[discussion] Investigative role in mafia

[EvilTom]

Not really related to the game. Remember, do not discuss ongoing games.

Mafia without a cop is weird, since it becomes really hard to get reliable information to the town.  Beats me what Sopko has set up - I guess it's possible to replace the cop with, say, a watcher which is also pretty good at sniffing out scum and then have fewer scum - but a detective is probably the rarest role to be without.  Also some historical significance to it - the party game version has cop as its only (town) role and is pretty foundational.  So no, I don't know for sure.

(Side note: I've played mafia games without a detective before where the clues were entirely in the "story" the GM posted every night.  More like a group reading a mystery novel and having communal guessing as to who the killers were.  Fun, since kinda sorta everyone is a detective, but also swingy since the clues need to be really subtle, as they can instantly end a killer's career if somebody picks up on a clue too well.)

It's not 'weird' at all. I ran SciFiAnonyMafia with Just a Doc+Nurse, ScumRB and a few miller/gf roles to throw people off. A game without a 'townwinsgame' role is an interesting game, that relies entirely on scumhunting. I find it weird that the GM would give out clues :\ how would that be balanced for scum?
Obviously they play mafia different where you're from. That said, there's often an investigative role in DL games, but not always.

/Open to comment yo

[Dark Holy Elf]

No role is 100% guaranteed in DL mafia. Anyway, town hardly needs a cop for a balanced game. A cop is not supposed to be town's only way of gathering clues - what if the cop is killed night 1, after all? Town does not (nor should it) give up. And sometimes the cop, even in games where he or she is present, is either insane (tends to result in a mislynch, so any good he or she does is often offset by this) or possibly even random (worse than no cop at all!).

Fundamentally the game is played by watching behaviour round to round, and piecing a puzzle together. Investigative roles help, but that's more because the randomness of who the cop hits, his or her sanity, etc., keep things fresh from game to game, so it develops a little differently. They're not needed for the core of the game (nor is any other power role).

[SnowFire]

Interesting.  All I can say is that I've never played in a Mafia game without a cop (or that wasn't under the alternative setup I described).  Kind of assumed that to be the standard role everyone expects - Mafia, a cop, possibly some other craziness for Internet games.  (I should warn you that when I last played Internet Mafia, it was 2004, and had rules like "you can't switch your vote after you make it.")  I certainly agree that there's no reason why you can't have a game without a cop and still have it be balanced.

EvilTom, re more story style games: Yes, if the clues are too blatant, then a perceptive townie can connect the dots, post their logic, and watch as a hail of votes strikes the target.  It's not necessarily biased against scum though.  For a similar experience, you can buy a variety of "host a murder mystery" games often based on the same premise - slowly hand out clues through the characters, try and figure out who the murderer is by the end.  Both of the ones I've played of these had the answer at the end be about as clear as mud, even if we'd theoretically broken character and just shared our clues / dark secrets.  In cases like those, where the clues are too obscure, it'd have been biased pro-scum.

I'd say the bigger problem with story style games is...  well, you want to have everyone on the same playing field.  But that can be tricky.  Themes help, but then there are issues of how hardcore people are.  Make the clues too easy and the person who's a complete Final Fantasy nut solves the game early, but make them incredibly subtle and the more casual fan is just kind of along for the ride assessing others' arguments.  Well, and watching for the normal Mafia tells, like the scum teaming up on someone who's on the right track.

Since I was riffling through the archives today, the closest thing to that it seems the DL has done was Pretty Princess Mafia, which seemed more like a roleplaying exercise dressed up in Mafia rules.  Which is cool!  Roleplaying is fun too, though I'd argue that a forum isn't quite the best avenue for it.