Thought I would contribute to this since I haven't even come close to hosting a phalla and I've been doing this for a little while now...
What are you contributing to? (choose one): Phalla Theory and Philosophy
Title of Book/Major to which you are contributing: Village Studies
Suggested Title of your Chapter/Class: The Basics of Being Special
Content:
The various village special roles are among the more difficult roles for a new player to approach effectively. As a mafia you'll generally have others who can help you figure out a good strategy. As a non-special villager you'll be mainly concerned with publicly available information, looking through the vote record and thread conversations to pick out mafia. As a neutral you'll generally be playing for yourself, perhaps with a small group. But the village specials are different. They are, in many ways, playing on behalf of the village as a whole, but without direct village input. I wouldn't claim to be an expert, and I'm certain others will pick up this line of thought and go more directly into power use as particular types of special villager, but I thought I'd share some ideas as to how a village special might play for those new to the hobby.
First though, a caveat: just because you have a power of some sort does not mean you are a special. Many games have either so many powers in play that yours is not particularly notable, or all villagers have some sort of minor power. This guide is intended for those who are playing as a somewhat major village special (a seer, a guard, vigilante, or the like). The general power level of a phalla can be hard to tell in the first day or so of a game, so play cautiously with a minor power, but if you establish that your power isn't all that valuable feel free to play more like a vanillager.
1) Use your power! This should be obvious, but put in orders every night you can. The game is generally balanced around the use of powers, and you can be sure the mafia will be using theirs. Try to figure out how to make your power impactful (don't waste a vig or seer on someone who's going to die by another cause, don't waste a guard on someone who will absolutely not get attacked), but at the same time don't let indecision or incomplete information keep you from using your power. Is there a solid chance you accidentally hurt the village with your power? Yeah sure! But you're far far more likely to hurt the village by not using it at all.
Another aspect of this point is that you should make use of the additional information that your power gives you. If you are a seer and you find out someone is a villager, talk to them. If you are a vigilante and your kill doesn't go through, you know that your target was guarded, you were roleblocked, etc. If you are a guard and you prevent a kill, you are the only person who knows what happened. You may or may not be in a position to directly act on that information, but you should certainly keep it in mind.
2) Play cool. Ideally you don't want to attract attention of any kind during the first couple of days, whether that means from the vote or from mafia action. This doesn't mean that you should sit around completely passively and barely participate if that's not your usual style. Generally speaking you should act exactly as you would as a villager. Some players may feel the need to moderate their style slightly so as to escape much notice, but being quiet can be as much of a "tell" as being loud. All players, however, must avoid giving the impression that they know more than a vanillager would. If you are the only player who knows about a blocked mafia kill, for example, and you talk a lot about the chance that a kill got blocked, the mafia could infer that you are the guard.
3) Guard your identity. The stronger your power, the more cautious you should be about revealing it, either publicly or via PM. If there is a publicly accepted network, by all means tell them everything you know, but otherwise be secretive. As the game progresses you may get to a point where you feel the need to reveal to someone, but consider carefully who you tell. If possible, have a backup plan in case your read is incorrect.
4) Don't get voted out. Getting killed by a vigilante/serial killer/mafia is unfortunate but can often be unavoidable. Getting voted out as an important special is far far worse. If you have time, consider speaking to some number of people on your vote wagon, asking them to change their vote. If you are pressed for time, reveal yourself to the thread. It is far better to force the mafia to take you out actively than to let them passively benefit from the vote going against you.
5) Keep playing the game. Remember that while you are a village special you are still a villager looking for mafia like everyone else. Don't get so bogged down in tactics (how do I make the best use of my power?) that you ignore strategy (who do I think is mafia?). The more complicated a game is, the more likely this becomes a concern.
6) Don't let information die. In phalla, the village starts with a numbers advantage and an information deficit. Your job is to maintain the former while eliminating the latter. Generally speaking, village specials are capable of gathering more reliable information than vanillagers. It is important that the village as a whole benefits from this ability. Try to make sure that any information you gather is still available to the village after your elimination. Obviously you can't simply post everything in the thread unless you are absolutely certain to die, but finding someone trustworthy to share your info with can be invaluable.
7) Don't stress out. Yeah, you have an important role, but it's an important role in a silly game on an internet chat board. Have fun with it!
Oh sure, tell people that they shouldn't say they're a special in PMs right after I advised mafia to go fishing for specials in PMs. Coincidence? I think not!
Why should the vig use their power?
