The Thing Mafia [Concluded]

[TinCow]

Game Starts In:

Rules, partially (and shamelessly) ripped off of GH's Mafia classic format.

Introduction: The Thing Mafia is a spin-off of GH's classic Mafia series. It will take place in Antarctica, but will involve the usual Frontroom gang of misfits. This is a traditional mafia game with only one power role: Mafia. There are no serial killers, no vigilantes, no doctors, no third-party roles or extra victory conditions of any kind, and no Detective. It is simply Mafia vs. Town. There is, however, one very significant change in the mafia's killing ability.

Anonymous Accounts: All players in this game will be required to use Anonymous Accounts. These accounts were introduced as part of the Gameroom Anniversary, and have been used in The Copa Clash and Mafia X. When the game starts, every player's forum account will be linked to an Anonymous account, as per this post. While alive, you will make all posts in the game under this anonymous account. It takes a single mouse click to switch between your normal forum account and your anonymous account... you don't even have to log out/in or remember a password. Anonymous Accounts are mainly being used to allow for the implementation of the Doopleganger Kill mechanism, described below, with anonymity of the players only being a side-effect. Players are free to state, withhold, or lie about their real identities as they see fit. There will be no confirmation of a player's real identity when they are killed.

Roles:
The Thing (mafioso): (1)
The bad guy. The mafioso gets one kill per night, however the mafioso will have two options on how to kill:

• Option 1: Normal Kill. The mafioso kills a person and they die. Dead player's account is unlinked to their Anonymous account.
• Option 2: Doppleganger Kill. The mafioso kills a person, but takes their form. The dead player is unlinked from their Anonymous account, while the mafioso takes control of the dead player's Anonymous account and uses it as his own. The mafioso's old Anonymous account shows up as dead.

The town will not know which option was used. The night write-up will narrate a kill, but the identity of the person who died will not be part of the narration. Instead, at the end a body will be found. The townies will not know whether the body is from a new victim, or The Thing's old (now discarded) doppleganger body. The mafia have some say in how much/little they put in their kill descriptions. It is up to the town to figure out how much is their work and how much is mine.

The Frontroom Mafia (townies): (everyone else)
Are you a townie in this game? Don't fret, so is (mostly) everyone else. Unlike in some of the more role-heavy games though, the townies are absolutely integral to the success or the failure of the town in the game, since there are no power roles to do the heavy lifting. The townies will only be able to win this game if they come together and take some time out to seriously do some detective work. Being talkative will be especially important in this game, as the more you talk the harder it will be for The Thing to successfully impersonate you.

Communication: No players may communicate about the game anywhere except in the public thread. No PMs, no IRC, no IMing, no email, no carrier pigeon. This is to prevent players from establishing pre-generated code words so that other players will know if their account has been taken over. Find The Thing with good old fashioned scum-hunting, not cheap tricks.

Death: Once you are dead, you will be given a link to a Quicktopic forum where you can discuss the game with other dead players. Other than inside that Quicktopic, you are not allowed to talk about the game to anyone in any way until it is over. Sorry if this rule is frustrating, but it's the only way to make the doppleganger system work. Anyone who's account is taken over by The Thing will obviously know it because they will see their account continue making posts. So, all dead players must remain totally silent to keep the game fair.

Game procedure: The game will start with a night phase. Unfortunately, this means one person will die before they even get the chance to cast one vote. You can still help your fellow townies by talking as much as possible the first night, so that they have as much 'natural' dialog from you as possible to be able to compare later to see if you've been replaced. Voting procedure is in the usual format, i.e.:

Vote: GeneralHankerchief

If you wish to unvote, then please do so in the following manner:

Unvote: Ser Clegane
Vote: GeneralHankerchief

Voting abstain (you are present for the round and have no lynch preference) is allowed, but "No Lynch" is not. If you post in a round but do not vote, I count it as an "abstain". Additionally, after a certain amount of rounds, usually when I deem it to be endgame, "Abstain" will no longer be allowed, meaning you must vote to lynch someone. I will let you know in the thread once this threshold has been crossed.

WoGing may or may not be used, depending on how I feel when I wake up in the morning. ph33r

Joining the Game: You may join the game with the usual 'IN' post. However, using The Thing's special doppleganger kill ability will require players to impersonate other players. This can be very difficult. As such, players will have to OPT IN in order to be put into the group from which The Thing will be randomly chosen. If you want to volunteer to be The Thing, PM TinCow when you sign-up to say so. This will allow me to give that role to a person who thinks they can pull it off without letting everyone else know which players they need to be looking for more closely.

