Thanks for the feedback everyone, especially those who took the time
to fill in the survey too. I'll leave it open for a little while longer, until the next game starts.
Couple of topics I want to touch on:
BalanceSome of the feedback is amusingly contradictory here: some Mafia players felt the Townies were at an advantage, whereas some Townie players felt things were the other way around. I went with Khush' advice here by aiming for 25% Mafia, 25% Special Roles and 50% Townies.
There's so many variables in terms of how the first days go and how alliances crystallise that there will inevitably exist several perceptions; isolated players will feel the deck is stacked against them, alliances may consider themselves in control, etc. I'm just glad things weren't over by Day 3 haha.
Weird one, but I did a lot of things using a randomiser while setting up. I had kinda hoped that some of the less vocal players would land special roles, but that only partially panned out. Great to see Mop It Up lasting beyond the first day at least!
Personal goalsThere's a few things I wanted to try here, besides giving hosting a whirl:
1. Make an accessible, fairly easy game.
2. Host in a flexible way that accomodates for people's busy schedules.
3. Try to liven up the typical Isolated Townie Experience.
4. Keep Dead Players engaged while the game goes on.
To be honest I don't know if any of my ideas here worked:
1. Regarding ease of access...The game immediately started with a chain reaction of events (a poll, voting extension, people being killed and revived, a new Race Leader appointed...). I frontloaded Day 1 too much with the Race Leader poll, which, combined with all the First Night Events must've been irritating for players who I had promised an easy, laidback game.
Rules-wise, the Cupid & Couple roles were not easily understood by everyone like I had thought. In general those roles will need tweaking if they're to be re-used. The voting extension... I don't know, I see arguments for both sides. I think rules shouldn't get in the way of players too much, but I understand that may come off as favouring one side of players, too.
2. Flexible hosting ironically contradicts an accessible game here in some ways. Letting a late arrival join the game felt natural to me; put them at a disadvantage to keep things fair, sure, but the more the merrier right? While I still stand by that decision, because this game is more about the social fun than the prizes in my opinion, it does also inject further confusion/unexpected drama. (A.k.a. the opposite of a breezy, easy to understand game.)
Amusingly, survey answers vary
wildly here from "this was not a good idea" to "great way to handle the situation". Also, both Townie and Mafia players thought the addition of a late player would lead to an advantage to the other party. I would probably not give a late entry the one-time Boost again, based on this feedback.
Another point here, I didn't reach out to every killed player to come hang out in the Dead Thread. Apologies if I missed you! Should've kept track of that better. I also missed one deadline by a few hours during Night Actions due to work. Apologies, comrades.
3. To spice up Townie roles I tried to add some less-powerful Townie roles (Cupid, Risky Driver, Race Leader) which
feel important, despite being limited-time use cases at best. One of my favourite recent roles was the Encryptor in BeautifulShy's first Resident Evil game. Functionally does nothing, but still feels like an influential addition to your arsenal.
By using these less-powered roles I tried to spread activity around over players who might otherwise feel less important than the roles for whom the game stops dead every 48 hours. (Cupid influences 2-3 people, being part of the Couple changes an objective, the Risky Driver is both a minor threat and a source of hope for killed players, the Race Leader poll provides incentive for early discussion/vying for the role and adds decisive weight).
Perhaps it's a mistake to assume everyone thinks playing as Townie is boring (see
Mop It Up's comments), but yeah, that influenced a lot of the design (and is again, at odds with the pitch of a simple, not too involved game).
4. Dead players are underutilised in Mafia, if you want to make it a primarily social game. It's always a bummer when people lose interest because they get voted out. It's kind of the nature of the game of course, but I was hoping to get a bit more activity in the Dead Thread.
Honestly, I banked on the Risky Driver laying low and being a way back into the game for a single player to incentivise keeping up with the thread. When that could no longer happen, I didn't really have a back-up plan other than messaging people to come check out the Dead Thread.
Future idea: provide some sort of Night Activity there. Both to keep momentum going when the Day Thread closes, but also to incentivise more chatter?
Other idea: I told people, upon request, who the living players' roles were. In the future I might just tell all the killed players, so it's more fun for them to watch from the sidelines. Of course you gotta cross your fingers nobody accidentally spills the beans, but what can ya do. (Obviously this won't combine well with a Revival role...)
RolesThe Doctor and Detective are staple roles on here, but I pulled Cupid and the Witch (here renamed to Risky Driver)
straight from Wikipedia.
I picked these two because they up the stakes in several ways:
-The Witch/Risky Driver functions as a semi-bomber in that she can kill if she is killed, meaning Mafia/Killer roles may want to be considerate who they target and how much that person knows. Simultaneously, I was
really hoping for this role to survive longer than Day 1, because the Revival potential is much more interesting to me as a means to keep Dead Players engaged.
This role worked pretty well for how short it was around; next time I would no longer allow a Day 1 blind revival I think. In general, revival works less well in Forum Mafia than the IRL game I guess, so maybe in a more aggressive game you could sub out the Doctor for a Witch with a one-time Protection/Kill potion.
-Cupid is a versatile staple of the Mafia/Werewolf boardgame. Usually they decide before the game starts; I picked Night 1 because then there's some limited info going around to base a choice upon. Maybe Night 2 would be better. There's some wacky stuff you can do here, like pinning yourself to a suspected Mafia member, or hoping to find the Doctor or Killer.
As for the Couple, it's a bummer both players were Townies. I think for them, with the current Win Condition, it was simply too hard of a game. This will need a more flexible Win Condition, I've received some good ideas via the survey. To Stratos & Stevey; I hope y'all still had a decent game and didn't feel like this was a death sentence.
Wrapping up:Big thanks to everyone who came out to play during a lull in forum activity with the holidays and everything. I did not expect more than 10 players, let alone 15, to show up. I hope nobody felt forced to pick a character/car if they didn't want to, but I think it really added to the experience.
While a lot of this game's experiments didn't really pan out, and I gotta work on the clarity of the rules in the future, I think it was still a decent time right? In any case, hosting was really fun for me, so provided you fine people will suffer me once more, I'd like to give it another shot next year. Would definitely encourage anyone who wants to try to host and hasn't yet to just claim a spot!
See you in the next one, space cowboys...?
Topic: Mafia 83: F-Zero Strapped for Crash! [PODIUM CEREMONY] (Read 9913 times)
