The Syndicate

Sup? Ya'll might confuse me with that other guy, but I guarantee I am not him.

notsawyer540 wrote:Sup? Ya'll might confuse me with that other guy, but I guarantee I am not him.

Welcome!

notsawyer540 wrote:Sup? Ya'll might confuse me with that other guy, but I guarantee I am not him.

Good to see you, stranger!

Welcome to The Syndicate!

notsawyer540 wrote:Sup? Ya'll might confuse me with that other guy, but I guarantee I am not him.

Hiya.

Care for a game to put your Lucille to good use?

notsawyer540 wrote:Sup? Ya'll might confuse me with that other guy, but I guarantee I am not him.

I don't think I ever knew that other guy so nice to see you! Welcome to the Syndicate!

juliets wrote:

notsawyer540 wrote:Sup? Ya'll might confuse me with that other guy, but I guarantee I am not him.

I don't think I ever knew that other guy so nice to see you! Welcome to the Syndicate!

lolwut

Ricochet wrote:

juliets wrote:

notsawyer540 wrote:Sup? Ya'll might confuse me with that other guy, but I guarantee I am not him.

I don't think I ever knew that other guy so nice to see you! Welcome to the Syndicate!

lolwut

what?

Isn't "that other guy" supposed to be reywaS?

Ricochet wrote:Isn't "that other guy" supposed to be reywaS?

No, the other guy is sawyer540 but I think notsawyer540 is really saweyer540, from Lostpedia.

juliets wrote:

Ricochet wrote:Isn't "that other guy" supposed to be reywaS?

No, the other guy is sawyer540 but I think notsawyer540 is really saweyer540, from Lostpedia.

oh

we have a sawyer540?

Ricochet wrote:

juliets wrote:

Ricochet wrote:Isn't "that other guy" supposed to be reywaS?

No, the other guy is sawyer540 but I think notsawyer540 is really saweyer540, from Lostpedia.

oh

we have a sawyer540?

on Lostpedia, not the Syndicate

Yeah, I was talking to sawyer540 on Facebook and told him about mafia here and he said it sounded fun, so now he's here.

I have no idea what you people are talking about. I'm definitely not that other guy. Who I'm not.

notsawyer540 wrote:I have no idea what you people are talking about. I'm definitely not that other guy. Who I'm not.

Oh yes, of course, strike what I said. I'm a liar after all.

Hi dunny!!


Hi trev!!!!

Hello everyone

First time caller, long time listener

Cryptonic wrote:Hello everyone

First time caller, long time listener

Hey there! Welcome to The Syndicate!

MovingPictures07 wrote:

Cryptonic wrote:Hello everyone

First time caller, long time listener

Hey there! Welcome to The Syndicate!

Thank you only took me 3 years to make my first post, my therapist is going to be so proud of my breakthrough

Cryptonic wrote:

MovingPictures07 wrote:

Cryptonic wrote:Hello everyone

First time caller, long time listener

Hey there! Welcome to The Syndicate!

Thank you only took me 3 years to make my first post, my therapist is going to be so proud of my breakthrough

Better late than never, right?

By the way, if you don't mind answering, have you played mafia/werewolf elsewhere or would this be your first time?

MovingPictures07 wrote:

Cryptonic wrote:

MovingPictures07 wrote:

Cryptonic wrote:Hello everyone

First time caller, long time listener

Hey there! Welcome to The Syndicate!

Thank you only took me 3 years to make my first post, my therapist is going to be so proud of my breakthrough

Better late than never, right?

By the way, if you don't mind answering, have you played mafia/werewolf elsewhere or would this be your first time?

Ya I have played and hosted mafia many many times. I'm actually an Administrator on another small Mafia-dedicated site. I thought I'd relog onto this community, maybe play a few games and see what positive things could be taken back to our community. Always been a huge fan of the game layout on this site.

Welcome Cryptonic it's great to have you here!

juliets wrote:Welcome Cryptonic it's great to have you here!

Thanks hoping to sign for a smaller game here soon, soon as I figure out how much time I currently have available.

