User:Toomai/IRC Mafia

I run a Mafia game on IRC sometimes (i.e. apparently once a week).

Setup

1. I post here and/or on IRC when the game will be played.
2. I open ##sw-game and invite in players. Spectating is allowed, you should let me know whether you're playing or spectating. Don't enter before I do, or things can't run properly.
3. Once it's been determined who's playing, I use random.org to determine who gets what role and tell each player in private message what they are.
4. I create ##sw-game-badguys (or similar) as a location for the bad guys to discuss their nefarious deeds.
5. To begin the game, I mute the channel and give voice to all players. This prevents spectators and dead players from interfering (players have voice removed on death).
6. The game starts running.
   1. Night occurs; the bad team discusses in ##sw-game-badguys who to kill and whatever else takes place during the night happens through PM with me.
   2. Day occurs; whoever's left has a big-o discussion/vote on who to lynch. "No lynch" is a valid vote and has strategic value in some situations.
   3. Repeat until either all the bad guys are dead or the bad guys outnumber (or tie) the good guys (or nothing can prevent this).

Rules

• The game always starts at night (unless we have six players with two mafia, or some other setup where I think a head start is unfair), but kills cannot be made. This gives investigative roles a head start while removing the non-fun of being killed before the game properly begins.
• Players' roles are revealed on death.
• Players may not PM each other.
• Dead players (and spectators) will be sent an invite to a channel such as ##sw-game-dead where they can "bah" and compare notes with other dead players; dead players should keep all game talk in there and not in other channels (such as #sw).
• Players can say pretty much whatever they want, including claiming what role they are. They may not post quotes (whether real or faked) from any mod PMs or private channels, but paraphrasing is okay. Claiming to have contact with the mod for night actions is not - you can say you intend to target X, but you can't say you told the mod to target X.
• Players that leave the game will be given three to five minutes to return, depending on the circumstances. Players who do not return are either replaced by spectators or modkilled as "abandoned the game".
• Those who break the rules will be terminated with extreme prejudice. The consequences of being "modkilled" will generally be tailored in order to have the worst effect on the player's team; in general, modkilling a good guy will end the day so an attempt at getting baddies cannot be made, while modkilling a bad guy will keep the day going to give the town a chance to get another. In addition, those who are modkilled will have their role changed to Neutral Survivor, and so are not eligible to win the game in any way (as Survivor only wins when alive at the game's conclusion).

Roles

Before each game, it may be made public what roles are in the game ("open" setup). If not, one can assume that any role listed below may be present ("closed" setup). If something not listed below is present, I will say something akin to "there is a new, secret role in the game", and once the game is over it will be added to the list.

The following roles have been used in the past:

• Vanilla Townie Regular townsfolk, no powers other than voting.
• Mafia Goon Regular bad guy. During night, meets in the bad guy channel and pick a player to kill. Decision must be unanimous. They must also pick which player will be the one to actually perform the kill.
• Bomb If killed (not lynched), the killer dies as well.
• Cop During night, tells the mod who they want to investigate. The mod tells them whether the target is "innocent" or "guilty". Note that this is not necessarily equivalent to being told "town" or "Mafia".
  • Warning: Cops are most commonly Sane (see modifiers below), but if you are told you are a Cop and not explicitly told "you are sane", be warned that you may not be sane.
• Doctor During night, picks a player other than himself to protect. That player is immune to being killed once that night.
• Encryptor Allows its affiliated group (typically Mafia) to daytalk as long at it's alive.
• Flavour Cop During night, picks a player to investigate. He learns something about that player's role depending on the game's theme.
  • Gunsmith The most common form of Flavour Cop. He learns whether his target has a gun. All Mafia members that can perform the nightly kill have a gun, in addition to Cops, Vigilantes, and other Gunsmiths.
• Godfather A Mafioso that returns "innocent" when investigated by Cops.
• Innocent Child A Townie that is explicitly confirmed as town by the mod. There are a few variations as to when this reveal takes place, with the most common ones being:
  • Confirmed at game start.
  • Confirmed at a certain predefined point (such as on day 3, or the first time one vote away from lynch).
  • Confirmed at will (that is, whenever the player wants to).
• Jailkeeper During night, picks a player to jail. This player is immune to being killed that night but is also blocked from using their active abilities. Essentially a combination of Doctor and Roleblocker. Unlike Doctor, it protects from all kill attempts and not just one.
• Miller Aligned with the Town, but investigates as "guilty" to Cops.
• Ninja Does not show up to Trackers or Watchers.
• Roleblocker Targets someone at night. They become unable to use their active abilities. The target will not be told their ability failed unless they are expecting a result, in which case it will be "No result".
• Serial Killer Third-party role that wins when it's the last player alive (or nothing can prevent this). Must kill a target every night. Also, every night it can choose whether to be night-kill-proof or investigation-proof.
• Strongman Kills made by a Strongman will pierce attempts to protect the target. Doesn't help if the killer is roleblocked or if the victim is untargettable.
• Tracker During night, picks a player to track. If that player uses an active ability of theirs, the Tracker is informed of who they targeted (but not what they did). Players that did nothing or got blocked return a result akin to "Did not visit anyone".
• Traitor In short: "bad Townie". The Traitor knows who the Mafia are and wins when they win (it does not count as Mafia for outnumbering the Town to end the game). The Mafia knows there is a Traitor, but not who he is. Attempting to night-kill the Traitor instead recruits the Traitor into a full member. Seen as innocent by Cops (until recruited).
• Vigilante Town-aligned player that can night kill. Typically limited to once per game but doesn't have to be.
• Watcher During night, picks a player to watch. If that player is targeted by any other players, the Watcher is informed of who they are (but not what they did).

