Mafia: Effulgent Edition

[Paradox]

I'd be interested in playing if prior experience with Mafia is not necessary and if I'm available at the time that is chosen.

[no.head.chicken]

Hi, can this lurking lurker who lurks join in? I'm from a rather inconvenient timezone for IRC(GMT+2), but hey, it's not like I've never stayed up all night for no good reason whatsoever, so it's not a big problem.. Also I've played at least 3 RL versions and not once online if it's at all relevant.

[Shoal]

also in an inconvenient time zone but if playing happens when i'm awake and not otherwise busy... :)

[kuuskytkolme]

Oh yes. Oh yeeees.

I have played so much Mafia you have no idea.

//Edit.

Although as a person who has player live, irc and play by post mafia, I have to ask: Do you have a bot? A large irc mafia without a bot is basically not doable. (I know a channel that has a creative commons bot, so I can get one for you if you need.)

That said I strongly advice for play by post as soon as you have more than six to eight people. The amount of text turns unwieldy very very soon. Also people from different time zones can all play. (72-96 h days and 24-48 h days are enough from what I've seen.) In my regular group a 12 person live game takes about three to four hours, and people are slower to write/read than talk/listen, and there are going to be new people who most likely get overwhelmed more easily.

[DanielH]

I have never played IRC mafia. I an surprised a bot is necessary or even particularly helpful, though.

I have also never played a play-by-post version. I don't particularly mind the syncness as long as there is a set schedule of when night and day happen, but would still slightly prefer real-time. I've never seen real-time take that long; usually for me an average of two people are eliminated every 10-15 minutes and it speeds up as the game progresses. Note that in IRC the nighttime can be more parallel too.

[Alicorn]

@kuuskytkolme: I am given pause by your arguments but I don't see what the bot would add. Do you have a solution/experience with PBP Mafia that suggests that we'd keep our players? My PBP experience is with D&D games and I've never been able to get to a good stopping place in a campaign, ever, people just vanish.

[kuuskytkolme]

The bot is there for counting the votes and telling people how many votes have been cast and keeping time (in a game where there are time limits), nothing else. It helps a lot, because a human always misses a vote or three in games that have more than four players. Alicorn, have you ever been in an irc discussion with twenty active participants? I personally find it hard to follow, because there's always at least three sub discussions, but if you find it easy to follow I might be the anomaly here.

Having a clear stopping point makes it easier to keep players. Assuming a 3 day night/day cycle and 2 dead per cycle killing 16 people takes 24 days or four weeks. My favorite game from year 2011 ran for about one and a half months with 15 players and no drop outs, so it's possible, but I have no clue how dedicated people here are.

I might be biased with my sampling size regarding the time everything takes, we have been playing together for years and mathematicians are strange people. Our first days are never less than half an hour, but you could put people on a timer and then either have a no-lynch day or kill the person with the most votes.

[Alicorn]

I haven't been in an IRC conversation with that many people, but can usually follow a betaparty with like eight betas at once chatting. I think Nemo is effectively volunteered as Co-God and possibly I can also recruit kappa who is disqualified for having seen rules. Adding a bot might help vote-counting which does otherwise sound potentially tedious.

[Tulip]

I've only done PBP mafia games in one community, so my sample is limited, but my experience there (in ~15-30-person games) was that there tended to be a few people who signed up but never did anything, but anyone who was still there by day three tended to stick around to the end.

[Nemo]

Yes, I'm volunteered. (I had thought the title was co-mod, but on second thought this one's cooler.)

I've never done IRC mafia. When I did PBP, there'd usually be 0-4 replacements on call depending on game size and how paranoid the mods were.
Since we do have more than the minimum amount of interest, and some people can join only if it's PBP, we could shrink the game by a couple players and still break even. The downside being that then some volunteers draw the short straw and end up as alternates.