Cryptonic wrote:

MovingPictures07 wrote:

Cryptonic wrote:

MovingPictures07 wrote:

Cryptonic wrote:Hello everyone

First time caller, long time listener

Hey there! Welcome to The Syndicate!

Thank you only took me 3 years to make my first post, my therapist is going to be so proud of my breakthrough

Better late than never, right?

By the way, if you don't mind answering, have you played mafia/werewolf elsewhere or would this be your first time?

Ya I have played and hosted mafia many many times. I'm actually an Administrator on another small Mafia-dedicated site. I thought I'd relog onto this community, maybe play a few games and see what positive things could be taken back to our community. Always been a huge fan of the game layout on this site.

Nice, that's awesome! What's the community?

Good to hear. Hope you enjoy playing here whenever you get around to it!

MovingPictures07 wrote:Nice, that's awesome! What's the community?

Good to hear. Hope you enjoy playing here whenever you get around to it!

The community is Sc2Mafia, which is a community based around the Starcraft 2 Arcade mod for Mafia.

Thanks I'm sure I will

Cryptonic wrote:

MovingPictures07 wrote:Nice, that's awesome! What's the community?

Good to hear. Hope you enjoy playing here whenever you get around to it!

The community is Sc2Mafia, which is a community based around the Starcraft 2 Arcade mod for Mafia.

Thanks I'm sure I will

Oh I know sc2! I may even have an account there though I may not. I know I've at least checked it out before. Cool beans.

'Lo, ladies and gents.

Sloonei recommended this site to me after he kicked my tail in the big inter-website mafia tournament thingie.

Currently reading through last year's Flash mafia and Battlestar Galactica mafia. Liking what I'm seeing so far.

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:'Lo, ladies and gents.

Sloonei recommended this site to me after he kicked my tail in the big inter-website mafia tournament thingie.

Currently reading through last year's Flash mafia and Battlestar Galactica mafia. Liking what I'm seeing so far.

Hello, Jackofhearts2005! We're glad to see you here.

Welcome to The Syndicate!

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:'Lo, ladies and gents.

Sloonei recommended this site to me after he kicked my tail in the big inter-website mafia tournament thingie.

Currently reading through last year's Flash mafia and Battlestar Galactica mafia. Liking what I'm seeing so far.

Any friend of Sloonei is a friend of mine! Welcome to the site. What does your name mean (I'm particularly interested in the 2005 part since that looks like a year maybe?)?

juliets wrote:

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:'Lo, ladies and gents.

Sloonei recommended this site to me after he kicked my tail in the big inter-website mafia tournament thingie.

Currently reading through last year's Flash mafia and Battlestar Galactica mafia. Liking what I'm seeing so far.

Any friend of Sloonei is a friend of mine! Welcome to the site. What does your name mean (I'm particularly interested in the 2005 part since that looks like a year maybe?)?

2005 is my high school graduation class. A decade ago, I fancied myself as a great Hearts player but thought King of Hearts sounded arrogant and pointed to romance instead of cards. So...Jack of hearts instead.

Haven't played in years but it's been my go to screenname for pretty much anything game related for so long, I wouldn't know what else to call myself.

You said you played in the mafia championship with Sloonei; what community are you from?

Welcome aboard, JOH2k5. What was your username in the Mafia Universe tournament? Sloonei represented rateyourmusic, a now dead Mafia community from which both he and I hail.

oh n/m, it was the same username

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:'Lo, ladies and gents.

Sloonei recommended this site to me after he kicked my tail in the big inter-website mafia tournament thingie.

Currently reading through last year's Flash mafia and Battlestar Galactica mafia. Liking what I'm seeing so far.

Reading through BG, god bless you that is what 100+ pages :P

Also welcome to TS!

MovingPictures07 wrote:You said you played in the mafia championship with Sloonei; what community are you from?

I've played on HCRealms.com for about ten years, now. It's not entirely dead but the player base and participation rate have shrunk.

There was a time when a new mod could run a game with an obscure theme and get 35 sign ups. Now, I see experienced mods struggle to fill 14 player games and even games with only 7 players end up with 1 or 2 only posting once or twice.