Sign-ups: (17/17) FULL
Montmorency
Populus Romanus
Death is yonder
ATPG
Mr. Stuka
Tratorix
GH
Reenk
B_Ray
TheLastDays
Ishmael
johnhughthom
Major Robert Dump
Captain Blackadder
issaikhaan
Arjos
classical_hero

Original First Post:

I was just watching the trailer for the remake of The Thing, and it occurred to me that the new Anonymous account system makes possible a new variation on the mafia game which might be fun. If you're not familiar with The Thing, the basic idea is that there's an alien which kills people, but it's essentially a shapeshifter and assumes their forms after they die, so no one knows who the killer is. This would be an interesting twist for a mafia game, which I think we can now pull off. It would work as follows:

All players use Anonymous accounts; no communicating in any manner outside the public thread. There is one (and only one) mafioso. Every night, the mafioso kills one person. However, there are two options about how the kill is handled, and the mafioso gets to choose which to use. The first option is that the kill occurs normally, and the player dies and everyone knows it when they find his body. The second option is that the player dies, but instead of their death becoming public knowledge, the mafioso takes over their Anonymous account and begins posting as them. The mafioso's old (abandoned) Anonymous account is then found dead in the player's place. Under no circumstances is any dead player allowed to talk about the game to anyone by any means until the game is over.

I'm interested to hear some commentary on this idea, as I think it could be really interesting, but it could also be very confusing and would depend heavily on strict obedience of the total silence upon death rule. Comments, concerns?

[edit]A follow-up thought on this. The success of the mafioso would depend very heavily on their ability to impersonate other players. This would require a far higher level of skill than most mafia games, as the mafioso would not only need to act innocent, they would need to act innocent in a totally different posting style. I can imagine some people who would want to play this game to hunt the mafioso, but who might not feel confident enough in their own abilities to actual play the mafioso. As such, it might be better to actually take volunteers for the role of mafioso instead of letting it be decided randomly from the entire set of players. Anyone could join, but in addition to joining they would also say whether they were willing to be the mafioso. The mafioso would then be chosen randomly from only the subset of volunteers.

[Double A]

Sweet jebus, that would be scary.

You know what's really scary? About an hour to half an hour ago, I stumbled upon The Thing on TV Tropes.

[TheLastDays]

I kinda like the idea although I think it could be very hard for the town...

Still it sounds like fun

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

Good idea. think it would cut out the bias to. For example, what if Player A the mafia hates Player B the townie? He might kill Player B despite that Player B may not really have any abilities or anything that could be used against him.

[TinCow]

Uh, well the bias would just be avoided because of the anonymous system, which has already been used twice and is not a new tool for this game. This is just an idea for a different way of using the anonymous accounts. I could see it working in larger games, but I think it would need a small game test first. As I'm imagining it, it would be a small game with player limit up to whatever the max is for small games. The only roles would be townies and the single mafioso. PMing might also be allowed, so long as no one deleted their PMs (so that the mafioso could read all the conversations if they took over the player's account). That might be a bit hard to police though, and most people don't PM in vanilla games anyway, so maybe just restricting it to public thread would be best.

More comments are welcome.

Sample banner:

[Tratorix]

Not sure how much work would be involved, but could the anonymous accounts names be temporarily changed? For a small game at least, it would be a neat touch to actually name the players after the characters from The Thing.

[TinCow]

I thought about that, but there's too few characters in the film to make that work anyway. I'd like to see this thing run with around 15 people. Since it's essentially just a vanilla mafia game with a twist, I was thinking of using the classic Frontroom setting anyway. I almost slapped a fedora on the monster guy in the banner when I made it, and I still might.

Basic background story idea: Following their victory in Mafia X, Kage and CR became immensely wealthy mafioso and founded a new crime empire in the Frontroom. They were given a job to smuggle some odd cargo back from an abandoned research station in Antarctica. They thought it would be a fun vacation, so they took their entire crew with them to Antarctica to help them get the job done. When they get there, the find the station torn to pieces and dead bodies everywhere. Yadda yadda yadda. This gives me an excuse to use the normal anonymous accounts, makes it a bit more mafia-y, and gives me a lot more opportunities to be amusing than I would get with a game that stuck to the film.

