Mafia "required" reading (warning--spoilers for old games)

The Game Room
1

So I’ve been playing my first game and it seems like there are a lot of references to past games. I understand this, and I’ve made these refrences myself, but most newer people have only read a few, if any of the old threads, I am thinking. So we should make a list of the significant events here so that people can reference this instead of searching and slogging through the archives. Provide links.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

The sad fate of faithfool in You-Solve It:

Faithfool, a wide-eyed newbie entering a game with mostly seasoned veterans, had made an early comment about a private PM. She was refering to a vanilla PM, but Diomedes had jumped on it, and was ready to lynch. A swath of flames was cut as people argued back and forth about what was said, and why Hal Briston’s special power specifically pertained to her. She survived down to the three-players, one-mafian lynch or lose…and was mod-killed, losing town the game.

Pleonast’s bastard modding and sachertorte’s manipulation of the rules in Mafia: the Conspiracy!

Quite possibly the most complex game of mafia ever modded, in this game, everyone had a special role. Only there were four factions. And some of the roles weren’t used. And none of the factions worked in the same way. And every single role had a secret power or information that was not known to anyone else. And Pleonast refused to answer questions about roles. Oh, and information about death came two days late to everyone except Sach the Coroner. Fortunately for town, he realized that in this game, withholding information was actually helpful for the town. He also came up with the innovative tactic of quoting PM’s, something never before thought reasonable. The town won.

Blaster Master’s extreme sacrifice in Mafia: The Mob is Recruting

This game had 24 people and 1 mafian, which sounds nice…until you realize that the boss can recruit EVERY DAY! Unfortunatly, the boss had fallen on hard times, and missed the first three days. On sunrise on the fourth, Blaster Master was accused of being scum–and his personality changed. Where previously he was a prolific, mathy, logical poster; now he was a prolific, logical, accusatory chaos machine. His points were contradictory and suspicious as hell, first accusing Darth Sensitive, than Millit the Frail, then Drain Bead, then Pleonast. His point, though, was to be lynched, giving the boss another day to recruit. He failed, and the boss was lynched.

I don’t know about off-site games, so that’s why these are all on-site. Please, bring examples from offsite games.

2

There were some good moments in Werewolf, a game, the very first game played here on the SDMB.

The Third Vote is a Scum Tell

[spoiler]It’s Day One, and a bandwagon starts against jsgoddess. Menocchio placed the third vote against her. JSexton, who’d played the game elsewhere, brought up the point that somebody at a site devoted to Mafia did a statistical analysis and discovered that the third vote on a bandwagon was the most likely to be placed by scum, and voted for Menocchio. JSexton hounded him for the rest of the day, and a very late bandwagon led him to be lynched. The result? Menocchio was the Alpha Werewolf, who was immune to the Seer’s investigations. Since then, placing the third vote has been a scum tell of legendary proportions around here, although its efficacy is questionable at best.

As one of the people who was on that Menocchio bandwagon, the third vote thing wasn’t even a big reason why I voted for Menocchio, but it you see references to the third vote being a scum tell, that is the genesis of it here on the SDMB.[/spoiler]

Winston’s Gambit

[spoiler]On Day Two of Werewolf, One and Only Wanderers claimed Mason. Much later in the game, Winston Smith came under pressure. He claimed Mason and repudiated OAOW’s claim. The Town saw through the lie and the lynch vote was unanimous.

Winston was a vanilla Townsperson.[/spoiler]

3

NETA(because I missed the edit window):

A comment about Conspiracy:

As far as I know, Conspiracy was the first game in which the moderator allowed quoting of Role PMs. That’s why it hadn’t been done in previous games, I believe.

The Random Investigation-Driven Lynch(also from Conspiracy)

[spoiler]I was a Witch in Conspiracy, along with Diomedes and Blaster Master. My Secret Power was a one-shot investigation. The results would only be communicated to me, so the three of us devised a system for me to get the results of my investigation of fluiddruid to the others. The system was pretty simple: the first letter of my first post would indicate the result: W for Werewolf, T for Town, U for Undead or C for Cabal. Unfortunately for me, I was killed the very same night I used that power. Shocked, I wrote a quick goodbye post and went off to have a shower. While showering I thought to myself, “Geez, it’s a good thing that I didn’t start that goodbye post with any of those four letters.” Then the wheels started turning in my head. What, exactly, had I said in that post, anyway? I hastened to check.

“Well, I guess that I get my life back now…”[/spoiler]

:eek: :eek: :eek: :smack: :smack: :smack:

The kicker? fluiddruid was a Werewolf.

4

The one that hooked me was M2, the first Mafia themed game:

[spoiler]It was my first of many games as scum, and storyteller was our Godfather (therefore he was immune to investigations by the town’s Doctor). I made quite a few mistakes, and was starting to draw a little bit of heat going into the endgame. Nobody on the town’s side had started to pursue me yet, though, they had only made accusations. story theorized on the scum boards that, in order to gain town creed, he would be the one to bring me down to help him gain the town creed we needed to keep him alive until endgame.