Short of confirming their identity to the network, or working in conjunction with the seer or a list of mafia to scrub the village clean, it seems like all the vig does is hurt the village by shortening the game.
It just seems to me that a vig killing without any access to information is a liability.
Any chance I can request that we point out knowledge lasers at faction phallas for a bit, if people have thoughts?
Or is that not what the thread's for?
This actually is a good place for that, from my understanding! There's also an official way to request information like that from the OP, which Obi will presumably use to compile a list of the requests so people who feel confident can tackle them without actually needing to keep a close eye on the thread.
Why should the vig use their power?
Short of confirming their identity to the network, or working in conjunction with the seer or a list of mafia to scrub the village clean, it seems like all the vig does is hurt the village by shortening the game.
It just seems to me that a vig killing without any access to information is a liability.
The vig should almost always use their power. I don't ever explain it well, so...
Type(s) of Information Needed (Choose one or more): Facts Suggested Title of the Book/Major (will be used if an original request): To Vig or Not To Vig? Description of the Information Requested: A solid explanation of why vigs should use their ability, even if they are likely to hit villagers. Numbers and such to make it not an opinion are preferable.
Any chance I can request that we point out knowledge lasers at faction phallas for a bit, if people have thoughts?
Or is that not what the thread's for?
Check out the OP and fill out a REQUEST for information on this topic. That will create a section in the OP for it and mark it red so people know we need some info on the subject.
AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
edited July 2014
Type(s) of Information Needed: Historical | Concrete Data| Opinions | Ideas |
Suggested Title of the Book/Major: Faction Phalla Design / Non-Standard Phalla Types
Description of the Information Requested: Evaluation and discussion of past faction phallas; opinions and ideas regarding the design of roles for inclusion in same; faction distributions; feasibility based on number of sign-ups.
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ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
Why should the vig use their power?
Short of confirming their identity to the network, or working in conjunction with the seer or a list of mafia to scrub the village clean, it seems like all the vig does is hurt the village by shortening the game.
It just seems to me that a vig killing without any access to information is a liability.
The vig should almost always use their power. I don't ever explain it well, so...
Type(s) of Information Needed (Choose one or more): Facts Suggested Title of the Book/Major (will be used if an original request): To Vig or Not To Vig? Description of the Information Requested: A solid explanation of why vigs should use their ability, even if they are likely to hit villagers. Numbers and such to make it not an opinion are preferable.
Type(s) of Information Needed: Historical | Concrete Data| Opinions | Ideas |
Suggested Title of the Book/Major: Faction Phalla Design / Non-Standard Phalla Types
Description of the Information Requested: Evaluation and discussion of past faction phallas; opinions and ideas regarding the design of roles for inclusion in same; faction distributions; feasibility based on number of sign-ups.
REQUESTS ADDED to Library of Design and Mechanics and School of Design and Mechanics Engineering respectively
Sir FabulousMalevolent Squid GodRegistered Userregular
edited July 2014
What are you contributing to? (choose one): Major
Title of Book/Major to which you are contributing: Meta Sociology
Suggested Title of your Chapter/Class: The Role of the Seer
Content:
This is a subjective piece about the purpose of Seers in the game and your opinion may well differ, but hopefully it will help you if you're thinking about hosting a game and you want to mix things up a bit.
The Seer is the most valuable role in a vanilla game, wielding a power that is extremely useful in many ways.
As I'm sure many other topics will tell you, the whole game of Phalla revolves around the accumulation and analysis of data. The vote record, mafia-kill targets, everyday discussions and private PMs are all ways of accumulating data that can then be used to help you win. This is the core of the game.
The fun of the game comes from the fact that in order to obtain information, you must make sacrifices. You might accidentally vote off a village special, your kills are public so other people can try to figure out who would want someone dead, by PMing someone you run the risk of contacting an enemy. It's a high risk/high reward type of game, and many people get satisfaction by correctly balancing the risk and reward aspects of the game.
This is where Seers come in. Although Seers are not terrible things, they are holdovers from a different type of game and sometimes their inclusion can reduce the fun of the game.
Seers are a relic of when Phalla was a party game. When you sit down with friends, you want games to be relatively short and painless. You're obviously not playing for weeks, as you are on the forums. In this context, Seers make sense. They ensure the game runs smoothly and quickly so that nobody gets bored.
Online mafia is different. There are many things we do here that are simply not feasible in a real-world setting. It's a different game. We don't have to sit around with our eyes closed while other people act. We can check how things are going a few times a day over the course of a week.