Modifiers

The following modifiers have been used in the past:

• Bulletproof Cannot be killed at night by the Mafia or similar. Typically a 1-Shot, but can feasibly be 2 or even 3. Used automatically and informs the user when it activates. In theme games, be warned that this may imply immunity only to a specific type of kill.
• Even-Night/Odd-Night Restricts a role to only working on even (0, 2, 4...) or odd (1, 3, 5...) nights.
• Macho Renders a role unable to be protected. For example, a Doctor can target a Macho Cop, but it won't do anything.

In addition to the above global modifiers, there are certain role-specific modifiers:

• Cop
  • Sane Explicitly gets correct results. If a Cop is not told that he's Sane, he should be aware that he may not be.
  • Insane Gets his results backwards: innocents are reported as guilty and vice versa.
  • Naive Always gets an "innocent" result regardless of who he investigates.
  • Paranoid Always gets a "guilty" result regardless of who he investigates.
  • Random Gets a random result regardless of who he investigates (50/50). Because this role is considered cheap, it will only appear in specific sets.
• Doctor
  • CPR If a CPR Doctor's protection was not necessary (i.e. no one tried to kill the patient), he kills the patient. Very unlikely to be seen outside specific sets.

Order of action resolution

This is the order in which actions get carried out during the night. All actions of a single type are executed simultaneously, so players A and B can kill each other or block each other; in the results they are listed in the order Town-Mafia-Other (and with further ties, alphabetically). Even if a kill resolves before another action, whoever is killed still has their action resolve (so a killed Tracker who tracks his killer will be told that the killer visited him).

1. Jail, Block
2. Protect
3. Investigate
4. Other
5. Kill
6. Track, Watch

Important notes/advice

• If you get a role that you don't understand, go ahead and ask questions to me in the role PM.
• I will never lie to players about their roles or actions, but I may omit information. For example, if I say you are a Cop, then you are a Cop. But I may not tell you that you are a Paranoid Cop and therefore your investigation results are mostly garbage. (Cops are the most likely for this kind of thing to occur.)
  • That said, however, I will always at the very least state at the start of the game "There is something new in this game". After the game the new element will be added to the above section, and I will not warn of the possibility of that element again.
• Voting for "no lynch" seems pointless. But in some situations, it can turn a disparaging "mislynch and lose" situation into a still-dangerous-but-statistically-better "lynch to win, mislynch and lose" one. Note that outside of these situations a no lynch is generally bad for town, as while investigators will get an extra result, the only kill in that day/night cycle will be made by scum and therefore always bring them closer to winning.
  • Don't no lynch on day 1. It never helps.

Results

See here.

And maybe also here.

Minutiae

Sessions

Regular

Regular rounds are currently on hiatus for several reasons:

• My schedule as a whole is less predictable.
• The novelty's worn off, and not enough players are showing up. (That said I'm impressed it lasted almost a year.)
• MafiaBot has issues that need fixing.

I'm therefore taking a break from running rounds for a while. In the meantime I'll try and upgrade MafiaBot with some of the "future features" listed below, and use its new abilities to drum up interest again when it's finished.

Bots

MafiaBot is a division of XL (specifically, a division of the X part). It helps with running the day game by providing vote counts and ridiculing players that do silly things. The voting process is thus:

• !vote Name changes your vote to Name. There is a degree of fuzzy matching, so it's not the end of the world if you don't capitalize correctly or have a minor spelling error. Your vote will be counted if the bot can tell who you mean with more than 70% certainty - still, best to not test this if a lynch is close.
• !unvote deletes your vote; you are no longer voting for anyone. Note that once a player has a majority of votes, unvoting will not save them.
• !nolynch lets you vote for no lynch.
• !votecount or !vc displays a vote count.

Once a player has a majority of votes, they are automatically killed.

In addition to MafiaBot, we have Lumberjack (a division of the L part). Lumberjack records the logs of the rounds. If you want logs, see here. Note that I currently do not try exceptionally hard to clean them up.

Future features

Wishlist; may or may not be plausible.

• Less incentive for players to spam to get funny things.
• Automatic prods for inactive players.
• Automatic flips for killed players.
• Simultaneous action resolution with day start (e.g. so Cops that die can't spill their night's result by posting before they're -v'd.).
• Random setup generation.
• If the above can be completed, full automated moderation shouldn't be far away. This would however make themed setups much more difficult.

Participation

1. Be in the game channel about ten minutes before planned game start.
2. When I call for the game to start, say !in if you want to play. I will assume you are spectating otherwise. You can cancel an !in with an !out; you are expected to do so if you're leaving.
3. You can change your name once you are in (or at least, that's the plan, untested code and all that), but you cannot once the game has started (design choice, minimizes player confusion).
4. Ensure you can commit at least an hour to the game before you !in. Repeat quitters risk being blacklisted. Having a chronically bad connection is not an excuse for flaking.
   • Be warned that game length is incredibly unpredictable, so the more time you set aside for it, the better. Leaving late in the game can be harder to fairly fix than leaving early if no replacements are available, and while you do have a valid excuse if the game has gone on an unusually long time, it's still bad.
5. While I can't reasonably enforce this, everyone would appreciate it if you paid attention to the game instead of trying to multitask and do something else. When it's night and you have no actions to utilize that's okay, but please don't treat this as just another window on your taskbar. Note that lurking is a "null action" at best and anti-Town at worst, so not participating much may get you lynched.