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Newbie mafia discussion

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Newbie mafia discussion

Postby StorrZerg on Sat Sep 13, 2014 7:02 pm

As topic says. Going to shoot some ideas.

Atm for newbie mafia 2, might consider opening to all, and giving people the option for a coach. I say this because the first one had experienced players playing.

Personally I feel the coaching was not utilized that well. So wondering what could be done to improve the experience. So if you played in game 1 or coached I'd like some feedback.

I might do a shadow game instead. Have some experienced players play game 1, each having 1 person shadow them.

Then game 2, the shadows play, same alignment as the experienced player they shadowed
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Re: Newbie mafia discussion

Postby StorrZerg on Sat Sep 13, 2014 8:35 pm

Iron Butterfly wrote:(1)I did not like the voting system.) It gave more power to Jonty. He was first to vote on the last day, which made his vote the lynch if there was a tie, which there was. When he voted along with me he sealed the game for himself as the only way to win was for three of us to vote him. It did not help that I did not understand the voting system toll the end and then it was to late.

(2)The problem was that with the set up it really was a guessing game. Jonty was very agreeable with me this game, which i did notice but aside from that he really did nothing scummy. The new guys made all the newbie mistakes to seem scummy.

Having the cop die and no other PRs made it extremely difficult especially with people who have not played before. The new guys were hard to read. (3) Having coaches made it harder because you don't know if they were speaking or their coaches.

(4)If you make another newbie game add more PRs to liven it up.


(1) I don't think the vote system was an issue. It is different, and it is designed to avoid "tie votes for no lynch" I'd say jonty nearly screwed himself with how he voted placing someone at 2 votes, the logic was out there to catch him, and it was presented. (just focusing the wrong person). Now if you did not understand the voting system, then it really isn't the systems fault or the rules fault. Its possible you needed to reread the rules, or ask for clarity since it was something new.

(2) I wouldn't call the set up a guessing game. I'd call it mafia. You can't always depend on the setup to carry you in the game, to expect the "power roles" to be around. The focus was more on trying to learn how to read someone as scum, how to win people to your view on why to lynch person X. Teaching mafia how to blend into the game. As for jonty, i'd say he did a good job of pulling the wool over your eyes. I mean that is a part of the game from a mafia standpoint, to blend in with town. Well I cannot control the level of input of a player, specially one who was active in a coach topic, then failed to post so he was lynched.

(3) I'm fairly certain i provided you with the QT link to your coach. If i did not then it is my fault. (again this could have been cleared up with asking how influential coaches can be). Here is the general guidelines I gave.
Use this thread to talk to your coach about the game. Coaches may not give their opinions about the game. They are here to help you understand and play. How to scum hunt. They are welcome to use previous games to give examples. They are welcome to ask questions why players feel the way they feel about a player in game. If you have any questions as a coach or player on what you may do or not do. Please send me a pm. Enjoy the game!


(4) i'll consider it. I assume the next game will be around 9-12 players. I'll have some options on setups, possible roles etc. Part of why the set up was rolled with 1 mafia power role, and 1 town power role was because it was RNG that way. The set up could have had 3 mafia, with 1 or 2 power roles, and town with 3-4. Just happened to be a very low power role RNG and mafia count.
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Re: Newbie mafia discussion

Postby pancakemix on Sat Sep 13, 2014 9:53 pm

I found it hard to actually figure out what to do. :lol: I tried to get my players to tell me why they were doing what they were doing and work from there. Checking the QT might have been the problem there, but I'm not certain (and that's why I ended up switching to PM). I guess part of it also had to do with how far I thought I was allowed to go, since I didn't want to stilt their opinions with my comments, but I wanted them to go in the right direction.
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Re: Newbie mafia discussion

Postby StorrZerg on Sat Sep 13, 2014 10:16 pm

purpose of the qt is to have record of discussion though. So things can be learned after math, insure nothing is being done that shouldn't be done from a moderating standpoint. Tbh i felt most coaches kinda did a poor job with doing anything. Maybe i made it appear they couldn't say much, but i'm not sure if any coaches asked their players "hey who do you think is town? why?" "who is mafia? why?" 0 coaches linked to a previous game to explain things as well. "this is an example of my scum read on X person, this person did this" exp. sometimes people are scum when they avoid reading people in the game, or when they avoid trying to figure out the game. You should try and look for poor reasons on a lynch. "because i think they are mafia" can be said as a poor reason, because it doesn't have explanation.
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Re: Newbie mafia discussion

Postby Iron Butterfly on Sun Sep 14, 2014 3:42 pm

"I wouldn't call the set up a guessing game. I'd call it mafia. You can't always depend on the setup to carry you in the game, to expect the "power roles" to be around. The focus was more on trying to learn how to read someone as scum, how to win people to your view on why to lynch person X. Teaching mafia how to blend into the game. As for jonty, i'd say he did a good job of pulling the wool over your eyes. I mean that is a part of the game from a mafia standpoint, to blend in with town. Well I cannot control the level of input of a player, specially one who was active in a coach topic, then failed to post so he was lynched."

This is where we get caught in semantics. Guessing game, mafia call it what you will. In the end without power roles one basis their judgement on how they think someone who is Town or mafia should act or speak. truth is a matter of perspective. It then becomes one big "WIFOM" argument based on ones experience.

