The Mafia Discussion Thread

[Ruki]

Must be up there with Futuramafia now, probably numbah one already.

Someone should check that.

[R.W.]

Futuramafia ran from 28th Oct 2008 to 15th Jan 2009. So a mere 2 and half months!

[Ruki]

.....wow, Norro.

[-A-]

I don't know how we even survived back in the day. You sign up for a game, get into it and then BAM - it's over a month later.

[The Mask of Norro]

Don't look at me. I had every intention of Anime Mafia being over months ago. But the game started dragging from inactivity and then had the misfortune for me of dragging just long enough to stretch into my holiday working time. I'm a retail store manager, that shit wasn't gonna end well when it happened. Soon as I hit holiday everything drug even worse, and there's been little I can do but do sporadic updates since then.

[R.W.]

I understand, but it's also the gamerunner's job to deal with inactivity rather than just let it slide.

I've said this before, and I'll say this again.

It is the town's responsibility to encourage activity and use the lynch to eliminate scum. Inactivity only benefits the scum. If inactivity is continued, set a deadline, and if nothing happens at the deadline, kill a townie (and only a townie - and if you really want to hurt them, take out a power role like Doc or Cop). The town should be punished for inactivity, not the scum. If all the town were active, it would force the scum into activity if they wanted to win.

I'd rather see scum win easily because half the town were modkilled for inactivity than see games drag on forever.

People should be of the mindset "If I get a vanilla townie role, I still want to play this game" rather than "Oh, I didn't get a cool ability, I won't bother".

[MalaCloudy Black]

My role wasn't cool enough, Norro

[-A-]

I completely disagree and random townie lynches encourage this model of scum play where you sit on your arse and say just enough to get by. That's hurting games just as much as disappearing townies. No-one should be punished for inactivity except the people who aren't posting. The town aren't a group, they can't exert pressure on any other townie to post. Townie players are individuals who don't know anyone else on their team. If I'm a townie in a game then there's absolutely nothing I can do to force another townie to post. That's the job of the mod, not me. If someone's given a townie role and they decide not to post, punishing the town team isn't going to do a fucking thing. They already decided they didn't care, will they really care if their team gets punished?

If people aren't posting enough, then don't let them into your next game. If you can't get enough committed players for your game then make it smaller. If there isn't enough demand for a 30 person game then I really doubt things will end well if we desperately try to fill things up with guys who don't really want to play. Is that a recipe for a good game or a disaster?

We need dramatically smaller games. We need more games that aren't half-arsed 'ThingILike Mafia!' We need more newbie games so that players can learn how to assert themselves in conversations without being shouted down by veterans like Be who actually suck at the game and don't realise it.

[Benjamin]

I realize I suck!

Oh, but am I a veteran?

[Cymbols]

open spot in HP mafia if anyone's interested

[EWB's Best Poster.]

I agree with -a-.

The play style of this board is to do nothing until a deadline is set, and perhaps still do nothing. I still havent found an effective way to get townies to play, and it really does encourage mafia to do nothing knowing they alone benefit.

[Matt]

We could try and form some sort of list to pick out those who are frequently inactive in games and that way gamerunners could simply exclude them if they wish.

[Cymbols]

We could try and form some sort of list to pick out those who are frequently inactive in games and that way gamerunners could simply exclude them if they wish.

great idea.

[Guest mr. potato head]

The problem with that is that it doesn't allow for improvements. Summ used to be the king of lurkers and now he's generally one of the more active players.

[-A-]

I think that would get too personal and might even drive off players. I honestly think that smaller games will help more than anything else we can do legislatively. In small games there's nowhere to hide and we won't necessarily have 3/4 people dominating conversation with everyone else relegated to occasional comments. There have been a succession of really good players (like Jam and deangelo) who just fade away because they aren't assertive and don't get the respect they deserve. If we ran smaller games then they might end up casting the deciding vote at lylo. That might give them the confidence to argue their case more passionately in the next game (and might force people to give them more respect.)

Activity doesn't have to be a million posts. If we were in a situation where people posted once a day, but with decent content, then that would be cool. If the first day phase takes over a week, that's just the nature of the game. When we get to the point where we know half the remaining players aren't even reading what we write, playing the game becomes a chore. We can't let games get to that stage.

We're missing a lot of the skills that make good townies. Guys like Josh and Pesci aren't playing any more and they were they guys who (like RW, Pizza and me) usually ended up QBing the town. That wasn't a healthy situation and neither is this. We need games that aren't defined by the flavour so that people get good at actually playing mafia.

[EWB's Best Poster.]

I think I am just going to stick to one week deadlines, like hells frozen was. There IS a list of who is and isnt active, RW updates it frequently, and its a pain in the ass to do so. Read the standings.

Im going to bring a few friends over to the board for my next game. Maybe they stick around, maybe not. Either way, lets try to treat them a little better than we normally give the 'new guys" and we might have games that are back to a strong standard again.

[-A-]

FOS all round!

[The Mask of Norro]

I understand, but it's also the gamerunner's job to deal with inactivity rather than just let it slide.

Oi. I tried to deal with it. I got replacements early on. Then my replacements went inactive too

Like I said, not blameless in any way, it's just that by the time my players finally started picking things up, I was in a position where I couldn't pick up with them, and then we've sort-of bumbled are way through this thing ever since. I agree with the census thusfar though, smaller games may need to take a stronghold here for awhile, get the demand for a big game to come back up again when we've got enough interested people ready to commit to staying active in it. We've seen a few successful ones, they're still possible, but it might be better to work our way up to those rather than have so many.

[EWB's Best Poster.]

Time to start my sign ups, any idea when would be the best time to start the game though? Wait til the others are out of day one maybe?

[-A-]

Yeah, I think that would be cool. I don't think launching while they're still in day one is really that much of an issue, but it works out nicely if someone who gets randomly offed on night one can then immediately sign up for a new one to get their mafia fix.