SDMB has been invited to participate in the fourth annual Mafia Championships along with 134 other online Mafia communities! I followed this event last year and it is a lot of fun, even though our representative, Colby11, was tragically mislynched early in his qualifying game (gee, that never happens to him here! :rolleyes:). See the spoilered document below for full details; there will be 15 player qualifying games, a wild card round, and one championship final game.
We need to select our representative by April 22. I would suggest leaving this thread open for nominations for a week or so and then doing a poll thread to select our champion.
Important: As stated in the document, these are very active, busy games, so nominees should decline the honor if they don’t feel confident they can commit a couple hours a day to playing.
To get the ball rolling, I think that the three players on this board most deserving of recognition for general excellence in the field of lying, paranoia and murder are
**Johnny Bravo, Biotop **and (Arch)Angel (of the North).
[SPOILER]INVITATION TO THE MAFIA CHAMPIONSHIP (SEASON 4)
Hello everyone! 
I would very much like to invite your community to take part in Season 4 of the Mafia Championship.
The Mafia Championship is an annual online tournament series that pits representatives from various forum Mafia (aka Werewolf) communities against one another as they compete to determine the Internet’s greatest forum Mafia player. Each participating community democratically elects one person to represent them and become their “Champion”.
Season 1 ran in 2013-2014, while Season 2 and Season 3 ran in 2015 and 2016, respectively. As of Season 3, a total of 160 communities have been represented in the Mafia Championship, making it the largest cross-forum event on the Internet.
I hope that all this sounds very exciting to you guys
Do you accept the invite?
If your community wishes to participate, please confirm your participation to me before April 16 to ensure yourselves a spot. If you need more time than this to think about whether you wish to participate, let me know and I can extend the deadline.
If you agree to participate, the deadline for selecting your representative is April 23.
The games will take place on Mafia Universe. If it’s okay, I can link directly to the general discussion thread regarding this topic on Mafia Universe.
Important notes
You may decide yourselves how you want to elect your representative, but we highly recommend some sort of democratic process (public nominations followed by a poll usually works out well).
In addition to electing a representative, you should also name an alternate who will be asked to step in if the first choice needs to back out.
Your representative should be prepared for having to read upwards of 500 posts per 24 hours during the early stages of the game. Additionally, there’s a requirement that each player must make at least 10 posts per Game Day. Only active players should apply/participate. I repeat: Your chosen player needs to be able to promise a good amount of activity on a daily basis.
Relevant only to communities that participated last season: Season 3 Finalists are not eligible to play again this season.
Season 4 Format
The tournament structure
135 communities will participate, each sending one representative.
9 Qualifying Games will be played consisting of 15 players each. I.e. every representative plays in one Qualifying Game. 1 player will advance directly to the Finale Game from each Qualifying Game. The players themselves vote post-game to determine who is deserving of advancement. I.e. 9 of the 15 finalists will be found this way.
A Jury consisting of finalists from Season 3 will along with me discuss and vote to determine a group of 30 wildcard players who will play in 2 Semi Final Wildcard Games. From each of these two games, three players will directly advance to the Finale Game.
The Finale Game is played. Once it has completed, the players vote to determine who shall hold the title of Season 4 Champion.
The setup
MOUNTAINOUS
12 Vanilla Townies
3 Mafia Goons
We’re going back to basics for Season 4. Each season we’re changing it up, and for this season it’s finally time to play without any power roles or abilities at all. Pure mafia. You have only yourself and your reading/bluffing abilities to count on.
Relevant mechanics info
Day start.
Deadline Lynch w/ Option for Majority starting Day 2. I.e. when day timer runs out, person with most votes will be lynched. However, day can also be ended early (starting Day 2) if there is ever a majority of votes on one person.
If there is a tied lynch, one of the tied players will be randomly lynched.
No outside communication. I.e. you may not contact the other players outside of the thread (unless you are Mafia and wish to speak with your teammates).
Phase Lengths and Deadlines will be up to the players themselves (I’ll organize them into games with deadlines that suit their preferences).
Thread is locked during Night Phases.
Alignments are revealed upon lynch.
The game will have a host to oversee everything and make sure everyone’s following the code of conduct, but otherwise the game is completely automated (automatic votecounts, thread locks and reveals roles automatically, the bot receives and processes actions, etc.).
Season 4 Timeline
The first Qualifying Game is currently set to start April 24th. Additional games will take place in the 1-3 months following. I will create a Doodle and find out the best times to start the various games so that preferably everyone gets to play during a time that suits them well.
Kind regards,
Thingyman
If you want to get in contact with me ASAP, you can find me on Skype (thingyman) or Discord (Thingyman#6075).[/SPOILER]
The main problem that outside players sometimes have in this “competition” is the sheer volume of posting. Whoever plays should expect to be able to cope with post numbers in the high hundreds per 36-hour game day while putting out at least 25 or so of their own posts.