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So You Want To Be In The Mafia
Topic Started: Jan 26 2014, 04:37 PM (337 Views)
Aviana
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Hey guys! I'm Aviana, friendly roaming admin. Apparently I'm pretty good at being evil, so I'm going to put together a few things that have worked for me with that. However, please note, as with all the mind games that happen on this forum, what works for one person will not necessarily work for another. You have to figure out your own tricks. And, as they are, in fact, tricks when you're in the mafia, you're going to have to be continually creative with how to get people. I'm just going to focus on some general guidelines because of that. Ready?

Before we can get into this at all, though, there are rituals you have to go through to join the mafia. An initiation, if you will. We'll get more into the details once you join, but what you're going to have to do is let the older members of the mafia explain the rules around here, they'll prick your finger with a needle and put a few drops of blood on the card of a saint. (Which saint varies depending on the mafia.) Card gets burned, everyone passes the flaming card around, you do your oath of loyalty, and THEN we can get into how to be in the mafia and what to do. Got it?

Did you do it yet?

...are you really freaking out that badly from just the needle? I dunno if you're cut out for this. You're going to have to kill people, you know.

Stop whimpering.

Oh, whatever, let's get going.

So You Want To Be In The Mafia

Um, let's see... some topics to cover.


  • What are the goals of the mafia?
  • Playing with the mafia
  • How to be the best "villager" ever
  • Don't get lynched!
  • Spreading confusion
  • False claiming
  • The night kill, and other various decisions


I'll go ahead and warn you guys - because there is a lot to discuss, and possibly because I tend to ramble, this guide is pretty long.

What are the goals of the mafia?

"Kill people okay let's move on Jessi." Haha. Shut up. This is my guide and this is important.

So, yes, if you're mafia, what you're going to end up doing is killing people. However, I feel like a lot of the time, the other things the mafia need to do get ignored or forgotten, in part or completely. The mafia has two very important goals. The one everyone remembers usually is that they must avoid being caught. That one's pretty obvious. If you commit a crime, and you get caught, you get punished, and your conspirators will be too, and then you lose. And that's no fun. No one really likes to lose.

The second goal that is more readily forgotten is they must confuse the village's organisation. And it's sad that that's the one that gets forgotten more, because wow there are a ton of ways to do it and every way you can attempt is so much fun. If village can figure out their right hand from their left, they can figure out mafia from village if they actually set their mind to it.

Now, I've got a section for tactics on how to spread confusion, so I guess the question is why do I have a section for the mafia's goals too. It's really, really important to keep in mind that these are the goals of the mafia when you're evaluating your decisions. Guiding principles and all. I dunno, should you do that? Will it contribute to blending in with the village or will it keep the village from getting it together? Or both! Both is always beautiful if you can. Anyway, the point is, goals are important to keep in mind. Let's get into how to achieve those goals a bit.

Playing with the mafia

The mafia has a lot working against them. They have worse numbers. Everyone's out to get them. They have to hide and hide and hide and not trip up, while in general village can just speak as plainly as they like. You end up having to be a good liar, or at least good at working only the convenient truths. Despite all of this, it's hardly bad news for the mafia. They have at least one key advantage over the village in most set ups. They have a number of people they can rely on for counsel at all times.

You know. The other mafia members.

One of the most important things to remember playing as mafia is that you are not stuck doing this alone. You can, and in fact have to work with a number of other people. This is entirely to your advantage if you keep your mafia well organised.

For that, communication is important. If your mafia members are on Skype, make a group chat for you guys to scheme in. If they're not, constantly PM them. Keep them completely in the loop. Make sure they know everything that's going on, everything you're talking about. These are your teammates, and it's vital that you're all on the same page. Mafias are ruined by lack of communication, so make sure you're doing everything you can to stay in touch. Personally, I like having the phone number of Americans in my mafia so that I can text them and get texts about the going ons when I'm not at my computer, but obviously whether you choose to do something like that depends on your own comfort level with such things and who's in your mafia. (I specify American because at least in my case, international texting costs a lot more.)

It's also really important that the mafia is not run by a single leader. There are a number of reasons for this, one of them being that it's simply less fun to have only one person making the decisions and running the show. More practically, though, what are you going to do if that leader gets caught and killed? Everyone else has gotten so acclimated to laying back and letting things happen that it's difficult for them to realise hey, we need to pick on our own. By then, usually a night phase has already gone by, and the kill is missed, and maybe other important things as well.

