# Mafia - Game in progress \[Edited title\] **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [January 9, 2013, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635 "2013-01-09T16:03:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![TexCat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/texcat/32/9041_2.png) [@TexCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TexCat)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/181 "2013-01-22T19:59:33Z")
@ **Pleo** , Either one is fine with me. > [@Babale](#): > > I don’t know if using the barn to announce investigations is a good idea… Without knowing who did the investigation, its a shot in the dark as to whether we trust them or not. And there’s always the risk of some sort of stalker power telling the wrong people who wrote what. > [snip] I don’t think you need to worry about the stalker power, unless our Mod is lying to us already? > [@storyteller0910](#): > > [snipped]There is no game mechanism by which the source of a given message may be revealed to any player. It’s been a while since I’ve played with multi-votes. It seems like there is great potential for a messy voting record. The problems I see with the 4 phase plan are that we seem to go back to the beginning a lot. We nominate MHaye and discuss it. Then MHaye claims superpowers and we go back to the beginning and look for someone else to nominate. Or we nominate MHaye and during the discussion someone makes a slip and we need to go backwards to nominate them. ---
**Author:** ![ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9bcb4/32.png) [@ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/182 "2013-01-22T20:02:33Z")
Who enforces this phased structure? What are the consequences of not conforming to it? It sounds like a pain in the ass to me, but I play this game by passing whatever post is in front of me through all of those phases plus a hindsight and conjecture phase, so maybe its just me. ---
**Author:** ![ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9bcb4/32.png) [@ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/183 "2013-01-22T20:08:34Z")
> [@TexCat](#): > > I don’t think you need to worry about the stalker power, unless our Mod is lying to us already? Did I miss something? Per the rules thread I don’t think any potential roles can be ruled out: > [@](#): > > You may expect the Town to have access to an investigator, doctor, vigilante, and Masons; you may expect the Scum to have access to a Godfather, role blocker, and investigator. Other Town and Scum roles may (or may not) be included. ---
**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:** [January 22, 2013, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/184 "2013-01-22T20:09:52Z")
> [@Johnny\_Bravo](#): > > Cool. I really appreciate the clarification, guys. I have more newbie questions. I hope it isn’t bad form to keep asking stuff, but I figure it’s best to get it all out of my system now. > > When we’re talking about “full claims,” and then qualifying them with forced/unforced, are we just talking about copying/pasting our role information? And I assume there’s no way to really force someone to make that kind of claim short of the majority of players declaring “show us your role or else we lynch you”? No one will complain about questions. You’ve figured out claims. A “forced” claim is one made when the player is close to being lynched. An “unforced” claim is one made when there is no chance of the player being lynched. A “full” claim is a copy and paste of a player’s role PM. Some players will censor out critical bits, but doing so reduces the believability of a claim. There are also “name” claims where a player states what their role name is. And there are “soft” claims where a player claims to be vanilla town or a power role, or something else vague and very unconfirmable. There are also “magic bag” claims where a player claims to have special information but chooses not to reveal it until later. > [@GuiriEnEspana](#): > > A very recent proposition he made on another board [here](http://www.giraffeboards.com/showpost.php?p=918956&postcount=36) in which we divide Days into 4 (not 3, sorry) phases: nominations, discussion, defense/prosecution and judgement. It aims to ensure discussion from early on in the day, forces scum to take stances, avoids last minute forced claims because a player wasn’t around or under suspicion earlier, ensures cop results don’t result in lack of discussion, and basically provides some structure to the Day so lurking is discouraged. > > I don’t believe it’s been tried and I suspect that it has less value on D1 than in later Days but I’m willing to consider approaches that enable scum hunting earlier rather than later. I’m in favor of anything that encourages discussions. So long as these phases do not discourage players from posting what they think is useful, I will be okay with it. In the end, however, I will always vote for the players I think should be lynched. ---
**Author:** ![TexCat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/texcat/32/9041_2.png) [@TexCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TexCat)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/185 "2013-01-22T20:12:16Z")
I don’t even know what a stalker is, but Babale seems to think they can see who writes on the wall. But as I quoted above, Story says that the barn messages will remain anonymous. ---
**Author:** ![ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9bcb4/32.png) [@ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/186 "2013-01-22T20:18:31Z")
Ah gotcha. In that case, yeah, I don’t think there’s any role that will be able to ferret out who said what on the barn or whether it is true or not. ---
**Author:** ![RyJae](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9d8465/32.png) [@RyJae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RyJae)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/187 "2013-01-22T20:26:13Z")
Skimming is a scum tell but I skim a lot so I don’t really believe that. Every game I have played as vanilla town I skimmed quite a bit. Paid much closer attention when the role was a power role or scum/independent. I mention this because I got all tingly when I read Babales post and went back (which on my phone is a tad harder to do and dangit all Texcat did it a few posts down anyway) and confirmed the mods message on barn messages. Nothing much to add ATM, it’s going to be a long Day. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/188 "2013-01-22T20:28:34Z")