Some of my favorite games were the massive off the wall games we used to play. Like a guy ran a Crisis on Infinite Earths mafia (any comic book fans in the house?) where some 40ish players were divided across 5 game threads, one for each Earth. You could only use abilities on people at your Earth and if less than 3 players were on a given Earth, the thread was closed and those players were instantly killed and their character names hidden. The big scum boss got more powerful as these threads were destroyed.

Anyway, you just can't do that kind of thing on HCRealms anymore. I look at the Flash and BSG games and it reminded me of our old epic games I enjoyed so much.



I noticed a couple things that look different from what I'm used to. Some games don't let you change your vote? Is roleclaiming usually not allowed? You vote on the thread and in polls? Dead players can chat on thread to a degree?

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:

MovingPictures07 wrote:You said you played in the mafia championship with Sloonei; what community are you from?

I've played on HCRealms.com for about ten years, now. It's not entirely dead but the player base and participation rate have shrunk.

There was a time when a new mod could run a game with an obscure theme and get 35 sign ups. Now, I see experienced mods struggle to fill 14 player games and even games with only 7 players end up with 1 or 2 only posting once or twice.

Some of my favorite games were the massive off the wall games we used to play. Like a guy ran a Crisis on Infinite Earths mafia (any comic book fans in the house?) where some 40ish players were divided across 5 game threads, one for each Earth. You could only use abilities on people at your Earth and if less than 3 players were on a given Earth, the thread was closed and those players were instantly killed and their character names hidden. The big scum boss got more powerful as these threads were destroyed.

Anyway, you just can't do that kind of thing on HCRealms anymore. I look at the Flash and BSG games and it reminded me of our old epic games I enjoyed so much.



I noticed a couple things that look different from what I'm used to. Some games don't let you change your vote? Is roleclaiming usually not allowed? You vote on the thread and in polls? Dead players can chat on thread to a degree?

Wow, nice, you've been playing a while.

That's a real shame. It's never fun with mafia communities take a dive like that. Many of us here have experienced a similar situation. I was introduced to mafia on Lostpedia in 2010 (I'm actually a newbie still if we're talking just LP-based players around here) and a good chunk of the players here migrated from that site and a couple of mafia-only sister sites (The Piano and RevolutionMafia) after participation at those places gradually died away. While those sites were active though, I introduced mafia to another forum I had frequented much longer (ProgArchives) since none of them had played it before and I really fell in love with the game. Unfortunately, that forum is incredibly difficult to host mafia on (PM restrictions among other things) and many of the people I knew for a while gradually drifted away from frequenting it too often, and I stopped frequenting it myself as well, so mafia died off after I hosted two games since no one else picked up the torch.

So when the Lostpedia-affiliated communities were struggling to fill games, much in the way that you describe actually (I remember our community's peak time when 30-40 player games filling in a few days on The Piano, and we've never quite matched that here even), I formed this site to try to bring together as many folks as I could from the LP-based community which had already established a solid mafia base and a bunch of mafia newbies from the PA community, along with as many other contacts from my RL that I could convince to try it out.

Since then we've had waves of activity, but finding out about the Mafia Championship last year was simultaneously a boon, as well as feeling like an isolated mafia planet and suddenly realizing there's an entire universe full of so many other mafia planets out there. It really opened up my eyes. 2015 was probably our best year yet, and I along with a few other solid members here specifically reached out to RateYourMusic and played a bunch of games over there. Their community is now defunct as well since RYM OT got shut down, so while some folks tried to keep it alive through a new forum (PWYW), it hasn't really been sustaining itself. We already had a couple of RYM folks migrate here before all of that happened because we hosted a crossover event with them last year (Talking Heads game), so we have some RYM folks now here too.

So we've been through one big merger of two communities, and more recently, one small migration.

To answer your questions, those are all habits that developed back in the Lostpedia days, and I for one never even knew there were other ways to play other than what we all had experimented with (because we love doing that around here) until playing on RYM and checking out and talking to other communities at the Championship this year and last year. So I would say the following attributes are all still typical, but we've gradually introduced other approaches around here after being introduced to them:

- Games historically featured non-changeable votes, but this tradition is the one that seems least pervasive anymore... I'd say it's a 50/50 shot these days. Depends entirely on which host you play with probably.

