MTG Salvation

Quote from 7hawk77

I think if we did this, we would have to add the roleblocker. We experimented with having a doctor instead of a vig and the cop would claim day 1 and just get saved by the doc while confirming half the town.

Another option is making it so the doctor can't protect the same person 2 nights in a row. That's how my old forum did it, and it was kinda nice giving the cop an extra investigation after they were outed, and led to some interesting night decisions.

That is a really good idea too. Cool, Thanks!

Wasn't that basically what MTG Salvation Mafia Redux was? Can't remember whether they were actual roles from previous games or just references.

Quote from Prophylaxis

Has there been any setups comprised of roles from past games? If so, what are the potential pitfalls of designing a game based around the concept?

Cyan's Impossible Mafia was one of the more prominent games with this gimmick.
A
B

I would assume that game balance is difficult to achieve if the game is full of high-power roles (consider a Magic Constructed format consisting only of Time Spiral Timeshifted cards).

I'd think of it more in the context of a cube, no?

Quote from ZeDorkSlipeur

But since you meant more original roles: not that I remember. This could be a fun concept, but modgaming is going to run rampant in such a game (and anyone without great knowledge of past games will probably feel lost and left out).

Honestly, I think everyone should be doing this and just not telling players. It's like returning mechanics in Magic - cycling is great, so they keep bringing it back. Popular and simple roles from good games... why don't they get used again just because they fit in another setup?

Holy crap I think I just figured out the next normal I want to design.

Quote from Ged

Holy crap I think I just figured out the next normal I want to design.

This I cannot wait for. Make it an FTQ, please?

Quote from Void

Quote from Ged

Holy crap I think I just figured out the next normal I want to design.

This I cannot wait for. Make it an FTQ, please?

Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of "just not telling players?"

Then again, I guess the fact that this conversation is even happening at all is sort of antithetical to Ged's intent.

Yeah, I guess that does defeat the purpose.

Have fun, Ged. I know everyone is looking forward to whatever you create.

Quote from Prophylaxis

Yeah, I was thinking about starting my Time Spiral mafia and I was wondering if the concept was designed before.

Did a quick check at the completed games list here I did not find a previous Time Spiral Mafia.

That doesn't mean that it wasn't named something else. I hope that helps you Prophy.

Quote from Prophylaxis

Yeah, I was thinking about starting my Time Spiral mafia and I was wondering if the concept was designed before.

/in as a Sliver.

Time Spiral began my love for Slivers and was probably one of my favorite blocks.

I'm pretty sure most games contain elements of others. I frequently steal and modify roles from various other games that I've read/played, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. The problem is if it's obviously a "reprint" as it were, then people can try and game it's precise function, which can break games or lead to stupid lynches.

Read past specialty/FTQ games. Start with Xyre's setups; they are some of my favorites. The most fun role was a post/day cop. Quote someone's full sentence to the mod, the mod will tell you to the best of his knowledge whether it was a lie or not. Very out-of-the-box creatively. New twists on old roles are fun and keeps the game balanced.

I greatly enjoy top-down designs. It's easier to produce these when you use existing source material, as I tend to.

Quote from Prophylaxis

Another setup question:

Does anyone have any tips to improve as a Mafia game designer? I feel as though there's no central "manual" on Mafia game design (just tips on how to balance). Every time I design a setup it always feels like it's vanilla (normal roles such as watcher, vigilante, doctor). How would I go "out of the box" as a game designer?

For me, it all depends on source material. Are you writing your own flavor, or are you basing it on a concept created by a show/game/etc.? For me, if I'm basing it on something else, I try to think of the 1-3 most memorable things about the source and apply them to the game's mechanics. Without giving away too much about the setup of GoldenEye (for example), it's heavily item-based (because I remembered the arms race that some people would get into when I played it as a kid), and a few events in the movie/game that stuck out to me through the years that I fashioned into references that became roles. For Digimon Mafia (I ran that on Colo), I made Digivolving a thing - if you fulfilled a certain condition (Agumon had to lead a wagon; Crest of Courage; Gabumon had to be the target of an ability; Crest of Friendship; etc.), you would Digivolve. It was pretty subtle, since I didn't directly incorporate the crests and whatnot into the role PMs, but each Digivolution was very flavorful and tied into the mechanics of the game quite well.

