The 'Shroom:Issue 100/On the Subject of Mafia

On the Subject of Mafia by

To start this one off, I'm just disappointed. Both with myself, and everyone else, really. Much like my gameplay, this is going to get messy. So hold on to your hats, you're on for a wild ride. Of course, if you know anything about how to play the game and not be absolutely stupid about it, you should already know this and I shouldn't need to include a list of those who actually know how to play the game, as that seems very redundant to me. I will however make a quick mention of the Dunning-Kruger effect, but only that: a quick mention. You may read up on it on your leisure time if you want to, since it's so broad to treat it as something intrinsically related to Mafia would be absolutely moronic from my side.

Okay, so Mafia. If you've played some games for two years ago (can't believe that it has been that long since I played a game), you might have played some with me. In case you didn't, that's fine. Whatever. My point here isn't to take up precious bytes of the Super Mario Wiki's servers just to dabble on about pointless excursions to the past. That's one of those stupid things I would have done back then.

Now, according to, there is a very terrible trend going on when playing Mafia. This trend is that the Mafia wins almost every single time. You'd think the Town meta would have caught up by now, but no, we can't have nice things happen to us ever, can we? The trend has arisen by the scum always Nightkilling off the most active Townie in the game, whilst the Town has done absolutely nothing to counter this behaviour. This is appaling on every level. You'd think that knowing the scum meta, every single Townie would up their ante, but apparently not on the Super Mario Wiki where nobody even dares to try anything. Now, why does this make sense? Well, if every Townie actually tried to discuss and be active in the game, then the scum would have no direct target to Nightkill every Night. This makes the scum less likely to win every single time. I know that this tactic works, but it's so tiresome reading about it every time.

So if you're a Townie next time you're in a game, try changing your gameplay, please. And don't rely on a Doctor to save you every Night, because the Doctor may be dead. No, a Necromancer won't help here either. Speaking of, why are they so prevalent? It's one of the reasons the meta has evolved like this in the first place, which is disgusting in its own way.

One of the first things I introduced to the table was the concept of randomvoting (kind of fitting for my name). Apparently, nobody even understands how to treat randomvoting since nobody understands what a gut feeling is. This is what I was using to quickly gain scumreads on other players. One reason for this can already be extrapolated from my earlier times on the community. I was in this one chatroom making reads and such from a finished game (don't worry, I didn't read the OP – only true noobs do that), and all of my reads were pretty much correct. Nobody understood how making the leaps of logic I had done worked in the end. I do these leaps of logic because this is what Mafia is all about. If you're a Townie, you know the following: your role, and that you are not scum. If you are a Mafioso, you know the following: your role, and who the scum are. Every player needs more information, always, but the Townie is in the need for more of it than the Mafioso, which is good because otherwise the game would be heavily rigged in the favour of Townies. You can perform bait and switches to get these, though I would consider those methods to be barbaric and slightly scummy in the first place – not the best way to go about things if you're a Townie, is it? Of course, it is a way of doing it, but it can be done so much better. One of those is vote analasys, in which I have on numerous times correctly called out a scum, but was never trusted on it. One such example is calling out on being scum in 's game Mafia 2101 by being the fourth vote on a bandwagon with no reason whatsoever to jump on the bandwagon. Sure enough, he was a Mafiaso in that game.

Now, there is so much more to Mafia than sending hilariously scummy PMs that request roleclaims, creating meme-worthy 'Confirmed Townie QuickTopics' that don't actually help your growth as a player, and just reading the posts in the thread. Try to always think about why a post was made, and what purpose it serves to the game and the thread in general. Was it an obvious way of defending something which didn't need to be defended? Why is someone so keen on not being on scumreads? Can it be a paranoid Townie, or an average Mafioso? If a roleclaim was requested in the thread, how did the player react to that, why, and how quickly? Always try to ask multiple of those questions when writing a reply, but don't just ask these, since that would be fatal. Have some creativity for once in your life. But never say there 'aren't any reads', because if you do you're just a lazy bum who wants all reads to be served to you on a silver platter instead of actually drawing some independent conclusions. Plus, this mindset deliberately kills the enthusiam for any fellow Townie. It's like you aren't even trying to lift up scummy behaviour that has previously been flying past the radar for Days and Days.

Oh yes, in case it wasn't obvious, using the thread for constructive purposes is absolutely necessary to the game, no matter which one you play. But don't use it when you're dead: that's rude since you're ruining the flow of the game. After all, you're dead; the thread no longer needs you. And try to not whine about a game that's still going on (even though I've done so in the past, I've learned my lesson here). That would just be incredibly childish and immature, and no-one wants to play a game with a sore loser.

I have one final question to everyone on the site playing Mafia: if the Mafia nearly always wins, and the Town never ever tries to evolve its gameplay, then why play in the first place? Isn't it very counterproductive to play a game if you know the winner from the get go? It just doesn't make any sense.