Live Action Mafia

A game of sneakiness and paranoia
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 Post subject: Schedule Updates
PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 6:59 pm 
I agree with Lilly, especially regarding this game in particular. Tracking down players should be something the mafia should be doing, not something players are doing for them. Exploiting players' routines and having NPs help you track people down is part of the fun of being mafia.


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 Post subject: Re: Schedule Updates
PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 7:10 pm 
I disagree that having to spend tons of time tracking down players makes being mafia more fun, at least for many players. Also, even with schedule updates, planning out kills is still pretty hard.

However, I do not think that schedule updates should be a required thing, except in the cases of people who have relatively unhelpful intros (for example, people who don't go to class / live off-campus). It's a nice thing to do for the mafia's sanity, but people with good intros shouldn't have mechanical consequences if they don't. And Lilly has a great intro.


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 Post subject: Re: Schedule Updates
PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 7:20 pm 
I essentially agree with aok. Finding people is part of the game and part of the fun (and yes, the difficulty) of being mafia. As long as players post reasonable introductions and don't subsequently try to make themselves near-impossible to kill, I think the mafia should be left to figure things out for themselves.

I would add the caveat that the gods should be willing to make exceptions to the (quite harsh) no-kill penalty against the mafia. In particular, if the mafia make very extensive efforts to make kills but are unable to do so, they should not be penalized for it. This should apply only to extreme situations, and I do not believe it is applicable to this game.

I do think that requiring players to post their general schedules was a good addition to the game. But I don't think much more than that is necessary, especially when players are restricted to relatively few living groups.

That's my high-level opinion. My opinion might be more nuanced in individual cases, and this is certainly an issue over which reasonable people can disagree.


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 Post subject: Re: Schedule Updates
PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 7:35 pm 
I think the main issue was the four-day weekend, during which the regular events in people's intros were mostly cancelled, and many players weren't posting where they would be, which made it very difficult for the mafia to make kills. We should have poked people to say where they'd be before the weekend, but we didn't think of it. The Mafia asked us to poke people about schedule updates, so we did, though we may have overreacted.


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 Post subject: Re: Schedule Updates
PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 7:37 pm 
In the future, I think starting a game before a 4-day weekend is a very bad idea.


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 Post subject: Re: Schedule Updates
PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 7:48 pm 
aok wrote:
In the future, I think starting a game before a 4-day weekend is a very bad idea.


I really don't think this was a problem. Most of the players were from just a few living groups. Even though players weren't attending classes I think it was reasonable in this case for the mafia to find them.

And if this was an unacceptable burden on the mafia (which again I don't think it was) then the gods could just relax the no-kill penalty rules a bit.


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 Post subject: Re: Schedule Updates
PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 8:03 pm 
No kill days are bad for mafia whether or not there's a specific rule banning a certain number of them, to be fair. I do think the 4-day weekend made things tougher for mafia, but not unreasonably so.


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 Post subject: Re: Schedule Updates
PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 8:10 pm 
ksedlar wrote:
No kill days are bad for mafia whether or not there's a specific rule banning a certain number of them, to be fair. I do think the 4-day weekend made things tougher for mafia, but not unreasonably so.


No-kill days are bad, but bad-kill days are much worse. Limiting no-kill days forces mafia to make bad kills instead of no kills.

But, having been part of the mafia, I agree fully with the sentiment from the second sentence.


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 Post subject: Re: Schedule Updates
PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 8:50 pm 
I'll note that none of the gods have ever been mafia, except in the Tragedy Looper game where Jackie couldn't make kills and I only killed other mafia. We don't really know how hard it is for mafia to make kills, and it's completely possible we're making the wrong calls.


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 Post subject: Re: Schedule Updates
PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 8:59 pm 
Gods, please don't be hard on yourselves. In every game there are judgement calls to make, and sometimes they are going to be controversial.

If you think that you've made the wrong call, it would be quite reasonable to reverse if you can do so elegantly. I do personally think that ltchin has been very reasonable in terms of her killability.

I'd like to note that I think this was the best-designed setup (in terms of roles, balance, etc.) that I've seen in a long time. It was tremendously fun to play!


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 Post subject: Re: Schedule Updates
PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 9:04 pm 
Boy, you guys are loud for a bunch of dead players :P

We're discussing it now.

Aww, thanks Daniel! :)

--jamb


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 Post subject: Re: Schedule Updates
PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 9:08 pm 
==dgrazian, pretty much


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 Post subject: Re: Schedule Updates
PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 9:10 pm 
jakob wrote:
==dgrazian, pretty much


On a completely unrelated note, jakob, does your change of signature convey info about this game or just previous ones?


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 Post subject: Re: Schedule Updates
PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 9:15 pm 
My history of roles, kills, and deaths:


Fall 14 - desperado (desperadoed)
IAP 15 - IC (Ama)
Mystery Fall 15 - mafia (survived)
- mads
- tsims via poison in person
- Ama
- asjm
- vlonge
Spring 15 - townie (aradhana)
Summer 2015 Game 1 - god
Summer 2015 Game 2 - god
Summer 2015 Game 3 - mafia (lynched)
- lilychen
Fall 2015 Game 1 - conscripted GN (lynched)
- shikexue
- kmath
Mystery Fall 2015 - vampire (ishara)
Mystery Spring 2016 - yakuza (survived)
- Alex
- corwind
- lukesci
Spring 2016 - mafia (tsims)


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 Post subject: Re: Schedule Updates
PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 9:26 pm 
Wow.


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 Post subject: Re: Schedule Updates
PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 9:35 pm 
As you guys have probably seen, we reversed the Schedule Updates decision. A little more explanation that we can't give to live players:

- mafia had asked us to poke people about updating their schedules
- mafia are planning to make a lot of kills tomorrow, which will be difficult with schedules and impossible without them
- there were initially a lot more people who hadn't posted updates (~half of game had nothing over the extended weekend), so the first time we poked them was definitely useful, although the second time obviously caused more negative feelings than we intended
- we talked to Sammy before reversing the decision and he generously said that players having fun is more important than extra convenience for mafia; yay Sammy!


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