And so am I.

But before we get to that, I'd like to outline what this topic is for. In support for the new direction, I am going to TRY to write a weekly or bi weekly mafia blog here in this topic. Entries will be dated, titled, and old entries will be hidden under spoilers. I also would like to use this topic for general mafia discussion, about anything at all that relates to mafia. Pose questions, tell us your shining moment in mafia, tell us your biggest mistake, your most frustrating moment, your favorite role, your time as host, or anything. I want to revive mafia here at RV and perhaps make it a staple of the new direction.

Recent Inactivity

Now. On to the actual entry. I'll just go ahead and ask: why the inactivity? I'm somewhat guilty of it too, but I'd venture to say that when I'm actually allowed to live, I'm more active than most. And no one had better say that it's because of lack of interest, because we have the numbers. We also have the interest, apparently, judging by the signup topics. So what the hell is it, then? Once the game starts, 3/4 of the people who signed up suddenly lose interest? IN UPICK, even? Where we all have roles that we chose? I'm insulted, so is topsummoner, and you should be, as well. I remember playing public mafia one, and I had the most incredible time. I've had more fun playing mafia than just about anything else these past few years. Recently, however, I have been very disappointed with the last few games.

There are some people that argue inactivity as a playstyle, but I argue adamantly that it is not. You do not sign up for any other game to NOT PLAY, why would you do that for mafia? It makes sense as a mafioso to be inactive, perhaps. But on the flipside, I like to lead inactivity crusades when I play, because I know it is a mafia strategy. It's much less scummy to be active as a mafioso. At any rate, the worst kind of mafioso is the one that simply votes and does not contribute in any other way. Then, in later days, I analyze these votes and they are all for known townies, you're easy pickings.

So you tell me (or us). How can we entice you to be more active? Maybe Upick is currently having the opposite effect it is supposed to. Maybe it's boring BECAUSE everyone has roles and no one really feels the need to actually do the gruntwork of mafia, as it were. Actually scumhunt or try to blend in as scum. I'm open to all suggestions.

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Don't you have a roleplay to be updating?

Mafia, I'm afraid to say, is pretty much a dead trend. With lax time constraints comes feeling like one can put off posting their argument. With a larger variety of roles, feeling one can trust the roles to pack the punch needed and answer curiosities one would be afraid to voice. With few roles, feeling unsure that one's voice would be enough to weed out the mafia. With a personalized role, such as Upick, the (lack of) satisfaction in what power you gain from the role may simply be enough, and interest in using it decreases as the game degrades.

What is the "perfect game" for our current crew, then? Invitation only of names that would for sure be active and set on thinking, with a good amount of the basic roles--Godfather, a couple goons, doctor, detective, either vigilante, Serial Killer, or Jack of All Trades, maybe a Stalker-Watcher-Tracker type role or back-up Doctor. Fairly strict time limits, and having the drive to actually stick to them.

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Goten is dead!

I agree that strict timelimits are definitely needed, and a host who sticks to those times - if there is no lynch, there is no lynch. If there is no PM, there is no night-action. If you are going to be away, either PM your night-action before you go, get a replacement, don't go away for long or just don't sign up...

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Thank You For The Sig Stalesoul!

Hidden: 

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No.



This is a great idea. Just saying. Not even fairly strict deadlines. VERY strict. It'd be like public, legends mafia. By invite-only...and if you wanna participate but don't get invited, maybe you ought to think about upping your activity in other games.

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If/when I host again, I plan to PM every participant at the start an end of each day. No excuses.

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I'd love to be active this game, if I hadn't been killed for such wonderful reasons D1.

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I have no idea what you are talking about

You could ask each person to post twice per Day, once roleplaying; the other not.

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There are 10 types of people in the world, the ones that understand binary, and the ones that don't.

Thanks Lou for the help with the avatar.

I thought the Draft was a rather successful variant and seemed popular. You really only need 9 (3 teams of 3), 12 (3 teams of 4), or 15 (3 teams of 5) to have a good game, and it encourages a lot of dynamic play.

As for regular Mafia, this is just my opinion, but we should have a formula along the lines of the following:
-9 players
-2 mafia, 7 town
-1 vanilla mafia
-1 mafia with powers (hooker, stalker, interceptor, framer, lawyer, janitor, witch, driver, godfather, hitman etc.)
-4 vanilla townies
-1 investigative townie (cop, insane cop, tracker, watcher, detective, etc.)
-1 protective townie (doctor, bodyguard, shield, blacksmith, visiting granny, etc.)
-1 flavor townie (drunk, hunter, oracle, mortician, miller, vigil, angel, governor, jailer, etc.)

Smaller games mean there is less overall room for inactivity, and people get less bored with being vanilla. Also, games finish quicker and are easier to follow because a general idea of the setup is understood.

I'm up for playing or hosting too.

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Am intrigued.

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*points to recent news*
Yeah, also Top hasn't done anything.

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I spent a while trying to balance out the roles for Mafia: The Game, it suffered from absolutely horrendous amounts of inactivity, and then as soon as it ended everyone wanted to start a new game.

(And did. (To achieve the same result.))

I don't get you people.

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.

.Legendary themed months are back! Maybe.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Putting it lightly...

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Feel free to add me on Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/Topsummoner

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To be honest, (I'm not sure if I'm part of the problem) I wasn't too active when I first played it, but for the record I was being active as much as I could for the recent game.

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I know for me, if there's no reason for me to speak, I try not to. If I'm mafia, it's all the less to hang me on. If I'm town, it's all the less to kill me on. I still watch the thread and at the very least post once a day, quite often much more, but in a game where what you say will be what gets you killed, I can't blame people for not wanting to speak up.

In the original first few games, people would speak up with their thoughts, they'd become under suspicion, and then they'd frantically defend themselves.

These days, sometimes they speak up with their thoughts, they become under suspicion, and then they go "dude I don't care; if you kill me you're just hurting the town", the end.

The way people approach the game has drastically changed in these couple of years, it's just not the same.

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.

.Legendary themed months are back! Maybe.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well then our big focus should maybe be on how to get the playstyle to shift back the other way. Perhaps we could find a way to make people want to participate?

Would anyone be opposed to trying a varient of Mafia where what you can do is based off of how much you post? Say if you're a detective and you don't post at all, then your Investigation will always fail. But if you post one non-spam post during the day you have a 50% chance of the Investigation working, 2 posts 100% and then more than that and you start to gain things like maybe if you post 5 non spam posts in one day you will have a chance of protecting the same person you investigated.

Obviously the powers would need to be re-balanced, but I think an incentive based game like that could work and be active. If people are interested I would be more than happy to come up with and host a variant that we could try to play to see how viable of a solution it is.

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Couldn't hurt, but I'm not sure this would work.

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So true. I used to write entire books to defend myself from accusations. I checked mafia upon waking up, between classes... basically every time I was on a computer.

Nowadays I have zero motivation to even check if the topic has new posts in it. I'll post like 5 times during an entire game, and most of those posts are either Day 1 BS or voting for whoever has the most votes.

Of course, when it's all over I sign up for the next game like the quick-learner I am!

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Well it's always worth a shot. I should have ample time on Tuesday to work out the particulars and then I can post them here and we can at the very least discuss it if not get a signup list going.

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So THAT'S how you perfected your incredible playstyle.

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