Ampharos
tag walls, punch fascists
hiya so Yeti's post in the big got me thinking that we really could stuff some additional stuff into the "What is even going on in this forum?" thread
so without further ado:
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Village vs. Mafia
By far the most common of Smogon's mafia formats, Village vs. Mafia is also the format that stays truest to real life Mafia/Werewolf. Often abbreviated as 1v1 or 2v1 (depending on how many mafia teams there are - more on that later), Village vs. Mafia is exactly what it sounds like - the village attempts to discover and vote out the mafia during the day, while the mafia attempts to stay hidden and kill the village during the night.
There are a couple of key differences between Smogon Village vs. Mafia games and real life mafia. As mentioned in an above post, most Smogon games allow for outside communication during games, meaning players can discuss the game wherever they want rather than being confined to the game thread. The ability to have private conversations during a game is obviously a huge deal and has led to the formation of many interesting play patterns not seen in real life games.
The most notable of these play patterns is the Village Leader system. Essentially, what happens is one player publicly announces their role, preferably with some sort of proof that they're telling the truth, and then asks all of the other players to send information about their role - also known as claiming - to the leader. The Village Leader system strengthens the average Smogon village considerably, as the ability to consolidate information and coordinate night actions often leaves the nighttime strength of the village on par with the mafia. One potential drawback to this, however, is that if a mafia member manages to infiltrate the inner circle of the village - known as moling - the village often gets curbstomped. As a more meta-related drawback, the Village Leader system often results in non-leading members of the village having significantly less agency than the leader(s). [needs rewrite]
Outside communication and village leaders aren't the only difference between Smogon and real life. Games are bigger on Smogon, and power roles are more numerous - most Smogon games (barring traditional-style No Outside Contact games) don't have any vanilla/roleless players at all! This means that Smogon games tend to be much more night-focused than real life games. That's not to say that day is unimportant - it just means that Smogon games place less emphasis on scumhunting and more emphasis on using night roles efficiently.
One final difference to note: as mentioned above, Smogon games often have more than one mafia faction - indeed, 2 mafia teams vs. a single village is considered Smogon's "standard" format. Note that on some sites, this is known as multiball, though it's a term that's rarely used here. Games with only one mafia team still exist, but they're less prevalent than the 2v1 format. Games with more than 2 mafias or more than 1 village are not unheard of, but they're definitely rare, and some of them don't quite fall under the perview of the Village vs. Mafia format, but are actually closer to another format:
Multifaction
First popularized by Exarius's Metal Gear Solid Tactical Game, the Multifaction format takes the basic mechanics of mafia and overlays a very different team dynamic. Multifaction games don't have a "village", and they have no "mafia". Instead, users are split into multiple teams - usually at least four or five. Sometimes they know who their teammates are, sometimes they don't. Sometimes the teams are all the same size, sometimes they aren't. The way each team wins is varied as well, though usually it involves outlasting most or all of the other teams.
Multifaction mafia very quickly turns more into a game of politics and negotiation than one of us-vs-them witch hunts. Lynches turn into reverse popularity contests of sorts, with whichever team is the current unfavorite usually getting the boot. Nights are often incredibly chaotic, as each team usually has at least some capacity for killing. Careful negotiation and a keen sense of the proper time to backstab is usually what leads to victory in these games.
Vanilla roles are essentially nonexistent in Multifaction games, and the overall power of roles is often greater than in Village vs. Mafia games.
An interesting facet of Multifaction is that it allows for more interesting neutral roles. Often referred to as a wolf on Smogon or a serial killer on other sites, neutral roles traditionally simply need to outlive every other player in the game. While this remains mostly the case in Village vs. Mafia, Multifaction neutrals are often more numerous and varied, often having win conditions that align with certain teams. This isn't to say that that's the case in every Multifaction game - some games won't have neutrals at all.
Free-For-All (FFA)
At it's core, Free-For-All games are a simple concept, taking Multifaction to a logical conclusion: what if EVERYONE was on their own team? FFA is quite possibly the most complex format for Smogon Mafia, as role distributions and win conditions are entirely up to the designer. This is where complexity comes in, as FFA often has extra mechanics layered on top to spice things up - mechanics which range from fairly simple (HP and attacks come to mind) to rather complicated (ask some of the old-timers about Card Games Mafia). There's really no blanket statement for what to expect out of a FFA, so reading the rules is especially important for these games.