- At the Lostpedia-based communities, games were pretty much always open setup role madness; many games featuring role secrets and crazy role/game mechanics, back in those days it was odd if hosts had vanilla roles in their setups. Nonetheless, however, things turned sour in some early LP games because of mass role claiming and outing, so a bunch of the players decided it would be better to institute a no claiming or dumping information rule, and that rule stayed in tact for quite a while. It was pretty well established when I joined LP mafia in 2010 so I never knew anything different until being exposed to other sites. Since the beginning of last year, as a host I've been experimenting with closed setups and allowing infodumping, and other hosts have started doing that more and more as well. So I'd say open setup role madness with no claiming or dumping is still typical, but the games here are gradually becoming more diverse.

- Regarding voting, again just what many of the LP folks are used to, we always had polls at LP, RM, and TP, so we always voted via poll where it would also track the order of your vote and such, and we've become spoiled by it. :P Typically it's suggested to describe your vote in the game thread as well, but as long as you cast your vote in the poll, it's not necessary to say anything about it (generally frowned upon not to though).

- Dead players chatting in the thread is another way I've noticed we're different than the vast majority of sites (and again, it's an LP thing), but the huge caveat is that they are in no way allowed to say anything that can be construed as on topic, so it's usually pretty limited.

Let us know whatever other questions you have!

And I'm really looking forward to playing a game with you too, as I'm sure others are as well.

I'm an old LP member. This is my first game. Ikkl Genius brought it to us, and we basically developed the game in more and more radical ways, completely unaware of the larger Mafia community that existed. Except for a vague awareness of mafiascum, which, it was generally agreed and taken on faith, was an unpleasant place to play.

Yeah, 2016 was a little quieter around here... do you think it will pick up again?

Long Con wrote:I'm an old LP member. This is my first game. Ikkl Genius brought it to us, and we basically developed the game in more and more radical ways, completely unaware of the larger Mafia community that existed. Except for a vague awareness of mafiascum, which, it was generally agreed and taken on faith, was an unpleasant place to play.

Yeah, 2016 was a little quieter around here... do you think it will pick up again?

I think so, for sure. This year has been quieter in general than I was expecting given all that momentum we seemed to have in 2015, but based on my observations, results from the survey we send out a couple of months ago, and just talking with folks, I'm thinking what's most likely contributed to that is we just saw the biggest chunk of our 'core' base of players going on some sort of hiatus during 2016 than we ever had previously.

However, the last month or so especially, it seems evident that activity has started picking up again, and some players have been around again after being absent or semi-absent. You, me, Golden, etc. are all here more than we were for a while before, and I'd say based on the rate that games have been filling up we're definitely on an upswing, which is oddly timed because historically this is always the toughest time of the year for us (and summer was usually the best).

I also know there are things in the works behind the scenes; as much as possible we're trying to plan things for the future here to continually make this place more appealing, and the feedback we got from the survey was immensely helpful in spurring a lot of conversation we've been having among the admin/mod team the last couple of months. In addition, now that I temporarily have some more time I'm trying to revamp the scout team so we can find a real solid community to reach out to and try and partner with (though it seems Jackofhearts might have done that some of that work for us already ), etc. I've been also trying to recruit new folks and old timers as much as I can, and I know I'm not the only one.

Well, it's good to be back. Maybe I'll just take summer off for the most part, since that's the time that is hardest to commit to Mafia for me.

And welcome jackofhearts2005... and thanks for the history of your name. Have you ever considered just being Jack of Hearts?

Long Con wrote:Well, it's good to be back. Maybe I'll just take summer off for the most part, since that's the time that is hardest to commit to Mafia for me.

And welcome jackofhearts2005... and thanks for the history of your name. Have you ever considered just being Jack of Hearts?

It's good to have you back!

I know the feeling; although I've been here all year and relatively active, I haven't been able to commit nearly as much time here as I'd like for most of the year until the last couple of weeks. It's been real nice being able to finally do so.

Heh. The vague awareness of Mafiascum as the only other online mafia site and that it is an unpleasant place to play mirrors our awareness exactly pre tournament.

