Friday, January 29, 2010

Proposal: Because Mafia is less fun over a period of two months

Self-killed. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 30 Jan 2010 11:43:12 UTC

Add a new rule, entitled ‘Late arrivals’, containing the text:

As a weekly action, any Guest who is Dead or Arrested may make a blog post announcing that they are playing a late arrival. They must then set all their statistics in the GNDT to those of a new Guest. Their former Role is no longer considered to be taken by a Guest per Rule 2.7, if the Guest was a Murderer or a Detective then they are no longer a Murderer or Detective with respect to Rule 2.4 paragraph 2, and they are treated for all purposes of any Dynastic Rules as if they just unidled, with the following exceptions:

  • The rule ‘Silence’ applies to them with regard to any information learned before they made their Late Arrival post.
  • The Spiritualist’s ability applies to them as to any other Dead Guest. The above restriction does not apply to this ability.

If the proposal ‘Rest in Peace’ failed, then remove the first item in the list and the second sentence of the second item in the list.

Replace the text ‘If the Spiritualist is in a room with a dead Guest and the lights are out, the Spiritualist may, once every 96 hours, notify the Executor that the Spiritualist is conducting a seance’ with ‘The Spiritualist may, at most once every 96 hours, notify the Executor that they are conducting a seance and give the name of a dead Guest’.

An attempt at coming back to life, with minimal breakage. Sort of breaks the Mafia theme, but as the title points out, Mafia, with its permanent-real-death as a game mechanic, is less fun when there’s only one game that lasts two months. I attempted to avoid breaking the other rules or providing any loopholes; the idea is that the ‘old’ persona remains intact, at least as much as a permanently-Dormant Guest has a persona, and the person who reincarnates simply starts playing a new one as well. If anyone has any specific problems with this, then please let me know and I will repropose.

posted by alethiophile at 29 Jan 2010 00:37:11 UTC Comments (24)

Comments

redtara: they/them

29-01-2010 01:08:36 UTC

for The one thing I can see is that the information they previously learned is available to them, but not to anyone else.

Doing it any other way makes no sense, though.

Ornithopter:

29-01-2010 01:12:20 UTC

for
Yeah, I noticed that too, but there’s no way around it unless we want to try and enforce mandatory roleplaying. Anyone wanna place bets on how long it would take to anti-quorum that proposal?

Klisz:

29-01-2010 01:18:45 UTC

for

Ornithopter:

29-01-2010 01:21:59 UTC

imperial CoV
Other issues:
1. This could be advantageous to the killed player, since you get a new, random degree of relation.
2. The ability to pick a new role could also be advantageous.
3. Opens the door to have Murderers and Detectives (the roles, not the Guests fulfilling those roles) impossible to get rid of, since there would be less than two Murderers as soon as a dead/arrested Murderer became a late arrival, meaning Kevan would be allowed (but not forced) to pick a new murderer. This may be a feature and not a bug, and since the Ruleset says “may” instead of “shall” Kevan could fix it by not appointing new ones, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Ornithopter:

29-01-2010 01:24:11 UTC

Wait, do they keep the same degree of relation? What does “they are treated for all purposes of any Dynastic Rules as if they just unidled” mean, exactly?

My other two points hold up.

Greytyphoon:

29-01-2010 02:28:33 UTC

against It would lead to farming deaths and late arrivals to get the best Relationship degree possible.

tecslicer:

29-01-2010 02:46:46 UTC

@Grey: But only if we knew what our relation was. against

Ornithopter:

29-01-2010 03:02:14 UTC

against  against  against CoV
“If the Guest was a Murderer or a Detective then they are no longer a Murderer or Detective with respect to Rule 2.4 paragraph 2”

Rule 2.4, paragraph 2:
If there are ever fewer than two Murderers or fewer than two Detectives, the Executor may privately select a random player (from those who are neither Murderers nor Detectives) and privately email them with an offer to make them into a Murderer or a Detective respectively. If they accept, and if the Executor honours their acceptance, then they become a Murderer or Detective as appropriate.

So, if a Murderer gets killed, there is now only one Murderer according to the cited paragraph and another can be appointed, *but* the late arrival is still a Murderer for the purposes of the entire rest of the Ruleset, including the bit that lets them kill people. There are now 3 Murderers.

redtara: they/them

29-01-2010 03:18:39 UTC

against per Orn but strongly in favour of a reproposal.

Wakukee:

29-01-2010 03:19:27 UTC

against

Wakukee:

29-01-2010 03:22:35 UTC

Also, the only apparent way to win this dynasty is to be the last man standing. So bring back the dead so easily makes the game unwinnable.

Thrawn:

29-01-2010 03:28:45 UTC

against
I agree with Ornithopter and Ienpw, that’s a pretty big bug.

alethiophile:

29-01-2010 03:44:34 UTC

Right. Sorry about that; I’ll repropose. S/k.  against

@Wakukee: I think that doing a last-man-standing dynasty over a period of two months is just not fun. I would be in favor of some other reasonable win condition.

alethiophile:

29-01-2010 03:49:26 UTC

I wonder…rather than big complicated lists of effects, would it work just to say ‘the effect of this action is identical to that of the Guest idling and immediately unidling’?

Ornithopter:

29-01-2010 04:11:22 UTC

There aren’t any effects to that.

digibomber:

29-01-2010 05:57:19 UTC

against

Kevan: he/him

29-01-2010 10:23:27 UTC

If dead players can stand back up in a new hat ten minutes later, it makes the work of the murderers a little unclear. Returning players should possibly be ineligible for the victory condition (or at least heavily restricted, maybe having their degree of relation bumped up by a thousand), so that the murderers can focus on only killing the first-generation players.

Kevan: he/him

29-01-2010 10:25:15 UTC

(In terms of slow Mafia being fun, the Werewolf Dynasty played out over a month, with dead players only being able to spy on werewolves and communicate through seances, and it turned out okay.)

redtara: they/them

29-01-2010 11:47:41 UTC

I don’t like the idea of being dead for a month. While I don’t disagree that it should be harder to win, I think being bumped up by a few hundred would be better. At least it’s not impossible, then.

Kevan: he/him

29-01-2010 12:08:27 UTC

That would mean that a Murderer with a degree of relation of 999 had to kill everyone two or three times before claiming an “I am next in line” victory, which seems a little tough.

(I think even with +1000 it’d be tough for the Murderers to get there without drawing too much attention to themselves; as soon as there were only three or four of the original guests left, the late arrivals could just Crisis them all to death on the basis that there must be some murderers in there. I don’t know if late arrivals should be exempt from voting on Crises, for just that reason.)

spikebrennan:

29-01-2010 14:22:16 UTC

against

redtara: they/them

29-01-2010 16:54:47 UTC

@kevan: No they should not. It’ll be hard enough for them to win as it is.

Oze:

29-01-2010 17:21:32 UTC

against

NonnoNaz:

30-01-2010 17:45:16 UTC

In this way, I fear we create another informed minority in a game dynasty based on a battle between an informed minority and an uninformed majority.
So, my vote is against