There's also the fact that if one person is making the decisions, it is several times more likely village will be able to detect some sort of pattern. Even if the person is brilliant and remembers to try to shake things up, everyone has a distinct style. Their style can and will be detected, they will be investigated or perhaps just straight out lynched, and then good game. Additionally, the mafia must constantly find new ways to achieve their goals, as repeating tricks too often or too soon after the other will lead to them being ineffective. It's a lot easier to come up with new ideas from brainstorming with a group rather than with just a single person trying to think of things.

Now, don't get me wrong, even in a pretty cooperative mafia, there might be a player in the mafia that ultimate judgements get deferred to depending on who's in the mafia. And that's probably fine. However, it's critical that everyone gives their input, and that whoever that person is for the mafia keep their mind open to new ideas.

It's also really important that you work closely with your other mafia members because not all of you will be playing the same role. The mafia has too many goals that reasonably can't be achieved by a single person. I know this sounds obvious, but you never know. Maybe someone will read the guide saying excuse me how am I supposed to do all this. Well, the short answer is that you're not. But as a group, you definitely should.

All of this said, a word of warning. While behind the scenes, you'll want to embrace your mafia partners, in the thread, publicly? You have no ties. Why would you? You're just villagers, right?

How to be the best "villager" ever

Cool! So! Here's a handy link for this!

"...but Jessi, this is Snow's guide for how to be a villager."

Exactly.

In thread, you more than likely claimed that you were villager, right? Whenever the big bad cop showed up and told you to report in. If that's what you did, you better do your darnedest to sell your story. If you're going to say that you're a villager, then in thread and in chats, you are a villager. That's it! That's literally all there is to it. And anything you say, anything you comment on, anything you do, you have to ask yourself, is this something I would reasonably say or do as a villager in that circumstance? If it is, do it! You can defend yourself later if you have to.

The thing is, a lot of times, mafia members get put under suspicion for not being very active, which means they're trying to avoid the spotlight, or they seem to be connected to other players for no apparent reason. Associations were suspected, and the only players that should have associations are mafia, right? That's at least true enough for a cop with no other leads to go yeah sure and start a lynch on you. Don't give them that fodder! In thread, you have nothing. You don't care if person a, b, c dies or not, they're all the same to you anyway. What does your mafia buddy have over the other guy getting lynched anyway, who cares?

That said, it's not totally impossible for you to try to change the lynch if it's on you or your friend.

Don't get lynched!

"Yes, thank you, Jessi, that's brilliant. Never would have thought of that on my own."

You're welcome.

Here's a question, how do villagers affect the lynch? Assuming the village isn't made of totally mindless sheep, anyway, which is shockingly common. And if they're doing that, it'll be easy to point out that they shouldn't be so mindless and rattle them by reminding them that they should be... I'm a little off topic. Anyway, if you said discussion, analysis, or scumhunting, you are absolutely correct. Give yourself a cookie.

What does this mean for you, though?

It means you better learn to scumhunt. Or, I guess a little more accurately, learn to "scumhunt".

If you're getting lynched, post a solid defence and find someone that did something scummy. If your friend is getting lynched, they need to post a defence and try to scumhunt too. And you know what? It's better if you "scumhunt" alone. You can get help on a solid defence if you screwed up bad and did something that fishy to begin with, but theoretically you've been a good villager and that should be a decent defence. If your mafia buddy is having a hard time with "scumhunting", don't forget you guys can back and forth in thread on why someone is or isn't scummy. Have dialogue. Analyse. It makes it look less and less like you're on the same side, which is good.

This is really the main difference between being a villager and a "villager". If a villager is lynched, their thoughts are validated, so it's okay as long as there are numbers, for the most part. But a "villager"? Heck no. You gotta stay alive. Gotta convince the leader that it's important too. Why? Dunno. Depends on the circumstance. You'll have to figure it out.

Spreading confusion

The big secondary goal of the mafia that often gets neglected! By its nature, it's impossible to sum up any number of ways to do this. You'll have to be constantly inventive. If you keep relying on the same old tricks over and over again... well, I mean, it's not like they won't WORK, probably, but the results are more spectacular if no one knows what's going on even.

