Well, OK - but that’s not what you said in the post I quoted.
Large games have the dual problem of having too many people to keep track of at the beginning and stretching the game out over the course of months. I think smaller games make more sense with a design lifetime of about 5 weeks. Longer than 5 weeks and interest will naturally wane.
Also, very long Days create pits of nothing in the middle of the Day. I’d like a cycle to last no more than 5-6 days.
I don’t think anyone should feel bad about getting lynched or incorrectly thought of being scum. It happens. It’s supposed to happen.
It isn’t?
I think what we really need, if we want to improve our play is basically to do drills. 9-person mafia, 5-day Days 2-day Nights and one of 3 setups: 7 vanilla, 2 Scum Goons; 5 vanilla, 1 doc, 1 cop, 1 Scum Roleblocker, 1 Scum godfather; 6 vanilla, 1 cop, 1 Scum godfather, 1 Scum goon.
That or a bunch of three-handed. 3 players, two town and one scum. No powers, no night, just a Day’s-worth of conversation and 3 votes.
I certainly don’t believe I’m practiced enough with the fundamentals to really be effective.
Three-handed isn’t a drill; it’s a completely different game. One which I think would be almost entirely luck, if played online.
For the medium-sized games, you might be right, but 9-player all vanilla is weighted pretty heavily in favor of Scum: You might want to make it 10 players (8 Town, 2 Scum), or possibly 8 players (6 Town, 2 Scum).
I pulled the setups from my memory of mini-mafia games on, I think, idle’s board. I defer to people with experience balancing games.
3-handed may be a different beast, but it still emphasizes post analysis and, at least in the past, was a common enough end game scenario that I don’t think it should be overlooked.
A 3-handed endgame is completely different from a 3-handed setup, because you have a bunch of Days before that to analyze and base your decisions on. And what could you possibly look for in post analysis of a 3-handed setup?
Bluffing practice. Calling out bluffing practice. Seeing how others react under pressure. Seeing how you react under pressure. I don’t know. If I knew it all, I wouldn’t need to practice. Anyway, it was a suggestion, not an order and even if we do do three-handed, you certainly don’t have to play yourself.
3-handed is just a pure guessing game. I know I think the whole thing is guessing, but 3-handed would be just a 50/50 guess for the town players.
Do we think there’d be enough interest in a month-long Mafia game? I had my De’endee 2 game 95% finished, I could run that in a week or two.
Or do we think Mafia still needs a bit of a break on the SDMB?
I’m in. I just hope that nobody volunteers if they don’t think they can participate.
I’m in for sure, Astral.
I don’t know if the board as whole needs a break, but I do.
I know that I specifically avoided going to three handed in this last game because I had no confidence in winning if it went there.
That was smart, and the extra kill sealed the deal for you guys. You were completely off the radar at the end, but a town flip on Mahaloth, sinjin, and me would have maybe led people right to your waiting neck 
I wish I had successfully saved Septimus instead of second-guessing myself, but I doubt it would have helped us in the end. Scum played well even after losing two players.
Oddly enough, if you didn’t have the double-kill available to you, your best move might even have been a no-kill. Though this is of course complicated by Lestrade’s power.
Pleonast’s Auction Mafia seemed very interesting. I’d like to play it again and see how it works out.
There was thought that the game could be busted, at least when down to a single Scum, by Townies agreeing publicly to limit their bids. A simple workaround to that would be to allow a Scummy to make two bids in each category.
Ok, I’ve read through this thread since it was referred to me and I have a few things to say. Sorry if I come off as a new guy trying to make changes but I am new to the site and sometimes, change is good. Agree or disagree, it’s totally up to you.
I used to belong to a site called The Unsung Heroes and we played mafia games regularly until the site went down last year. During my 4 or 5 years of being on the site, we played maybe 30-40 games of mafia, with anywhere from 10-16 players. I moderated about 20 of the games myself and enjoyed them all. We had superhero themes, action movie themes, made up story themes etc. They were all great fun and they all lasted maybe 3 weeks at the most. Our Day phases usually lasted 24-36 hrs, sometimes less if a Lynch was sealed. Night phases were the same. 24 hrs approximately. Earlier if all Night abilities were sent in. Things went by nicely and there were very few issues.
The Scum/Mafia had a Godfather, An Assassin, A Roleblocker(usually) and A Goon - depending on if Scum had 3 or 4 players.
Town had atleast 1 Cop, maybe a PGO, maybe a Commuter and maybe a Bodyguard. They also usually had a couple other investigative roles, depending on number of players.
Masons were not a common thing. We used them, sure, but it wasn’t a standard.
Now I’m not trying to say “let’s do things like this” - I’m just giving you guys an idea of how I am used to playing, so you may better understand why I am intimidated by the Straight Dopes play style. If I am allowed to run the next game or the game after, I plan to follow my play style that I am used to, with the exception of maybe stretching out the length of Day and Night cycles, since you all seem to be used to it.
Questions, comments?
I don’t think anyone will object to you setting up with the roles you prefer. You might get someone who won’t be playing to do a balance check, but it should be fine.
That makes sense, Darth.
Good tip.