For my own, original setups (I have surprisingly few, likely because I enjoy using source material that inspires me for games and because people are more likely to join my games if they recognize where the ideas come from), I like to start with a story. For example, in Pirates Mafia (the sequel to The Legend of Lucian), I wanted to make it a simpler story than TLoL, so I took the concept I had already established in TLoL (go read the OP if you're curious) and branched off of that universe with a simple "there are pirates involved in a mutiny, weed out the bad ones!" that takes place following the Battle of Formonune in TLoL. It's a perspective change, but it allows for new mechanics to take shape in the same universe (Fear Tactics; those will be explained in the OP) and keeps the flavor running to keep the players interested.

Basically, don't limit yourself to a set role type. If you want to include an investigative Cop-type role, make them jump through hoops and have to use the ability at a weird time and get a strange kind of result (like how many scum players they quoted in the previous Day, for example). If you want a completely new role altogether, the possibilities are endless! It just has to be feasible from a theory standpoint. Good luck with growing as a mod, and feel free to ask me for clarification on anything I said if you need to.

Quote from Zionite

Read past specialty/FTQ games. Start with Xyre's setups; they are some of my favorites. The most fun role was a post/day cop. Quote someone's full sentence to the mod, the mod will tell you to the best of his knowledge whether it was a lie or not. Very out-of-the-box creatively. New twists on old roles are fun and keeps the game balanced.

Magical Girl Mafia had a similar role (Void's).

Quote from AsianInvasion

I greatly enjoy top-down designs. It's easier to produce these when you use existing source material, as I tend to.

I always like to establish flavor first when I'm making a setup, unless the concept isn't based on something someone else has done, but rather, my own machinations. I don't find it stifles my creativity as a mod to set flavor first, but rather, allows me to focus the possibilities into a more elegant and efficient design. There are some roles that just don't belong among others and would make the game totally out of whack. Design space SHOULD be limited, despite the ridiculous possibilities one can create with roles. Gotta keep the game fun for the players, after all.

Designing a mafia game is just like designing any game. Once you have a core idea, build on it until you have an elegant balance of roles.

From a hosting standpoint, is it considered bastardly to resolve actions one way in one game and another in another?

Take Roleblocks vs. Single-Shot abilities and Trackers, for example.

Game A: Bob targets Frank with his 1-Shot Vig ability. Ted Roleblocks Bob by locking his door that Night. Jim Tracks Bob and sees him target nobody because Bob was locked in his room. Bob keeps his Vig shot because he never left his room.

Game B: Bob targets Frank with his 1-Shot Vig ability. Ted Roleblocks Bob by bashing him in the head with a chair as he reaches Frank's room. Jim Tracks Bob and sees him target Frank because it's pretty obvious that Bob was trying to shoot down Frank by going to his room. Bob loses his Vig shot because any competent Roleblocker would see the gun next to Bob and think, "****, if Bob knows I Roleblocked him, he's going to shoot me for sure!" and removes Bob's only round from his chamber and hides it.

Should it be uniform across games or should it be contingent upon flavor? I would think it makes more sense for the latter, but some players may look at past games by that host and lynch players for "lying" about how their actions resolved because it resolved differently in another game. Should the players be penalized for modgaming, in that case, by the mislynch of Bob who was trying to prove his Vig shot? Or should the mod intentionally make what happened easier to guess?

I think it should be game specific as certain games might require different order of resolutions and such for balance reasons. Though I do think the order of resolution should be known to the game unless their is a reason for them not to know it.

Quote from Iso

From a hosting standpoint, is it considered bastardly to resolve actions one way in one game and another in another?

Take Roleblocks vs. Single-Shot abilities and Trackers, for example.

Game A: Bob targets Frank with his 1-Shot Vig ability. Ted Roleblocks Bob by locking his door that Night. Jim Tracks Bob and sees him target nobody because Bob was locked in his room. Bob keeps his Vig shot because he never left his room.

Game B: Bob targets Frank with his 1-Shot Vig ability. Ted Roleblocks Bob by bashing him in the head with a chair as he reaches Frank's room. Jim Tracks Bob and sees him target Frank because it's pretty obvious that Bob was trying to shoot down Frank by going to his room. Bob loses his Vig shot because any competent Roleblocker would see the gun next to Bob and think, "****, if Bob knows I Roleblocked him, he's going to shoot me for sure!" and removes Bob's only round from his chamber and hides it.

Should it be uniform across games or should it be contingent upon flavor? I would think it makes more sense for the latter, but some players may look at past games by that host and lynch players for "lying" about how their actions resolved because it resolved differently in another game. Should the players be penalized for modgaming, in that case, by the mislynch of Bob who was trying to prove his Vig shot? Or should the mod intentionally make what happened easier to guess?

