Elements Mafia 72 - by Ginyu

[kaempfer13]

1. A bit too much random noise that wasnt worth going for in the end, too little meaningfull as you said. But I like it in theory.
2. Musician/drug dealer seem kinda useless for town (and kinda in general) even if sound mattered more. i was hoping to get friendly neighbor . I like gunsmith, its mere theoretical presence is a powerfull tool  for town to softconfirm themselves without gunsmith actually needing to exist. In so far mw not actually checking those people was a galaxy brain strategy; note that it only works if mafia has to fear getting checked though. parascience was useless (EoR single target? really? haunt would at most be used once in the game), so was policeman.
If it counts, I dont like the current workings of haunt. It permanently removing roles from the game entirely and being boosted big time by drug dealer makes it way too swingy, especially if the real officer has to claim early.
Security guard is also pretty useless as town (although i would have loved to see the strategy that I was briefly paranoid about, where you block your own teammate to prevent gunsmith check).
3. That kinda means dead pad cannot exist or a specific role will not be invited too it, otherwise the fullbrain power of all the dead village will be combined (and mafia might slip).
4. I like chat.

[Espithel]

Noise currently leans too much to being an automatic scumread, rendering the mechanic useless.
Just making noise abilities stronger or abundant won't fix that, though: You have to deal with the fact that everyone can just agree to keep silent to prevent the use of nefarious mafia abilities.

If you were going to do this setup again, you need to make noise very obfuscated, both by drastically increasing the amount of noise made and by being silent much harder to do.

My personal solution would be to start by giving each role two abilities, one a stronger version of the other. If you use the stronger version, you make noise, and you have a limited number of uses on the silent ability.

Another option is to make all noise abilities "towny" in appearance - Instead of noise looking scummy, have it look towny, meaning people actively want to make noise, both to prove how towny they are and so it gives mafia a chance to "blend in".


If you removed the noise ability entirely, this would be a pretty decent ruleset on its own. Haunt preventing mass roleclaims is a great natural deterrant if it didn't make noise - I would have haunt require exactly two non-mafia roles in order to function, though.

[Submachine]

Spoiler for Vanilla:

This game felt like a vanilla mafia. With the agreement of not using potentially harmful or noise-making roles, the following roles felt useless:

• Paranormal Scientist
• Policeman
• Drug Dealer
• Security Guard
• Musician
• Friendly Neighbour
• Mechanical Engineer
• Grave Robber: useless until a useful role dies, which rarely happens.
• Undertaker: with most roles being useless, this role rarely does anything useful.

With so many "vanilla" roles, we had the incentive to use reads more than roles, until of course the last phase. I did not find this a bad thing, but others may have.

I noticed how the game lacked the energy of the previous Mafias. Day 1 was sluggish to spark any discussion and even the dead pad was quiet throughout. I assume this was because of the lack of impactful roles, but it also could have been because of the burnout of Night 0, the thematic roleplay of The Quiet City, the newness of Mafia wore off, the players had better things to do, or etc.

Spoiler for Personal:

When the game started, I had a hidden agenda that failed from the get-go. This agenda was to draw in a Nightkill on me before the Officer dies to give more time for the Officer for his investigations. I went out the door immediately dishing out plans, encouraging activity, doing stuff that the Mafia wouldn't like. However, some people decided to WIFOM too hard into this, and this drew some scumreads on me. Sadly, the Mafia would never target anyone who Town considers to lynch, so this was immediately ruined. It also didn't help that Mafia seemed to actively hunt the Officer, which I had already claimed I couldn't be. At one point, I desperately tried to hint to the Mafia that I'm either the Undertaker or the Paranoid Doctor, - roles that might be useful enough that Mafia snipes them - but they ignored it.

With this result, I don't think I'll use this strategy again any time soon. It's also not really fun, as it requires a lot of effort, which becomes wasted if the strategy fails.

Spoiler for Ginyu:

1. While there were not enough noise making roles in this game, did you like the noise concept in general? Would you like to see similar concepts in future games?
2. What did you think of some of the new roles? Were they good additions, and if not, how could they be changed?
3. I had a rough idea of giving dead players abilities to still interact with the game to a lesser degree (but usually not chat). Assuming you die early, would you like such an addition or rather stay out of the game entirely / just watch?
4. Are there any rules that are more harmful than beneficial? Especially, what is your stance on allowing the chat, assuming the blab mafia chat works?

1. This mechanic should be a tertiary thing rather than something primary or secondary. Having no more than 3 sound-based roles should be fine.
2. See my spoilers above. I think more roles should be added that are independently useful.
3. As long as it's a targeting mechanic instead of allowing the deads to communicate, and as long as it's perfectly balanced, I'm okay with it.
4. I have complaints about a few changes.

My biggest problem was that Limited Use (1U/2U) abilities were not refunded upon failure. It also bugs me that this is nowhere stated in the rules, only in a hard-to-find post. This is the opposite of how things have been, but Ginyu was acting like he's continuing a trend. Ginyu did not respond to my message when I said he's wrong about this, so I hope he addresses this before his next game.

The encryption rule did not draw a clear line, and when it almost did, the line was set too high. The problem is that breadcrumbing is allowed, but breadcrumbing is essentially encryption. The method of breadcrumbing can differ from horizontal, vertical and sporadic, but then grid breadcrumbing should be allowed too. What people wanted to be banned was hiding information with tools rather than text, but only some tools and not all (spoiler should be fine, even though it's also a tool that hides information. Table should also be fine, as it does not hide information).

"The Day will not end until both the timer has ended and 5 minutes have passed since the last vote. If any sort of endless voting loop occurs that affects the lynch, there will be No Lynch. The day will be ended at the host's discretion if there is any vote swapping trolling/juggling. In any way, 30 minutes past the regular deadline will always be final." - This is a mix between having a hammer and not having a hammer. Compared to this rule, I prefer an instant hammer right on the deadline.

I also didn't like that Security Guard lost the ability to learn the names of the blocked abilities, compared to Warden.

Interesting notes:

• Noone was mislynched. Only Nightkills and Modkills killed Town members.
• A No Lynch happened with zero Mafia involvement (and it was arguably the right choice).
• No sound was made.
• Noone's ability failed. (Even the Mafia warden knew not to block anyone.)