Mafia Opinions/Changes Thread

Danny · Postby **Danny** » Sat Aug 05, 2017 4:34 am

Hey, Mafia players! With Mafia returning, and us welcoming a third GM to the team, I would like to take an opportunity to gather some information and discussion about the features and rules of Mafia based on player feedback and general opinions. Every once in a while, a poll will be set up in this thread to gather information and opinions on a Mafia-related topic, and the Mafia player-base (and the GMs!) can discuss these opinions and see if we can make any changes or compromises to better appeal to the players.

I would like to make it absolutely clear from the beginning that opinions expressed here, even if they are of a majority vote, will not reflect any definitive changes to the game, they will just be used to gather some otherwise unknown feedback and make it easier for the GMs to communicate with the players on issues, possibly allowing us to make changes that suit everyone perfectly.

-Revision 1: Mandatory Lynching-
To kick things off, I would like to bring up the widely debated hot topic of mandatory lynching. Many players seem opposed to it, while others agree it is a core element to Mafia.

For clarification, mandatory lynching has been a Mafia rule since its induction on this forum, and is one of the most core elements to Mafia. At some point, which is still exactly unknown, the enforcement of mandatory lynching started to become lax, until it was almost nonexistent, and players accustomed themselves to things such as "safety voting" or just not voting at all. From an actual rulings standpoint, "safety" votes do not really exist nor differentiate themselves from not voting at all at the time, whereas not voting at all should create a Knife-in-the-Box against every single living player, essentially giving a completely random death.

Mandatory lynching is, for the most part, a crucial part of Mafia, as it not only encourages activity among the non-special roles (townies), but it also creates the risky atmosphere of Mafia that has seemed to have diminished recently, and it encourages teamwork and interrogations. When mandatory lynching is removed from the game (regardless if it's removed for a single phase or the whole game), it gives the town a significant upper hand as they can forgo lynching people and rely on the town's kill and inspection roles (vigilante and seer/sheriff respectively) to deal with the Mafia. This tactic has been observed many times where mandatory lynching is not around, and it more often than not results in a Town victory because of this advantage.

Just as a general proposition, a rule could possibly be implemented that allows each player a single safety vote that they can use in a game, or the current "safety voting" rules should be looked over again and possibly reworked. Lets hear your opinions on this subject. Remember to remain civil in the thread, and if you have further opinions or questions you would like to add, do not hesitate to post in the thread about them! We are open for discussion.

-Revision 2: Third Parties-
Third parties have been a pretty interesting topic in Mafia as of recently, and it appears most games, if not all of them, feature some form of third party.

The original third party role was the Serial Killer, which had a simple lone-wolf style of gameplay, featured a single killing role, and some variations featured nightkill immunity. The third party's typical goal is to be the last person standing, so that presents a challenge that only the most witty, manipulative, and sneaky players could seem to pull off. Since the Serial Killer, other third party roles have been introduced, such as the famous Arsonist, Voodoo Lady, and Penguin.

The third party opens up an opportunity for especially complex and unique roles to fill its position, expressing a game creator's creativity, but it's always presented with a big question; is a third party always necessary? In most scenarios, specifically in larger games of 18 to 20 players, a third party might seem like a good idea to add a heightened sense of insecurity and a bit of suspense, with multiple kills happening each night, also giving the Mafia a bit of an edge to work against. However, some games appear to have third parties shoehorned in for the sake of having a third party, and this can lead to an over-powered third party, an under-powered third party, or just a generally uninteresting third party.

What are your opinions on third parties? Should there be rule restrictions on third parties, at the risk of limiting creativity? Are third parties fine as they stand now? Lets hear what you have to say about them.

-Revision 3: Special Roles-
Special roles (also known as blues, town specials, utility roles) are the backbone of Mafia. They give the town some strength against the Mafia, which is pretty useful and slightly mandatory in larger games.