In this game, Seers are not as necessary. Seers get the benefit of obtaining (presumably) completely accurate knowledge without any consequences. This can be unfun. Many players groan when a powerful village network starts to control the game, because it seems like the contribution of the average villager is meaningless, whether or not that's the case.
Because the Seer detracts from the core premise of the game, I posit that people think carefully about whether their game needs a Seer. If you're running a mostly vanilla game, I would hazard not.
In my next post I will provide some Seer variations that you might include in your game in order to add a bit of that risk/reward mechanic back into the equation.
That was very opinionated (literally using "I see..." "I think..." "I do not think..." many times) piece for being called "objective". Was that perhaps the wrong word by accident?
ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
And I had never thought about Seers working better in a party setting than our forum game situation. To me they have always felt like too much concentrated power to put onto a single player and agree with what you said about the role.
What are you contributing to? (choose one): School of Design and Mechanics Engineering
Title of Book/Major to which you are contributing: Non-Standard Phalla Types
Suggested Title of your Chapter/Class: Let's You and Him Fight: Designing for Faction Phallas.
First things first, designing a Faction Phalla is hard.
If you're just starting, I'd strongly recommend doing a traditional Mafia vs Village Phalla. Every aspect that you have to balance in a normal Phalla increases exponentially for each different faction you add.
So, that aside, let's go over some basics.
There are two types of faction phallas. Mafia vs. Village Factions games and Pure Faction games.
Mafia vs Faction games have the largest variance in how the game can go. If you get a bunch of peace loving hippies in charge of the Faction powers, the Mafia is probably going to get blown out of the water, while if the factions fight each other, then the mafia can just pick off the remnants. When designing, you need a compelling reason for factions to work together (this is generally the existence of the mafia) while also having a good reason to stab each other in the back (either have them have unrelated goals or completely contradictory ones.) The most frequent version of a contradictory goal is requiring one faction to have more members alive than the others at the end of the game.
Pure faction games are easier to balance, but they have their own problems in design. The simplest way to balance these is, of course, give every faction the same specials, numbers, etc. This works, strictly speaking, but without other mechanics, this leaves the villager members of each faction out in the cold. The only thing the villager has is the vote. There's no informed minority trying to hide among the village in a Pure Faction phalla. There's just specials of each faction plugging away at the other side. So, in many pure faction phallas, most votes are going to have little to no information behind them. The opposite of this is where each faction is completely masoned. Ironically, this also leads to the vote having little thought put into it, as people will often bandwagon on the first vote they see that doesn't have someone on their team.
So, what's a designer to do?
Here's a few general suggestions:
1. The vote is king. This should be true in all Phallas, but it can't be repeated enough. It shouldn't be guarded, busdriven, etc. The vote is the only way the villagers can meaningfully affect the game. Messing with it too much can really make villagers lose interest.
2. In a Mafia vs Faction phalla, make sure the mafia is able to pass as members of all factions. All Factions need to worry about infiltration from the mafia.
3. As above, in pure faction phallas, short of seering, members of each faction should be able to pass as members of other factions.
4. In a pure faction phalla, each faction should have at some of their numbers masoned. This allows for vote analysis and for villager intrigue. This is a good thing.
I wrote a monte carlo simulation for a game I am pretty close to finishing, and am tweaking parameters here and there. Since in my simulation targeting is done randomly (with things like making sure mafia don't target themselves etc.), what is a good starting part for mafia win %?
Edit: to further clarify, no specials have been added, and do we consider the strength that village gains through information collecting (their actions will not be that random on later days) to balance against mafia active subterfuge?
I'd say generally 50/50, with a slight advantage to the mafia being fine.
Now, when you say "No specials," does that include no vigs? Because adding more kills into the mix is going to really throw off your work, probably the point of making the original simulation useless.
I'd say generally 50/50, with a slight advantage to the mafia being fine.
Now, when you say "No specials," does that include no vigs? Because adding more kills into the mix is going to really throw off your work, probably the point of making the original simulation useless.
Vigs are included, and right now guards aren't in, but thats something i can marginally account for, but seers masons etc i dont have in at all.
AssuranIs swinging on the SpiralRegistered Userregular
What are you contributing to? (choose one): Phalla Theory and Philosophy
Title of Book/Major to which you are contributing: Creation of Phallas
Suggested Title of your Chapter/Class: Theme, IP, and Design: a discussion
Hello, my name is Assuran and today I’ll be talking about Theme in phalla and how it relates specifically to mechanics.