That's a good question and one I may have a polemic opinion about.

I think that when players are focusing on those kind of "catches" the spirit of the game suffers. The game should not be about if the scum correctly guessed how the mod resolves actions in this particular game, catching scum because of those stuff is dirty and I think mods should be very attentive to this stuff.
That's why in all my games I will make sure the actions are resolved in the same way and I will make sure all players know exactly how. However, if despite being informed or the NOR players still makes mistakes that's their fault and they will be penalized by it.

TLDR: If players are asking those kind of questions in the thread or by PM you are probably doing it wrong as a mod, this stuff should be 100% clear all the time.
TLDR2: What gman said.

Look for anyone whose opinion has changed dramatically overNight. And look for anyone who states something as a definite - or hints at knowing something. Unexpected questions are also a decent tell.

Similar question. When you are a cop, how do you breadcrumb your results without claiming? What if you catch scum but don't want to out yourself yet? Or maybe you've just cleared 2-3 innocents but think you are about to eat the Night Kill.

How do you leave this information in the thread in a way that the rest of the town can find it after your death without blatantly revealing what you are to the scum?

Axelrod did an excellent job of it in Ataghan. AE did a fair job in C&B. I also did decently in Deitrip.

Quote from Asenion

Similar question. When you are a cop, how do you breadcrumb your results without claiming? What if you catch scum but don't want to out yourself yet? Or maybe you've just cleared 2-3 innocents but think you are about to eat the Night Kill.

How do you leave this information in the thread in a way that the rest of the town can find it after your death without blatantly revealing what you are to the scum?

Simply state "X is town" or "Y is scum." VTs do this all the time.

Quote from Iso

Axelrod did an excellent job of it in Ataghan. AE did a fair job in C&B. I also did decently in Deitrip.

I tried to do this in SH but apparently nobody noticed until I soft-counter claimed ETR fake claiming cop.

Your town/scum list would have made it obvious if roles were actually revealed upon death.

Which is another good way for cops to breadcrumb results - if people are on a town tier that you wouldn't expect them to be on, the logic checks out.

Risky, though.

Quote from Voxxicus

Your town/scum list would have made it obvious if roles were actually revealed upon death.

Which is another good way for cops to breadcrumb results - if people are on a town tier that you wouldn't expect them to be on, the logic checks out.

Risky, though.

Yes, if the game had been full reveal I think the crumbs were there. But it wasn't, so I was taking a real risk.

Quote from Megiddo

Quote from Iso

Axelrod did an excellent job of it in Ataghan. AE did a fair job in C&B. I also did decently in Deitrip.

I tried to do this in SH but apparently nobody noticed until I soft-counter claimed ETR fake claiming cop.

No one noticed it until Axelrod died.

Right, but when he died they knew what to look for.

If I had died nobody would have been tipped off by my role PM.

That is somewhat moot though. ^^

Quote from swishh

Quote from Asenion

Similar question. When you are a cop, how do you breadcrumb your results without claiming? What if you catch scum but don't want to out yourself yet? Or maybe you've just cleared 2-3 innocents but think you are about to eat the Night Kill.

How do you leave this information in the thread in a way that the rest of the town can find it after your death without blatantly revealing what you are to the scum?

Simply state "X is town" or "Y is scum." VTs do this all the time.

You have to be careful not to be too obvious about it though: I saw a game (it was a newb game admittedly) where a guy spent D2 saying he thought a prime lynch candidate was town based on a strong gut feel. Turned out he was the cop with an innocent result and got nuked by the Mafia the next night.

Quote from Megiddo

Right, but when he died they knew what to look for.

If I had died nobody would have been tipped off by my role PM.

That is somewhat moot though. ^^

Archmage Eternal did the same thing one game. Can't remember which, but it was so subtle that we nearly missed it until Void noticed.

AE never actually got a check off in Checks and Balances - I think he targeted scum both nights, but was roleblocked by the town jailer.

Quote from Wheat_Grinder

Quote from Megiddo

Right, but when he died they knew what to look for.

If I had died nobody would have been tipped off by my role PM.

That is somewhat moot though. ^^

Archmage Eternal did the same thing one game. Can't remember which, but it was so subtle that we nearly missed it until Void noticed.

It was C&B, which I mentioned.