As we saw, was a newbie acting like a newbie or was he using it as tool to fake his way to Townhood. The only solid facts are when someone flips and how they interact to the past posts.
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Re: Newbie mafia discussion

Postby StorrZerg on Sun Sep 14, 2014 5:13 pm

This is where we get caught in semantics. Guessing game, mafia call it what you will. In the end without power roles one basis their judgement on how they think someone who is Town or mafia should act or speak. truth is a matter of perspective. It then becomes one big "WIFOM" argument based on ones experience.


From my point of view mafia at its core isn't about power roles. Its about 2 factions, a faction that is smaller that knows each other and tries to kill the larger faction. The larger faction doesn't know who their friends are. They must use a voting system to remove suspected people. I do agree a lot of the matter is perspective, and ones ability to communicate your perspective to the rest of the people in the game, as well as ones ability to try and read into players at hand. Maybe I should reformat the games and make it "Back to the Basics" and focus more so on helping people develop "scum hunting" as well as helping scum with their ability to "cause disruption and hide within town". I say this because i suspect there are a lot of people who enjoy playing the game (specially flavor related games), yet feel very lost early in the game (i suspect because lack of claims), or latter in the game when no claims are alive.

Personally i really hate the term "wifom" I think it simplifies discussions and kills discussions. And really doesn't do any good for the game. I understand why the term is in the game, and often why it can be correct to use in a discussion. However it feels people use it to much to "dismiss" conversation, ignore it, belittle it, etc.

As we saw, was a newbie acting like a newbie or was he using it as tool to fake his way to Townhood. The only solid facts are when someone flips and how they interact to the past posts.

Often from personal experience, newbies tend to do a lot of things that can be considered mafia traits. so i completely understand the frustration that can come from playing with new people. Often what you can try to do is explain things they can do that help town (explaining their stance on who they vote, getting them to vote, getting them to explain town reads) .
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Re: Newbie mafia discussion

Postby pancakemix on Sun Sep 14, 2014 9:39 pm

Often from personal experience, newbies tend to do a lot of things that can be considered mafia traits. so i completely understand the frustration that can come from playing with new people. Often what you can try to do is explain things they can do that help town (explaining their stance on who they vote, getting them to vote, getting them to explain town reads) .


This might be a problem inherent in hosting newbie games with experienced players playing. Or it might be a boon if the vets consider their audience. For instance, if IB committed a newbie mistake, I'd say "that's scummy" and vote him, but if a newbie did it, I could say "that's scummy" and leave it at that (obviously, I'd explain it, but you get the idea). If things didn't change after that, then I'd vote them. So maybe reminding vets to be conscientious would be a good idea? But the problem there is what if they actually ARE scum and you've given them a free pass? Tricky...
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Re: Newbie mafia discussion

Postby edocsil on Sun Sep 21, 2014 2:03 pm

You explicitly made it sound like coaches were not supposed to interact heavily with their players of to give them explicit ideas or contributions.

I would say take the reigns off the coaches, send everything to CC PMs and screw QTs. Seriously, the need to prevent cheating just isn't there, and checking yet another site daily for responses is just a nuisance. Have 1 scum coach, 3 town coaches and encourage them to actively take part in advising new guys and you will get a WAY larger response from your coaches. Nothing can really go wrong, and the absolute worse case is some proxy gaming. Just tell the coaches not to blow it to town who other faction members may be (town only clearly).
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Re: Newbie mafia discussion

Postby aage on Mon Sep 22, 2014 6:35 am

pancakemix wrote:
Often from personal experience, newbies tend to do a lot of things that can be considered mafia traits. so i completely understand the frustration that can come from playing with new people. Often what you can try to do is explain things they can do that help town (explaining their stance on who they vote, getting them to vote, getting them to explain town reads) .


This might be a problem inherent in hosting newbie games with experienced players playing. Or it might be a boon if the vets consider their audience. For instance, if IB committed a newbie mistake, I'd say "that's scummy" and vote him, but if a newbie did it, I could say "that's scummy" and leave it at that (obviously, I'd explain it, but you get the idea). If things didn't change after that, then I'd vote them. So maybe reminding vets to be conscientious would be a good idea? But the problem there is what if they actually ARE scum and you've given them a free pass? Tricky...

Throwing coaches in the game together with the "newbie" players creates two seperate player pools. People will use statistical arguments (eg. 'two of the four coaches died and flipped scum, the other two then must be town') to disrupt the game and drive it away from its purpose, as well as allow scum to highly cripple town by specifically taking out most of their coaches who then won't be able to post any more. I agree with Edoc'sil's idea. Priority should go to helping people implement a strategy or style that allows them to both look town and further their own goals, be they town or mafia. PMs would be best for town players, but QT could be helpful for the mafia to support team efforts - they have nothing to hide from one another anyway.
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Re: Newbie mafia discussion

Postby StorrZerg on Mon Sep 22, 2014 12:48 pm

I think you missed something. No game would have coaches in the game playing. If the student dies, their coach does not flip.

One suggestion was a normal game where new players could have a coach.

Qt links for players and coaches is still best. It keeps information avaliable after the game. In the future they can then be used as reference points

Qt should also be standard for mafia teams. The mafia chat is a part of the game. PMs are messy and the average user can only hold 50.

I'm still inclined that I wasn't that restrictive. Half the coaches afked. 2 players got replaced.

Hardly any coaches followed up with players. Many players decided to not use their coach.

I can't recall if any player or coach talked post game with each other. What they did good, what was bad. What they could improve on.

I still stand with the opinion that coaches should not be giving personal reads on players in the game. Most coached 2 players. So opinions could be tainted. (Unintended)
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