I want to establish a few ground rules:
1.) I’m not a crunch person. I ALWAYS ask for help when it comes to balancing the powers I create from someone who is better at that type of thing. It's important to know your strength and weaknesses when creating a Phalla.
2.) I’m talking mostly about using established IP and translating that into a Phalla. If you’re creating your own stuff, more power to you, but I’m not aiming this advice at you (although, I do hope it helps you as well).
With those ground rules set, let’s talk about using established IP in Phalla.
Using an established IP can be daunting in Phalla, but done well can introduce many players to your favorite IP and maybe create new fans of the IP (a win-win for everyone).
Obviously, the first thing most hosts start with is a theme (unless you’re testing a specific mechanic and base the theme around that mechanic). Theme is important for another reason: it sets the tone your Phalla will present to the players. Generally speaking, an IP will already have an established theme, so this is actually easier to figure out than creating a homebrewed material where you have to create your own in universe theme. For example, if you choose Star Wars as your theme, the players expect gonzo over the top space fantasy with western aspects (and the Force). If you choose a Dark Sun theme, the players know you are presenting a bleak situation where daily survival is a struggle. By crafting your narrations to fit those themes, it will help players visualize what it is your trying to get across and will hopefully draw the players further into the game.
I'm going to walk you through my thought process for choosing the IP and theme for my first faction game. I knew that I wanted to have a faction game and Vampire: The Masquerade is tailor made for that kind of game. V:TM also has multiple themes running throughout the game system and I choose to focus on the paranoia aspect V:TM as the main emphasis of my phalla because the IP's other main theme, slowly losing your humanity, does not translate well in a mafia style game. By focusing on the paranoia theme in the established IP, I knew that I could play up the paranoia them through a variety of measures and mechanics, including dividing the village into sub-factions based on the various Vampire Clans in game rivalry, introducing a cult and a mafia able to blend into the clans also found in game (though the mafia might argue this point to some valid degree), having independents with their own motives and flavors capable of working with any faction, and further sub-dividing the mafia into multiple factions in and of itself. I wanted an overwhelming sense of suspicion that required cooperation to accomplish your goals, but also left room for players to switch allegiances easily and frequently, thus fueling the paranoia even further and further showing how power politics in an immortal society would play out. I wanted the game to be very tense and exciting. From behind the scenes, everything was working as planned the first couple of days until the Immortal Prince Langly fiasco derailed it (note, it was not his fault).
The big picture of theme is the most important thing to nail, but it's also important to pull features of the IP you choose into your Phalla's mechanice so that the "feel" of the IP is easily identified to the players. The first thing a host should decide after selecting your theme is if you choose to be a traditional style Phalla or a battle/multiple power Phalla as you can flavor the individual roles to match the IP. Either decision is valid, so this is more of a personal choice. With Star Wars, I choose a traditional style Phalla setting where most villagers were either Senators for the Galactic Republic or Generic Jedi working for the Jedi Council while the specials were flavored so that they were the prominent characters from the setting. On the other hand, in Vampire, each player created his or her own character by selecting powers based on powers created in the original game itself. In Vampire I was able to maintain some balance by providing Clans to channel player abilities.
This brings me to an important point: "Borrow" liberally from the source material when creating mechanics. Sure, you want to make sure it's balanced and plays well in a Phalla, but the more flavor you can pack into the game, the more your players will wrap themselves into the game. Players are always excited when their favorite aspect of an IP is included, whether it's a minor B character you nail or a mechanic from the game you incorporate into the rules. On the other hand, if you can't figure out a way to incorporate a certain aspect of the IP into the game, don't be a slave to the system and include a broken or mangled version of it. For instance, I could not figure out a way to include duels into the Deadland game that felt right, so I left it out.
My final point is to pick a theme that you love yourself. Your players know if your bullshitting them and don't really know or understand the setting. You'll be putting many hours of your life into something, so make sure you enjoy your time.
I wrote a monte carlo simulation for a game I am pretty close to finishing, and am tweaking parameters here and there. Since in my simulation targeting is done randomly (with things like making sure mafia don't target themselves etc.), what is a good starting part for mafia win %?
Edit: to further clarify, no specials have been added, and do we consider the strength that village gains through information collecting (their actions will not be that random on later days) to balance against mafia active subterfuge?
Not taking into account information gathering is going to make the village much stronger than they should be if you balance it 50-50. Even just the fact that simulations don't pick up on behavior cues is going to make the village too strong.