In standardized, simple games, these positions exist solely as roles such as the Sheriff (or Seer), the Doctor, and the Vigilante. As Mafia has evolved and players have become more skilled, complex special roles have been introduced into the game, and the cravings for more special roles has started. After some time, people became completely reliant on special roles, and games were seeing a higher ratio of special roles compared to regular townies. Some games featured a Mafia where every member featured a special ability akin to a town's special roles, almost completely eliminating the existence of the basic Mafioso role, and this has introduced an influx and bigger interest towards Faction games.

There are several problems that special roles face or have faced. Some players have treated regular townie roles as inferior because of the number of special roles in the game, and this has resulted in inactivity among townies. Some players think and agree that there are far too many special roles in certain games, with the inclusion of some not even making sense. In the case of some third parties, the special roles can almost seem shoehorned in, just to increase the special role count.

Whether you perceive this as an issue or not, it has been the source of some interesting debate in the past, and is still brought up on the occasion. Do you think specials roles should be limited, or at least encouraged to be limited, based on the number of players? Do you think special roles are fine as they are now? What are your opinions on this topic?

Cedur · Postby **Cedur** » Sat Aug 05, 2017 6:59 am

Mandatory lynching on D1 has done more harm than good. On the other side, if there's none, chances are that the day is passed with nothing happening at all (no gathering leads, no alliance strategies etc), so if there's mere inactivity D1, the host should choose to extend the day and enable mandatory lynching.

All further days should have mandatory lynching.

Thehelmetguy1 · Postby **Thehelmetguy1** » Sat Aug 05, 2017 7:15 am

I believe that Shroom said what should be done. Optional lynching on day 1 and obligatory lynching on all the other days. It is also possible to have the host decide this.

Postby **ShadowStarX** » Sat Aug 05, 2017 7:29 am

I have to agree with Shroom and thg1 about this.
D1 mandatory lynching affected the game severely in M39 and M40 for not-so-fair reasons. Most of the D1 lynches were against relatively inactive but not completely inactive people which barely ever led to further leads.
So yeah, D1 mandatory lynching should be the host's decision.

Postby **Witchking666** » Sat Aug 05, 2017 8:46 am

Unlike nearly everyone else on these forums I am actually a great supporter of Mandatory Lynching.
Something people seem to forget when hating on the mechanic is the fact that it improves a lot of stuff. For example, mandatory lynching has made people actually give a damn about the first phases. Before, people would just say "hey" and wait until it was night 2 before they got to actually playing. Now people are forced to think about who to lynch to avoid a KitB randomly killing one of the players. This has increased activity during the first phases quite a bit.

I agree that most day 1 lynches harm the town in one way or another. But it can be argued that this problem (If we even wish to call it that) lies with the players, not the lynching mechanic. It is perfectly possible to get a weak scumread or townread on people during night 1 by doing some basic strategizing. Sure, this tactic takes a little effort and it can still backfire. But people don't even try to get a good lynch on day 1. Everyone is too busy placing those goddamn safety votes to actually bother trying to lynch the mafia. And in the rare event where someone does decide to vote for a player they suspect, it is usually due to some meta-bullshit like skills or inactivity. And when their bullshit lynch turns out to be a blue they just blame their own stupidity on the game's mechanics.
Sorry if a sound harsh, but damn!

Then there is the funny little fact that forced lynching is actually a standard mechanic in the game mafia. Day 1 lynching is just as standard as nightkills and cardflip colours. And sure, some mechanics have the tendency to harm the town. But who said that that isnt exactly what these mechanics are supposed to do?
A Vigilante can backfire on the town just as easily as a day 1 lynch and as far as I know, no one is taking about removing the vigilante. So why would mandatory lynching be any different?

Danny · Postby **Danny** » Sat Aug 05, 2017 11:12 am

I would like people to bear in mind that mechanics are not supposed to put the town in any sort of favor, which is exactly what holding off on mandatory lynching does. I've been seeing a lot of features being put in place that try to give the town some sort of advantage, such as allowing them to establish a town alliance, allowing them time to gather leads, and so on. This completely eliminates the urgency, suspense, and tension of Mafia, and often leads to the town showing a large amount of success. Day 1 lynching only hurts the players that don't know how to work with it, and so far from what I can tell, the complaints appear to be rather artificial.