So the most obvious way to do this is counterclaiming, or falseclaiming. That's got its own section, so we'll talk about that more in depth when we get there.

There's also framing. No, I'm not talking about the role, though that's a good confusion spreading role if used properly. This is something better covered in talking about the night kill, so hang tight til we get there.

Another reasonably common tactic is called bussing. It's called that because you're basically throwing your friend under the bus. Bussing is basically in order to make yourself look more innocent, you implicate or condemn one of your fellow mafia. After all, the mafia look out for each other, right? So why would they say hey, this person looks or is fishy and actually deliver? There are a few scenarios in which this is effective. One of those would be if you're counterclaiming cop and you need to deliver a guilty on someone. Obviously you can't say someone is guilty without knowing they are, otherwise you're not going to fool anyone.

Second big circumstance where bussing works is when you're "scumhunting". If you're the one who was pushing for scumbag Joe to get lynched to begin with, don't you look like rather the hero? What you have to be careful with on that is that your suspicion of scumbag Joe is believable to begin with. If scumbag Joe was actually acting rather angelic and didn't mess up at all, but you were miraculously able to pick him out anyway, you're either going to look like a god of mafia (unlikely) or you're going to look pretty weird for that suspicion (much more likely). Now, is that to say he has to look like a total scumsicle first? No, but he needs to have done SOMETHING reasonably suspicious before you start calling for his head.

Those are the most common tactics that spring to mind immediately. Any further suggestions will be gladly welcome.

False claiming

All right, so the goal here is pretty simple. Some would be village leader shows up, and you want to make sure they can't be trusted immediately. Or maybe you want to confuse whoever the village leader is, and make it so they can't trust all their PR claims. Or maybe you want to make the village leader look untrustworthy as soon as they show up, or maybe you want to force them to expose themselves when they might have remained hidden otherwise. There are lots of good reasons to false claim! What you have to be careful with is how you do it.

It's really important to pick your battles. Obviously, falseclaiming is a dangerous road. Once your lie is discovered, it's not like you can say whoops misread the role PM I'm actually a villager. You're getting lynched. That's that. So you have to play it really carefully. You can't have your entire mafia false claiming, or you all have a 50/50 chance of getting caught instead of whatever odds there are.

...actually, I say that, but that sounds hilarious and it'd be interesting to watch that happen. That mafia would probably lose, though, unless they played it pretty perfectly and unless the numbers were right. Anyway, I'm on a tangent again.

Which role you falseclaim and when you choose to do it will depend largely on the setup and what goal you want to achieve. Let's use a sample setup.

Village: Cop/Doc/Vig/Villager x 4
Mafia: Hooker/Goon x 2

Now, there's at least five different ways you could go about this. Do you go cop fishing? If so, if no one's pointed out the vig should reasonably claiming, and if they can get away with whoops missed that, one of the goons should could cop, preferably with a guilty, immediately. Or maybe "claim" to a villager who you've "cleared" and ask them to lead for you. (It'd be hilarious if you accidentally pinged the cop himself with that, though.) Do you just want to make the vig disreputable when he shows up? A goon claims as vig right away, or counterclaims the vig when he shows up, either way works. If the cop is known, and gathering claims (therefore permahooked), you could have a goon or even the hooker send in a Doc claim, which will make it impossible to know which of them to trust, and will leave it so that they will leave that counterclaim alive. If it's the vig gathering claims, you could have someone claim cop so that the results will be difficult to trust no matter what. You could even get really convoluted with it - say you've got a vig CC situation going, then one of your goons steps forward as the cop with a guilty on the CC or something.

These are just ideas that I came up with on the spot in a few minutes. If you take a good chunk of time to analyse the situation and bounce around ideas with your mafia buddies, you could probably come up with even more than that. It's really a big risk reward analysis. What are you willing to pay? What do you think you can get away with? How tricky can you make the web before it's impossible to swallow? What is it you want to accomplish by this?

What's important to keep in mind is whoever is falseclaiming is going to be under a lot of pressure if it happens in thread. (Private CCs are interesting. For a doc CC, there's basically no pressure on the doc and a lot of pressure on the leader. Cops still do have some pressure on them depending on how the leader plays it. Anyway, focusing on thread CCs for now.) The most important thing with thread CCs is that you have to stand your ground. You say you're a cop? Then you're a friggin cop, and that other guy saying so is a scumsicle that needs to burn. Stand your ground! You know you're telling the truth, after all! Don't get scared! Make sure your story is perfectly believable so that they don't find contradictions. This is a lot easier for roles that don't have results returned to them, like a vig claiming after night one where obviously they didn't shoot anyone. But no matter what, do not give up on your claim until you are dead and the host has officially stated that you're actually scum. Until that point, you are a friggin village PR, and don't you act any other way.