Sc2 Mafia has a pretty nifty simulator. According to it, the standard newbie game here (vig, seer, guard, mason pair vs 4 player mafia with 20 players) the mafia wins 70% of the time, and that's with only 1 mafia kill (we typically give 2). Presumably that accounts for seer/mason networks and similar. It's important to note that this is for the live game, which doesn't have things like vig kill calling, etc. but I presume your simulation wouldn't either.
I wrote a monte carlo simulation for a game I am pretty close to finishing, and am tweaking parameters here and there. Since in my simulation targeting is done randomly (with things like making sure mafia don't target themselves etc.), what is a good starting part for mafia win %?
Edit: to further clarify, no specials have been added, and do we consider the strength that village gains through information collecting (their actions will not be that random on later days) to balance against mafia active subterfuge?
Not taking into account information gathering is going to make the village much stronger than they should be if you balance it 50-50. Even just the fact that simulations don't pick up on behavior cues is going to make the village too strong.
Sc2 Mafia has a pretty nifty simulator. According to it, the standard newbie game here (vig, seer, guard, mason pair vs 4 player mafia with 20 players) the mafia wins 70% of the time, and that's with only 1 mafia kill (we typically give 2). Presumably that accounts for seer/mason networks and similar. It's important to note that this is for the live game, which doesn't have things like vig kill calling, etc. but I presume your simulation wouldn't either.
Good stuff here, I'm glad I asked the question because that is a result I would not expect.
I wrote a monte carlo simulation for a game I am pretty close to finishing, and am tweaking parameters here and there. Since in my simulation targeting is done randomly (with things like making sure mafia don't target themselves etc.), what is a good starting part for mafia win %?
Edit: to further clarify, no specials have been added, and do we consider the strength that village gains through information collecting (their actions will not be that random on later days) to balance against mafia active subterfuge?
Not taking into account information gathering is going to make the village much stronger than they should be if you balance it 50-50. Even just the fact that simulations don't pick up on behavior cues is going to make the village too strong.
Sc2 Mafia has a pretty nifty simulator. According to it, the standard newbie game here (vig, seer, guard, mason pair vs 4 player mafia with 20 players) the mafia wins 70% of the time, and that's with only 1 mafia kill (we typically give 2). Presumably that accounts for seer/mason networks and similar. It's important to note that this is for the live game, which doesn't have things like vig kill calling, etc. but I presume your simulation wouldn't either.
In a standard game I think the mafia tends to win until the village figures out how to play better. Like In BSG the cylons tend to win the first few games the group plays, then it averages out a bit. Softnetworking isn't as popular as it once was these days, My last few games I've seen a lot less networking than a year ago or so.
Posts
What are you contributing to? (choose one): Phalla Theory and Philosophy
Title of Book/Major to which you are contributing: Village Studies
Suggested Title of your Chapter/Class: The Basics of Being Special
Content:
First though, a caveat: just because you have a power of some sort does not mean you are a special. Many games have either so many powers in play that yours is not particularly notable, or all villagers have some sort of minor power. This guide is intended for those who are playing as a somewhat major village special (a seer, a guard, vigilante, or the like). The general power level of a phalla can be hard to tell in the first day or so of a game, so play cautiously with a minor power, but if you establish that your power isn't all that valuable feel free to play more like a vanillager.
1) Use your power! This should be obvious, but put in orders every night you can. The game is generally balanced around the use of powers, and you can be sure the mafia will be using theirs. Try to figure out how to make your power impactful (don't waste a vig or seer on someone who's going to die by another cause, don't waste a guard on someone who will absolutely not get attacked), but at the same time don't let indecision or incomplete information keep you from using your power. Is there a solid chance you accidentally hurt the village with your power? Yeah sure! But you're far far more likely to hurt the village by not using it at all.
Another aspect of this point is that you should make use of the additional information that your power gives you. If you are a seer and you find out someone is a villager, talk to them. If you are a vigilante and your kill doesn't go through, you know that your target was guarded, you were roleblocked, etc. If you are a guard and you prevent a kill, you are the only person who knows what happened. You may or may not be in a position to directly act on that information, but you should certainly keep it in mind.
2) Play cool. Ideally you don't want to attract attention of any kind during the first couple of days, whether that means from the vote or from mafia action. This doesn't mean that you should sit around completely passively and barely participate if that's not your usual style. Generally speaking you should act exactly as you would as a villager. Some players may feel the need to moderate their style slightly so as to escape much notice, but being quiet can be as much of a "tell" as being loud. All players, however, must avoid giving the impression that they know more than a vanillager would. If you are the only player who knows about a blocked mafia kill, for example, and you talk a lot about the chance that a kill got blocked, the mafia could infer that you are the guard.