Yep, let's do the new banner:

[TinCow]

Draft Rules, partially (and shamelessly) ripped off of GH's Mafia classic format:

Introduction: The Thing Mafia is a spin-off of GH's classic Mafia series. It will take place in Antarctica, but will involve the usual Frontroom game of misfits. This is a traditional mafia game with only one power role: Mafia. There are no serial killers, no vigilantes, no doctors, no third-party roles or extra victory conditions of any kind, and no Detective. It is simply Mafia vs. Town. There is, however, one very significant change in the mafia's killing ability.

Anonymous Accounts: All players in this game will be required to use Anonymous Accounts. These accounts were introduced as part of the Gameroom Anniversary, and have been used in The Copa Clash and Mafia X. When the game starts, every player's forum account will be linked to an Anonymous account, as per this post. While alive, you will make all posts in the game under this anonymous account. It takes a single mouse click to switch between your normal forum account and your anonymous account... you don't even have to log out/in or remember a password.

Roles:
The Thing (mafioso): (1)
The bad guy. The mafioso gets one kill per night, however the mafioso will have two options on how to kill:

• Option 1: Normal Kill. The mafioso kills a person and they die. Dead player's account is unlinked to their Anonymous account.
• Option 2: Doppleganger Kill. The mafioso kills a person, but takes their form. The dead player is unlinked from their Anonymous account, while the mafioso takes control of the dead player's Anonymous account and uses it as his own. The mafioso's old Anonymous account shows up as dead.

The town will not know which option was used. The night write-up will narrate a kill, but the identity of the person who died will not be part of the narration. Instead, at the end a body will be found. The townies will not know whether the body is from a new victim, or The Thing's old (now discarded) doppleganger body. The mafia have some say in how much/little they put in their kill descriptions. It is up to the town to figure out how much is their work and how much is mine.

The Frontroom Mafia (townies): (everyone else)
Are you a townie in this game? Don't fret, so is (mostly) everyone else. Unlike in some of the more role-heavy games though, the townies are absolutely integral to the success or the failure of the town in the game, since there are no power roles to do the heavy lifting. The townies will only be able to win this game if they come together and take some time out to seriously do some detective work. Being talkative will be especially important in this game, as the more you talk the harder it will be for The Thing to successfully impersonate you.

Communication: No players may communicate about the game anywhere except in the public thread. No PMs, no IRC, no IMing, no email, no carrier pigeon. This is to prevent players from establishing pre-generated code words so that other players will know if their account has been taken over. Find The Thing by

Death: Once you are dead, you will be given a link to a Quicktopic forum where you can discuss the game with other dead players. Other than inside that Quicktopic, you are not allowed to talk about the game to anyone in any way until it is over. Sorry if this rule is frustrating, but it's the only way to make the doppleganger system work. Anyone who's account is taken over by The Thing will obviously know it because they will see their account continue making posts. So, all dead players must remain totally silent to keep the game fair.

Game procedure: The game will start with a night phase. Unfortunately, this means one person will die before they even get the chance to cast one vote. You can still help your fellow townies by talking as much as possible the first night, so that they have as much 'natural' dialog from you as possible to be able to compare later to see if you've been replaced. Voting procedure is in the usual format, i.e.:

Vote: GeneralHankerchief

If you wish to unvote, then please do so in the following manner:

Unvote: Ser Clegane
Vote: GeneralHankerchief

Voting abstain (you are present for the round and have no lynch preference) is allowed, but "No Lynch" is not. If you post in a round but do not vote, I count it as an "abstain". Additionally, after a certain amount of rounds, usually when I deem it to be endgame, "Abstain" will no longer be allowed, meaning you must vote to lynch someone. I will let you know in the thread once this threshold has been crossed.

WoGing may or may not be used, depending on how I feel when I wake up in the morning. ph33r :ninja:

[Reenk Roink]

I personally hate the idea of anonymous accounts because a big part of the fun in playing Mafia is you know a lot of the Orgahs to some degree or another. However, your game making it a feature is interesting for sure.

[TinCow]

I personally hate the idea of anonymous accounts because a big part of the fun in playing Mafia is you know a lot of the Orgahs to some degree or another. However, your game making it a feature is interesting for sure.

