MTG Salvation

I mean, I get where the push against this comes from, but I feel like I'm being punished for not lying. The reason I've played almost 150 games without claiming VT when I'm not VT was not to foster a trust tell, but to make my VT game more solid instead of relying on the absurd lies and dumb gambits my early Mafia career was infamous for. Rather, it was an olive branch to the players that felt my play was disruptive, and my attempt at giving a more traditional approach to Mafia a try. The trust tell was just an incidental development that I realized was a thing at one point and went with it. Again, I understand that allowing this creates a potential slippery slope for dumb shenanigans, but after 6 years of claiming VT only as VT, I think that at least Proph's suggestion of "start claiming VT as scum" is honestly really dumb. (Because really, when has that ever dissuaded a scum lynch from happening?)

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@Eco: So in those specific scenarios, how do I reconcile my abrupt shift in read on that player? Because regardless of openly evoking trust tell or not (i.e. the difference between "I'm VT" and "I'm VT ergo confirmed town"), my read on somebody is going to change if they start pushing me or continue to push after a VT claim. Not intentionally - just as a visceral reaction to what I know about my meta regardless of how hard I may try to suppress that initial reaction. Does that make sense?

I'm on board with the anti-trust tell rules, so don't get me wrong - I'm not arguing against that. I'm just trying to wrap my head around how I'm supposed to change my initial reaction to something after 6 years of conditioning to immediately respond to it in a certain way that's probably going to color my read of a person for the remainder of the game.

Quote from Iso »

I mean, I get where the push against this comes from, but I feel like I'm being punished for not lying. The reason I've played almost 150 games without claiming VT when I'm not VT was not to foster a trust tell, but to make my VT game more solid instead of relying on the absurd lies and dumb gambits my early Mafia career was infamous for. Rather, it was an olive branch to the players that felt my play was disruptive, and my attempt at giving a more traditional approach to Mafia a try. The trust tell was just an incidental development that I realized was a thing at one point and went with it. Again, I understand that allowing this creates a potential slippery slope for dumb shenanigans, but after 6 years of claiming VT only as VT, I think that at least Proph's suggestion of "start claiming VT as scum" is honestly really dumb. (Because really, when has that ever dissuaded a scum lynch from happening?)

You're not being punished for not lying, you're being singled out because you have intentionally transcended the game and given yourself and get out of jail free card whenever you roll VT. No skill required, you automatically become an innocent child. That is obviously broken and unfair, and if taken to an extreme where more people did it, the game of Mafia would cease to function entirely. How it happened doesn't matter, the fact that it became a deliberate, explicit pattern is the problem.

I don't think you should necessarily have to claim VT as scum (or when you're town power or anything else). What you need to do is not ever close off that avenue of play, nor assume that anyone should treat your VT claim as any different to any other.

Quote from Iso »

I'm on board with the anti-trust tell rules, so don't get me wrong - I'm not arguing against that. I'm just trying to wrap my head around how I'm supposed to change my initial reaction to something after 6 years of conditioning to immediately respond to it in a certain way that's probably going to color my read of a person for the remainder of the game.

By recognising that your actions during those 6 years were very much outside of the spirit of the game and only not cheating because they were not explicitly legislated against.

Suddenly the Lulz issue on Mafia Universe makes more sense...

Very problematic?
A chance.
Need to change?
In time.
Less stupid clears.
Less game breakage.
A path to better mafia.

I guess all I can do at this point is walk away from this with the intent to play better. Sorry if anyone has felt like I was taking advantage of the system; as I stated, that was not my intent, but rather, an incidental result of the way I had been playing.

Iso, this is really really easy. No soul-searching required.

Just say, right now, for the record, that in some game, somewhere, hypothetically, you'd claim VT as scum.

Boom, trust-tell gone. Now people can evaluate your claim based on how much sense it makes in the context of the game, and not based on some meta thing they may or may not even know about.

Just put it on the table as something you might do, and the whole "trust" thing evaporates. You don't even have to actually do it, you just have to destroy the sense that someone can use it to predict your alignment based on past games, which is the *****ty part.

We'll see what happens.

What I claim as what is my choice to make, but I won't be alluding to aforementioned trust tell in any capacity any more.

Awesome, sounds like a good resolution.

Hey guys. I was taking a peek at the player contact list/rolling basics thread, and it seems like we're not getting critical mass for rolling basics in the slightest. However, we have had a handful of new players attempt to sign up.