3) Guard your identity. The stronger your power, the more cautious you should be about revealing it, either publicly or via PM. If there is a publicly accepted network, by all means tell them everything you know, but otherwise be secretive. As the game progresses you may get to a point where you feel the need to reveal to someone, but consider carefully who you tell. If possible, have a backup plan in case your read is incorrect.
4) Don't get voted out. Getting killed by a vigilante/serial killer/mafia is unfortunate but can often be unavoidable. Getting voted out as an important special is far far worse. If you have time, consider speaking to some number of people on your vote wagon, asking them to change their vote. If you are pressed for time, reveal yourself to the thread. It is far better to force the mafia to take you out actively than to let them passively benefit from the vote going against you.
5) Keep playing the game. Remember that while you are a village special you are still a villager looking for mafia like everyone else. Don't get so bogged down in tactics (how do I make the best use of my power?) that you ignore strategy (who do I think is mafia?). The more complicated a game is, the more likely this becomes a concern.
6) Don't let information die. In phalla, the village starts with a numbers advantage and an information deficit. Your job is to maintain the former while eliminating the latter. Generally speaking, village specials are capable of gathering more reliable information than vanillagers. It is important that the village as a whole benefits from this ability. Try to make sure that any information you gather is still available to the village after your elimination. Obviously you can't simply post everything in the thread unless you are absolutely certain to die, but finding someone trustworthy to share your info with can be invaluable.
7) Don't stress out. Yeah, you have an important role, but it's an important role in a silly game on an internet chat board. Have fun with it!
Good guide though
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
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:P
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
Or is that not what the thread's for?
Short of confirming their identity to the network, or working in conjunction with the seer or a list of mafia to scrub the village clean, it seems like all the vig does is hurt the village by shortening the game.
It just seems to me that a vig killing without any access to information is a liability.
This actually is a good place for that, from my understanding! There's also an official way to request information like that from the OP, which Obi will presumably use to compile a list of the requests so people who feel confident can tackle them without actually needing to keep a close eye on the thread.
Like this maybe...
The vig should almost always use their power. I don't ever explain it well, so...
Type(s) of Information Needed (Choose one or more): Facts
Suggested Title of the Book/Major (will be used if an original request): To Vig or Not To Vig?
Description of the Information Requested: A solid explanation of why vigs should use their ability, even if they are likely to hit villagers. Numbers and such to make it not an opinion are preferable.
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
Check out the OP and fill out a REQUEST for information on this topic. That will create a section in the OP for it and mark it red so people know we need some info on the subject.
Thank you for helping build Phalla University!
Suggested Title of the Book/Major: Faction Phalla Design / Non-Standard Phalla Types
Description of the Information Requested: Evaluation and discussion of past faction phallas; opinions and ideas regarding the design of roles for inclusion in same; faction distributions; feasibility based on number of sign-ups.
REQUEST ADDED to the Library of Theory.
REQUESTS ADDED to Library of Design and Mechanics and School of Design and Mechanics Engineering respectively
Title of Book/Major to which you are contributing: Meta Sociology
Suggested Title of your Chapter/Class: The Role of the Seer
Content:
This is a subjective piece about the purpose of Seers in the game and your opinion may well differ, but hopefully it will help you if you're thinking about hosting a game and you want to mix things up a bit.
The Seer is the most valuable role in a vanilla game, wielding a power that is extremely useful in many ways.
As I'm sure many other topics will tell you, the whole game of Phalla revolves around the accumulation and analysis of data. The vote record, mafia-kill targets, everyday discussions and private PMs are all ways of accumulating data that can then be used to help you win. This is the core of the game.
The fun of the game comes from the fact that in order to obtain information, you must make sacrifices. You might accidentally vote off a village special, your kills are public so other people can try to figure out who would want someone dead, by PMing someone you run the risk of contacting an enemy. It's a high risk/high reward type of game, and many people get satisfaction by correctly balancing the risk and reward aspects of the game.
This is where Seers come in. Although Seers are not terrible things, they are holdovers from a different type of game and sometimes their inclusion can reduce the fun of the game.
Seers are a relic of when Phalla was a party game. When you sit down with friends, you want games to be relatively short and painless. You're obviously not playing for weeks, as you are on the forums. In this context, Seers make sense. They ensure the game runs smoothly and quickly so that nobody gets bored.
Online mafia is different. There are many things we do here that are simply not feasible in a real-world setting. It's a different game. We don't have to sit around with our eyes closed while other people act. We can check how things are going a few times a day over the course of a week.
