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?