Last thing I can think to note about CCs for now. You'll notice in the examples I gave, most of the false claims were made by the goons, and not by the hooker. It's important to note that whoever makes the CC is more than likely going down as soon as possible, barring a few very specific scenarios. (Almost all of which are doc claims.) So make sure whoever you use for this CC is relatively expendable.

The night kill, and other various decisions

The night kill is universal no matter how your mafia is set up, so let's focus on that first. Congratulations, this is the part that is central to your organisation. Murder. The tricky part is, of course, deciding who to kill. And really, how you choose who to kill depends on the members of the mafia themselves, especially on the first night. Do you go for someone who knows your ticks? Do you dare try to kill a power player? Or should you go for someone a little lower key to avoid getting doc blocked? RNG it? A gut feeling? Any of those work! However, do note that if there is a doc in the setup, a power player is pretty likely to be protected.

The first night is the perfect night to try to frame someone as well. Oh, that's right, I did say I would talk about framing. So basically, you see all those reasons I just listed above? The goal of framing is to try to make it look like someone in the village was using one of those reasons and thus killed so and so. For example, everyone knows Magellan and Letter are buddies. They're in a mafia game together, and the nefarious mafia decides to kill Magellan. After all, who immediately becomes suspicious when Magellan dies? Letter does, of course. They picked their kill so as to frame poor innocent Letter as a murderer.

Of course, you can go for the straightforward frame, as outlined above, or you could even go for the reverse psychology there. For example, let's say Letter isn't actually so poor and innocent after all, and it WAS actually his idea that the nefarious mafia kill Magellan. Because he's on the mafia. We don't play against faction around here. Anyway, he knows he's going to be number one suspect after that, and therein lies his defence. "Why would I kill Maggie if I knew I was going to be suspected for it? That's pretty dumb." Either method works, as you've managed to pour a couple glasses of wine in the process, it's simply a matter of preference for that. And what you think your mafia can handle, of course.

The last three paragraphs mostly apply to the first night's kill, though of course you can use some of the thinking if you don't have anything better to use on subsequent nights too, or if there's someone you decide you very specifically want to frame. However, once day phases begin, you had better start using those.

You know most of the village is going to be busy with scumhunting? The mafia also has their own version they need to be doing. They need to be looking for PR tells. Obviously, what PR they're looking for depends on the setup and what's going on. Using our sample setup again, if the vig publicly claims, I sincerely hope you don't need to scrutinise the thread to try to figure out where the vig is. But it might be worthwhile to try to figure out who's projecting some doc tells. Is someone who's usually pretty loud and brash being kind of low key? Maybe they're trying to avoid notice. Does someone ask a little too quickly about should they start sending in claims? Keep an eye out for stuff like that, and try to kill appropriately. Doc tells are the best ones to look out for in terms of kills, because docs can't protect themselves, while a cop could be protected.

Other various decisions depends completely on what power roles are in your mafia. However, there are a few unifying elements to who you pick and how you do it. One of those is picking someone you ordinarily wouldn't be able to touch. For example, you can't kill someone who's likely to be protected by the doc. However, you can hook them, or silence them, or voodoo them. You can use different powers to disrupt them. Another is picking someone you think the village is likely to be visiting. If you have a framer, and you think you know who the cops will be investigating, make them look guilty. If you have a thief, and you think you know who the gunsmith will be gunning, steal from them and take the gun for yourself. Stuff like that. How you use your PRs depends largely on your strategy as well, as there are different approaches to just about every role. However, in most of the decisions, PR telling is going to end up being pretty important.

Conclusion

Kill people, give the village hell trying to find you, and whatever story you're going with, stick to it. That's pretty much it!

If anything I've written is unclear, or if you have further questions on how to play as mafia generally (as in, not specific mafia PRs), please feel free to ask! Otherwise, good luck, and I hope this was helpful.
Edited by Aviana, Feb 4 2014, 12:17 PM.
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