Fans of politics and negotiation will love FFA games, as these are the core gameplay elements. If you love diplomacy, or even Diplomacy (which we also play sometimes), FFAs may be the game for you. Be warned, though: these games usually require immense levels of activity and involvement, both on the forums and in real-time communication. Do you dare?
As an aside: Do FFAs count as mafia games? Sometimes they really shouldn't. But will we continue to call them mafia games? Of course, because change is bad.
Viva-Style
A rare format, Viva-Style, or just Viva, refers to the format used in the classic Viva la Mafia game. Essentially, it's Multifaction, but each team starts out with only two or three members. The rest of the players are "freelancers" - players who are unaffiliated with any team. The main goal of the teams is to convert players to their side in such a way that their team comes out stronger than the others. Though you might think Viva evolved from Multifaction, it's actually the other way around; Viva was the predecessor of the modern-day Multifaction.
Lynchpin
A rare subsection of Village vs. Mafia, Lynchpin games typically start out as your standard 2v1, but there's a catch: one person in the game is assigned the role of Lynchpin. When that person dies, the faction he's associated with splits into two. Generally, these two new factions need each other dead. There's generally a couple of special roles which know the identity of the Lynchpin, but generally the game plays like a standard Village vs. Mafia before the split, and as either a Village vs. Mafia or a Multifaction afterwards.
NOC
Sometimes we play actual mafia! NOC stands for "No Outside Contact", which means that all discussion must take place inside the game thread, emulating the environment of real-life mafia. NOC games are almost exclusively Village vs. Mafia, and are generally smaller than our other games. Additionally, the spread of power roles is closer to what you'd find in a real-life game of mafia, with plenty of vanilla players on both sides. We still maintain longer deadlines, however, so these games often get a bit... verbose.
Some common Smogon Mafia terms [need to alphabetize this]
WIFOM - "Wine In Front Of Me". Refers to logic that requires one party to predict whether the other party will be able to predict the original party's actions. To fully understand the reference, I highly recommend watching the clip it originates from. Also the entire movie.
Village Leader - A player who publicly claims their role and asks for other users to claim their roles to them, enabling the leader to coordinate night actions in an attempt to find mafia. Exclusive to Village vs. Mafia and highly controversial.
BG - The bodyguard/doctor.
Scum - A member of the Mafia.
Scummy - Refers to behavior consistent with that of a mafia member.
Scumslip - A mistake made by a player which indicates that player is likely to be mafia. Mostly seen in NOC.
Townslip - A mistake made by a player which indicates that player is likely to be a villager. Mostly seen in NOC.
Town - A synonym for village. Similarly, "townie" is sometimes used to mean villager.
CC - Stands for "counter-claim". Refers to when one player claims a role that has already been claimed by another player, usually intending to discredit the original claim.
MYLO - "MislYnch and LOse". Refers to a daytime situation in which the village will lose if a villager is lynched.
Mislynch - A lynch in which a villager is killed.
LYLO - "LYnch or LOse". Refers to a daytime situation in which the village will lose unless they lynch correctly.
Neut - Short for "neutral".
Harmless Neutral - A neutral role that does not need to kill anybody to win. Rarely seen in modern games.
Res - Short for "Resistance", as in the tabletop game. We play it a lot when nothing else is going on.
Von Karma - A role which causes the person with the second highest number of votes to be lynched instead of the person with the highest number. The name is a reference to Manfred von Karma, the original role name which possessed the role. Rarely seen nowadays.
Dickens - A role which can essentially turn another user into a mole. The name is a reference to Charles Dickens, the original role name which possessed the role. Rarely seen nowadays.
Claim - To claim is to tell someone your role. It can be private, or it can be public; it can be as detailed as your full role PM, or as vague as a role name and a hint. Can also be a noun to refer to the role that is claimed.
Softclaim - Implying a claim without actually claiming. Mostly, but not exclusively, seen in NOCs.
Clean - Someone who is clean has been confirmed to be town. Can also be used as a verb to refer to the process of ascertaining if someone is clean or not.