HCRealms also rarely has vanilla roles but our roles are generally not revealed at all except in name only through nightkills/lynches and then in full at the end of the game. Having setup knowledge is usually reserved for specific mafia variants like Texas Justice or One Night Ultimate Mafia. Should be interesting trying out a home brew game with an open setup.

Infodumping is one of the main things I dislike about that community and there has been heavy resistance to restricting roleclaims. The plethora of powers has lead to an attitude of "waiting for info" or "pressure votes" that get removed when someone name claims. I'm okay with a couple townies being able to self confirm with name claims but I've also played games where the theme and player count were so restrictive that there was no room at all for false claims and any townie could self confirm. That's not much of a game, IMO, and it's frustrating that some players have no idea what to do without roleclaiming or a cop to follow.

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:Heh. The vague awareness of Mafiascum as the only other online mafia site and that it is an unpleasant place to play mirrors our awareness exactly pre tournament.

HCRealms also rarely has vanilla roles but our roles are generally not revealed at all except in name only through nightkills/lynches and then in full at the end of the game. Having setup knowledge is usually reserved for specific mafia variants like Texas Justice or One Night Ultimate Mafia. Should be interesting trying out a home brew game with an open setup.

Infodumping is one of the main things I dislike about that community and there has been heavy resistance to restricting roleclaims. The plethora of powers has lead to an attitude of "waiting for info" or "pressure votes" that get removed when someone name claims. I'm okay with a couple townies being able to self confirm with name claims but I've also played games where the theme and player count were so restrictive that there was no room at all for false claims and any townie could self confirm. That's not much of a game, IMO, and it's frustrating that some players have no idea what to do without roleclaiming or a cop to follow.

Sounds like you'll fit in real well around here then.

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:Heh. The vague awareness of Mafiascum as the only other online mafia site and that it is an unpleasant place to play mirrors our awareness exactly pre tournament.

Ahhhhh, that's too funny.

HCRealms also rarely has vanilla roles but our roles are generally not revealed at all except in name only through nightkills/lynches and then in full at the end of the game. Having setup knowledge is usually reserved for specific mafia variants like Texas Justice or One Night Ultimate Mafia. Should be interesting trying out a home brew game with an open setup.

Infodumping is one of the main things I dislike about that community and there has been heavy resistance to restricting roleclaims. The plethora of powers has lead to an attitude of "waiting for info" or "pressure votes" that get removed when someone name claims. I'm okay with a couple townies being able to self confirm with name claims but I've also played games where the theme and player count were so restrictive that there was no room at all for false claims and any townie could self confirm. That's not much of a game, IMO, and it's frustrating that some players have no idea what to do without roleclaiming or a cop to follow.

It has been a very long and difficult battle around here, trying to balance "no infodumping" with "game censorship". Too many times, I have seen a role-checker type of role who KNOWS someone is Mafia, and they get too frustrated trying to get that player lynched... so they drop a post that says something like "I'm 100% sure that this person is bad" in one way or another. Once something like that is out, it never goes away, and everyone else can easily put the pieces together that it was said by a role-checker... and then the game is tainted by infodumping, and the role-checker never really even meant to do it.

You just gotta make a case. If you KNOW someone is bad, then cobble together any convincing-sounding thing you can to sawy hearts and minds - I think that those players who "have no idea what to do without roleclaiming" just need to play harder, do more research, and be more creative. Which is why I support the "no infodumping" side of things.

And it is very much a "spirit of the law" thing, rather than the "letter of the law", which is why some players still go to far and accidentally infodump. To me, a game should be played within the desired parameters that a Host wishes, and it's not good sportsmanship to try and find a loophole in any rules or roles that the Host didn't intend. But I'm rambling now. It's cool to see that you seem to be someone that will enjoy The Syndicate, Jack.

MovingPictures07 wrote: Sounds like you'll fit in real well around here then.

That's my hope.

Went ahead and signed up for a game.

