Merits of Mass Claim...

[The Fonz]

Well, yes, but there's skill involved in fitting a name you've been given to a role that will save you. The flipside of the coin is that you don't want a game to come down to whether the mafia are lucky enough to guess correctly which names are and aren't in the game.

My personal preference is for having fewer safeclaims than there are scum (which requires some inventiveness, and penalises town for giving their rolenames away prematurely, whilst not making massclaim game breaking- obv, you throw in some dubious sounding town roles too). I won't do it all the time though, since good mods should be unpredictable.

[Yosarian2]

On the subject of fakeclaims (including fakenameclaims), isn't half of the skill in being Mafia in a Theme game coming up with a good claim?

Meh...depends. In some themes, there's just no good way to do that; for example, in my MAD mafia games, I felt I had to give the scum safeclaims, since there are such a limited number of nations in the world that have nuclear weapons.

If there's a very limited number of likely claims, safeclaims are probably needed. That being said, I do agree with you that it's nice when thy're not needed, makes it more interesting to try to figure stuff out from the roles.


This thread is funny, from 2006, because I feel like we've pretty much solved this problem now; I don't know when the last time I've seen a game here with the "can be broken with an early massclaim" flaw.

[PokerFace]

Holy necrophilia batman, has Pie seen this thread yet?

[The Fonz]

This thread is funny, from 2006, because I feel like we've pretty much solved this problem now; I don't know when the last time I've seen a game here with the "can be broken with an early massclaim" flaw.

The Silent Speaker's Meta Mafia mini. All the town had confirmable night actions, and none of the scum did (nor were we told the former).

[SensFan]

On the subject of fakeclaims (including fakenameclaims), isn't half of the skill in being Mafia in a Theme game coming up with a good claim?

Meh...depends. In some themes, there's just no good way to do that; for example, in my MAD mafia games, I felt I had to give the scum safeclaims, since there are such a limited number of nations in the world that have nuclear weapons.

If there's a very limited number of likely claims, safeclaims are probably needed. That being said, I do agree with you that it's nice when thy're not needed, makes it more interesting to try to figure stuff out from the roles.

I guess my main reason for that mindset is that if I use a Theme from a source material (unlike Vegetable Mafia or something) and plan on making everyone a unique name, I make sure there at least twice as many plausible names as there are players. That, or make it narrow enough that the Scum have to claim their actual name, and the skill comes in picking a role that fits the name.

[Mr. Flay]

I usually give safenames in Theme Games and let the player come up with whatever power/role they feel goes with their play. Seems the best of both worlds...