I'm reviving this topic, because i found a new problem with Mafia games. After talking to some people around, it seems it became a trend that players lose interest halfway during the game. I really wished that this had a solution, because the people who host these games wait long months even to be able to host. But if the players lose interest midway, the whole waiting will become pointless. :/
If you can relate to this, please help figure this out. What made you lose interest? What would make you be interested again? Some of my ideas are:
| Problems | Possible solutions |
| The waiting between two phases is so long, that players get bored after a while. | Shorter day and night phases.
Punctuality. |
| There's no reason to even try, the enemy already won, our faction can only win if we get extremely lucky. | When creating the rules, make sure that you don't give early win conditions to any team.
Make abilities less powerful as the game advances. |
| I can't do anything to even affect the outcome, i don't even have a useful role. | Try making every role powerful without depending on others. (this was never done before) |
| I'm doing my best to win, but my teammates are inactive / illogical / throwing the game / killing each other on purpose / etc. | If this happens, the others already lost interest. This has no real solution yet, thus why i'm trying to solve it.
I really got nothing here. :/ |
| People are not discussing anything in the game thread. They make their own alliances and communicate in chat / PMs / private pads / etc. This makes me feel exiled / untrusted. | It would be nice if people discussed in the game thread more, but that is very dangerous if you're being too useful, because you risk being killed next night. A solution would be if all players became suddenly useful, but that doesn't have a possible reach.
A solution that seemed to work every time was giving the players a small, but reliable alliance to begin with. Everything becomes brighter when you have a trusty sidekick.  |
| I'm gonna die, just because a player ordered others to throw votes at me! | In case there are too much votes on someone, it's barely possible to make the majority change in time, so maybe implement a vote limit.
If you're rightfully suspected, you cannot really do anything. If all else fails, you can always try the Cute Fuzzy Kitten Defense.
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| I'm always the first to be killed in any mafias. Why should i even start playing? | One possible solution can be found in the OP, under point 5: Stereotypical Behaviour.
Try to play differently than usually. Go out of your usual way, do something new. Even if your usual tactics are perfect, don't use them. That is why you die, just play a bit less effectively on purpose. If you do so, make sure that you announce it. The more people do this, the merrier. Constantly refer back to this and the people will then remember. Warning: If you start using this strategy when you're actually mafia, you'll probably won't be trusted in any of your future games.
Examples of new behaviour: play blindly, take bold risks, show people some humor so you will be worth keeping alive, role-play for fun and stay in character, make funny overreactions, etc. |
Of course, these are only my opinions. ^^" I'm interested in other people's opinions not only about the problem in question, but also about my opinions.