In this game, Seers are not as necessary. Seers get the benefit of obtaining (presumably) completely accurate knowledge without any consequences. This can be unfun. Many players groan when a powerful village network starts to control the game, because it seems like the contribution of the average villager is meaningless, whether or not that's the case.
Because the Seer detracts from the core premise of the game, I posit that people think carefully about whether their game needs a Seer. If you're running a mostly vanilla game, I would hazard not.
In my next post I will provide some Seer variations that you might include in your game in order to add a bit of that risk/reward mechanic back into the equation.
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Also thanks for picking up on "I think"s, I tend to put that phrase everywhere when I write subjectively.
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I think I'll post a short list of Seer variations tomorrow. What section do people think that would fit in?
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I'm thinking that will go into Design and Mechanics
I'll get around to doing some cool graphics. Have to finish my button for PAX
for now I guess I'll just bring these up again, even though they aren't THAT informative. They are cute
obviously just for that ONE game.
Title of Book/Major to which you are contributing: Non-Standard Phalla Types
Suggested Title of your Chapter/Class: Let's You and Him Fight: Designing for Faction Phallas.
If you're just starting, I'd strongly recommend doing a traditional Mafia vs Village Phalla. Every aspect that you have to balance in a normal Phalla increases exponentially for each different faction you add.
So, that aside, let's go over some basics.
There are two types of faction phallas. Mafia vs. Village Factions games and Pure Faction games.
Mafia vs Faction games have the largest variance in how the game can go. If you get a bunch of peace loving hippies in charge of the Faction powers, the Mafia is probably going to get blown out of the water, while if the factions fight each other, then the mafia can just pick off the remnants. When designing, you need a compelling reason for factions to work together (this is generally the existence of the mafia) while also having a good reason to stab each other in the back (either have them have unrelated goals or completely contradictory ones.) The most frequent version of a contradictory goal is requiring one faction to have more members alive than the others at the end of the game.
Pure faction games are easier to balance, but they have their own problems in design. The simplest way to balance these is, of course, give every faction the same specials, numbers, etc. This works, strictly speaking, but without other mechanics, this leaves the villager members of each faction out in the cold. The only thing the villager has is the vote. There's no informed minority trying to hide among the village in a Pure Faction phalla. There's just specials of each faction plugging away at the other side. So, in many pure faction phallas, most votes are going to have little to no information behind them. The opposite of this is where each faction is completely masoned. Ironically, this also leads to the vote having little thought put into it, as people will often bandwagon on the first vote they see that doesn't have someone on their team.
So, what's a designer to do?
Here's a few general suggestions:
1. The vote is king. This should be true in all Phallas, but it can't be repeated enough. It shouldn't be guarded, busdriven, etc. The vote is the only way the villagers can meaningfully affect the game. Messing with it too much can really make villagers lose interest.
2. In a Mafia vs Faction phalla, make sure the mafia is able to pass as members of all factions. All Factions need to worry about infiltration from the mafia.
3. As above, in pure faction phallas, short of seering, members of each faction should be able to pass as members of other factions.
4. In a pure faction phalla, each faction should have at some of their numbers masoned. This allows for vote analysis and for villager intrigue. This is a good thing.
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I wrote a monte carlo simulation for a game I am pretty close to finishing, and am tweaking parameters here and there. Since in my simulation targeting is done randomly (with things like making sure mafia don't target themselves etc.), what is a good starting part for mafia win %?
Edit: to further clarify, no specials have been added, and do we consider the strength that village gains through information collecting (their actions will not be that random on later days) to balance against mafia active subterfuge?
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Now, when you say "No specials," does that include no vigs? Because adding more kills into the mix is going to really throw off your work, probably the point of making the original simulation useless.
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Vigs are included, and right now guards aren't in, but thats something i can marginally account for, but seers masons etc i dont have in at all.
Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
3ds: 3282-2248-0453
Title of Book/Major to which you are contributing: Creation of Phallas
Suggested Title of your Chapter/Class: Theme, IP, and Design: a discussion
Hello, my name is Assuran and today I’ll be talking about Theme in phalla and how it relates specifically to mechanics.
I want to establish a few ground rules:
1.) I’m not a crunch person. I ALWAYS ask for help when it comes to balancing the powers I create from someone who is better at that type of thing. It's important to know your strength and weaknesses when creating a Phalla.
2.) I’m talking mostly about using established IP and translating that into a Phalla. If you’re creating your own stuff, more power to you, but I’m not aiming this advice at you (although, I do hope it helps you as well).
