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Charisma and Mafia
[ Originally posted to Mafia Discussion 07/02/2018 by Firebringer: link ]
[ This Article has been reformatted and merged with other writings by the author. It may be incomplete. ]
General Topics on Charisma
1) Knowing what people want:
- This is a quality any good leader needs to understand, if you examine any person who has moved you to act in a certain way they had to understand what you specifically want and tailor their message to your demographic in order to effectively sway you to their side.
- In mafia, its not different.
- Everyone has a win condition, and its easy to say "Both our goals are to eliminate scum, join me on this wagon because it will lead to you furthering your win condition" in practice, that is rarely enough to actually push people to act with you.
2) Understand what people value:
- This means you need to understand not just what a person wants in terms of who they want to lynch, but WHY they want that. What does the person your trying to convince think is the determining factors whether a person isn't aligned with you? Tailor your message to hit those points. Maybe someone reads players by VCA, somehow try to frame your reasoning using that to express why they should be joining you to lynch who you believe is not aligned with you.
3) Mimicry:
- People tend to agree with people who behave as they would. This could mean posting style, word choice or just voting pattern. The key here is you can use those to try to target a person and talk as they would talk, and behave as they would, they will be far more receptive to your attempts at persuasion.
4) Confidence:
- This is an obvious one, but people will gravitate to players who exude confidence, the key here I believe is that you should never FAKE confidence. That will cause you more problems because people will pick up on you faking it when you start showing cracks in your facade. You should be honest about what you are confident on and what you aren't, and yes that sometimes means people will not be swayed by your arguments, but people will believe you more when you say you are confident on something if you have a history of being upfront with people on what you are and aren't sure of. Lying about your confidence will only hurt you in the long term, it will lead to blind arrogance and people thinking you are full of it (which honestly you will be if you have been faking it).
5) Affirm Others:
- Do not outright dismiss anyones argument even if you 100% disagree with them on every level. Talk to them, say why you think they are right but also affirm them of something that you do agree with. Perhaps you like the way they came to conclusion but you don't agree at all with that conclusion. Or you think they are right but they missed some steps logically, a charismatic individual will give credit to a person when they do something right and point out in a nice way where they may have messed up.
6) Don't try to win them all:
- You will not win everyone to your side. Don't attempt it. If one player hates VCA and you push an argument using VCA you may alienate another player while you tried to persuade another. You should try to keep your message in a way that convinces the most people you think you will need without trying to convince everyone. This can be hard, but some people will just disagree with you no matter what. Even if you frame it in the way that is convincing to them if you made another argument they don't value they may see both arguments as invalid.
7) Repeat Yourself:
- You think you made an excellent case why X is scum? Great! But it will get lost in the noise. You have to repeat the message constantly, so it sticks in peoples minds. I would recommend never Copy and Pasting the same post because people will think you are just spamming and being a nuisance, always try to find a way to rephrase your message but keeping the heart of it intact. Maybe the way you said your case the first time just didn't have the right wording and the second time will broaden your reach to players who didn't agree with the way you said it the first time.
Writings on Wall posts
Anyone who has played with me, or knows my style, knows that I dislike people who only post walls. Truth be told I also don't like when people ONLY post short posts too. Their is a time and place though for both of these post types in a mafia game and theirs a reason why I prefer to do shorter posts versus longer posts. I will go into basics of why you would make each post and how they should be formatted, then I will try laying out the advantages and disadvantages of each and when and where you should do them.
Lets start with Walls. Wall posts are great! That is, if you are trying to make a specific point and want people to agree with that point. A wall you can think of as a speech. When you write out or make a speech to someone you want to ensure first of all that YOU KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. That means first and foremost, this is a game that people play for entertainment, there are people who enjoy reading games but most people are playing for amusement, KEEP YOUR WALLS TO A REASONABLE LENGTH, for mafia game Id say 3-5 paragraphs of about 5 sentences each. The longer a wall is, the more likely it will be skipped. Especially if you don't follow the second rule of speech making: capturing and maintaining your audience. So many people will make out a beautiful wall with so much information, but they fail at the first thing that you need to captivate the audience and hold their attention. You can do this a number of ways, but i will save that for another topic. The third thing you need to do is make sure your wall has a flow to it and isn't disorganized. One of the saddest things to see is someone who makes a wall that could have been great if they just properly put everything in the right place and it didn't go into twenty different directions, if you have a lot to say try to connect everything together in a condensed fashion and if you think something doesn't serve a greater purpose, cut it out of the wall! Fourth and final big thing for a wall is you should address any counter arguments preemptively, you will make yourself more persuasive if you engage this conversation now before someone has a chance to dismiss your argument. With that said, sometimes making points can be done in a shorter style so lets move to short posts.