Should we perhaps change that thread's purpose/branding towards not specifically basics, but more of a welcome mat/signup for new players wanting to be contacted when a newb-friendly game pops up?

Quote from Azrael »

Hey guys. I was taking a peek at the player contact list/rolling basics thread, and it seems like we're not getting critical mass for rolling basics in the slightest. However, we have had a handful of new players attempt to sign up.

Should we perhaps change that thread's purpose/branding towards not specifically basics, but more of a welcome mat/signup for new players wanting to be contacted when a newb-friendly game pops up?

I was more or less under the impression that's what it was, but making it clearer couldn't hurt.

Ok, I've updated that and the hosting signup thread as well to reflect the FTQ changes.

If anyone has setups to submit to the FTQ, now's the time.

So is the Mafia Setup Archive still something that gets used/is supposed to be used?

Quote from Cantripmancer »

So is the Mafia Setup Archive still something that gets used/is supposed to be used?

As far as I'm aware it's useful but optional. It's mostly used to store setups so that if a mod disappears/can't finish the game then it's in a place we can get to it and keep it going.

Quote from Ecophagy »

Quote from Cantripmancer »

So is the Mafia Setup Archive still something that gets used/is supposed to be used?

As far as I'm aware it's useful but optional. It's mostly used to store setups so that if a mod disappears/can't finish the game then it's in a place we can get to it and keep it going.

Ok, just wondering if I was supposed to be using it, because I'm pretty sure it was operational last time I ran a game, but I didn't use it.

I'm not active here and wont be again for reasons. Might as well remove me as Secretary.

Hey, guys! Good news~

I spoke to senior staff, and they advised me that if we go out of our way to run a Magic-themed Mafia game once every few months, we can get a small spotlight on either the front page, MTGS social media, or both.

If that's not motivation to start cranking out games - to revive our community - I don't know what is!

Az, Eco, Zionite - should we have a small flavor design throwdown so that we have hosts ready and raring to go for some time? I think we should keep the games at Basic just so that they're more accessible to newbies, and we do need to fill up the Basic queue, anyway. What say you?

Sounds great; glad to hear they're willing to give us some spotlight time/

Awesome. Micro and/or basic sounds wonderful.

For the sake of visibility, we are adding a list of common rules for game to the Rules, Info, and Articles thread. The game host still has precedence (mostly), but almost every game will use these rules.

They are:

1. Follow MTGS rules
2. The spirit of the rules is as important as the letter: if you think you have found a mistake or loophole, talk to the mod about it before you post.
3. Do not edit or delete your posts
4. Do not post after you are dead
5. Do not post in the thread while the game is in Night
6. Do not directly quote or screenshot your role PM, or any other communication from the mod or from any other private communication. You may paraphrase this information. If you have the slightest doubt, check with the mod before posting.
7. While the game is ongoing, do not talk to anyone about the game outside of the game unless your role PM explicitly allows you to. That means anyone.

Generally speaking, you're going to need a very good reason for any of these not to apply.

Question: has anyone attempted a Mexican standoff type game, where each player is a 1x shot Dayvig and there is only one Day? Something like 6 town, 3 mafia? I was thinking of ways to have a quick game. Mafia wouldn't have Day chat, so their only chat would be Night 0. I am sure this is busted in 700 ways, but for those who have played a lot, do you know of similar setups I could read.

Back in the annals of time on MTGS, Lost Mafia had 2 Mafia, 1 Town, and 9 Serial Killers.

We used to play all vig turbos on MafiaUniverse occasionally, but it usually just ended with all of the scum dying on N1 since they were smaller games and a lot of the shots were duplicated.

I think once we tried giving out vests too, but the games only had like 7 players so a lot of the shots were duplicated.

I think it was something like [5x Town 1-shot Bulletproof Vigilante] vs [1x Mafia 2-shot Bulletproof + 1x Mafia 1-shot Bulletproof Vigilante] or something.

I'll see if I can dig up some of the all vig games I saw on MU but they were night vigs so it's not perfectly translatable.

But yeah, 6x 1-shot day vig vs 3x 1-shot day vig has some problems. Night vigs are marginally better but not by a ton, they basically just make it so that town can't coordinate the shots and hold people accountable for them.

You /could/ do something like nonreveal day vigs instead, which gives the scum team some wiggle room to shoot people. Still gives the town a ton of info with an immediate flip with which to judge their next shot though. Balanced by the fact they can only miss twice I guess?

edit: here's a link to Mafia Universe's custom turbo database...

http://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/database/games/custom-turbo/

There's lots of all vig games in there, phases are really short though. Usually 24 minutes/6 minutes or something close to that.

