# Harry Potter Mafia **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [June 25, 2010, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429 "2010-06-25T01:13:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 39
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/761 "2010-07-30T00:21:29Z")
> [@Normal\_Phase](#): > > Oddball game, and strangely enough I think the death miller was the least of it. The death miller totally fucked us; we would have known or at least suspected there was one more scum out there without it. Might not have made any difference, but there you go. ---
**Author:** ![peekercpa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8baadc/32.png) [@peekercpa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peekercpa)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/762 "2010-07-30T00:32:33Z")
> [@Red\_Skeezix](#): > > > [@peekercpa](#): > > > > hey, **maha** if you want to blow of some travel frustration come play poker with us tonight. **meeko** and **moi** will be there so you have a real good chance of not finishing last. > > > > add in the fact that **skeez** will be there and you might get a top 10. and if **mental** shows up you have an even chance of a single digit finish. > > **vote Peeker[COLOR]**, for blatantly misleading statments. \ fuck it then **[color=blue]vote story** ---
**Author:** ![Normal\_Phase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Normal\_Phase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Normal_Phase)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/763 "2010-07-30T00:36:57Z")
I remember some speculation about there being no serial killer at all due to the plethora of single-kill nights, that there was only some sort of bonus kill system going on. I would have had to play on that for the same tactics to work with only four known scum rather than the assumed five. It would in fact have been more difficult. (All Walker, for one, would obviously not have been fooled and hence much more likely to kill me.) However, from my own uninformed perspective as secret scum, the death miller was the source of endless confusion and misjudgment. 🙂 Chronos – thanks, I really appreciate it. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/764 "2010-07-30T00:47:30Z")
As the death miller in question, allow me to kick you all in the shins via the internet for reminding me. Imagine my surprise that not only did I wake up to a bullet in my town-friendly robot brain, but that my name was in red in the game thread. Fun times in the spoiled thread watching the speculation after that. My investigation list at the time was **AllWalker** and then **Chronos**. My investigation of **AllWalker** didn’t tell me what I needed to know, but the fact that he killed me did. Speaking of that spoiled thread, **Normal Phase** , **Chronos** is right. I really felt for you; you were in a ridiculously bad spot and did really well with it. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/765 "2010-07-30T01:24:56Z")
I don’t believe in using a death miller. Now, the next game I run, everyone will be assuming I am using a death miller. Heh. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/766 "2010-07-30T07:41:07Z")
> [@Red\_Skeezix](#): > > Town hasn’t won here in a while: As a complete novice my opinions is worth _very_ little, but I’ll mention a hypothesis which occurs to me anyway. Is there greater room for skill in scum play than town play? And was the “Sexton point” system devised in olden days when players were less skillful? Perhaps an extra half-point should be credited to the scum side, when players are skillful. ---
**Author:** ![Alka\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@Alka\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alka_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/767 "2010-07-30T08:56:17Z")
I’ve only followed the game casually, but it doesn’t strike me as unbalanced. Without the two modkills town would have probably won. It’s always going to be tricky to truely balance non-trivial mafia games, as so many roles produce swingy results, especially in combination. I tend to look at it this way - if you win against the odds it’s more of an achievement. As long as the game isn’t hugely out of balance it’s not a problem. I think modkill for editing is a bad rule, and not one that should be included in the future. Playing the game properly is a major time commitment, so it’s very frustrating for all the players if a silly and insignificant error can change the balance of the entire game. With the short edit window on this board it’s a real non-issue. I sympathise with the frustrations some players are expressing, it’s demoralising when people don’t participate or things outside your control throw the game off. ---
**Author:** ![Normal\_Phase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Normal\_Phase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Normal_Phase)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/768 "2010-07-30T12:45:22Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > > [@Red\_Skeezix](#): > > > > Town hasn’t won here in a while: > > As a complete novice my opinions is worth _very_ little, but I’ll mention a hypothesis which occurs to me anyway. > > Is there greater room for skill in scum play than town play? I think you could argue that. For one thing, in this form of Mafia, the town players have very little scope to lie, manipulate, and misdirect. That’s almost entirely the Mafia’s purview. And the mafia has to excel at “town” skills as well, at least to the extent that they need to recognize and avoid the things that will trigger lynches. ---
**Author:** ![Meeko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e495f1/32.png) [@Meeko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meeko)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/769 "2010-07-30T13:22:32Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > Now, the next game I run, everyone will be assuming I am using a death miller. Heh. > > 🙂 A promise, or a threat? ---