I'd start to believe that Day 1 lynching is not the problem, and it lies at the fault of game balance, or just the players themselves.

Postby **Julia Pseudo** » Sat Aug 05, 2017 9:21 pm

I personally agree that mandatory lynching is a fundamental and critical part of the game, and that the town is too powerful without it. Even though the majority of players in any single game are part of the town, they shouldn't be catered to by the game and should have roughly equal chances in winning as the mafia does (as well as third parties, to a lesser extent).

PixelPest · Postby **PixelPest** » Sat Aug 05, 2017 10:16 pm

One of the things I also like about mandatory Lynching is it forces you to investigate for leads and not wait for them to be handed to you by the Sheriff, etc. They make the game much more intense, interesting, and fun imo

Danny · Postby **Danny** » Mon Aug 07, 2017 5:32 am

I feel like now's a good time to bring up the next revision. It's a good discussion topic, so I think this will get some attention. If you still want to discuss mandatory lynching and what can be done with it, feel free to do so! Remember that this thread is to gather opinions so they can be assessed a little easier.

Here are the poll results from the first revision:

-Revision 2: Third Parties-
Third parties have been a pretty interesting topic in Mafia as of recently, and it appears most games, if not all of them, feature some form of third party.

The original third party role was the Serial Killer, which had a simple lone-wolf style of gameplay, featured a single killing role, and some variations featured nightkill immunity. The third party's typical goal is to be the last person standing, so that presents a challenge that only the most witty, manipulative, and sneaky players could seem to pull off. Since the Serial Killer, other third party roles have been introduced, such as the famous Arsonist, Voodoo Lady, and Penguin.

The third party opens up an opportunity for especially complex and unique roles to fill its position, expressing a game creator's creativity, but it's always presented with a big question; is a third party always necessary? In most scenarios, specifically in larger games of 18 to 20 players, a third party might seem like a good idea to add a heightened sense of insecurity and a bit of suspense, with multiple kills happening each night, also giving the Mafia a bit of an edge to work against. However, some games appear to have third parties shoehorned in for the sake of having a third party, and this can lead to an over-powered third party, an under-powered third party, or just a generally uninteresting third party.

What are your opinions on third parties? Should there be rule restrictions on third parties, at the risk of limiting creativity? Are third parties fine as they stand now? Lets hear what you have to say about them.

PersonNamedUser · Postby **PersonNamedUser** » Mon Aug 07, 2017 3:34 pm

Now as for my opinion on TPs, even though Danny and TLtimelord think otherwise, I think they absoulety NEED night kill immunity, one of the reasons is this, some people are targeted early all the time, which means they have pretty much no chance of their TP since their pretty much guaranteed to be targeted meaning they have NO chance. Also, people often act like the TP needs a billion other abilities to win, however, this isn't true remember, both me and Megar almost won as TP when all we both had was a nightly kill in M38 and M39 respectively. Also, TPs I feel can balance a game to an extent, it makes things more intense as two people are dying every night as opposed to one and also the mafia actually has something to worry about, but yeah, though giving TPs other abilities can spice things up, people should stop acting like they NEED these abilities to win.

Postby **ElectriKong** » Mon Aug 07, 2017 3:54 pm

IMO lynching should be something the host decides if it is mandatory or not.

For example:

Example Game 1 wrote: M1: Mafia
-16 Players
-Cardflip
-Lynching is optional

Mafia Roles

Town Roles

Or

Example Game 2 wrote: M2: You must vote
-18 Players
-Roleflip
-Items
-Lynching is mandatory

Mafia Roles

Town Roles

Third Party

As for Third Parties I think they are alright as they are now. They do have their flaws without restrictions but it should up to the host to manage those flaws when creating third parties.

Valentine · Postby **Valentine** » Mon Aug 07, 2017 4:01 pm

I recommend people to try making games without third parties for the most part. Third parties can throw off the balance of everything terribly and generally make balancing games like twice as hard.

Also this thread was a really good move, great idea.