OK, next question: “Players may have any number of active votes at any time.” Does this mean we can vote for as many players as we want, or are we responsible for unvoting all but one of our votes? ---
**Author:** ![LightFoot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e8cbc/32.png) [@LightFoot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LightFoot)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/189 "2013-01-22T20:43:37Z")
> [@Johnny\_Bravo](#): > > OK, next question: > > “Players may have any number of active votes at any time.” > > Does this mean we can vote for as many players as we want, or are we responsible for unvoting all but one of our votes? The way I read it - the former ---
**Author:** ![LightFoot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e8cbc/32.png) [@LightFoot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LightFoot)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/190 "2013-01-22T20:54:29Z")
I see some interesting potential for the Barn Let’s say the detective has a few results and 2 or more of them are Scum Instead of outing themselves they could write on the barn one night who is scum/town Of course Scum will anticipate this and post their own ‘results’ at some point We won’t know which one is telling the truth until a name on the list gets lynched but Scum are less likely to NKill a person they graffiti as Scum so the protector roles can eliminate them from the pool of endangered characters - Or it could work that way \* ---
**Author:** ![LightFoot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e8cbc/32.png) [@LightFoot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LightFoot)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/191 "2013-01-22T20:58:55Z")
NETA some of Scum’s scribbles will be truthful to throw us off- so it will be a carp shoot - but we’ll possibly have extra information down the line ---
**Author:** ![wombat99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b782af/32.png) [@wombat99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wombat99)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/192 "2013-01-22T21:15:16Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ > > By the way, do players prefer if I do these multi-quote posts, or would you prefer I do one post per response? I prefer one post per response, unless the quotes are all related to the same topic. ---
**Author:** ![wombat99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b782af/32.png) [@wombat99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wombat99)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/193 "2013-01-22T21:20:49Z")
I am looking forward to seeing what turns up on the Barn. I’m picturing players skulking out under cover of darkness with a can of spray paint, scrawling their missives and looking around furtively for signs of Wolf activity. ---
**Author:** ![USCDiver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/uscdiver/32/354_2.png) [@USCDiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/USCDiver)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/194 "2013-01-22T21:23:36Z")
Carp shoot! I find dynamite works better! Back to the discussion of the “Four phase plan” I don’t see how that would work. All four of those phases happen simultaneously and multiple times per Day. I think **TexCat** and **Cookies** have the right of it. There is no reasonable way to legislate when a player initially becomes suspicious or when we can talk about them. ---
**Author:** ![wombat99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b782af/32.png) [@wombat99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wombat99)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/195 "2013-01-22T21:29:30Z")
> [@GuiriEnEspana](#): > > A very recent proposition he made on another board [here](http://www.giraffeboards.com/showpost.php?p=918956&postcount=36) in which we divide Days into 4 (not 3, sorry) phases: nominations, discussion, defense/prosecution and judgement. It aims to ensure discussion from early on in the day, forces scum to take stances, avoids last minute forced claims because a player wasn’t around or under suspicion earlier, ensures cop results don’t result in lack of discussion, and basically provides some structure to the Day so lurking is discouraged. > > I don’t believe it’s been tried and I suspect that it has less value on D1 than in later Days but I’m willing to consider approaches that enable scum hunting earlier rather than later. It would be an interesting experiment to try, and this extra-long Day would be the time to try it. I’d say it has more value on D1, not less, actually. But, I believe herding cats has already been mentioned…yeah. Who knows how well it would work in practice. Probably not very well. Let’s try it! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/196 "2013-01-22T21:39:49Z")
> [@TexCat](#): > > I don’t even know what a stalker is, but Babale seems to think they can see who writes on the wall. But as I quoted above, Story says that the barn messages will remain anonymous. I guess I wasn’t being as clear as I thought I was… Let me explain myself. First, I didn’t mean “Stalker”, I meant “stalker”. As in, not a specific role known as a Stalker, but rather some sort of “stalker” role that can stalk others (hence the name) and find out which Night actions they took, or who they acted against. I was sure there was a standard name for something like that, but I’m not familiar enough with Mafia to know that off the top of my head and didn’t have time to check. MafiaWiki claims that its known as a [Tracker](http://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Tracker), it seems. But the idea is that Stalker (Who I guess would be called a Tracker) stalks Bob on Night 2, and Bob writes on the barn, and then Stalker tells everyone “Hey guys, I stalked Bob last night and his target was the Barn”. When I wrote my post, I had forgot about the disclaimer: “There is no game mechanism by which the source of a given message may be revealed to any player”. Without that disclaimer, my line of reasoning went like this: Storyteller did say that names would remain anonymous, but that’s like saying that if