**Author:** ![peekercpa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8baadc/32.png) [@peekercpa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peekercpa)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/770 "2010-07-30T14:24:50Z")
> [@Normal\_Phase](#): > > > [@septimus](#): > > > > > [@Red\_Skeezix](#): > > > > > > Town hasn’t won here in a while: > > > > As a complete novice my opinions is worth _very_ little, but I’ll mention a hypothesis which occurs to me anyway. > > > > Is there greater room for skill in scum play than town play? > > I think you could argue that. For one thing, in this form of Mafia, the town players have very little scope to lie, manipulate, and misdirect. That’s almost entirely the Mafia’s purview. And the mafia has to excel at “town” skills as well, at least to the extent that they need to recognize and avoid the things that will trigger lynches. and i’ll give my opinion whether you want it or not. it seems to me that a lot of folks find it more “exciting” to be scum or a power role on this board. if they end up vanilla they kind of go, meh. to a less extent on giraffe and not as much on idle’s board. so you end up with a subset that really don’t give a hoot here. personally, i like getting vanilla because then i can get in folk’s grill without worries (other than the fact that it seems to get me lynched here). i think that is why the all power games have grown in interest. it just keeps people more involved because they feel they are actually doing something. but jeebus sussing scum as a vanilla is much more rewarding. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/771 "2010-07-30T15:16:04Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > **Mahaloth** , I’m not saying that you did a bad job of balancing. You used the best information available to you. It’s just that I think the best information available is flawed. I made the same mistake in my game, too: I put in one more Scum towards the end of the design process, because it looked, from the conventional wisdom, like it was biased towards Town (this was unfortunately before I did my own work on balancing rubrics). Well, I did tell you to use 4 scum instead of 5 when I did my analysis. 🆒 > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > The town also had a mechanism to temporarily remove players from the game, in effect a reversible lynch. Very useful to the town! > > No, the Town had a mechanism to temporarily remove _Town_ players from the game. The existence of the Cracker role made it effectively impossible to use the Brig against a Mutineer. Sure, that was a one-shot, but the game was small enough that there wouldn’t have been time to use it a second time. > > I agree that the basic ruleset would have been pretty well balanced in a larger game, but as it was, we had one genuine mis-lynch on Day 1 (when a mislynch should be pretty much expected), then we had one Day where we flat-out lynched a Scum player, and then we had another Day when we used that “extra lynch” ability that we thought we had and nailed one Scum and one Town. That should be pretty good for Town, but that left us in a position where we were powerless to lynch the remaining Scum. Good comments. > [@](#): > > Come to think of it, I think one reason we as a group have such a hard time balancing games is that we like to tinker. To really know if a particular setup is balanced or not, you’d have to run many games with that setup and look at the record. But nobody ever seems to want to re-run the same setup: We’re always coming up with clever ideas for new roles and new game mechanics. This is a problem and one that I’ve been thinking about for a long time. It’s one reason I’ve developed open rules sets, Conspiracy, Munchkin and Ship, with the intention that the rules can be reused. The trick is that the game needs to be interesting to the players. In Conspiracy, I vary the numbers on each side and put in a few secret powers to mix things. Munchkin should be interesting just by the random variations in the role and power distributions (I do need to give it another balance pass, though). The Ship rules are kind of out there. It deserves another play, but with a reduction in swinginess and more players. The other problem with tinkering or not is that our games here are slow. That’s good for players with limited time, but it makes it much harder to collect data. I have half a mind to program a “player agent” code and run Monte Carlo simulations with different rules sets. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Skeezix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/aca169/32.png) [@Red\_Skeezix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Skeezix)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/772 "2010-07-30T15:19:19Z")
> [@peekercpa](#): > > and i’ll give my opinion whether you want it or not. > > it seems to me that a lot of folks find it more “exciting” to be scum or a power role on this board. if they end up vanilla they kind of go, meh. to a less extent on giraffe and not as much on idle’s board. so you end up with a subset that really don’t give a hoot here. I don’t know that I agree with that theory. In this game it was power roles and scum who were subbed out the most. There’s some really frustrating tendencies that go on here, that hamper what I would consider to be good play. There is a real tendency to want to lynch the loudest person in the room. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/773 "2010-07-30T15:32:23Z")
I note that myself, which has started biting me in the ass since I get it from both ends–I don’t post a lot, but when I do it’s because I have something to say, so I find myself fairly often both getting accused of lurking AND being at the center of controversy. =P I think the reason vanilla feels less important here is that there’s a tendency to appeal to authority in these games, witness how at least some people thought it’d be a given that story the mason should be driving voting, so people feel like they have to have a power role to get listened to sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![ShadowFacts](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shadowfacts/32/2934_2.png) [@ShadowFacts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShadowFacts)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/774 "2010-07-30T15:33:57Z")