Short posts are the best. Say what you want in a short precise manner without over-explaining and boring your audience to death. A short post is usually a paragraph at most, maybe two if you want to stretch definition. That was complicated!
Since I am bad at flow, lets jump into advantages/disadvantages of walling/short.
Walls Pro:
- They are generally more persuasive than short posts.
- Contain lots of thoughts/ideas and information.
- Posts are often seen as professional and authoritative
Walls Con:
- They are less engaging than short posts.
- If done improperly can lead to information overload.
- Impersonal and robotic if you don't add a proper voice.
- Short attention spans means you have to really grab your audience attention to ensure the post is read.
Short Pro:
- They are generally more personal than wall posts.
- Feels more like a proper conversation between two or more people.
- Can be used to build a good rapport with a person.
Short Con
- Can lead to miscommunication when you keep the message too short.
- If done too much can be viewed as a person being unprofessional/lazy/etc.
- Spam can create too much noise that drowns out the game that can also make it so your posts AND others get ignored.
So when would you use either? As said earlier, a wall you want to use for when you are making a specific point. This should be done when their is really stuff you have to say, and you are trying to convince people you are right. You shouldn't write this post out with the expectation that someone gives a rebuttal, thats not the purpose. You write out a wall to make your points to convince others. A short post is what you should use for 90% of the time you are playing mafia. This is what you do to interact with others in a group setting or even when you try to talk to someone on a one on one setting. You just talk to them and ask them questions, building a rapport and having a dialogue that builds off one another. This is where you are trying to understand each other on a basic level when you don't already have that. If you are wall posting, you already should know who you can trust or not trust and are trying to convince whoever your audience is to vote for the people you aren't trusting. With a short post, you just want to see if you can trust them.
In the most basic way possible to sum up this point.
When you are wall posting, you are talking AT SOMEONE.
When you are short posting, you are talking WITH SOMEONE.
Confidence versus Arrogance
I talked about previously how being confident is a key to winning people over, people naturally gravitate towards confident people, their is exceptions to this and its when people are perceived as arrogant rather than confident.
So how do you distinguish between someone who is being confident or arrogant? Well the key is really a mindset.
Confident people can say what they say with CONVICTION. That means they know what they are saying is truth. They are aware of all the information, they can say with utmost certainty what they tell you is hard fact as much as they know they can say how many fingers on their hand is without looking. They know it, they believe in it, and they can explain it with such passion that you can't believe not to at least believe they really think what they say is true.
To contrast that with arrogance. Arrogance is the twin sister of confidence. While a confident person says things with conviction, a arrogant person might lack it. They will say they believe in something, but you can tell theirs cracks in the wall. They put up a facade, and that can make them harder to trust and harder to work with. People who are arrogant are perceived as such for two reasons.
If you are arrogant you are either ignorant or a liar. Neither of these are something you want to be. The liar is someone trying to be something they aren't in order to convince others to believe in them. The ignorant one is someone who is completely unaware of the pertaining information which disproves them and are usually unwilling to take that information in and accept it as truth.
So what can you do to not be seen as arrogant, and how do you become confident? Humility and Research. If you do the work for the game you are in, or anything really, you can find the knowledge necessary to not be seen as a idiot or in over your head. That means reading, possibly re-reading, and making sure you are reading very closely. The humility comes in when you admit what you don't know and are willing to work with those who do have more information. Don't disregard someone's experience with another person. Listen to them, and communicate with them. Ignoring others experiences/input can make you seem arrogant to others.
