While these are excellent points, I think that masons might be more hesitant to confirm masonhood in a game like this where the masons themselves have a separate win condition. That is, let’s say there are four masons and one gets outed or is forced to roleclaim…the other three have a strong-ish motivation to keep silent, in the hopes that they’ll be able to outnumber the town in the end. So maybe a stealth Mafia mason isn’t necessarily a disaster for the town…and the possibility of it happening breeds even more distrust and paranoia, which is always fun.
My take is that early in the game no-lynch is bad, but later in the game it might make sense. The mafia win then the number of mafia is greater or equal to the number of townies. The game can therefore end in these ways:
N_TOWN = N_MAFIA + 2 and the town lynches a townie and the mafia sucessfully kill at night
N_TOWN = N_MAFIA + 1 and the town lynches a townie
If we ignore the possiblity that the mafia might fail to kill at night, then a town facing situation 1 could very well benefit from not lynching forcing the mafia to do their endgame kill first (thus revealing additional information) and then the town is shifted to situation 2 where they still have to lynch mafia or lose the game but have one less suspect and additional information.
Of course at that point the mafia would nightkill a confirmed townie if available, but if no one was confirmed, then it becomes a viable plan.
I had completely forgotten about the mason win condition. But isn’t the mason win only exclusive when the masons win? That is, the mason can share a town win, but win alone with a mason win. What was your thinking in implementing that asymmetry?
I think that if the masons can win with the town, then they should do so. Going for a mason-only win is more risky and there isn’t sufficient reward. If the mason and town were completely exclusive, then I’d agree that the masons would be in a weird situation.
Hmm. That’s a good point. I’m not sure why I made the masons able to share a win with the town; I guess I didn’t want them to be completely anti-town as well as anti-mafia, but maybe that balance would be built in regardless. (By which I mean, the masons have an incentive to assist the town in eradicating Mafia whether or not their win condition is exclusive, because if the Mafia win everyone else loses.)
This is the one thing, upon reflection, that I’d prefer to change about the current game if I could. But it’s already started (although in very early stages), so that would probably be inappropriate. Wouldn’t it?
I’m not sure what you are proposing about changing the game, so I can’t really comment on its merits. I suppose if you analyze the situation and find that the game is broken without a rules change, then you are justified (obligated even) in making the change, especially since it is still early in day one. By day two, you’d be pretty stuck.
I say ‘obligated’ because the players invest quite a bit of time into the game, so if you see something clearly broken, then you should fix it. Small changes this early in the game that don’t have an effect on how a player should have been playing so far should be okay. Plus you’re the mod-god.
I’m not sure if the mason thing qualifies as clearly broken though. What change would you make if you made one?
Oh, I was thinking of making the mason win condition exclusive…so that the masons only win (and the town loses) if they outnumber the town once the Mafia have been eliminated. But upon reflection, I like it the way I’ve set it up. Doing it that way means that the town has to worry about Masons just as much as it has to worry about Mafia, and I’m not quite sure I want to go that far into setting up three competing camps just yet. So no rules change forthcoming, although I wouldn’t mind trying an exclusive mason win condition in a future game.
I think your decision is a good one. While I too would like to see how a third (exclusive) win condition would affect the game, you’d really have to do some serious analysis to determine game balance. As it is will probably be fine as the masons will recognize that a town win is a win. I don’t think anyone there will get greedy.
FWIW, I like the rules in this game. I am glad there is no single killer out there. It seems that the beat cop role is taking a lot of flack but I don’t mind the role. People just think to much about it IMO. The correctness of the beat cop only matters when it gets to the end game I think. The SK is just impossible to tell who it is. But enough of that. The night watchman idea is a very interesting one, and my favourite addition to this game. I think it sounds like a nice little change to the game, making it harder for the mafia to get a kill, but not exceptionally so.
Plus I am glad my thread won. Now I get to have started a hopefully long thread! Take that MTS!
This morning I thought about the asymmetry (Town v. Masons) and realized that the setup is nice to inspire discussion and argument. At some point, I expect the town to have a discussion about the win conditions and masons. Perhaps someone will suggest lynching a mason (I can only hope!) and then there will be a wonderful firestorm about win conditions and scummy behavior and masons and fun fun fun.
I’m liking the quirky mason win condition more and more.
This is my first time paying attention to a Werewolf / Mafia game.
It seems to me that the Masons’ win condition creates a conflict: They can only win if the Mafia are eliminated, but they also have to eliminate Citizens as they go. Which means the Masons would want to lynch Citizens, without drawing excessive suspicion to themselves, or they might get counter-lynched as suspected Mafia.
But the Citizens don’t gain anything by lynching Masons – doing so helps the Mafia instead!
I’m wondering if we can give this game a try at the next Gettysdope, if there’s anybody there who can GM the game.
I loved the pre-game discussion. Now we should get to see if our theories will play out.
What should we call the players? I’m tempted to call them hampsters, because I have this image of a group of hampsters in a cage playing mafia for me to watch and enjoy.
Seems like a pretty slow start to the game. No one wants to drive a bandwagon, and no one is willing to drive a *fake *bandwagon either. I think everyone is terrified of looking like scum. What do you think would be a good way for a hampster to start the game. The temptation is to just sit back and watch, some have even mentioned a wait and see attitude. I wonder what a good way to get discussion going is. They only have a few days to get their act together, and right now they aren’t generating much information at all.
I think the group is falling into the same trap as game 2. They aren’t willing to act without information, but they aren’t really seeking out information either. Once the first bit of information falls out, they will all pounce on that one bit and feel like their job is done. maybe that’s just the way day one always goes.
I think the only thing you can do (assuming you’re a townie or want to appear that way) is generate discussion to try and get people to say who they suspect and, more importantly, who they don’t suspect. I don’t think that anything anyone says is really going to help on Day One, but it will bear fruit further down the line.
I’ll tell you, too, that if I’m ever Mafia, I’m going to strongly consider voting for a fellow Mafia member during Day One in order to muddle up future analysis of voting patterns. Feel free to use that against me.
I think the hardest part about this game is everyone comes in from a different point of view and worse, some players don’t really understand that certain actions are very bad for the town. In game 2, I was convinced that cowgirl (first incarnation) and Winston Smith were scum based on their votes to lynch on the first day which ended the day. But they were both town! They honestly were just trying to move along the game.
I like the current discussion about random voting. One thing no one has said is that mafia votes are not random, and even if someone says they used random.org, it doesn’t mean they really did.
So far, I’d say that Blaster Master is playing consistently with how he played in game 2 – good hampster.
The ones who mentioned no lynch as an option, bad hampster.
It looks like the town is not understanding the mason’s win condition. Ha! Fun! Not only don’t they not understand it, the one person (Kyrie) who seems to understand it is getting flack for talking about it!
I don’t know why this amuses me so.
Of course, if I were in the game, I’d probably be getting strung up for yakking about Masons too.