I had fun this game, which is always my bottom line, so thanks to **Mahaloth** for creating and modding 🙂 Nevertheless, it will not surprise anyone to hear me say that I am severely disappointed in the level of effort of many players in this game. I’ve always been a “participation” pusher, because it’s way more fun when people are engaged and playing, and because low levels of participation are anti-town. I think that was carried to a ridiculous extreme in this game, and was quite frustrating. We had: [ul] [li]Several people who essentially never showed up (or who posted once or twice then disappeared)[/li][li]Multiple post edits against explicit instructions[/li][li]Someone who read the forbidden thread against explicit instructions (which as far as I am concerned is cheating when done deliberately)[/li][/ul] I really like to play mafia, but I am only about to do so once or twice a year due to my schedule and availability. I could sign up for more and just half-ass it, but I only sign up when I know I can give the game the time it needs. I wish others were as considerate. It’s getting to the point where I feel like we need some kind of penalty box or something, where mods can see who has fucked up/blown off previous games and can use that to evaluate whether they want to allow someone to sign up. That is, just because you say “I want to play” doesn’t mean you’re automatically on the list. If you [and I’m coining a term here] _pedescribed_ it last game, maybe you only get on the list if there are not enough others to fill. Only fair, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/775 "2010-07-30T16:09:32Z")
> [@](#): > > I’ve only followed the game casually, but it doesn’t strike me as unbalanced. Without the two modkills town would have probably won. You can play the if game all day. But consider this: How would the game have gone were it not for **Omi** ’s Day 1 mistake that ended up getting half the Scum team lynched? And part of the reason there’s a strong emphasis on the power roles around here is that, much though folks might not want to admit it, power roles really do win games. It’s pretty much impossible to make an all-vanilla game of any significant size that gives Town a reasonable chance of winning. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/776 "2010-07-30T16:09:53Z")
I have removed the passwords for the Scum and setup threads. You still, I assume, have to register to read them. Sign up here and I will periodically approve your accounts. **Also, this is limited time. My next game’s setup will be put there for review/discussion and I will re-delete all accounts at that time, so check it out ASAP.** You are free to review Wild West and LOST as well, if you are curious. > **[Login Required | Mahaloth's Message Board](https://mahaloth.proboards.com/)** > > Visit our forum at: mahaloth.proboards.com ---
**Author:** ![peekercpa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8baadc/32.png) [@peekercpa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peekercpa)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/777 "2010-07-30T16:21:03Z")
> [@Red\_Skeezix](#): > > > [@peekercpa](#): > > > > and i’ll give my opinion whether you want it or not. > > > > it seems to me that a lot of folks find it more “exciting” to be scum or a power role on this board. if they end up vanilla they kind of go, meh. to a less extent on giraffe and not as much on idle’s board. so you end up with a subset that really don’t give a hoot here. > > I don’t know that I agree with that theory. In this game it was power roles and scum who were subbed out the most. There’s some really frustrating tendencies that go on here, that hamper what I would consider to be good play. There is a real tendency to want to lynch the loudest person in the room. talk to me about lynching the loud. and i guess you are right. this board seems to encourage non participation. i mean this game went six Days and was only 14 pages or so of actual game play. crap malazan went 16 pages on Day one and generated a butt load of pm’s and other off board threads (mother of og did it ever). i mean the whole thread is in excess of 60 pages and that doesn’t include the literally hundreds (thousands?) of pms and shit at least another 10+ or so off board threads. ssb went 13 pages on Day 1 and ryker’s was 15 on Day 1. ---
**Author:** ![peekercpa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8baadc/32.png) [@peekercpa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peekercpa)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/778 "2010-07-30T16:27:59Z")
and **shadow** kind of hits it. non particpation is not only “anti town” but “anti game” which is a more serious offense in my book. i mean seriously if you sign up for softball but all you want to do is pick your boogers and eat them in right field why the fuck are you even there? ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/779 "2010-07-30T16:36:39Z")
… to pick my boogers and eat them in right field. What is this, some kind of weird-ass quiz where you reveal the answers before you ask the question? ---
**Author:** ![Alka\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@Alka\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alka_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429/780 "2010-07-30T16:46:49Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > You can play the if game all day. But consider this: How would the game have gone were it not for **Omi** ’s Day 1 mistake that ended up getting half the Scum team lynched? There is a big difference between something that’s the cut and thrust of the game (scum will always make mistakes, and sometimes town picks up on them), and two exceptional modkills. The point I’m making is, both sides had opportunities to win. I’m with Shadow and peeker and the participation problem. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429.md?page=38) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-potter-mafia/544429.md?page=40)