There is a Christmas game open on the realms that could use some more players if anyone wants to try something different and try to siphon off a couple more players for the Syndicate.

http://www.hcrealms.com/forum/showthread.php?t=569190

Long Con wrote:

HCRealms also rarely has vanilla roles but our roles are generally not revealed at all except in name only through nightkills/lynches and then in full at the end of the game. Having setup knowledge is usually reserved for specific mafia variants like Texas Justice or One Night Ultimate Mafia. Should be interesting trying out a home brew game with an open setup.

Infodumping is one of the main things I dislike about that community and there has been heavy resistance to restricting roleclaims. The plethora of powers has lead to an attitude of "waiting for info" or "pressure votes" that get removed when someone name claims. I'm okay with a couple townies being able to self confirm with name claims but I've also played games where the theme and player count were so restrictive that there was no room at all for false claims and any townie could self confirm. That's not much of a game, IMO, and it's frustrating that some players have no idea what to do without roleclaiming or a cop to follow.

It has been a very long and difficult battle around here, trying to balance "no infodumping" with "game censorship". Too many times, I have seen a role-checker type of role who KNOWS someone is Mafia, and they get too frustrated trying to get that player lynched... so they drop a post that says something like "I'm 100% sure that this person is bad" in one way or another. Once something like that is out, it never goes away, and everyone else can easily put the pieces together that it was said by a role-checker... and then the game is tainted by infodumping, and the role-checker never really even meant to do it.

You just gotta make a case. If you KNOW someone is bad, then cobble together any convincing-sounding thing you can to sawy hearts and minds - I think that those players who "have no idea what to do without roleclaiming" just need to play harder, do more research, and be more creative. Which is why I support the "no infodumping" side of things.

And it is very much a "spirit of the law" thing, rather than the "letter of the law", which is why some players still go to far and accidentally infodump. To me, a game should be played within the desired parameters that a Host wishes, and it's not good sportsmanship to try and find a loophole in any rules or roles that the Host didn't intend. But I'm rambling now. It's cool to see that you seem to be someone that will enjoy The Syndicate, Jack.

Oh, but I love game mechanics discussions.

The realms usually allows info sharing like "I copped LC as mafia" but tempers it with fairly common misdirection powers, millers (townies copping as scum), cloaks (scum copping as town) and the occasional naive/paranoid/reverse/random cop that's info can't be trusted anyway. Plus there's nothing in the OP saying there is a cop at all or that character X is the cop so if character X is dead, the guy claiming cop could be lying and then use all of the above as an excuse when the accused flips town. And then there is always the possibility of a scum info gatherer trying to string up an opposing scummer to look good.

We've hit the somewhat paradoxical point where an info gathering role is required to get much of anything done but "I copped JoH as mafia" only leads to my death like 50-75% of the time.

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:There is a Christmas game open on the realms that could use some more players if anyone wants to try something different and try to siphon off a couple more players for the Syndicate.

http://www.hcrealms.com/forum/showthread.php?t=569190

LOL I tried... and then posted a thread in the new member forum, and:

You have been banned for the following reason:
SpamBot

Date the ban will be lifted: Never

Haha. Probably happened if you linked to the Syndicate in your first post. Sent a message to a mod to unban you.

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:Haha. Probably happened if you linked to the Syndicate in your first post. Sent a message to a mod to unban you.

Thanks, that's exactly what I did.

Okay. You've been moderator unbanned but Quebbster (mod) wasn't sure it went though and might need admin approval.

I can click on your profile now without the site erroring out so...you're probably no longer banned.

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:Okay. You've been moderator unbanned but Quebbster (mod) wasn't sure it went though and might need admin approval.

I can click on your profile now without the site erroring out so...you're probably no longer banned.

Still banned on my end.

Leave it to LC to get banned with his first post.

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:

MovingPictures07 wrote: Sounds like you'll fit in real well around here then.

That's my hope.

Went ahead and signed up for a game.

There is a Christmas game open on the realms that could use some more players if anyone wants to try something different and try to siphon off a couple more players for the Syndicate.

http://www.hcrealms.com/forum/showthread.php?t=569190

Sweet! I'll register and try this out myself if anyone besides Mr. Ban over there wants to join us.

I'm getting in the Christmas spirit with the HeroClickers.