Cedur · Postby **Cedur** » Mon Aug 07, 2017 4:07 pm

The TP doesn't need billions of abilities to have a chance. They need some chance, meaning that they can e.g. also gather information for themselves just like the town specials and mafia do. (and the M39 Warlord was a very powerful TP, since they could induct everyone they failed to kill, making every healed person a potential suspect and also making public heal requests near-impossible).

People should include TPs just how they feel apropriate, and should consider them as a valuable part of the game, there's not really a reason to put up any restrictions.

Danny · Postby **Danny** » Mon Aug 07, 2017 4:48 pm

Just a reminder that a base Serial Killer role can be comparable to a town's Vigilante.

Thehelmetguy1 · Postby **Thehelmetguy1** » Mon Aug 07, 2017 7:28 pm

I am here to state my opinion. Third Parties are really common nowadays, but they have to be used right and done right to affect the game positively. If they are used incorrectly, this can heavily affect the game's balance. Take my game, Undead Chaos as an example:

Spoiler: show

Undead Chaos is a game where the town faces a cult that builds his mafia as time passes. It looks balanced and good this way, but let's add a third party into the mix:

Spoiler: show

This Third Party is a problem for the game's balance, as you might be able to see.

People also say that a TP needs to be strong to have a chance to win, but it is not really true. It is also really easy to go over the limit and make it overpowered:

Spoiler: show

This TP is obviously overpowered in such a small game, but some can be overpowered even in bigger games. In M39 the warlord could turn anyone protected into a suspect as stated before. He was kinda strong even in a 20 player game.

Third Parties need to be used right to make the game better, or else the balance will be affected negatively. And it isn't that hard to do an unbalanced TP if your thoughts are "tp needs power to win" or "tp makes games better". The challenge of the Third Party is to win alone. This requires skill and good playing. Not a powerful role. A game also doesn't require a TP to be good. What matters the most is balancing.

Delete if Allowed · Postby **Delete if Allowed** » Tue Aug 08, 2017 6:14 pm

Mandatory Lynching:
I do not necessarily believe that mandatory lynching can lead to a more fluid game all the time, since reading this thread the main argument is that the townspeople can wait until sheriff or vigilante find something. However, in that case, what's stopping this situation from constantly happening: A person claims townsperson on days with no leads and advocates for themselves to be lynched. Let's say this happens day after day. This still also gives an advantage to the town because the townsperson case of asking to be lynched is justified as in they do not want any blues to be mislynched, and they therefore in effect give town another day to stall for more leads. Mandatory Lynching does not completely reduce stalling. I'm not arguing for or against mandatory lynching. I'm just bringing up another point that needs to be solved.

Third Party:
In my opinion third party should have at least night immunity. I've hosted multiple mafia games before and I on talkhaus, I hosted a 20 player mafia game and on night one the third party was randomly attacked and killed. It's really not fair to the player if they so happen to be third party and are just killed either RNG wise or killed for player skill as TP. That is really not fun for the player. The Third Party role is supposed to be a fun challenging role for the player who gets it. It is easily one of the hardest roles to play in the games. Lynching the third party after they are attacked a night also heavily effects the game such as questioning onto how exactly said player knows who the third party is and ultimately leads to a more interesting dynamic. Of course third party has balance flaws, but in my opinion, the concept of third party in itself is inherently flawed via by its definition.

Danny · Postby **Danny** » Sun Aug 27, 2017 2:01 am

Why not, lets roll out another one. I won't put up a poll this time, I'd like to focus the discussion to in-thread.

-Revision 3: Special Roles-
Special roles (also known as blues, town specials, utility roles) are the backbone of Mafia. They give the town some strength against the Mafia, which is pretty useful and slightly mandatory in larger games.

In standardized, simple games, these positions exist solely as roles such as the Sheriff (or Seer), the Doctor, and the Vigilante. As Mafia has evolved and players have become more skilled, complex special roles have been introduced into the game, and the cravings for more special roles has started. After some time, people became completely reliant on special roles, and games were seeing a higher ratio of special roles compared to regular townies. Some games featured a Mafia where every member featured a special ability akin to a town's special roles, almost completely eliminating the existence of the basic Mafioso role, and this has introduced an influx and bigger interest towards Faction games.