He was so diplomatic, he asked my “permission” first. I resisted at first, asking for one more Day. Around that time, Aguecheek claimed Cop. He was able to take the pressure off of me and get town lynched instead. story used this as part of his case against me, getting me and another Mafioso lynched, and surviving until endgame.

The best part was watching the endgame, while dead, and having pretty much every other player saying how sure they were that story was town, so much so that he was one to cast a deciding vote. The way he lingered and agonized over his decision was classic.[/spoiler]

Disclaimer: That may or may not have been exactly how it happened. I may have misspoke, but that’s how I remember it, damn it!

5

Conspiracy:

[spoiler]Speaking of fake claims, in Conspiracy, the alignment of a player wasn’t immediately revealed, and their role took even longer to be announced. There were four Masons in that game, and I was scum (again, but a Wolf this time). I had theorized that there were three Masons, and so when two people were dead, but before their roles were revealed, I took a gamble that one of them was the final Mason. I claimed Mason, and it went uncontested for two Days. At that time, One and Only Wanderers effectively counterclaimed me. sachertorte, the town’s Coroner (who knew the true roles and alignments before everybody else did), had bought my story hook and line, spit out the sinker when I flubbed the posting of my role PM by erroneously including a link to an offsite Mason board. I even tried to make an account, called “masonzeta”, postulating that the other three Masons were eta, theta, and iota. Diomedes, who had access to the offsite board as a Witch, called me out on it.

HazelNutCoffee, our Alpha wolf, and I realized that we were exposed and there was no way we could win. I then claimed wolf, and Zoggie (now Freudian Slit), the Neuromancer (who was a different faction and could zombify recently dead players for her own win condition), also claimed Wolf in order to get HNC lynched as the Neuromancer. This was because the Neuromancer was a greater immediate threat to the town.

The amazing part is the way HNC, Zoggie, and myself were able to coordinate this devious plan without any private communication. In the end, Zoggie was lynched, and HNC ran away from the town to start our own little wolf family.[/spoiler]

Also, pertaining to this thread, if you have your own version of an already told story, share it! Don’t hold off on posting it just because somebody already did, the more the merrier. Especially if it shows a bit of the role’s thought process or intricacy that the casual observer may have been oblivious to.

Double also, at first I thought keeping everything in spoiler boxes was kind of silly, I mean, it says “spoilers” right there in the thread topic. But then, as I read them, it felt kinda neat, like I was unraveling a mystery. YMMV. :cool:

6

Autolycus’s unique strategy

[spoiler]As far as memorable gameplay goes, I remember that Autolycus had a unique strategy in the first few games that revolved around misunderstanding a small point in the rules. Also, I should note that I’m not trying to be hostile: this is intended as good-natured joshing after the fact. :slight_smile:

Anyway, the way the SDMB plays Mafia, you generally win if your faction wins, regardless of whether or not you are personally alive at the end of the game. However, this had gotten garbled during the mafia game, and Autolycus’s strategy was based on the idea that you only won if your faction won AND you were still alive during the endgame. I seem to recall that he was Town for both of the games where this happened, and his strategy was extremely reasonable given his version of the rules: essentially, he tried to toe the line between Town and Scum to such a degree that the townies would be hesitant to lynch him for fear of offing one of their own, while the scum would refrain from nightkilling him because he appeared to be taking the heat off of the real bad guys.

The only real issue was that the method he used to accomplish this was very, very annoying. Essentially, he took to posting exclusively in a setting-appropriate dialect, in this case an extremely heavy Godfather-esque dialect. This, combined with numerous posts that seemingly added little to the strategizing, ended up sending the signal-to-noise ratio through the roof and eventually resulted in a fairly intense debate among Town after he came out with his strategy.

I’m pretty sure he was Town, but had he been Scum it would’ve been a great strategy.[/spoiler]

7

That is the very reason I got interested in the Dope. Before that I used to just read the articles, and maybe browse a few of the interesting chat boards that came up on the main page, but I never really “read” the threads here.
But I was fascinated by that Mafia game, as I found the thread once the game was over, and M2 was starting.

And when I got to Winston’s Gambit, I fell in love with the Dopers, and you guys became more than just a series of threads to me, but rather I started to focus on the names behind the posts.

Winston’s Gambit is probably one of the major reasons I’m even here as a member. :slight_smile:
That moment was just sheer Brilliancy as I read it from an observer’s unspoiled perspective- that’s when I realized what a fascinating bunch you silly Dopers were.