This is actually something I'd like a bit of input on. I'm not actually using the anonymous accounts because I want players' identities to be hidden, I'm only using them because there's no other way to implement this 'bodysnatcher' mechanism. So, on a mechanics level it really doesn't matter to me if people know who has which account at the start. I'd be perfectly happy to put everyone's starting name next to their anonymous account. However, there is a gameplay balance issue that should be considered. If it is stated who has which account, there's a risk that stuff like time zones could be used to spot the mafioso. For instance, if the mafioso is a Brit and takes the body of an Australian, they could be caught out be having unusual posting times. Is that kind of thing too hard on the mafioso, or is it acceptable? My concern is that this will already be a very difficult game for the mafioso, and making all player identities public would increase the difficulty even further.

[Montmorency]

I personally hate the idea of anonymous accounts because a big part of the fun in playing Mafia is you know a lot of the Orgahs to some degree or another. However, your game making it a feature is interesting for sure.

I don't know any of you besides Tincow (barely).

That's how it works, right?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I definitely don't want to be the Thing though.

[Populus Romanus]

So I sign up here? In. I just hope I dont get Johnny again. Hehe

[Tratorix]

This is actually something I'd like a bit of input on. I'm not actually using the anonymous accounts because I want players' identities to be hidden, I'm only using them because there's no other way to implement this 'bodysnatcher' mechanism. So, on a mechanics level it really doesn't matter to me if people know who has which account at the start. I'd be perfectly happy to put everyone's starting name next to their anonymous account. However, there is a gameplay balance issue that should be considered. If it is stated who has which account, there's a risk that stuff like time zones could be used to spot the mafioso. For instance, if the mafioso is a Brit and takes the body of an Australian, they could be caught out be having unusual posting times. Is that kind of thing too hard on the mafioso, or is it acceptable? My concern is that this will already be a very difficult game for the mafioso, and making all player identities public would increase the difficulty even further.

Player identities should be secret. Some players might know others well enough that they could ask a personal question that only that person would know, thereby identifying the thing. Also, guys I don't think sign ups are starting just yet, this is still in the development stage.

[TheLastDays]

Player identities should be secret. Some players might know others well enough that they could ask a personal question that only that person would know, thereby identifying the thing. Also, guys I don't think sign ups are starting just yet, this is still in the development stage.

But this could be faked too. There's not guarantee people will believe me that player A is Mafia because he couldn't answer my question, unless the Mafia is the only one not knowing the answer which kinda defeats the question in the first place...

It's something worth considering. It would definitely require even more skill from the Mafioso to fake other players though

[Visor]

Yeah. I'll try my hand as townie first day lynch bait again. :D

[TinCow]

Also, guys I don't think sign ups are starting just yet, this is still in the development stage.

It's ok, I'll take sign-ups. This is actually a very simple game and it's pretty much done. The only changes I would make would be balance-related tweaks based on whatever opinions people express before the game starts.

[Death is yonder]

As has been mentioned, timezones are indeed something that could be a dead giveaway.

Personally me and other people in the timezone region (Aussy's included) run at around +8-10GMT, and it would be very simple, as someone not the thing, to deliberately post only at times lets say between 4pm and 6pm my time, 3-5am EST, such that the thing would be fairly hard pressed to follow if he lived in North America, where many of the players in the forum are from.

(Well on the other hand someone aspiring to be The Thing may consider such considerations to be the components of the pinnacle to which he/she aspires to reach in the goal of a very convincing impersonation )

All in all, it sounds like a really good idea, but perhaps it may be prudent to further define rules/perimeters for players in this regard as naturally (some?all?) townie players who aren't the thing would be trying to leave behind posting clues or telltale signs that would make impersonation more difficult.

Anyway, on a whole its a very interesting idea, and I would love to be In

Perhaps as to whether people are interested in being the Thing they could tell Tincow via pm and not in thread

[TinCow]

(Well on the other hand someone aspiring to be The Thing may consider such considerations to be the components of the pinnacle to which he/she aspires to reach in the goal of a very convincing impersonation )

That's one of the factors that I'm trying to weigh here. A wise mafioso will only take the body of someone they think they can hide well in, which should include considerations like these. This is another example of the significantly higher level of skill that would be required of a bodysnatching mafioso, and it's one of the reasons why I only want to pull the mafioso out of a smaller pool of people who have specifically volunteered for the role knowing in advance what will be required. At the same time, the mafioso doesn't have to swap bodies every time he/she kills. It's even theoretically possible to just keep the same body the entire game and treat it like a normal vanilla mafia game, though I personally hope that doesn't happen as it totally defeats the purpose of the game.

