Intentions, Thoughts and Conclusions.

[Forum Mafia GM]

This is a document I have been adding to over the course of the game documenting what I think as a host and how unpredictable people can be. I also plan on going through my thoughts on each of my mechanics / changes and telling you how I thought they worked out. You can balance and plan as much as you like but in the end, it's all up to the players how it works out. I think of it as a basic foray into game design... seeing how the players react in certain situations with certain variables. I admit I still have a ways to go, but I hope the following gives you a little insight into what I was hoping/planning/thinking.

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Multiple Jailors / Jailor Sides:

My intention with multiple jailors was to get people more involved at night, especially citizens. I then thought well... I dont really want all these jailors to start claiming in their chats and getting a mason like network of contacts so I decided to make the mafia jailor in the hope that distrust may follow and the jailors would have to try to get information and to make the chats work. In order to balance more jailors I needed to weaken them, especially seeing as one was mafia.

All in all I think it worked for the most part, although it may have worked too well in that a lot of the discussion was based solely on the jail chats. Though I dont really mind. By the way, the reason I said no quoting is because there's a Vbulletin exploit from the quote link that allows you to see jailor chat.

I think that the multiple Jailor arc has potentinal if not overused. I weakend them for my set up becaue I didnt want them to be rediculously game changing with super blocks and heaps of kills.

The reason they cleaned was to make the Town Jailors really think about when to use it, because a cleaned role helps Mafia more than town.

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A Single Mafia:

If I am to host another game, I will definately be going back to the 2 mafia set up. Though in 1 team you get the opportunity to control 1/3 of the vote and to plan as a collective unit, losing members early really bones the team, and losing a killing neutral early fucks the KPN to the point where the town has too much time. 2 Mafia set up pretty much guarantees a set KPN till at least the mid game.

This game, now that I look at it, had a KPN too low even with the 3 jailors and the vig. I'm not sure what kind of effect the Revo would have had. An extra non town KPN would have changed the outcome entirely I think.

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The Mafia Coroner:

My intention with this role was to make writing your Last Will a game in itself. And I saw a lot of people playing this game. I think it worked well having a fun way to lie to mafia and having to think carefully about what you put in the will, rather than it being a free ticket to an investigation log or something.

I also want to note that the mafia were balanced around having an Exact Role Consigliere that was murdered night 1 too

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The Vig's Daykill:

I wanted vig's kills to be more premeditated. You should have to think about who it is you want to kill before you do it. Rather than a sporadic im going to day kill this guy because he said something scummy. I think it worked

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Multuiple Sheriffs/Investigators:

Though this seems like I want to stack the town, I intended there to be tension when it came to counter claiming, especially with a consig able to jump in and fabricate results using the handbook. With the consig being roasted it didn't work out as planned.

Towards the end we saw a bit of a conflict, but it was nothing game changing or anything the Mafia could play on.

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Updated Revolutionist:

Well I wanted the Revo to add to the KPN late game to build some form of dramatic tension in the late game. I don't know what effect this guy would have had cause he got stabbed.

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Random Night Events:

I wanted there to be some element of randomness that could affect the outcome, though, as stated below, my intentions weren't very clear on a couple of the power nights. While I think there is some merit to this mechanic, I dont think I implemented it in a good way.

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Meta:

This game has evolved and changed a lot since I hosted in fm5. A lot of this was changed with Yayaps FM that I didn't really follow. A lot of people 's first fm was Yayaps and his warped rules seemed to become base for these people. A lot of the things I didn't list in the rules because I thought they weren't needed were used and abused by some to their benefit. Yayap was very lenient on forum meta (such as pms, forum names etc). This is mostly my fault for not keeping up with it and going forward I will have to think very carefully about what people read my intentions as. On that note. On work of jailor forum names: I didn't even consider it by the way, proving again its very difficult to predict every movement your players will make in balancing.

Another issue of Meta is attempting to find someones COM name in order to find out their play style from previous FMs to determine their alignment. It makes Anon names both required to attempt to stop this, and useless because people are always COM name hunting. I dont actually know what anyone can do about this now. New players wont have this meta knowledge and will be at a disadvantage.

This actually extends further to players of straight FM and the regulars of the M-FM board. I saw the split from day 1 and a lot of the M-FM regulars seemed to be able to pick each other out fairly fast. Though I dont think this had much of an impact on gameplay, it was jsut an observation.

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Intentions:

From reading feedback and some messages I've received, I'm not very good at relaying my actual intentions for anything. I started the game with a set framework in mind and when I made calls depicting to that framework, I got called out 'for changing the rules'. Some of these call outs were probably warranted now that I look back upon what was written. Again, going forward (assuming I host another one after this meta mess) I plan on taking great care in the pregame to ensure I have my exact thoughts on paper. Though, some people in particular (and I'm pretty sure they know who they are) killed my drive to create very early. I might just stick to the M-FM board from now on.

I'm probably going to edit this as the game continues. I was thinking of locking this thread but I suppose I could use the feedback.

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Luck:

Let's face it, a lot of this game, especially early days, is based on luck. Healing the right people, shooting the right people or investigating the right people. Sometimes, this luck can also be played in gambits. A cit can make a radical claim and actually get a sucm lynched based on pure dumb luck (unless they have been scumhunting of course) or a sheriff can find straight Mafia, so the element of chance will always make balancing a set up hard. IE: LOL REVOS DEAD NIGHT 1.