the moderator says “Any player who is killed will have is alignment revealed” that automatically rules out a Miller, or some other mechanism that will hide alignment on death. Specific rules trump general rules in most games, and it’s quite possible (IMHO) that Storyteller meant “Messages on the Barn will remain anonymous (unless X, Y, or Z)”. Once I went back and re-checked, I saw the disclaimer I mentioned above. So I admit it, I was wrong; even if either team does have a Tracker, the Barn shall remain anonymous. > [@ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](#): > > Ah gotcha. In that case, yeah, I don’t think there’s any role that will be able to ferret out who said what on the barn or whether it is true or not. That is correct. Were it not for the “There is no game mechanism by which the source of a given message may be revealed to any player” disclaimer, I’d argue that we don’t know that for sure, but that line does prove that there will be no hidden exceptions. Some may argue that if there was a Tracker role that would reveal who wrote what Storyteller would have had to specifically mention that under certain circumstances anonymity would be broken, but IMO that would make it too obvious. IMO not including the disclaimer would be enough. > [@RyJae](#): > > Skimming is a scum tell but I skim a lot so I don’t really believe that. Every game I have played as vanilla town I skimmed quite a bit. Paid much closer attention when the role was a power role or scum/independent. > > I mention this because I got all tingly when I read Babales post and went back (which on my phone is a tad harder to do and dangit all Texcat did it a few posts down anyway) and confirmed the mods message on barn messages. > > Nothing much to add ATM, it’s going to be a long Day. This doesn’t have much to do with skimming; rather, it relates to the fact that I read that post yesterday afternoon, noted that the barn will remain anonymous regardless of any sort of power usage, and then promptly forgot about that fact by this morning. My apologies; the rest of my point still stands. In any case, this is only my second game of Mafia, but from the six or seven other games that I’ve read over, it seems to me that skimming is a null tell. There seem to be three types of people who tend to skim (and more importantly, post in a way that SHOWS that they’re skimming): new players, who might read carefully but still screw up and make “skim-like” mistakes; players who are busy; and players who don’t care. Sadly, I am both new and busy, so I’m sure I’ll get accused of skimming quite a bit :(. One final thought: If there really is a Tracker role, could he tell us that Bob used the Barn without actually identifying which message is his? That wouldn’t violate the letter of the rule, and would mean that if Bob is the only one to use the Barn that Night, the message would be revealed without truly breaking the rule… Or am I way off base? ---
**Author:** ![ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9bcb4/32.png) [@ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/197 "2013-01-22T21:52:47Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > One final thought: If there really is a Tracker role, could he tell us that Bob used the Barn without actually identifying which message is his? That wouldn’t violate the letter of the rule, and would mean that if Bob is the only one to use the Barn that Night, the message would be revealed without truly breaking the rule… Or am I way off base? If this were a Gastardly Gastard game or something, maybe. But Storyteller has assured us that this game is on the simple and straightforward side, so I think the barn is as described: a place where we can each write one 10 word statement on whatever Night we choose and no one will know who wrote what. Unless they decide to claim what they wrote publicly. Which can’t be confirmed short of lynching them to see if they were motivated to lie or not. ---
**Author:** ![USCDiver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/uscdiver/32/354_2.png) [@USCDiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/USCDiver)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/198 "2013-01-22T22:14:50Z")
> [@wombat99](#): > > It would be an interesting experiment to try, and this extra-long Day would be the time to try it. I’d say it has more value on D1, not less, actually. On the other hand, D1 starts with essentially NO information. How are we to begin with a nominating “phase” when there is no reason to nominate one player over another. Are we to wait until a specified day (within the Day) and then begin the phases? I don’t think that it’ll work any better on Day 1 than any other Day. Maybe **Pizza** should Mod a game where he has that mechanism in place as an established part of the game. Then we could see how well it worked in practice! ---
**Author:** ![Enderw24](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba9def/32.png) [@Enderw24](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enderw24)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/199 "2013-01-22T22:15:03Z")
Pizza’s 4 part plan, like communism, works well in theory. In real life, we’re always going to screw it up. It may be the best way to ferret out scum. But in implementation no one can step up to lead the group through the steps because no one trusts anyone else as Town. Not yet anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Chucara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Chucara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chucara)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635/200 "2013-01-22T22:28:54Z")
Hi everyone. This is my first game here in more than 3 years, so I hope I can get accustomed to the single-thread game. As for the barn: I don’t know what to use it for just yet. Maybe someone has the ability to watch who writes on the barn. If that is the case, scum can’t use it to fake investigation results. It would obviously be an advantage if the cop could write investigation results on the barn without exposing themselves. On the other hand, we don’t want the cop to reveal his/her investigations immediately, or scum would just pick them off one by one. Anyway, we should not blindly trust what is on the barn. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-in-progress-edited-title/646635.md?page=11)