8

Another note about Pleo’s Conspiracy (my favorite game so far, even including the offsite game that RoOsh and I are running now):

The Witches (a combo Mason/Doc/Investigator group) had discovered that CatinaSuit was Undead, and I was the “outted” Witch. I pointed a finger at Cat, who instead of taking his ensuing lynch lying down, became very active in orchestrating a very open, combined effort between all of the remaining anti-Town parties. Cat claimed a secret power that would enable him to kill me off (and thereby permanently neutralize the Witches powers) when he was Lynched, and ended up convincing the town to forestall his lynch by a day.
Cat, of course, didn’t have these powers, but took advantage of the extra Night to kill and recruit Idle Thoughts to the Undead side. Luckily for the town, measures were taken to prevent Idle’s recruitment, but it could have been a masterstroke to doom the town to losing to either one of the two remaining factions. I certainly learned from that experience to never trust anything an outted scum says, even when done in an apparent ‘gloating’ manner.

9

The reason why **Diomedes ** and I talk of blowing each other up.

From Pleonast’s Conspiracy game.

[SPOILER]My Roleclaim from having been outed by those pesky witches.

*I’ve been pondering what to add over the weekend considering the Lynch wagon against me.

In the end, I just decided to roleclaim. It’s easier this way

I am the Necromancer.

The good news for the scum is not only my daily night ability to raise zombies, but the fact that upon lynch I can CURSE (ie. kill ) one target of my choice. Yup, even the undead gets special abilities as well. The person gets nominated as a Day action in the event of my untimely lynching.

Pleonast truly is a Bastard Mod[sup]TM [/sup]

So as I get lynched at the end of the day, I am taking Diomedes down with me. That gives us one remaining Vanilla witch and the Wolves get a free shot at Hockey Monkey. I would prefer Diomedes not outing the other witch, because it provides the scum with a free hiding place.*

II was a lying scummy vampire of course, but I needed a reason to keep myself alive for another night to try and recruit and forcing the Witches to protect everyone of value gave me a shot at Idle Thoughts.

And threatening Diomedes with being blown up for a couple of Days was great :cool:

Ultimately futile - but great fun.

[/SPOILER]

10

How weird is that :smiley:

Nice simulpost Diomedes

11

Your pelt is still my most treasured possession. :slight_smile:

12

This looks like another good place to stick the Master List:

Werewolf - A Game (M1)

Mafia 2
M2 Forbidden Thread

Mafia The Game III: Kinder and Gentler
M3 Forbidden Thread

Mafia V: The Cult of Sekham
M5 Forbidden Thread

Mafia: The Conspiracy

You-Solve-It Mafia Game
Y-S-I Forbidden Thread

The Mob is Recruiting
TMIR Fobidden Thread

Mafia: Simpletown
Simpletown Forbidden Thread

All other games can be found on the off-board site

13

Why no Mafia IV? Was that an offboard game?

14

I won’t bother to spoil this, since any descriptions of it can’t do it justice. But one piece of required reading is Day 2 in Mafia 2. It is a clusterfuck of galactic proportions, and it is enormously instructful when one is aware of the roles of those involved. Read it through not knowing the roles, then read it again knowing. Fun stuff!

15

Off Board games

Mafia IV: The Good Ship “Hispaniola”: **Malacandra’s ** Pirate-themed game.

Asylum Lane: **Idle Thoughts’ ** Psychopath-themed game.

Serenity: **NAF1138/Kat’s ** Firefly-themed game.

New Caanan Town Hall: **Storyteller’s ** Blade Runner-themed game.

Ancient China: **dotchan’s ** Three Kingdom-themed game.

Plenty more games to read on and wonder at the great intelligence and stupidity people can display while playing these games. Myself certainly included. :smiley:

16

A few of my top moments:

Day 2 of Mafia 2: I second Blaster Master. If somebody asked me to explain Mafia to them, I’d give them a list of the roles and show them Day 2 of Mafia.

The Chia Bingo Manager: In an offsite game (Asylum Lane). We had been told that it was a fairly basic setup. About three days in, someone claimed to be the “Chia Bingo Manager,” and to have the power to either come back from the dead or bring a dead player back to life, if he completed a special Bingo board. Hilarity, let’s face it, ensued.

The Big Ass Kicking of All Time: Mafia: Hispaniola. There were three Masons; one of them was the Doctor. When the Doctor was forced to claim, he instead claimed vanilla Mason. The Scum were completely fooled. Then along rolled MadtheSwine, as an investigative role, and he guessed right something like six Nights in a row. That game was a clinic in how to play pro-Town power roles.

Cookies’ dilemma - The last Day of Mafia: Sekham was awesome reading, simply just for the way Cookies knocked it out of the park.

17

Oh, and geez, anything involving Idle Thoughts. The fake Mason stuff especially, which was so close to working in spite of making no sense at all that it will remain forever in my consciousness.

Somebody should do a SDMB Mafia Wiki, or something.

18

Ah yes, the Chia Bingo Manager. I have to say, that is probably my shining moment in all of the mafia I’ve played. Plus, it was just SO much fun.

19

zuma played that one well, as the not-actual-pirate-but-pro-pirate role, because he sussed out our little Mason lie, but by then we had managed to play it out for a couple Days and Mad took it to the bank.

20

You and I screaming at each other for three straight game Days was pretty damn entertaining in retrospect, too.