Hydras in mini normals

[Ranmaru]

I was just thinking about this.

With two masons, you have two votes, and two people confirming each other. So that's information to the town, and that's it.

But with a hydra, the two heads are only confirmed 'whatever' to each other, not to the rest of town. Ok, so there goes alignment. Then, they only have one vote. Also consider them having to possibly argue over their scumpicks to get what they want.

So really you only get the communication aspect of the mason role. Town recognizes that. Does this help the slot IMMENSELY beforehand? I don't think so. I think it's neutral. As neutral as a neighbor role. I think the more effort you put into the hydra, the more can possibly come out. (If you are sync with your other head) Once you take advantage of the hydra, the advantage is clearly there. But if you slack off, there won't be any 'advantage' to your exposal as if you were some mason, because you aren't a mason. (Again, neighbor) You'll come back to it and realize it's still sitting there untouched like you left it.

So it's like...

masons to each other, neighbors to everyone else

(in town). [both of which have half a vote]

Oh. MY. GOD.

I just thought of a cool idea.

Some masonry/neighbors that can only have ONE vote together. Can that work?

Also, I love playing in hydras, because masonry is my favorite role. As a mod I'd prefer to keep my games non-hydra, but I'm biased because I love to play in them. It's hard to find that happy balance. Maybe what flay said could work, every other game NO HYDRAS's or something to fulfill that niche. Or hydra limits.

Spoiler: May be inappropriate, will take down if prompted

For some reason I can only think of sexual favors between two people... lol. "I want you to do this but I don't want to do it back... yeah I'm selfish."

[Eden]

Is there some way to organize players who strongly dislike hydras so that they can make their own games free of them?

This reminds me of a discussion that would occasionally flare up on another website (for another game besides mafia, to be clear) I frequent where people dropping out of real-time games mid-game was an issue. Quite a lot of the forum regulars hate it and would do anything not to play games with people who drop out of the games; but the forum regulars constitute a small minority of the player base, and unlike here all such games happened in one giant queue, so naturally the odds of you drawing a game with a player who would drop out was extremely high. The problem still hasn't been solved after years of trying, but the most effective fixes were establishments of vetted players who wouldn't drop out of games. This worked very well while people were active enough to keep it going, but disorganization strangled and killed them relatively quickly (a span of a month or so).

I see that there are usergroups on this site; I'm not familiar with their function on phpBB boards in general or this one in particular. But it sounds like the exact tool that would solve this issue. Perhaps players, like me, who do not like the idea of hydras and would not play games with them, could make some kind of on-site group that would allow them to create hydra-free games for them to play? The group would likely need to be a GMing group rather than a player group; if you had about a dozen GMs who were dedicated to running no-hydra games on a regular basis (not necessarily all at once), then the apparent demand for hydra-free games could be satisfied with minimal disruption to the population who is apathetic toward or supportive of hydras.

[Psyche]

Eden.
That is a very poorly resolved avatar.

[Huntress]

Why would mods need to be in a special group to do what they can already do, and are doing, in the current system? I agree that there is a demand for hydra-free games, which is one of the reasons I went that way with mine, but I don't believe the demand is great enough to have a separate group. Perhaps listing mods willing to run such games on a wiki page, like what was done with the BAM group, would work?

I've seen hydra-free games running in most of the queues so it's not as if they don't exist at all. In fact, if you want a hydra-free game you can jump straight into one right now if you can handle replacing into a large.

[Eden]

That works as well, I would think, Huntress. The real key is that the group doing it stays organized and committed to the idea; the specific form of the group doesn't need to be any particular thing, as long as people are committed to it then the details of its actualization will work itself out.

[Eden]

Eden.
That is a very poorly resolved avatar.

lmao you're not kidding

this one should be a lil better

[Huntress]

But I still don't understand why you actually need to organise anything for this? As I asked at the beginning of my last post.

[Eden]

Wouldn't the wiki page require some organization? The BaM page you linked looks exactly like what I was thinking (though a blacklist would be unnecessary since it's just a mechanic ban). Someone would need to get together a list of mods at least, which would require getting people organized and ready to go to some extent. Maybe I'm not following your question? I'm not talking a big group here (like I said before, wasn't sure what the usergroups were exactly, that just sounded like something that would work for this).

[Huntress]

What I meant was that if mods wanted to make their games hydra-free then they'd just go ahead and do that. It doesn't need any organising. So it's not clear to me what you're trying to achieve with your list that couldn't be done without it?

[Eden]

Provide a reference point for people who don't want to play with hydras so that they could find games like this a little more easily. From the sounds of it most games these days allow hydras, so I imagine it's somewhat difficult to find a game without them. I don't really follow your (apparent?) objection; if I thought of a more efficient way to achieve this I'd suggest that instead.

[Psyche]

SOLUTION:

1. CREATE ALTERNATIVE SITE CALLED MAFIASCUM.COM
2. BAN HYDRAS
3. ENTIRE USERBASE TRANSFERS TO MS.COM BECAUSE IT HATES HYDRAS
4. PUT ADVERTISEMENTS UNDER EVER POST MADE
5. PROFIT

[Eden]

SOLUTION:

1. CREATE ALTERNATIVE SITE CALLED MAFIASCUM.COM
2. BAN HYDRAS
3. ENTIRE USERBASE TRANSFERS TO MS.COM BECAUSE IT HATES HYDRAS
4. PUT ADVERTISEMENTS UNDER EVER POST MADE
5. PROFIT

** mafiascum.org

that way it'll look more like the real one hue