Certainly. A basic Mafia technique is examining the past play of the person you’re suspicious of, then looking at whether their current play is more similar to their play as scum or their play as town. There is also wide knowledge (at least online) of moves that are generally “scummy,” such as congratulating the doctor after he or she successfully protects, as these moves have been determined to be commonly used by scum. Of course, all of this is constantly evolving, since once something is generally known as a scumtell, advanced scum players avoid it. Further, different things are tells at different levels of play, which tends to make the game much more complicated than my above description might indicate.
That said, I think it’s certainly possible to do better than chance—my own record, at least of games that I can remember, is 4 wins to 1 loss, all as town (I have yet to be scum in my recent games).
Further, there are some situations where certain tactics have been determined, over wide periods of play, to be dominant, and applying these strategies gives you a very high chance to win. For instance, if the town has a doctor and a cop (and knows this) and also knows the scumgroup has no roleblocker, the best strategy is to stop voting to lynch, have the cop claim, and have the cop constantly investigate while protected by the doctor. The scum must then start hitting other targets in hopes of getting the doc. A truly advanced doctor will then, knowing the scum is doing this, not actually protect the cop but instead protect other members of the town in the hopes of blocking the scum’s pseudorandom flailing, but a truly advanced scum player might anticipate this and try to kill the cop instead—so there are mindgames all over the place, but dominant strategies are still known.
Generally, I feel like Mafia—at least online Mafia—is a rather good rationality exercise. I could expand this to a top-level post if there’s interest.
Do make the top-level post please. I think there is use in the making Mafia more well-known in demographics such as the one we have here.
It sounds like online Mafia is a totally different and much better game than what I’ve played at various icebreaker functions, camps, and times when there’s a substitute teacher
In my experience the outcome of face-to-face mafia can be even more dependent on the players’ skill, once you get past the newbie phase. Not just because newbies can’t read others well, but I think they are also less readable due to undeveloped meta and making vastly suboptimal plays that regular scumhunting techniques do not read well. Once there is some standard in the players’ moves and some meta is available, one can read much more accurately in face-to-face games than online due to factors such as tone, moments of hesitation, and body language.
And thus for a given single game, I would rather play mafia face-to-face with groups of regular players than online, though I would prefer playing online to face-to-face with a whole group of newbies.
Face-to-face Mafia is certainly easier to read people in, but this actually (IMO) makes it a worse game. There are other issues as well, such as the inability of the Mafia to communicate articulately at night, but if you’re a good lie detector (or the scum are bad liars) the game becomes almost trivial, and introducing the difficulties of online communication IMO adds an appealing element of challenge. That said, I agree that face-to-face Mafia with a regular group can certainly be fun and even educational in itself.
It sounds like online Mafia is a totally different and much better game than what I’ve played at various icebreaker functions, camps, and times when there’s a substitute teacher. I’ll check it out if I ever have a clear enough schedule. Also, I’d definitely enjoy a top-level post if you made one.
Certainly. A basic Mafia technique is examining the past play of the person you’re suspicious of, then looking at whether their current play is more similar to their play as scum or their play as town. There is also wide knowledge (at least online) of moves that are generally “scummy,” such as congratulating the doctor after he or she successfully protects, as these moves have been determined to be commonly used by scum. Of course, all of this is constantly evolving, since once something is generally known as a scumtell, advanced scum players avoid it. Further, different things are tells at different levels of play, which tends to make the game much more complicated than my above description might indicate.
That said, I think it’s certainly possible to do better than chance—my own record, at least of games that I can remember, is 4 wins to 1 loss, all as town (I have yet to be scum in my recent games).
Further, there are some situations where certain tactics have been determined, over wide periods of play, to be dominant, and applying these strategies gives you a very high chance to win. For instance, if the town has a doctor and a cop (and knows this) and also knows the scumgroup has no roleblocker, the best strategy is to stop voting to lynch, have the cop claim, and have the cop constantly investigate while protected by the doctor. The scum must then start hitting other targets in hopes of getting the doc. A truly advanced doctor will then, knowing the scum is doing this, not actually protect the cop but instead protect other members of the town in the hopes of blocking the scum’s pseudorandom flailing, but a truly advanced scum player might anticipate this and try to kill the cop instead—so there are mindgames all over the place, but dominant strategies are still known.
Generally, I feel like Mafia—at least online Mafia—is a rather good rationality exercise. I could expand this to a top-level post if there’s interest.
Do make the top-level post please. I think there is use in the making Mafia more well-known in demographics such as the one we have here.
In my experience the outcome of face-to-face mafia can be even more dependent on the players’ skill, once you get past the newbie phase. Not just because newbies can’t read others well, but I think they are also less readable due to undeveloped meta and making vastly suboptimal plays that regular scumhunting techniques do not read well. Once there is some standard in the players’ moves and some meta is available, one can read much more accurately in face-to-face games than online due to factors such as tone, moments of hesitation, and body language.
And thus for a given single game, I would rather play mafia face-to-face with groups of regular players than online, though I would prefer playing online to face-to-face with a whole group of newbies.
Face-to-face Mafia is certainly easier to read people in, but this actually (IMO) makes it a worse game. There are other issues as well, such as the inability of the Mafia to communicate articulately at night, but if you’re a good lie detector (or the scum are bad liars) the game becomes almost trivial, and introducing the difficulties of online communication IMO adds an appealing element of challenge. That said, I agree that face-to-face Mafia with a regular group can certainly be fun and even educational in itself.
It sounds like online Mafia is a totally different and much better game than what I’ve played at various icebreaker functions, camps, and times when there’s a substitute teacher. I’ll check it out if I ever have a clear enough schedule. Also, I’d definitely enjoy a top-level post if you made one.