The Syndicate

Black Rock wrote:

Turnip Head wrote:

Epignosis wrote:An unlimited recruiter, whose recruitment power passes to the recruited players upon the recruiter's death. Unless the recruiter is lynched Day 1 (or blocked Night 1 and lynched Day 2), the recruiter wins. This mechanic is inherently game-breaking.

This. I would understand if it just slipped the host's mind the first time this sort of mechanic popped up, but I've seen it twice recently and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. The one time I saw a recruiting team work was in LOST Mafia on LP, where the recruiting power died with the recruiter, was every other Night, couldn't recruit roles with BTSC, and the recruited players lost their old roles.

My least favorite mechanic is silencing. It can make a player completely lose interest, and it's always used on an active poster so participation drops as a whole. I prefer insanifiers and cursers.

I have to agree on this. Although from a host stand point I will use it, there is strategy in it. Should be a Mafia power. From a player stand point it's hard for me to stay interested. I'm more like silenced for 48 hours? See you in two days and then I fall behind. I used to keep up but that just frustrated me.

I remember Secret Mafia when you were the baddie silencer. You were doing good until the night you silenced yourself the same night you got sent into the future. They didn't even care that you couldn't speak when you returned to the game. They lynched you straight away.

Law wrote:

Dragon D. Luffy wrote:
The prize itself doesn't matter much, but my wincon while I'm still playing the game does.

This statement is all that I need to know that I would never host a game where you had to be alive to win. It's all anyone should need, to understand why it's a terribly flawed notion.

It's not about winning and losing, it's about incentive and intent. If your townies aren't playing properly, then it's not the same game anymore. If I enroll in a game and I'm later informed that I need to be alive to win, even if I am

I've not seen one person here refute this most basic detractor from that style of hosting. I've seen some people try, and ultimately fail.

I see how the alive-to-win wincon turns a game from a group of civvies into a group of indies. I don't think that can be refuted because many of us have or had played that way for years. I think it was a function of people creating more intricate games with role mechanisms that could possibly break a game too early if powerful civvie roles outted themselves. In our quest for creativity, we felt it necessary to ban claiming, clinting, and info-dumping to ensure (in hosts' minds at least) that both sides of the game had a chance to both win and enjoy themselves.

Without the ability to claim and whatnot, the imperative to contribute may have been lost along the way. Without the chance to break a game, there was less chance to put yourself out there and take a stand. In this way, would anyone agree with me that the drive for complexity and uniqueness in our games years ago may have led us to this point where we find this culture clash taking place?

I like complexity in games because they lead to fascinating roles. The more fascinating, intricate, and nuanced a role I am given, the less likely I will be to take a chance and die early. If I have an awesome role, I want to stay alive as long as possible to use that role.

What I think I disagree with in this discussion is the seeming assumption that a DoA wincon will result in players collaborating and engaging more. I can agree that civvie-survival wincons will lead to less risk-taking. Without hosts having the ability to pick and choose which civvies deserve win credit, I cannot agree that DoA wincons lead to more risk-taking. In my mind, unregulated DoA can yield just as much nonparticipation. Maybe that's a product of the mafia cultures I have played in over the last eight years.

The subject of who gets credit for a win is something I have been struggling with as I've gotten more and more games in the hosting queue. I started out on forums where you had to be alive at the end to get the win credit. We knew what we were signing up for and I think few people ever complained about it because, just like life, mafia ain't fair. It's a leisure-time activity that is really meaningless in the grand scheme of things. The journey is always more important than the destination. That's what informs me and leads me to play the way I want to play in that moment. That doesn't mean I view DoA wins as cheap; I've just been hardwired through my experience to view alive-at-the-end wins as the norm. Because of this, I am inclined to impose such win conditions on my upcoming games.

Seeing both forms of win conditions here makes me question whether to use alive-at-the-end as my winner's badge standard though. I certainly don't want to feel pressured to offer DoA win conditions just to fill up a game or to attract people opposed to alive-at-the-end wincons to take part in the G-Man hosting experience. I'm used to alive-at-the-end but I will play any format of game if 1) I have time for a game, 2) I'm intrigued by the theme, and 3) I trust the host or am willing to see what hosting skills they've got (in that order- I usually don't get past #1). I try not to let the mechanics of a game hold me back from playing if the aforementioned three criteria are met. I would hope that others are the same way.