Fakeclaim - To lie about your role, usually to disguise the fact that you're mafia. Can also be used as a noun to refer to the role being claimed.
Safeclaim - A fakeclaim that is given to the mafia ahead of time and is guaranteed to not be present on the village. Usually, but not always, takes the form of a role name.
Role - Can refer to either the entirety of your information (name, ability, etc.) or just your abilities and actions.
Power Role - A role that does something, as opposed to a vanilla role. NOC-exclusive.
Vanilla - A role with no ability. Usually only found in NOCs. Also referred to as "vanillager" or "vanilla townie" or simply "villager" when a villager, or "goon" when mafia.
Negative voter - A role whose lynch vote is worth -1 instead of 1 (i.e. when he votes for someone, 1 is subtracted from that person's total number of votes). Often shortened to "neg voter".
Sub - A substitute player.
Host - The person running the game. Sometimes referred to as a "mod", which has nothing to do with forum moderators.
Cohost - A person who aids the host in running the game. Often had less of a hand in desigining the game (if at all), and usually defers to the host on major decisions.
Godkill - The host forcibly killing a player who has broken the rules.
Godsub - The host forcibly substituting a player for a different one, usually due to a rules violation.
Idle - To not use a night action. The term "idler" is often used in a derogatory sense to refer to a player who chronically forgets to send actions, or an NOC player who rarely posts.
GMaxing - The act of infiltrating the supposedly-secret/secure private chat of another team. User:GMax was very, very good at this.
Fuck Tiger - The act of intentionally godkilling ones self right before being lynched, causing the person with the second most votes to be lynched instead. Nowadays there are usually rules which safeguard against this. [remind me to link to the original later]
Melt - Short for "meltdown". Will probably not be relevant when the Season 3 Mafia Invitational ends.
Stealth lynch - to withhold votes until the last second to catch someone by surprise and lynch them.
SG - Safeguard.
NL - No lynch.
Priority - Refers to the order in which actions occur. Generally predetermined. Sometimes kept secret, sometimes not.
might put more roles here but need to see which roles are already in aska's part of the guide
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pls post feedback/additions/corrections/suggestions and i'll take a gander when i wake up. i feel like there's probably more i can/should write about multifaction but i can't think of what because zzzzzzzzzzzzz
so without further ado:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Village vs. Mafia
By far the most common of Smogon's mafia formats, Village vs. Mafia is also the format that stays truest to real life Mafia/Werewolf. Often abbreviated as 1v1 or 2v1 (depending on how many mafia teams there are - more on that later), Village vs. Mafia is exactly what it sounds like - the village attempts to discover and vote out the mafia during the day, while the mafia attempts to stay hidden and kill the village during the night.
There are a couple of key differences between Smogon Village vs. Mafia games and real life mafia. As mentioned in an above post, most Smogon games allow for outside communication during games, meaning players can discuss the game wherever they want rather than being confined to the game thread. The ability to have private conversations during a game is obviously a huge deal and has led to the formation of many interesting play patterns not seen in real life games.
The most notable of these play patterns is the Village Leader system. Essentially, what happens is one player publicly announces their role, preferably with some sort of proof that they're telling the truth, and then asks all of the other players to send information about their role - also known as claiming - to the leader. The Village Leader system strengthens the average Smogon village considerably, as the ability to consolidate information and coordinate night actions often leaves the nighttime strength of the village on par with the mafia. One potential drawback to this, however, is that if a mafia member manages to infiltrate the inner circle of the village - known as moling - the village often gets curbstomped. As a more meta-related drawback, the Village Leader system often results in non-leading members of the village having significantly less agency than the leader(s). [needs rewrite]
Outside communication and village leaders aren't the only difference between Smogon and real life. Games are bigger on Smogon, and power roles are more numerous - most Smogon games (barring traditional-style No Outside Contact games) don't have any vanilla/roleless players at all! This means that Smogon games tend to be much more night-focused than real life games. That's not to say that day is unimportant - it just means that Smogon games place less emphasis on scumhunting and more emphasis on using night roles efficiently.