There are several problems that special roles face or have faced. Some players have treated regular townie roles as inferior because of the number of special roles in the game, and this has resulted in inactivity among townies. Some players think and agree that there are far too many special roles in certain games, with the inclusion of some not even making sense. In the case of some third parties, the special roles can almost seem shoehorned in, just to increase the special role count.

Whether you perceive this as an issue or not, it has been the source of some interesting debate in the past, and is still brought up on the occasion. Do you think specials roles should be limited, or at least encouraged to be limited, based on the number of players? Do you think special roles are fine as they are now? What are your opinions on this topic?

PersonNamedUser · Postby **PersonNamedUser** » Sun Aug 27, 2017 2:50 am

Okay, now, the opinion that i have on special roles, i may be explaining for a bit but i'll just start up with saying that i feel having weak specials in your game
is a no go. So this would mean doublevoters, masons, nightriders, bulletproofs and even town criers to an extent. The thing i noticed that's a tactic far too common
on here is this. It can pretty much be summed up as:
1. Game starts
2. Night 1 ends
3. People suggest that the weakest special claims
4. they claim
5. other specials claim to them
6. Allaince

and i literally mean people do this any game that has a weak special in it, so in my opinion, if you want to use doublevoters, masons, nightriders or bulletproofs
in your game, they should flip an anti town color which balances these roles more.

Now, another opinion i have is this. While a game having too many specials is certainly a bad thing, i almost feel that having too FEW specials can be bad too.
Now, while i'm a supporter of games like Blue Paint Crisis and True Barebones, these games still feel more balanced as the former uses vanilla mafia aswell i believe
along with all the specials being green meaning for the most part the town doesn't know how well their doing nor does the mafia too an extent, so it evens things out.
While, with the latter game, NO ONE HAS ABILITIES TO USE. This literally means the only tools people have in this game are wits, deduction, interrogation, etc. plus remember the mafia has no abilites too.

But back to what i said eariler about how it can also be bad having too FEW specials. take M40 for an example, it was originally in terms of specials and mafia going to have a sheriff and doctor and backups, a deputy and nurse. and in terms of mafia was going to have a Disguiser, Consort and two vanillas i believe. Now, this setup was actually pretty balanced, however, we then realized that more people wanted to play so we added in an EXTRA mafia, a doublespeaker and a vigilante to the game. Now, something to remember, and this could be one of the reason vanilla mafia aren't that common, is that vanillas
can actually be stronger for the mafia than some may think. Because of the fact that a mafia may sacrifice a vanilla to get people to trust them, means they could fake a sheriff claim by saying they got a red inspection when their actually just throwing a mafia under the bus. Now the thing is, the mafia in M40 had TWO vanillas, and FIVE members, meaning that them sacrificing one wouldn't be a big loss. Just the fact that the mafia had 5 members is one of the issues with what happened. Basically, the town was luck fucked because the vigilante was targeted NIGHT FUCKING ONE meaning just like that the town had no night firepower to counter with for the rest of the game in one that had FIVE MAFIA and TWO VANILLAS. So, while i certainly agree that too many specials is bad, i feel, that depending on the game's size, it can
be bad to have only a few too. Imo, games with 15-18 players should have 4-5 specials, while i only think games with 20+ players having anything higher than
6 is okay. Infact, i feel you should NEVER have anything higher than 7 in your game, if you go over, your game has far too many then.

While the subject of this is being discussed, i'd also like to bring up the fact that your game should never have anything less than atleast 8 vanillas counting millers and/or masons. One reason for this is the on the subject of a game having too many specials is that if you have too many specials, the mafia and/or TP could easily go on a blue massacre without trying which is a bad thing too.

Now, i have yet more reason why blue alliances are something we're getting tired of and/or find boring. Eventually, so many confirmed specials end up getting into
the allaince that it gets to the point that anyone not in alliance is scum, meaning it's a guaranteed town win. There have actually been a few examples of this
happening, this includes M28, M37, M38, and possibly to an extent M39. I'd like to bring this up(yeah, i bring it up alot) that the reason an instant allaince was formed in M38 was that Cedur was using meta evidence in the sense that he never logged on when the reroll happened and people were choosing their roles, making him a confirmed townie allowing the specials to claim to him.

