Savant

if you had 2 mafia wins compared to someone who had two town wins my assumption is that the mafia wins would weigh significantly more

That's correct. Keeps total elo balanced, and also I think it's more telling how you perform when there are fewer other team members to dilute your ability. This kind of expects that you perform similarly as scum and as town, which feels necessary if we're going to have a single elo score. It may be an oversimplification, but if I need to change the system later, I can retroactively rescore everyone so it's consistent.

a player's Elo rating is equivalent to their expected winrate against a player whose Elo rating is a certain amount relative to theirs, e.g., 150 points lower or 300 points higher. Since Mafia is a team game with a large random component, I doubt that any player will ever have a win-rate above a certain percentage that's nowhere close to 100%.

Elo here is actually an estimation of the winrate of a team with an average elo of some value. So if I'm 1600 and you are 1500, it estimates that a team made of me and other people at my skill level would beat a team of you and others at your skill level a certain amount.

So isn't the possible Elo range effectively restricted to a few hundred points on either side of 1500?

I'd expect so if opponents are just random. However, once the spread gets large enough, we may start having people play rated against others with similar elo. That could allow for a bigger range of scores. There's also a decent amount to be gained by carrying a team of others with low elo (which allows your elo to rise faster). But your team is basically random, so you should expect to be paired up with people of average elo within the group.

My personal view is that I think we'll be able to assess the results better after 20-30 games, but the results seem to make more "sense" than I would have expected at this point, I guess. I considered having player votes on performance, but while I think this would improve short-term results, it introduces other sources of bias that I think are more likely to be avoided long-term in a system that only rewards wins/penalizes losses. It's also difficult to noob snipe, because in contrast to debating, there's a lot more people in each game, and you have to play a lot of games to improve your score significantly.

What are your general thoughts, and what do you expect the rankings to be after some large number of games—say, after 100 games or so?

I didn't know who was going to be on top, but Pie makes sense to me. I expect him to stay pretty high up (even if an 83% winrate likely isn't sustainable). The gap between him and the second-place spot on the leaderboard seems telling even this early on. I think Mikal and Lunatic are underrated at the moment (just got unlucky with the small sample size) and will end up at least above average. As a general rule, I think experienced players being consistently at the top will be a sign that the system is becoming more accurate. As for how they'll rank against each other, I think that's harder to predict.

Surprised we only had a roleblock

I guess I expected your role to be more OP and less of a liability than it ended up being. Probably should have given you more in retrospect. I thought giving everyone the same character would hurt the town, as well as messing up the wording in some town players' PMs for their win condition and character description to throw some people off. When most people had you in their town block, I thought you had a shot. But Avenger was a very powerful role for town to have.

Well, technically not a switcher since Pie still died. But basically the same thing in this case.

Endgame up!

TOWN WIN

1st Place: Vader, Mag1cman, Shining, RexFavilla, ILikePie5, whiteflame, Airmax1227

2nd Place: Wryly, Mikal

KOHAI: So, you have a new mafia endgame for me?

SAVANT: Yes, sir, I do. It's called Ryan George Cinematic Universe Mafia Endgame.

KOHAI: And what game is it for?

SAVANT: The only one that makes sense given the title.

KOHAI: So, what players were in this game?

SAVANT: Well, there's Pie, and Mharman.

KOHAI: They're on the top of the leaderboard!

SAVANT: They sure are, sir.

KOAHI: And what did they do to help catch the mafia?

SAVANT: Well, they lynched a town player, and one of them died the first night.

KOHAI: ...and?

SAVANT: Well, that's two things.

KOAHI: It seems like it must have been pretty hard for the town to win the game if one of the best players got killed the first night.

SAVANT: Actually, it was super easy, barely an inconvenience.

KOHAI: Oh, really?

SAVANT: See, one of the scum players said a trigger word they were told would kill them. And one of the town players who can avenge someone's death picked the same person that scum targeted on the first night.

KOHAI: Why would a scum player say a word they were told would kill them at the beginning of the game?

SAVANT: So that the game can happen.

KOHAI: That works.

SAVANT: We also have this other player who dies on the first day. Shining.

KOHAI: Shining? What's his deal?

SAVANT: He was in the game!

KOHAI: Wow wow wow....wow.

SAVANT: So, what do you think?

KOHAI: Well, I think as long as we really lean into the meta angle with this endgame writeup, people might overlook the extremely swingy setup, borderline unfair mod tactics, and all the alternative ways this role setup could have gone wrong.

Role PMs and Night Actions:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZBrxf_e896nIFcKoTWrWGYExRjer0sNq5chHQmAvtxw/edit?usp=sharing

Vote Count

Airmax1227 (1/5) Mikal 

Shining (5/5) whiteflame, Vader, Pie, Mharman, Mikal

Shining was lynched. They were innocent! DP2 coming shortly.

As stated in the original post: to go to the next day phase, you must lynch a player.

Vote Count

Airmax1227 (1/5) Mikal 

Whiteflame (1/5) Pie

With 8 alive it takes 5 to lynch!

Living Players:

1. Airmax1227

2. RexFavilla

3. Shining

4. Mikal

5. whiteflame

6. Mag1cman

7. ILikePie5

8. Vader

Wryly has died for unexplained reasons! They were guilty. The day phase has not yet ended.

Let the mafia game begin!

KOHAI: So, you have a new mafia game for me?

