Live Action Mafia

I'd like to suggest a couple things for the beginning of the game:

1. Items should be transferred quickly; they're useless or worse if the mafia knows where they are. DO NOT just give your item to whoever asks for it (unless they prove their innocence or something.) Choose somebody arbitrarily to give it to, and don't be too biased toward giving it to somebody in your living group. We want the items to surprise the mafia.


As a prelude to point 2, note that Prophet is the most powerful role in the game. They can target anybody in the game and verify for certain whether they are innocent (and kill them if they are mafia.) The prophet dies at the end of the day if the target was innocent... but that is worth it. The game will probably only last at most five days anyway. We want as many prophets in the game as possible, and backups can turn into prophets...
2. I propose a plan. At the beginning of the game, an Innocent Child should reveal their innocence to everybody in the game. The prophets and the backups should then message the Innocent Child. The Innocent Child should then instruct the backups as to who to backup. Presumably, each backup will have a prophet on their backup list. Then the next day a prophet can strategically smite a player, and if the target is innocent, the prophet dies...and is replaced by the backup. But this only works if the backup backs up the prophet the day before the prophet smites somebody.

This plan will require the cooperation of everybody in the game (or at least of the players with the given roles.) I'd like to wait until more people have introduced themselves (indicating that they are paying attention to the game.) It will be up to an Innocent Child to initiate the plan.

Please feel free to debate this (or more importantly tell us if it won't work for some reason that I'm not thinking of!) If we do this plan (which we should) it needs to be done on the first day of the game. Remember, the game will only likely last four or five days.

++ to this plan! Dgrazian and I talked about this together earlier today, and I am definitely in favor of it.

what if the innocent child gets conscripted?

The innocent child isn't the important part of the plan. The prophets and backups are. The innocent child is only necessary because we want an innocent person to tell the backups who to backup. If they get conscripted and don't tell the backups to backup the prophets, we'll basically know they're conscripted when the backups see people they didn't back up doing the smiting. If they get conscripted and do tell the backups to backup the prophets, then we got what we want anyway. Yeah, they know the roles of the prophets and can set a trap them, but the idea is that we'll have the prophets do their smiting before mafia kills them.

I think it's too easy to claim backup, figure out who the prophet is, and kill them before they can smite anyone.

What I think might be a better idea is to hold prophet smiting meetings at 10-10:30 pm during the day. At 10:40-10:50, one prophet would reveal, the backups would back up before day end, and once day rolls over, the prophet would smite. This way, the time between prophet reveal (to anyone, including backups) and prophet smiting is very short and very public. No one would be able to kill prophets without it being public. What say you?

I agree with Ellena. The previous plan won't work if people lie to the innocent child. And even if it went to plan the backups and innocent child all know the prophet and it's a small game .

Assuming we can coordinate people to be active during that timespan, that sounds like a fantastic improvement to the plan!

Most people are staying in EC or ET over the summer.

Please post here if you are free to come to a mafia meeting at 10:20 pm tonight (it's OK if you're a bit late, just no later than 10:40), where you would like the meeting to be, and where you would be sad but would still attend if the meeting was held.
Ex:

I would attend a meeting tonight, I would much prefer it to be in EC, but I would be willing to walk over to anywhere (even all the way to ET) if necessary.

I would attend a 10:20 meeting if and only if it's held at ET.

I could make it at EC between 5:30 and 7:00 p.m. I could make it at ET before 10 p.m. I want to go to sleep by 10 p.m. in order to be up for an 8 a.m. meeting at work tomorrow.

I too want to be in bed by 10pm.
Let's move it to EC 6 pm.

Well, we should also probably have a separate lynching/investigating discussion meeting, and that should be early, say 6. I'd like to see some more people respond when/where they can do things, and then decide final time for the meetings. Let's say depending on responses by 4 pm we'll plan the 6 pm meeting, and by 8pm the 10:20 pm meeting.

For 6 pm I can probably get to anywhere on main campus. So not ET.

Moving the prophet smiting early wouldn't work. The backups need to declare a day in advance who they're backing up, so the reveal and the smiting have to happen on subsequent game days.

I can definitely make a 6 pm discussion meeting. Where would that be located? In one of Beast's lounges, maybe?

And ++ to Ellena; having a 6 pm meeting for the backup/prophet thing ruins the whole point of the plan. If there were a meeting for that sometime after 10, I would prefer if it were at ET, but I would reluctantly attend an EC one. I also have to wake up early for my UROP (because the commute is really annoying), so I would ideally want to go sleep close to right after day end.

We should also try to get as many people as possible for the smiting meeting; people are basically self-selecting for this, so if there are only a small number of people, they're disproportionately likely to not be mafia. So drag your friends, people!

It seems like so far things seem to be in favor of a 6 pm meeting in EC (Beast lounge works fine for that), and a 10 pm meeting at ET (where would that be? I don't know ET well, can someone offer a place?).

Everyone doesn't have to attend both. Higher attendance is always better, but if you're choosing which of the two to go to, the 10 pm one is probably more important today. Also, if you are a prophet, please please please come to the 10 pm meeting. I'll be really sad if I had to walk all the way there and be sleep-deprived for my UROP just to have no prophet show. Backups don't necessarily have to attend - just be on forum at the time of the meeting, and we'll announce prophet so you can back up from the comfort of your home. It would be nicer if they attended too, though, for the larger number of people thing.


Also, regardless of how legitimate your excuse is, your sketchiness level in my eyes will be increased if you do not attend the prophet smiting. I will post a roster of who attended on forum.

Question about transportation: what's the best way to get from EC to ET that's not 40 mins of walking?

Boston West saferide. Unfortunately, summer saferides are twice as dumb as normal saferides, and thus only run half as much. Theoretically, the Boston West half of the Boston All starts at 6:30, 7:30, etc, but in reality saferides come at who-knows when. If you want a mostly-accurate time of when one will arrive, you should check the Shuttles section of the MIT Mobile App.

Ellena (or somebody else) can you let me in to EC at 6? I assume we're meeting at 2E?

Sure. Do you still have my number? You can call when you get here.

I also want to be able to get into EC! And I unfortunately do not have your number. I'll try to get to the doors at 5:55 though, so you can let me in around that time.

Sorry, I won't be able to make it to EC today. I just got home from work and desperately need to take a nap. I'll be at ET at 10:20 tonight though.