YET another point is this, usually, once the blues form an alliance, the rest of the town just follows everything the alliance says like a bunch of sheep and if the allaince ends up falling apart or they find that a scum infiltrated it, people often give up or say things like "we lost" when really, this isn't true. Examples of people saying
"it's over" or "we lost" when specials start dying would include M30 and M36ll. Granted, the town got pretty unlucky in both, the former, two blues died in the first cycle, the sheriff was killed night 1 and another special(i forgot okay?) ended up being lynched, i was foolish at the time and thought there wasn't anything i could do since i was vote blocked that day phase. And M36ll, two specials died on night 1, true, it was just bad luck, but people acted as if the town was nearly fucked just because of this occuring.

Now, how i feel about having alot of specials in a game, well, i feel if none of the specials are that weak, then it's fine as long as the vanillas outnumber the specials,
take my game Mad Mad Scientist for example:

Spoiler: show

As you can see in this game, it does indeed have alot of specials in it, but another thing to note is that none of the specials in my game would be worth sacrificing, therefore, none of them would claim. And despite there being quite alot of specials in this game, there are noticeably more vanillas than specials. This game used to have a role in it called the Snoozer, however, this special was actually pretty weak meaning they could just claim for instant allaince plus they would have equated to 8 specials which i think would have been far too many to have in this game, despite being a 21 player game.

Now finally, do i think specials should be limited based on a games size? Do i think we should change anything about people putting certain specials in their games?
Well, i actually personally don't, while yes, it's true that there are certainly a share of problems too many specials can have, i feel that if people add them to their game reponsibly and actually think about it and not add specials just because reasons when it really wouldn't even fit lore wise, they we're fine for the most part.

But i do certainly agree that people should stop with weak specials in their games.

Postby **Julia Pseudo** » Sun Aug 27, 2017 3:09 am

My rule of thumb for game design is that the number of blues should not generally exceed the number of bad guys. I usually have one blue per villain, including third parties, or sometimes fewer blues if the mafia isn't very powerful in that game. The current SMBX Mafia meta certainly overemphasizes blues, though I don't see a lot that can be done about that past something like Sanct's Blue Paint Crisis (which is a cool-looking concept, I'm not bashing it at all) or removing blues altogether, which is a decent idea but would make every game pretty much the same.

I do think that Deputy-like roles should be used more, since they kind of discourage guaranteed alliances by reducing the initial number of blues, while keeping a similar number over the course of the game.

I also think that regular mafiosos are underused, which is pretty hypocritical I guess considering most of my games, including the one I have submitted right now, but I believe that having an all-special mafia might discourage strategy for the mafia a bit in favor of just manipulating everyone with their powers. I'm less sure about this, though - most special mafiosos are fine as long as they're not too strong (thinking mainly of being strong enough to carry the mafia on their own, which shouldn't happen).

Danny · Postby **Danny** » Sun Aug 27, 2017 4:00 am

The all-special mafia are really infuriating to me because it messes with the core concepts of Mafia/Werewolf by providing the enemy with increases powers that they can and do use to manipulate the town. Granted they don't win here a lot of the time, that can also be attributed by their opposition, which is usually a town with really powerful blues that can secure an alliance early, root out some of the mafia, and then act as scapegoats for the mafia to focus on killing. While people do and should include fun and exciting roles, I think there needs to be a realization that power balance must exist in more ways than one. Like for example, just because your mafia has four members, three goons and a godfather, doesn't mean you need to insert four or five special roles into your town.

If you included some really cool and awesome special role, like the Mayor roles I've tried implementing into the town in the past with their ability to give everyone doublevoting or to host a secondary vote in the day or what have you, you would most definitely want to balance this out by having considerably less special roles than you normally would because the Mayor is going to give the town a lot of power if they have a proper lead, which can usually be attributed to by the inclusion of a Sheriff role.