Thanks Silver, I'll take a look. I was thinking that there would be no Night. No factional kill. Etc etc. That probably disadvantages the scum team as they can't really plan during the game, but maybe a N0 chat and knowing who your teammates are would be enough? *shrug*

I think the biggest problem with day vigs is that it's really hard to shoot inside of the "town circle" without getting immediately shot for it. No flips might help since there'd be some question of whether they were actually town or not. Nonpublic day kills would help too since there'd be no way of knowing who killed whom, but I'm not sure if I'd try both at once.

Is there listed somewhere that we agreed that a rule should be instated that players should not be allowed to ignore other players due to its disruption of the integrity of games? We definitely agreed to it, I was just curious if the listed rules had been updated to reflect this anywhere.

Also, Council has agreed that we'll be pinning sign-up threads from now on for visibility. Please proceed with this in mind.

Iso requested that I post all of the information about an incident that happened in my game, so, here it is:

Summary: Osieorb18 posted a screenshot containing private communications with the game host (me). The screenshot did not contain messages that were directly game related, but they were used in the game thread to explain a thread absence. He had asked me if it was okay to post it prior and I agreed it was okay due to a misunderstanding.

The post in question.

And here's our chat log:


After this I attempted to contact council members and more experienced game hosts. I chose to issue a warning rather than a modkill because it didn't appear to have a large impact on the game, and Osieorb18 was ultimately lynched during the same phase.

I'm not requesting council action or anything since it's partly my own fault, but Iso wanted a record of it... so here it is.

It's pretty clear that the spirit of the rules Silver set in his game should have been apparent to osi that his actions were forbidden; especially given his incident in Horsemen. That said, osi is still new, so I'm inclined to let it slide just this once with the knowledge that he should tread carefully with regards to rules regarding game integrity from here on out.

Hey guys, I couldn't find a place for chitchat so I'm posting here.

Anyway, I found gandering_dan in the ffrk subreddit and remembered the good old mafia days. I stopped when curse took over and the site got blocked at work.
How's the state of the sub? I don't have as much time as before but I'm willing to help in any way it's needed, just tell me where if i'm needed at mentoring, playing, replacing, reviewing or creating games and I can help.

Quote from DRey »

Hey guys, I couldn't find a place for chitchat so I'm posting here.

Anyway, I found gandering_dan in the ffrk subreddit and remembered the good old mafia days. I stopped when curse took over and the site got blocked at work.
How's the state of the sub? I don't have as much time as before but I'm willing to help in any way it's needed, just tell me where if i'm needed at mentoring, playing, replacing, reviewing or creating games and I can help.

Hey man, it's been a while. Most chitchat happens in our Discord server if you want to drop by. Right now we mostly need players and games (mainly Minis).

We, the Council, are investigating the probability of running a forum event that might look similar to MafiaScum's Team Mafia.

We would like to run a pilot experiment for such an event, which would require 9 players across 3 teams of 3, who play 3 simultaneous games of sudden death 1v2 endgames, with one team member in each game. Such a game would require usage of the Mini queue but would run very quickly due to the three games being very small and therefore fast.

Does anyone (particularly mods in the Mini queue) have any objection to us jumping the queue and running this soon(TM) in order to get feedback as soon as possible?

Mmm. I'm not in the mini queue but I don't have any objections.

Alright, I'm moving for Dawningbluesky(Phraze) to be placed on probation.
I think if anyone knows me then they know I don't mind prickly players. However DBS, has proven time and time again that they are a problem.

A. DBS seems to manage to get in many flame arguments during every game she is in. Typically this isn't a big issue to me, but it was enough in my game and having players comment on it, that I took notice. I had no other complaints about any other players during the course of this game for these reasons.
B. DBS always threatens game throwing during these situations as a power play. Its basically every game that she says "I don't care if you're town I just want you lynched." This is where it becomes unacceptable to me. Doing this once or twice out of frustration, I might understand. But every game is just too egregious to ignore.
C. The player shows a lack of self awareness or willingness to change.

Quote from dawningbluesky »

2. all the more reason I disagree with the co-host then. it should've been directly addressed to me, and via pm. leaving a vague notice, with real consequences, does no real job of keeping the actual person in line, but only serves to 'punish' everyone at that person's expense, making ganging up a likelihood (should any threats be carried out). as for me being an ass, you can confirm with the others, I'm usually like that.