I've only been in one game so far where I would have benefited from a DoA wincon- Biblical. That game lasted 16 day phases. I busted my butt to provide those technicolor vote analyses, which helped catch at least one baddie while I was alive and one baddie after I died on Day 10. In a complete twist from what I am used to, I was told that I could continue to have BTSC with my civvie partner (Lot/Golden, the Coawrd ) even though I died. Every game I played before on forums long ago the rule was death meant you cease all BTSC. I didn't let up theorizing with Golden until the final day of the game (at which point I didn't have enough time anymore to analyze everything the way I had been).

The civvies won the game, Golden gets the banner, and I get nothing but pride in helping my BTSC partner through the end. That pride was enough for me. At least Golden thought I should share in the win but that's not how the host had things set up. I'm okay with that. Had it been a DoA wincon, I'd have been okay with that because of the effort I put into it after death. However, that game was riddled with poor participation. Had it been DoA wincon, I'd have been pissed about some of the low- or non-participants getting credit for something they contributed almost nothing to.

On the flip-side, I was pretty much useless in the Arrested Development game. I survived through to the end, so I'll take the credit for not dying but had I died, I wouldn't have felt like I deserved a win at all and likely wouldn't have posted a banner if Heist games had those.

Another unique situation I was put in was in Bullets Over Broadway. I subbed in for ThatGamerGuy, who had made himself look as bad as he possibly could and was more or less exposed as bad when he posted something about it on another forum. That news broke into the thread during the minutes between getting the role info from the host and being inserted into the game. I entered the game knowing full well that everyone knew I was bad and that I was going to die in short order. It was crushing to enter into that situation but I made the best of it by almost completely ignoring what my baddie teammates were plotting, so as to not leave any breadcrumbs leading to them. I pitched in a little after death, but had my team won the game, I wouldn't have felt like I earned the winner's badge.

I can see where some are coming from with their arguments in favor of DoA, because alive-at-the-end can turn a game from baddies v. civvies into baddies v. a bunch of indies trying not to die. Maybe it comes down to whether you play for the fun of playing or you play for the credit of winning. I play for the former but there's nothing wrong with playing for the latter. No matter what you're playing for, though, you have to show up and play. Maybe there is a middle ground. In the end, it's the host's decision which wincon is in play. You have to trust the judgement of the host, for better or worse.

As a host, I would want to deny win credit to an absentee player who showed up for one or two days but then disappeared but was alive at the end because no one wanted to lynch or NK them. Baddies love to let absentee players linger in the hopes of an easy lynch target. Absentee players hurt the civvie cause, so they should not reap the benefits of a civvie win. The same goes for an absentee baddie player. As a host, I'd like to overrule someone getting automatic win credit. Since The Syndicate doesn't seem to have a set policy, couldn't hosts make their own judgement? That brings with it a lot of subjective rulings, which can lead to claims of bias but, let's be honest, none of the wincon setups are perfect.

As for Heist wins devaluing the Hall of Fame data, I can see a point there. I will probably play mostly Heist games for a while unless I have a lot of free time going for me. They are quicker and smaller games, so those wins can add up in a hurry. I think everyone would keep in mind for themselves that Heist wins aren't as valuable as other wins and understand that their win tally is skewed because of Heist wins. Perhaps Heist games should be weighted significantly less than the rest? Or does weighting Heists mean we need to weight Side-Missions too? That being said, if a Heist loss counts against you just as much as a regular loss, so why not count a Heist win in full?


</rambling>

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:Anything that corrupts voting or lynch results for either faction.

In light of this, you might not want to play my Chicka Chicka 1, 2, 3 game coming up later this year.

I'm a bad mafia player because I'm not good at analyzing other players. I can look at vote patterns and use process of elimination to track who other players might be but making a good/bad judgement call based on post content is not my forte. Thus, being a vanilla civ is something of a chore for me. I need secret stuff to decode or a power to play with to keep my mind off of my inability to analyze people's posts. It does at least allow you to be completely honest and not fall under any suspicion for someone seeing that you used a power or whatever, but it's challenging. Given how few vanilla roles are in games these days, I'm not sure I remember the last time I was a 100% vanilla townie.

I guess hammer lynching isn't such a bad sounding idea but it allows the baddies to skip a vote with no consequences should the poll be heading toward a civvie lynch. A hammer would allow hosts to post at their convenience- a lynch deadline also brings with it the expectation of a lynch post following shortly thereafter. But I also like the expectation that must vote because the data freak in me wants a trail on everyone I'm playing with/against. I also like my votes to be final, not changeable.

That and the previous Recruitment games were very popular and had a lot of buzz leading up to it. There was once a time and place where A game based on recruitment was foreign and unclear if it could work. In those instances where bold new things are being tried, it really comes down to the host's ability to execute.