GH's recent commentary in the Mafia X thread is currently swaying me heavily in the direction of specifically stating who the real players are for each anonymous account at the start of the game. In short, GH thinks that the anonymous accounts make the game much harder for the town and give the mafia an advantage. If this game was totally anonymous, it would give them an even bigger advantage. I'm concerned that if it's totally anonymous, it will be essentially impossible to catch the mafioso and too frustrating for the town.

[Askthepizzaguy]

I rather disagree.... you're only trying to catch one person in this game.

Being completely anonymous could balance it out.

Oh, and I'd be interested to play.

[TinCow]

I rather disagree.... you're only trying to catch one person in this game.

Being completely anonymous could balance it out.

Yes, that's true. At the same time, 1 mafioso and 16 townies is better odds than 2 mafioso and 34 townies, which was the setup in Mafia X. Since there will always be one night kill and one lynch, to win the mafioso will have to survive 7 day phases, no more, no less.

[johnhughthom]

I'd play this, now that I think about it I'm amazed I've never come across a game based on The Thing before, it's a perfect mafia setting.

[Mr. Stuka]

Interesting idea, and I agree that the player's identities should be kept secret completely. I'm in

[Tratorix]

I'm in.

[White_eyes:D]

I think using the kill write-ups could also freak the out of everyone. In the movie, people would find clothing burned with no nametags to make everyone in the base paranoid. They also just killed or burned themselves alive to prevent themselves from turning. If you do the kill write-up VERY well(Or the Mafia is good at writing) it could make most of town go into a panic.

The anonymous accounts seems like not such a good idea though...I have seen other players easily see though posting styles...Someone even spotted Kages one post and knew it was him. Lurking seems like the only way to win but I am sure people well lynch the lurkers. I think the mafia should get a one-shot ability to jump bodies as he is lynched.
Town would be down but not out and it would give the Mafia some time to remake his posting style and not just be a lucky win.

Or the thing could recruit someone who can't jump bodies...like in the movie(I recall some of them dieing from this)...I am just concerned that your throwing everything on the mafia and the few people that could(would) do it, but could be screwed over by timezones or lurking to avoid posting. I mean it is reasonable to assume that he would then jump into a background poster or even his biggest defender. But at that point people would be expecting him to act exactly the same, post the same and could you see Pizzaguy acting like Crazedrabbit? or Khaan acting like Reenk?

Would be a quick game...but it's up to you.

[Tratorix]

I think using the kill write-ups could also freak the out of everyone. In the movie, people would find clothing burned with no nametags to make everyone in the base paranoid. They also just killed or burned themselves alive to prevent themselves from turning. If you do the kill write-up VERY well(Or the Mafia is good at writing) it could make most of town go into a panic.

Also, everyone has to listen to this while reading them.

[GeneralHankerchief]

So in a sense, the game no longer becomes about finding the mafioso so much as finding out the change in posting behavior night-to-night, yes? That sounds pretty interesting to me. My only worry is that the Thing would chicken out and not really use the bodysnatcher option much/at all.

As for the anonymous account issue, I would not leave the townies in the dark about who is who. Vanilla games are supposed to be difficult for the mafia - they're the only person(s) who got an interesting role. Let them work for the victory.

(In, btw)

[Reenk Roink]

TinCow you sold me

[TinCow]

My only worry is that the Thing would chicken out and not really use the bodysnatcher option much/at all.

Well, I could require The Thing to change bodies no less than once every X turns. Or maybe something like 'changes bodies at least once during the game, with the first change occurring no later than turn X.'

[B-Wing]

I love this concept, TinCow! Pure brilliance!

Love the movie; love the idea of using the setting for mafia.

I agree that anonymous accounts are a must for this.

I suggest not making it mandatory for the Thing to change bodies. They'll probably just target the least talkative players anyway.

Good idea allowing players to decline mafia eligibility.

Now I wanna rewatch The Thing!

[Double A]

Well, I could require The Thing to change bodies no less than once every X turns. Or maybe something like 'changes bodies at least once during the game, with the first change occurring no later than turn X.'

Or you could just leave it to everyone to WIFOM the entire scenario.