Common Problems in Mafia Games

History

Original Publication: February 6, 2013 by Mastin2.

The original article can be found here.

Purpose Of This Article

I'm writing this to address some of the issues which I see increasingly often appearing in games, in a single topic to help highlight them and offer solutions. Though all of these seem like common sense, they are increasingly ignored.

Boiled Down

1. Be succinct.

2. Occam's Razor.

3. You're not a scumhunting god.

4. Be cool.

5. Be charismatic.

Keep Things Simple

You want your posts to be concise. Cut out anything not relevant to your post. If it's not important, don't mention it; write yourself a note. Try to cut out as many words as you can, and limit redundancy.

Good practice for this is to write a long case, create a summary, and delete (not spoiler--delete!) everything except for the summary. (Summarizing the summary provides further practice.)

It also helps to keep the purpose of your post in mind--have a central focus point to unify the post.

Stream of conscious posts are not exempt from this--they benefit more than any other from it. Minds naturally take shortcuts and exclude words; including them slows you down and adds unnecessary fluff.

This rule extends to setups and player interactions under the name "occam's razor". The simplest answer may not *always* be the correct one, but it is often right.

Reads to Fit Evidence, not evidence to reads

Too often, we grow attached to a read we should let go of, morphing facts. We can--and will--be wrong; nobody's a scumhunting god. Don't be afraid to admit it, either--you'll lose far less credibility if you say, "yeah, I was wrong" compared to if you try defending your read/action.

Socialize

Be friendly/polite, and see things from the other point of view. Though this slightly conflicts with being concise, knowing when to be direct and when to be indirect can make all the difference. Often, Bluntly saying "you're scum" doesn't work as well as "I'm confident you're scum for this," and presenting it.

Strong-arm Arrogance works really well short-term, but it's self-destructive in the long-term; you need to negotiate/persuade, not threaten and force.

Closing

This post is my attempt to best demonstrate these aspects.