This is a problem for two reasons. First, we as the moderators did not call out DBS in the thread, the thread got heated from more than one players and we simply asked players to play nice. That was it. We didn't incentivize or encourage ganging up on a player and I take offense to this even being suggested. But secondly and more importantly it shows a lack of self awareness or willingness to change. Which to me is the bigger problem, the biggest problem.

Normally, if it was any one of these issues I wouldn't care. Combined together I think it shows a problem that needs to be corrected. Which is why I'm asking for probation and not a blacklisting. I think that player attitude can change and I think that we need to be more proactive in dealing with player attitude such as this.
I have to wonder if we on MTGS were more proactive with a litany of other players(Myself included) that we would have higher retention rates and better quality games.

Given that dawn up and disappeared for two game Days in Friends & Enemies Mafia, costing my team the game as a result, I'm inclined to be in favor.

On the note of reviewer lists, I am at least feigning being around/helping Rhand/Bur/Cyan with a setup at current. So you can slap me back on there if so inclined.

Quote from shadowlancerx »

I wouldn’t mind going through whatever process to be an approved reviewer as well.

Same

There isn't a formal process as such, but I think all three of you have enough of a history building and running games that I'd be happy to see you all on the approved reviewers list. Just make an effort to team up with an experienced second reviewer.

Re: Dawning

A very regular tendency to petulantly refuse to ask the mod questions.

ZE - Pissed everyone off after botching her role claim "I'm having fun holding town hostage"

Pirates - Unclear what was Dawning's fault and what was just caused by Grape, D_V, and others being tired of Dawning in general, though that doesn't speak wonders to Dawning.

Arkham - Got modkilled because there was no way we were replacing her. She'd been somewhat inactive near the end, as well as openly combative and lashing out at people. A bunch of players called her out at the end of this game for her behavior.

F&E - Lurked her way into her scumteam losing, despite solid play from another scumteam member.

%%%%

OTG4 - Relatively middle of the road activity. Nothing egregious.

Haiku - Relatively middle of the road activity. Nothing egregious.

Emperor - Relatively middle of the road activity. Nothing egregious.

At the same time, I know Dawning from conversations and games outside of this site.

And so my thoughts on the matter get a little murkier.

But the sticking point for me is that she is not self-aware. Or if she is self-aware, she willfully chooses to not change behaviors to adapt to the people with whom she is playing. And that's very concerning. Especially because these sorts of issues have come up on both sites, albeit less so on MyAnimeList than here.

She said something to the effect of taking a break, and that could be potentially reasonable enough. But if it's just a temporary hiatus from the same behavior, that's not productive. Assuming that she is willing to swallow her pride and adapt or even directly be mentored as appropriate, I could see her going on acceptably. But without that happening, I am concerned that her behavior will repeat itself further, at which point probation would definitely be advisable.

It's regrettable, because she has a decent amount of skill and when she's not being antagonistic, she's enjoyable to talk to and to play with. But she goes off of the rails too often, so I would also support a probation, with some endeavor to reach out and see if she can be willing to change. As of yet, I would not support a blacklisting.

Quote from Ecophagy »

There isn't a formal process as such, but I think all three of you have enough of a history building and running games that I'd be happy to see you all on the approved reviewers list. Just make an effort to team up with an experienced second reviewer.

I'm an active reviewer on Mafia Society and have reviewed some number of games here as well as hosting some games here and on live chat via discord, and am about to host a game over there. I would also be up for being an approved reviewer.

Reviewers approved. If we could have someone with Scribe access add the names, that'd be appreciated. I'm more than a little maxed out atm.

Quote from Bur »

Someone PM me the list of all new reviewers (and for which categories) and I'll add them!

I'm down for any category.

Quote from Bur »

Someone PM me the list of all new reviewers (and for which categories) and I'll add them!

Everyone who's volunteered previous to this post in the past week or so is fine.

Nah, go for it.

Quote from Ecophagy »

There isn't a formal process as such

Technically, there is A while back, I would have would-be reviewers take a swing at setups that needed review, critique their thoughts and input, and perform the final review, myself - the mantle of which was handed down to me by Xyre after he retired. However, I took a big step back from reviewing after I reviewed nearly all of the setups we ran one year, causing me burnout and an inability to play for most of that year, and we haven't really had a push for new reviewers, since.