One final difference to note: as mentioned above, Smogon games often have more than one mafia faction - indeed, 2 mafia teams vs. a single village is considered Smogon's "standard" format. Note that on some sites, this is known as multiball, though it's a term that's rarely used here. Games with only one mafia team still exist, but they're less prevalent than the 2v1 format. Games with more than 2 mafias or more than 1 village are not unheard of, but they're definitely rare, and some of them don't quite fall under the perview of the Village vs. Mafia format, but are actually closer to another format:
Multifaction
First popularized by Exarius's Metal Gear Solid Tactical Game, the Multifaction format takes the basic mechanics of mafia and overlays a very different team dynamic. Multifaction games don't have a "village", and they have no "mafia". Instead, users are split into multiple teams - usually at least four or five. Sometimes they know who their teammates are, sometimes they don't. Sometimes the teams are all the same size, sometimes they aren't. The way each team wins is varied as well, though usually it involves outlasting most or all of the other teams.
Multifaction mafia very quickly turns more into a game of politics and negotiation than one of us-vs-them witch hunts. Lynches turn into reverse popularity contests of sorts, with whichever team is the current unfavorite usually getting the boot. Nights are often incredibly chaotic, as each team usually has at least some capacity for killing. Careful negotiation and a keen sense of the proper time to backstab is usually what leads to victory in these games.
Vanilla roles are essentially nonexistent in Multifaction games, and the overall power of roles is often greater than in Village vs. Mafia games.
An interesting facet of Multifaction is that it allows for more interesting neutral roles. Often referred to as a wolf on Smogon or a serial killer on other sites, neutral roles traditionally simply need to outlive every other player in the game. While this remains mostly the case in Village vs. Mafia, Multifaction neutrals are often more numerous and varied, often having win conditions that align with certain teams. This isn't to say that that's the case in every Multifaction game - some games won't have neutrals at all.
Free-For-All (FFA)
At it's core, Free-For-All games are a simple concept, taking Multifaction to a logical conclusion: what if EVERYONE was on their own team? FFA is quite possibly the most complex format for Smogon Mafia, as role distributions and win conditions are entirely up to the designer. This is where complexity comes in, as FFA often has extra mechanics layered on top to spice things up - mechanics which range from fairly simple (HP and attacks come to mind) to rather complicated (ask some of the old-timers about Card Games Mafia). There's really no blanket statement for what to expect out of a FFA, so reading the rules is especially important for these games.
Fans of politics and negotiation will love FFA games, as these are the core gameplay elements. If you love diplomacy, or even Diplomacy (which we also play sometimes), FFAs may be the game for you. Be warned, though: these games usually require immense levels of activity and involvement, both on the forums and in real-time communication. Do you dare?
As an aside: Do FFAs count as mafia games? Sometimes they really shouldn't. But will we continue to call them mafia games? Of course, because change is bad.
Viva-Style
A rare format, Viva-Style, or just Viva, refers to the format used in the classic Viva la Mafia game. Essentially, it's Multifaction, but each team starts out with only two or three members. The rest of the players are "freelancers" - players who are unaffiliated with any team. The main goal of the teams is to convert players to their side in such a way that their team comes out stronger than the others. Though you might think Viva evolved from Multifaction, it's actually the other way around; Viva was the predecessor of the modern-day Multifaction.
Lynchpin
A rare subsection of Village vs. Mafia, Lynchpin games typically start out as your standard 2v1, but there's a catch: one person in the game is assigned the role of Lynchpin. When that person dies, the faction he's associated with splits into two. Generally, these two new factions need each other dead. There's generally a couple of special roles which know the identity of the Lynchpin, but generally the game plays like a standard Village vs. Mafia before the split, and as either a Village vs. Mafia or a Multifaction afterwards.
NOC
Sometimes we play actual mafia! NOC stands for "No Outside Contact", which means that all discussion must take place inside the game thread, emulating the environment of real-life mafia. NOC games are almost exclusively Village vs. Mafia, and are generally smaller than our other games. Additionally, the spread of power roles is closer to what you'd find in a real-life game of mafia, with plenty of vanilla players on both sides. We still maintain longer deadlines, however, so these games often get a bit... verbose.
Some common Smogon Mafia terms [need to alphabetize this]
WIFOM - "Wine In Front Of Me". Refers to logic that requires one party to predict whether the other party will be able to predict the original party's actions. To fully understand the reference, I highly recommend watching the clip it originates from. Also the entire movie.
