off first. If someone's not participating in the game, then vote the slacker off, goddammit. If a player is new, haze them, and then if they really want to play they'll come back anyway and not be a new player any more.

Haing said that, there's at least two first-time players still kicking in the current game, and at least 1 sleeper too.

Defending another player is good practise, I'd say. You need allies to make it to the final rounds.

-Jam

[Theben]

Docpiling does take away somewhat from the game, but IMHO how the story is presented can make or brake it. The 1st game I played I much enjoyed, the 2nd was okay, but suffered when Frozzy had to concentrate on work. This one is better and I do think the 'clues' adds a nice touch w/o any 'special powers', since anyone can claim to have received a clue.

[Adagio]

Here's my idea on how it could work:

It's up to each player to decide if they want to post their vote public or in private.
Private votes will be sent to a certain player (Not the GM... just some villager), who will keep track on who has who's votes and such... When the 24 hour voting limit is nearing it's end, the results are sent to the GM (This requires the GM and vote-collector to be online at the same time)... I wouldn't mind this job next game...
When the voting is finished, all votes will be published (So you can't hide)

[duke o' york]

But if the vote-collector is being doc-piled then why would they pass the secret votes on correctly? At the moment, the voting is at least transparent and all above board, if nothing else.

[Adagio]

The vote-collector wouldn't gain anything from lying, since all votes will be posted public at the end of the votings, thereby will all the players be able to check if their vote was correct or not...


If the vote collector lies about this, nobody would trust him anymore... of course the vote-collector has to be a person who is generally known on this forum

[Spaced Cowboy]

Actually, I had an idea for a secret ballot game, but it would be a little different from the Mafia game and more like the survivor TV series.

Contestants split into tribes.

Immunity won by tribes during a challenge (I was thinking, web searches, trivia, and the like). First team to pm the correct answer to the quiz win immunity.

The losing team/s have to vote one of their players off.

As the teams get smaller, there will be some shuffling about.

In the end only one team, and onely one person get immunity.

Kind of a rip-off, and a different game. Thoughts?

[Jamski]

Do you mean like the survivor game on the HOTU forums?

-Jam

[duke o' york]

What does HOTU stand for please?

[Jamski]

I can't say on this forum. Its related to "inferior canine mamillia"

-Jam

[gjramsey]

I am one of the "newbies" in the current round and fully expect to be wacked soon.

I like the open voting but the docpile (not sure of where this term came from since I am on the new side to this) seems to happen often. After lurking the previous two go rounds, this one does seem to be more interesting with the clues being provided, and, so-far, less everyone jumping on a wagon and riding the current villager to the death.

ADG's idea is not bad either, would prevent to piling on, but the votes would be open at the end of the round. Not sure how to verify there was no vote changing happening before the results were displayed.


edited for spelling (doh!)

[Jamski]

History of the Docpile

Dogpiling is a term from the days of fox-hunting and bear-bating. The dogs would pile onto a larger and more dangerous foe and bring him down by weight of numbers. The term passed into modern English to describe the process whereby people would criticise or attack the person already under attack.
Or, dogpiling refers to the behaivor of a pack of dogs who will all turn on the weakest pack-member in order to ensure thier own status within the pack.

The change to docpiling was because of a typo involving Doc.

-Jam

[rah]

And I thought it was intentional.

[Tuberski]

The rule I'd like to see changed is the first round kill by the mafia.

I think the first kill should always be the GM, so that everyone gets to vote at least once.

ACK!

[SnowFire]

Random comment: I don't play Mafia here on 'poly, but not having a public vote defeats half the point of the game- not to mention leaving fewer clues as to who the Mafia is (based on their voting patterns).

That said, I don't see why you should only be able to vote for one person. The way it always seemed to be ran in person was that every person could vote on kill / don't kill for every other person- as in, you could be in favor of killing everybody, if you wanted. It's just that at least 50% of the people would need to agree to kill that person before it'd actually be done. Generally, you'd hold votes on suspected people in the preceding discussion; if there were 2-3 suspects, they'd all be voted on in a row, and if multiple ones met the 50% threshold, then whoever had the most votes would get executed.

[Jamski]

Good idea. Then we would start with 27 players for a two week game instead of 28. I like it

-Jam

[alva]

I don't really get it

Wouldn't everyone vote for everyone each round?

[Vlad Antlerkov]

I suppose an upper limit (50% rounded up) could be set on that.

Alternatively... everyone gets some number of "points", equal to half the number of living rounded up; they distribute these points based on who they think the Mafia is. They can put all their points on GhengisFarb, or give one point to a bunch of people, or whatever. Whoever ends up with the most points gets killed by the village.

[rah]

We do want to minimize the GM's effort. The stories take enough time

[Guynemer]

I think a simplified version of ADG's idea would be best.

People can vote public OR via PM.

ONLY one PM vote can be sent.

However, a public vote may be controverted by a PM vote. (I post on the forum, "I vote rah," but send a PM, "just kiddin', it's Skanky.")

The GM posts only the final tally, and does not show who voted for who.

[Hercules]

I think as has been said above, Public voting is key to the fun.

I quite like the idea of dividing out say 10 votes over three suspects. This would encourage people to make their choices based on the clues and also discourage random docpiling: it also spreads your own risk.

I like Jamski's 2 clues approach and that has, as has been noted, helped spread the voting.

[Rasputin]

never figured that allainces were behind my docpiling.... two games in a row


...

i think whilst pming would stop somwe collusion, the allainces would continue and therefore docpiling could still occur...

[Spaced Cowboy]

Since we have multiple mafias, we could have the same number of multiple votes, hence the game would go faster, if there were 2-3 mafia hits per night and 2-3 persons voted off each day.

[Urban Ranger]

You almost always end up with the mafia winning that way, what with less clues and more docpiling.