Likability
The keys to being likable are connected with a few things, but the core of likability has to do with one person being able to see another other as a friend, family member, someone they can relate to. The most likable people in the world are the ones that you feel a connection too and have an understanding and positive uplifting spirit that you can walk away from.
So, starting with basic idea of reliability and projecting your humanity, how do you present that in a game like mafia?
Reliability is paramount for getting someone to see through your eyes and for you to see through their eyes. The idea being that if you can relate to another’s experiences/thoughts/idea you will make it easier for yourself to both read that player and get that player to understand and listen to you. The ways to do this is to first start at what you have in common. Ask them questions first, this can be anything. My favorite questions to ask someone is things going on in real life at the time, this first creates a topic that interests me because I like getting to know people and real life is easy branching point to seeing the person behind the screen, and then relating to them with any experience they may be having and empathizing. So, for example, you may have someone who is having a really horrible day and is just taking it out in your game and you can just ask them, “hey, is everything going alright in rl?”. Maybe they don’t want to talk about it but you can shift and talk about how that you are open to talk or say something about how you feel similar with frustration in some regard, continue on that conversation if they open up to being able to understand their POV. I can’t state enough how understanding someone elses point of view is CRITICAL. Taking an interest in others and trying to really get them will go a long way when they are trying to read or understand you.
Reliability can go further than just taking an interest in a person, because sometimes as stated before, the person just doesn’t want to get personal in the game. So, to bridge that gap, you may have to talk about other topics that you can mutually talk about that is interesting to both of you. Maybe you had a past game that you could talk about, maybe you both have anime avatars and you two can talk about that, maybe they mentioned a movie and you can talk about that a lot of posts contain something where you can see a new place to take the conversation. This is great for starting and building a good rapport and maybe allowing you to engage in some banter. (both topics to be covered another time).
This can be hard for a lot of players, because they feel its offtopic and unrelated to the game, and yeah they are a bit. However, building these interactions and forming bonds with players is a key part of games. Too many players get focused in the game on just the central point of it all when that isn’t how life and people work. Games can be EXCRUCIATING. You may never want to open the thread and yet you do and you continue on, why continue playing a game that is unpleasant? Why not turn it enjoyable? Is a conversation unpleasant? Shift it. In the immortal words of Don Draper “if you don’t like what is being said, change the conversation”. A likable person doesn’t change the conversation to avoid criticism, questions, or heat. They change the conversation because the tone of the game has shifted away from being fun and playful to heavy and dreary. A lighthearted person who can play the game but not in a serious fashion can be a powerful thing that motivates others and turns a game that is annoying/depressing/frustrating into an enjoyable experience. Mafia can be a fun experience when you realize the absurdity in it, and when you embrace it but not treat it as though its life or death, when you can scumhunt without being negative, when you can enjoy the small things in the game like a particular post without making someone feel like shit for posting it, or just enjoy the enjoyable aspects of the game.
Some people to be likable will go out of their way to compliment and be cheerful, while this is generally good it can lead to problems. Some people will see you as fake if you are always positive, or they will see you as a kiss ass if you are just always complimenting. This is where you should be more genuine in what you say, don’t compliment people just to say it, say what you think. The more genuine it is, the better it will be. This is a change in mindset that might be difficult to achieve and this is why I always suggest trying to post in mafia when you are in a good state to be playing.
Don't go in the opposite way either, don't blow up and start going ballistic in a game to express how you feel. Find a different outlet then the game to get your feelings out, but don't hide it from the game either. Tell everyone you are upset, explain why you are upset, in a controlled fashion. You want to make sure people see you as human not a crazy person.
In summary of all this, you want to make sure when you are presenting yourself and trying to make yourself likable that you present yourself as a person that is real, and that you are positive in general. This can be a balancing act as sometimes you may supplant realness to be a bit more positive but still letting people know that you aren't up to par, at other times you may very negative just to show people that their is someone behind the screen. The approach and balance you might have to find on your own. Just remember to think of others and try to add to the game and make it enjoyable for others and yourself and you will win hearts and minds.