The Mafia Discussion Thread

[C-MIL]

Before I vote...

?

[Commander Sheepard]

So what's the general feeling on jesters being included in a mafia?

[Sousa]

That idea is inspired in its shittiness. The entire point of a jester is that it should be hard to get lynched. Making a scum player win by being lynched means it's nearly impossible for the town to win.

Sorry, but that's a really bad idea.

[Guest Mr. Potato Head]

Plus any time a jester is actually pulled off on EWB, it leads to somebody faking it for each of the next ten games and a ridiculous amount of meta-gaming.

[C-MIL]

Did you mean a jester in a mafia game? Or a jester in the mafia in a mafia game?

I think jesters are, by design, indylicious.

[deangelo]

I thought Jesters were town given their whole point is to make the town think they are scum. Kind of defeats the purpose if they are actually scum and get investigated or something.

[Noah]

What's the status of Norro's game?

I'm really looking forward to it.

[Pleatherface]

HTTK? Run something. I realize I'm the worst person in the world to be giving advice to potential game runners, infact the only thing I'm even kind of decent with is creating roles and story, but I more than anyone else here can say matter o'factly what does not lead to a successful game, what with only one out of 10 finishing.

Watch your balance. I've made this mistake too many times. Trust me when I say unless you want a game that ends in a 3 or 4 day clusterfuck(something I intend to try one day) DO NOT have 6 killing roles in your first game ever. It's bad for bidness.

Balance is important is the lesson there, but equally so? Creativity. You don't have to tweak every power role, and turn it into something special (although innovation is more than recommended if you can sort it out properly.) just make each role unique, even if they're all plain jane vanilla townies, give people a reason to WANT to stick through the bullshit that gets bandied about in your average mafia game.

Characterization helps.

Write up role pms before hand. If you have the concept and the game designed, the pms should be done long before your game reaches the top of the queue. It's honestly sapping to write each of them (atleast in my tl;dr useless detail) in one setting and pass everything out, and it's important that YOU don't get burned out, this has killed more of my games than anything else.

If applicabe use photos in your role pms. They help make the role feel real, and just somehow pop. I never use them, but if I was smart that would be the way I went.

Don't be scared of variation, it's your game and if you want to try something new go for it, that's what made Haruhi Suzumiya one of the best games ever and the reason I bought the box set.. It was a simple idea but something truly unexpected, and had top notch execution.

Try to discourage role claiming (unless it happens to be a role you desperately want to hear posted as, then by all means push for it.) and meta gaming in whatever way you see fit, even if it's just saying blatantly in the opening post that it's not a good idea in this game.

If you set deadlines, stick to them unless there's one hell of a reason not to. Avoid handing out time sensitive roles (on day blank, such and such happens.) unless you've balanced extremely well they can blow up in your face.

The best bit of advice I can offer though is learn from people's mistakes. Mein, Visionary's, Reflecto's, those of whichever bastard did RAPE (I wanna say sdm, but part of me says Be was involved somewhere.. Not that it was a bad game, but I didn't get past the poop eating open post so who knows.)

Take our combined failure and turn it into your success, but ultimately make it fun for you, if you're not bogged down and hating yourself, chances are the players aren't either.

[Ace]

Ringo ran RAPE Pleather

[Guest Mr. Potato Head]

Yeah the point of declaring a game 'ready' is that you do it when the role PMs are all written and your game could start literally that second.

[Pleatherface]

Indeed

[Sousa]

At least vote EddieG if you're going to do that. Who cares if he vanished, we'll set up the noose & cash in the Lynching in the Bank when he shows up.

Right, so oldskool is basically the best person to play Mafia with.

[HailtotheYo]

Thanks Pleather.

I've got a theme idea and some roles thought out already, but I'm still filling in the pieces before moving on to the next step.

[Ruki]

Just re-read Scrubs...I wanna make a game where everyone has a fucked up win condition.

"Sousa, you cannot win unless Maxx is lynched, LD is night killed, and MPH is still alive."

[DavidMarrio]

Could anyone actually win

[Sousa]

I could accomplish the "get Maxx lynched" condition so easily it'd make your head spin.

MPH surviving would be hard.

[R.W.]

Sousa

You can only win if Dukes is lynched

And Dukes isn't playing

[oldskool]

Sousa

You can only win if Dukes is lynched

And Dukes isn't playing

somebody didn't play dukes' battle for vince's soul mafia.

dukes is always playing, even when he's not. he is everywhere and nowhere.

[Guest Mr. Potato Head]

He only kept it going for fun, everybody who died after the last real mafia won in the end

[Commander Sheepard]

So for those of you who have run a game before and had to cut roles, how did you go about deciding which roles to cut? did you just go for more vanilla-type roles, or some other method? Any help is appreciated.