Quote from Voxxicus

AE never actually got a check off in Checks and Balances - I think he targeted scum both nights, but was roleblocked by the town jailer.

Confirm. Very funny night actions that game.

This question is more directed at long-term players.

Lately, I feel like all of my reads/ability to navigate a game are being heavily impacted by metagaming. Like..I can't read a person's posts without taking prior history with that player into account. This isn't necessarily a terrible thing, but A)it lets scum take advantage of being scummy as town and B)when you have 6-7 years worth of experience with some people, you become inundated with meta. There are circumstances where I think a person is town/scum, but meta is the only reason, which isn't particularly quantifiable.

Does anyone else have this problem?

I used to meta all the time, but I've strayed from it for the most part (except in early game) because once I hit the ~70 game mark, I stopped being able to keep tabs on how players acted in every single game I'd played in them with (though I do remember events fairly well, I think). I think that the most effective use of meta is to see how people REACT to things, not necessarily how they act on a regular basis in the game.

I don't personally use meta anymore unless the player is so consistent in a particular way that it would be impossible to judge them any other way (e.g. Wrath_of_DoG has a very dichotomous, absent-present style as scum; Kosakosa is a player who resists knee-jerk reactions to his posts). But I'll accept someone else's meta read (especially one that suggests someone is town).

I think meta is too powerful to ignore. I don't feel like I can read a fresh group of players at all. I pretty much always go look up a few of their games to get a feel, otherwise I have no idea how to evaluate their behavior. Everyone has a different baseline and to treat people the same just doesn't work IMO.

I use meta to guide my internal reads, but I don't often use them in the thread unless the source games are quoted. Example being:

Quote from current game.

This looks an awful lot like:

Quote from previous (meta) game.

Where the player was scum/town.

If they're not presented like this then I either have to dig for whatever meta they're talking about or just plain ignore it, which makes discussing meta more difficult than it has to be.

Quote from Asenion

I think meta is too powerful to ignore. I don't feel like I can read a fresh group of players at all. I pretty much always go look up a few of their games to get a feel, otherwise I have no idea how to evaluate their behavior. Everyone has a different baseline and to treat people the same just doesn't work IMO.

This is me; it's why I dislike playing with players for the first time and absolutely hate playing with players who themselves are playing for the first time.

I think to discern new players real scumtells from bogus ones is an art. I know ZDS is pretty spot on those things but there are some tells that are quite universal given new players.

I remember that after trying to chain lynches on two players in my first game(final fantasy) I was slammed into the ground pretty quickly and correctly by DYH, geez, DYH was quite a good townie in that game, he caught me so easily.

It depends on what technically counts as meta.

'Cause for me it's a complicated question. I definitely view posts by different people in different lights, but for me, I'd say it has to do more with how I'm reading their personality though than what I've actually seen of them in previous games -- though reading them in previous games can certainly give me a better idea of their personality.

Meta just as pattern recognition (ie, Player A is doing x here, he did x in previous town games, therefore x is null) can also be useful, but imo you have to be pretty careful using it, as it's easy to make wrong assumptions. For example, from a purely meta standpoint, in the above parenthetical example the correct conclusion is that x is null (and not a town tell), unless it can also be proven that Player A does not do x as scum (in which case it is a town tell). That's a pretty obvious example, but there are a lot of very similar traps that you can fall into. It's also pretty rare that you can find a good meta tell like that, because scum are usually aware of their metas. Most meta that I actually end up using says things are null rather than that they are town tells or scum tells, which makes it less useful.

Quote from AsianInvasion

This is me; it's why I dislike playing with players for the first time and absolutely hate playing with players who themselves are playing for the first time.

I'm generally the opposite; I like playing with new people. For me, trying to get a read on how this dude thinks is one of the more interesting parts of the game.

Quote from DRey

I remember that after trying to chain lynches on two players in my first game(final fantasy) I was slammed into the ground pretty quickly and correctly by DYH, geez, DYH was quite a good townie in that game, he caught me so easily.

I'm going to assume that the emote indicates sarcasm. (For those not in the know, DRey, DYH, and myself were all scum in that game.)

Quote from DRey

I think to discern new players real scumtells from bogus ones is an art. I know ZDS is pretty spot on those things but there are some tells that are quite universal given new players.

I remember that after trying to chain lynches on two players in my first game(final fantasy) I was slammed into the ground pretty quickly and correctly by DYH, geez, DYH was quite a good townie in that game, he caught me so easily.

LOL!

/scumteam high-five bus drive!