And Epi has a point about games straying away from what is really mafia. I don't think I ever consciously asked myself if what I'm trying to add or change up really serves the core purpose of mafia. I am definitely guilty of getting lost in building up a cool set dressing to the point where I've built a game that's based on mafia but isn't really mafia. Especially lately it seems. Some of my favorite ideas are probably not true mafia games. Now I'm determined to go back them and figure out to rebuild them so that they are true mafia games or else scrap them. Murder your darlings, right?

Yikes. Given the general disdain for resurrections and recruiting, I may scrap that hybrid idea I posted earlier.

Having been away from the game for a few years, I'm trying to give every mechanic and role type the benefit of the doubt as I encounter them anew or for the first time. A lot of the success or failure of these mechanics depend on how the host implements and manages them. Throwing cool ideas you saw elsewhere can be a recipe for disaster if you don't take time to thoroughly think through how that mechanic interplays with other elements of your game. If you only know it on a surface level, I'd say be careful. You have to have a higher understanding of some mechanics to use them well.

In the early days, I remember a few LP games where one or two key roles would out themselves to enable the civvies to try to coordinate the other civvie night powers for maximum gain. I remember it most clearly from Harry Potter Mafia. There were multiple protection roles in that game though, which allowed the civvies to cycle through protecting the two outed roles. It frustrated the baddies but they still took chances on killing people that the civvies thought they could plan to protect. In that way, I agree that sometimes structure can allow for outing and claiming. Doing it just to try to rip the game open one Day 1 is meh.

Maybe that's just the mafia communities I've played on wearing off on me. Many of the people here who can be traced back through The Piano and LP tend to favor the mystery and intrigue of a role-claim-free game. A fair fight if you will. The more I read and hear about other mafia communities, it seems like we're the Bohemian's of mafia- we make beautiful, intricate games for the sake of making beautiful, intricate games. Because of this, we have more rules on these sorts of things so the beauty and intricacy of games can be appreciated to the fullest. Short answer: we're a little weird I guess.

Balance is a tricky thing. I've seen both over-powered and under-powered baddie teams and both are frustrating. When I build a game, I create chunks of it at a time and stop to look at how those chunks interact. I don't think there's anything wrong with creating an over-powered baddie team if you include civvie roles that have potential to keep it in check. It's then up to the players who get those roles to live up to that potential and not let the game become a landslide victory. Sometimes I like to include a few civvies who can achieve BTSC or just add an extra blocker or protector.

In one game, I spent a ton of time crafting a potentially pivotal character who needed one or two things to happen to unlock her awesomeness. Another element of the game prevented it from happening and a whole subplot of the game was lost. It was poor planning and a case of trying too hard to do too much in one game. That character would have been a powerful ally to the civvies but without her, one of the baddie teams were all but certain to win, which was the case. Spreading the power is crucial.

As for recruitment, I don't have much experience with it outside of using in one of my past games and not getting recruited in Recruitment IV. I think cool ideas go through phases. They rise and fall depending upon over-use in a short time span. That's why it's nice to have so many outside-the-box thinkers around here. I haven't seen much of anything yet that feels stale to me. Then again, I've only been around The Syndicate for about a year.

Silencers have one thing going for them though- they sow the seeds of doubt about the silenced person. Many a silencer has gotten burned by getting caught self-targeting and also targeting a teammate (if baddie) in an attempt to build up credibility for that player. I do understand the frustration of being silenced though. You just sit there, watching the game unfold, shaking your fist at the screen. Then you feel the need to post a big catch-up post to praise and criticize the good and bad things you observed.

Even worse than being silenced is being NKed by the baddies the night after they silence you. That's genuinely rage-inducing.

Epignosis wrote:An unlimited recruiter, whose recruitment power passes to the recruited players upon the recruiter's death. Unless the recruiter is lynched Day 1 (or blocked Night 1 and lynched Day 2), the recruiter wins. This mechanic is inherently game-breaking.

Oh wow. In a regular game, that would be extremely disheartening. In a game I hosted on a now-defunct site, I gave one of the two baddie teams a recruiter but the power didn't pass down. They recruited three additional members of their team and still lost to the other baddie team. I'm open to recruitment roles but I agree with you that it's not something that should be passed on to the team when the original recruiter dies.

I'm working on a game setup right now that uses a kind of unlimited recruitment but there's a twist. Maybe I'll post what I have so far during lunch to see if it's a viable concept.

For me it's a tie between seemers and changeable votes because both mess with my spreadsheets.