Hey all,
I know Mafia is fantastic as a SCII mod, and I know it can be played in a forum format. I was just wondering if anyone had successfully extrapolated it to another platform?
More specifically, I was hoping to introduce lots of new friends to this fantastic game, but a lot of them don't own starcraft. We all play World of Warcraft together though, and in lieu of finding any ideas on the internet about this I thought I'd run a preliminary assessment of its viability in WoW past all of you (I'm hoping you guys can identify any major flaws that might occur). I'm hoping that one day I can run a WoW Mafia event in my guild to share the love
1. Obviously it's going to need a moderator, one person to run the game, which will be me. I'll have all the necessary information to hand, scribbled down on bits of paper around me I suspect.
2. Day/night cycles: Timing may be a slight issue. Daytime, if we can't find a better solution, I'll just keep a stopwatch nearby and manually type time remaining during both the voting and non-voting segments. Night will be trickier; I'll have a fixed time limit on when the players can take their actions obviously, but I guess I'll have to have a period of time where I manually figure out the consequences of player actions and do my own announcements (i.e. telling each player whether they've been killed, saved, switched, etc.) since this has to be done before daytime. Will rely on players discretion to just be quiet during this time period and take no action, including mafia chatting etc.
3. Chatting at night: If necessary I can just take out the Spy role, but quite frankly sometimes a game is made much better by its inclusion. Making a random custom channel in WoW for the Mafia/Masons just before the game is easy; the correct players will be invited, and at night they can chat in there. Since you can't 'anonymize' names in WoW channels though (did I just invent a word?), I was thinking that I could make a separate channel for the spy and copy all mafia chat into that channel. If anyone can think of a WoW addon that has that function it'll help, but if not I might be able to either concoct an addon that'll do it for me with some manual input (hell, I could just do it all manually, though this would increase the catch-up time before the day cycle a considerate amount).
4. Private Messaging: I think many people don't use this setting for good reason. Personally I don't use it too much if it's enabled; I sometimes talk to others, but I don't divulge information to anyone via it. In WoW though I'm not sure what I can do about it. Either I just let it be, or I ask players to honour the rules themselves (hard to monitor though, unlike the other honour rules). In the same vein, I'm hoping that the players and I can all be on Teamspeak together for a laugh (I don't expect anyone will willingly give away their role there, nor will I encourage chatting at night).
5. Deaths and Graveyard: Once a player dies it's fairly simple I guess. We can't have some awesome execution animation, they'll just have to leave the game, but I'll make a graveyard chat channel.
6. Anonymity: Tricky. Having everyone create a new level 1 character is ideal, and I can just do a mass summon once I get them all in a party. I know some people don't have space for a new character though. I'm not sure how worried I should be about this; if someone really wants to cheat or something, then they'll find a way. I like the idea of completely anonymous characters, but at the same time if you know who a player does that ruin the game? I know that when I've played with my friend on SCII it's informed my decisions slightly (not what you may think! we don't tell eachother who we are or what role we are via skype, but my mate is predictable and lacks originality, and sometimes I can immediately tell who he is and what his role is just by his name and typing). Since everyone will know eachother though I don't think it's as game-breaking. Yes everyone has their preferred mates, but I expect people to stay in the spirit of the game and not to go gunning after their best mate.. and even if someone does occasionally it'll probably be a laugh.
Can anyone think of any other issues?
Quick disclaimer; yes this is my first time posting in these forums, yes I've searched for a similar topic not just here but on google too, I respect any wise opinions that tell me to forget doing it but I'm hoping that people can suggest solutions to problems before I begin trying this with my mates. Tbh I realize that this may be a really mundane topic, either so blindingly obvious or it's been done before and is general knowledge for everyone except me.