With those ground rules set, let’s talk about using established IP in Phalla.
Using an established IP can be daunting in Phalla, but done well can introduce many players to your favorite IP and maybe create new fans of the IP (a win-win for everyone).
Obviously, the first thing most hosts start with is a theme (unless you’re testing a specific mechanic and base the theme around that mechanic). Theme is important for another reason: it sets the tone your Phalla will present to the players. Generally speaking, an IP will already have an established theme, so this is actually easier to figure out than creating a homebrewed material where you have to create your own in universe theme. For example, if you choose Star Wars as your theme, the players expect gonzo over the top space fantasy with western aspects (and the Force). If you choose a Dark Sun theme, the players know you are presenting a bleak situation where daily survival is a struggle. By crafting your narrations to fit those themes, it will help players visualize what it is your trying to get across and will hopefully draw the players further into the game.
I'm going to walk you through my thought process for choosing the IP and theme for my first faction game. I knew that I wanted to have a faction game and Vampire: The Masquerade is tailor made for that kind of game. V:TM also has multiple themes running throughout the game system and I choose to focus on the paranoia aspect V:TM as the main emphasis of my phalla because the IP's other main theme, slowly losing your humanity, does not translate well in a mafia style game. By focusing on the paranoia theme in the established IP, I knew that I could play up the paranoia them through a variety of measures and mechanics, including dividing the village into sub-factions based on the various Vampire Clans in game rivalry, introducing a cult and a mafia able to blend into the clans also found in game (though the mafia might argue this point to some valid degree), having independents with their own motives and flavors capable of working with any faction, and further sub-dividing the mafia into multiple factions in and of itself. I wanted an overwhelming sense of suspicion that required cooperation to accomplish your goals, but also left room for players to switch allegiances easily and frequently, thus fueling the paranoia even further and further showing how power politics in an immortal society would play out. I wanted the game to be very tense and exciting. From behind the scenes, everything was working as planned the first couple of days until the Immortal Prince Langly fiasco derailed it (note, it was not his fault).
The big picture of theme is the most important thing to nail, but it's also important to pull features of the IP you choose into your Phalla's mechanice so that the "feel" of the IP is easily identified to the players. The first thing a host should decide after selecting your theme is if you choose to be a traditional style Phalla or a battle/multiple power Phalla as you can flavor the individual roles to match the IP. Either decision is valid, so this is more of a personal choice. With Star Wars, I choose a traditional style Phalla setting where most villagers were either Senators for the Galactic Republic or Generic Jedi working for the Jedi Council while the specials were flavored so that they were the prominent characters from the setting. On the other hand, in Vampire, each player created his or her own character by selecting powers based on powers created in the original game itself. In Vampire I was able to maintain some balance by providing Clans to channel player abilities.
This brings me to an important point: "Borrow" liberally from the source material when creating mechanics. Sure, you want to make sure it's balanced and plays well in a Phalla, but the more flavor you can pack into the game, the more your players will wrap themselves into the game. Players are always excited when their favorite aspect of an IP is included, whether it's a minor B character you nail or a mechanic from the game you incorporate into the rules. On the other hand, if you can't figure out a way to incorporate a certain aspect of the IP into the game, don't be a slave to the system and include a broken or mangled version of it. For instance, I could not figure out a way to include duels into the Deadland game that felt right, so I left it out.
My final point is to pick a theme that you love yourself. Your players know if your bullshitting them and don't really know or understand the setting. You'll be putting many hours of your life into something, so make sure you enjoy your time.
Now, get to creating and I'll see you in game!
Not taking into account information gathering is going to make the village much stronger than they should be if you balance it 50-50. Even just the fact that simulations don't pick up on behavior cues is going to make the village too strong.
Sc2 Mafia has a pretty nifty simulator. According to it, the standard newbie game here (vig, seer, guard, mason pair vs 4 player mafia with 20 players) the mafia wins 70% of the time, and that's with only 1 mafia kill (we typically give 2). Presumably that accounts for seer/mason networks and similar. It's important to note that this is for the live game, which doesn't have things like vig kill calling, etc. but I presume your simulation wouldn't either.
Good stuff here, I'm glad I asked the question because that is a result I would not expect.
Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
3ds: 3282-2248-0453
In a standard game I think the mafia tends to win until the village figures out how to play better. Like In BSG the cylons tend to win the first few games the group plays, then it averages out a bit. Softnetworking isn't as popular as it once was these days, My last few games I've seen a lot less networking than a year ago or so.