Village Leader - A player who publicly claims their role and asks for other users to claim their roles to them, enabling the leader to coordinate night actions in an attempt to find mafia. Exclusive to Village vs. Mafia and highly controversial.
BG - The bodyguard/doctor.
Scum - A member of the Mafia.
Scummy - Refers to behavior consistent with that of a mafia member.
Scumslip - A mistake made by a player which indicates that player is likely to be mafia. Mostly seen in NOC.
Townslip - A mistake made by a player which indicates that player is likely to be a villager. Mostly seen in NOC.
Town - A synonym for village. Similarly, "townie" is sometimes used to mean villager.
CC - Stands for "counter-claim". Refers to when one player claims a role that has already been claimed by another player, usually intending to discredit the original claim.
MYLO - "MislYnch and LOse". Refers to a daytime situation in which the village will lose if a villager is lynched.
Mislynch - A lynch in which a villager is killed.
LYLO - "LYnch or LOse". Refers to a daytime situation in which the village will lose unless they lynch correctly.
Neut - Short for "neutral".
Harmless Neutral - A neutral role that does not need to kill anybody to win. Rarely seen in modern games.
Res - Short for "Resistance", as in the tabletop game. We play it a lot when nothing else is going on.
Von Karma - A role which causes the person with the second highest number of votes to be lynched instead of the person with the highest number. The name is a reference to Manfred von Karma, the original role name which possessed the role. Rarely seen nowadays.
Dickens - A role which can essentially turn another user into a mole. The name is a reference to Charles Dickens, the original role name which possessed the role. Rarely seen nowadays.
Claim - To claim is to tell someone your role. It can be private, or it can be public; it can be as detailed as your full role PM, or as vague as a role name and a hint. Can also be a noun to refer to the role that is claimed.
Softclaim - Implying a claim without actually claiming. Mostly, but not exclusively, seen in NOCs.
Clean - Someone who is clean has been confirmed to be town. Can also be used as a verb to refer to the process of ascertaining if someone is clean or not.
Fakeclaim - To lie about your role, usually to disguise the fact that you're mafia. Can also be used as a noun to refer to the role being claimed.
Safeclaim - A fakeclaim that is given to the mafia ahead of time and is guaranteed to not be present on the village. Usually, but not always, takes the form of a role name.
Role - Can refer to either the entirety of your information (name, ability, etc.) or just your abilities and actions.
Power Role - A role that does something, as opposed to a vanilla role. NOC-exclusive.
Vanilla - A role with no ability. Usually only found in NOCs. Also referred to as "vanillager" or "vanilla townie" or simply "villager" when a villager, or "goon" when mafia.
Negative voter - A role whose lynch vote is worth -1 instead of 1 (i.e. when he votes for someone, 1 is subtracted from that person's total number of votes). Often shortened to "neg voter".
Sub - A substitute player.
Host - The person running the game. Sometimes referred to as a "mod", which has nothing to do with forum moderators.
Cohost - A person who aids the host in running the game. Often had less of a hand in desigining the game (if at all), and usually defers to the host on major decisions.
Godkill - The host forcibly killing a player who has broken the rules.
Godsub - The host forcibly substituting a player for a different one, usually due to a rules violation.
Idle - To not use a night action. The term "idler" is often used in a derogatory sense to refer to a player who chronically forgets to send actions, or an NOC player who rarely posts.
GMaxing - The act of infiltrating the supposedly-secret/secure private chat of another team. User:GMax was very, very good at this.
Fuck Tiger - The act of intentionally godkilling ones self right before being lynched, causing the person with the second most votes to be lynched instead. Nowadays there are usually rules which safeguard against this. [remind me to link to the original later]
Melt - Short for "meltdown". Will probably not be relevant when the Season 3 Mafia Invitational ends.
Stealth lynch - to withhold votes until the last second to catch someone by surprise and lynch them.
SG - Safeguard.
NL - No lynch.
Priority - Refers to the order in which actions occur. Generally predetermined. Sometimes kept secret, sometimes not.
might put more roles here but need to see which roles are already in aska's part of the guide
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pls post feedback/additions/corrections/suggestions and i'll take a gander when i wake up. i feel like there's probably more i can/should write about multifaction but i can't think of what because zzzzzzzzzzzzz
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