SAVANT: Yes, sir, I do. It’s based on a YouTube sketch artist called Ryan George.

KOHAI: That does sound like a person’s name. So, what’s gonna happen in this game? Do you have anything cool planned for the night phase?

SAVANT: Actually, sir, there’s not going to be any night phases.

KOHAI: Oh, really?

SAVANT: Yeah, see, players are just going to lock in different versions of their night actions ahead of time based on different possible ways the day phase could end.

KOHAI: Players love it when new and inexperienced moderators introduce confusing rules.

SAVANT: They sure do, sir. We’re also going to have a time limit for the whole game instead of for each day phase so the whole thing doesn’t take too long. Each day can be as long as people want.

KOHAI: Is that how days work in the real world?

SAVANT: It might be. So, what do you think?

KOHAI: Well, I think as long as we don’t follow up this dialogue with a list of intentionally vague additional rules, people won’t be too confused.

Game Information

1. There may or may not be anti-claim mechanics in this game. Claim at your own risk.
2. There are 7 town players and 2 mafia. No third parties.
3. Votes and unvotes must be clear, no hiding it with small text or burying it in other text. If you vote and unvote in the same post, the unvote does not count, and the vote stays.
4. I will announce when MYLO/LYLO has arrived, and votes will be permanent on MYLO/LYLO days. So no hammer baiting.

Unique Mechanics

1. The town has five days to eliminate the mafia. Day phases can be as long as you want, but the game will default to a mafia victory at 1PM central time 10/10/2025 unless the mafia have been eliminated before then. To go to the next day phase, you must lynch a player. You cannot vote to end the day phase without killing a player, the day phase just continues until someone is lynched.
2. To both town and mafia, specify your night actions before the day phase ends. That will usually be once I get home from work and see that a hammer has happened. You can specify as many conditions as you want, such as “target player X, unless player X is dead, target player Y, unless player X flips town, target player Z, and if all three are dead, do nothing.” I’d suggest having a long list of backup targets. Just be prepared for any surprises, because the next day phase will start as soon as this one ends, and if you have no possible actions locked in you’ll do nothing.

Rules

1. No copy-pasting full role PM
2. Do not edit or delete your posts
3. No cryptography
4. No liking/upvoting posts after you die

If you have any questions, please PM me. I will answer questions about your role and dead players’ roles, but not about hypothetical roles.

Living Players:

1. Airmax1227

2. RexFavilla

3. Shining

4. Mikal

5. whiteflame

6. Mag1cman

7. Wryly

8. ILikePie5

9. Vader

With 9 players alive it takes 5 to lynch.

PMs going out now

If you want to play Thoth's game as well, I recommend signing up now. That way there's no delay between the end of this game and the beginning of that one.

1. Airmax1227

2. RexFavilla

3. Shining

4. Mikal

5. whiteflame

6. Mag1cman

7. Wryly

8.

9.

Backups:

1. ILikePie5

2. Vader

1. ILikePie5

2. RexFavilla

3. Shining

4. Mikal

5. whiteflame

6.

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8.

9.

Interested in playing?

Magic and I were not a happy couple

I mean you still won that game.

Elo is calculated based on wins and losses, with greater change if the lower elo team wins and bigger changes for each player on smaller teams (it's zero-sum). And yeah, the ranking right now isn't set in stone after this few games. Like, a 10-15 elo difference is actually very little, it only seems significant now because people's elos haven't changed much yet. (Elo changes much more slowly in team setups because the reward is split. I could scale it up, but then it would bounce back and forth a lot, because the small changes are meant to reflect that a team result doesn't say much about each individual player's skill.)

The reason it's not based on anything else is (a) simplicity, and (b) because every player should only be incentivized to play to their wincon, not to make moves that could help their personal "score" potentially at the expense of the team. There's other systems like MVP selection and voting on the top players, but those are somewhat flawed and not objective. They'd make ratings more accurate short-term, but the long term equilibrium wouldn't necessarily match the expected win probability.

If you get 9p go ahead and start without me

Should be quick enough that you won't be waiting too long for the next game =)

1. ILikePie5

2. RexFavilla

3. Shining

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Yeah, it's my second time hosting, and people have talked about unbalanced setups before. So if I screw this one up, at least it won't take too much of people's time.

The theme will be a surprise. One thing I'll say off the bat though is that there will be no night phases (any "night" actions will need to be locked in in advance) and the town will have a total-game time limit. They can use as much time as they want on each day phase, and lynching someone moves to the next day phase. However, if the time limit runs out, town loses.

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Hang is better than lynch, but still carries some racist connotation

Criminals have been hanged for millennia (they still are in some countries), and the term is mostly used in contexts not referring to racial killings.

Lynch has a strongly negative connotation, partially because it implies that the person was killed without due process

I mean, not to say that your overall point is bad, but executing someone by majority vote is literally killing them without due process. People often just get voted out on a hunch or even randomly. Not really a game that depicts its characters as morally upstanding on either team.

I still don't like it

I mean, fair enough. If enough people prefer a different word, I guess that's a reason to change it. Maybe put it to a vote. "Execute" and "hang" seem like decent alternatives if we want to go that route.

I'm not sure whether being so used to it that we overlook the racist connotation makes it less problematic or more insidious

Well, it cuts both ways. The racist connotation is largely because it's usually used to refer to racist killings (even if it doesn't only mean that). Everyone who was lynched was hanged and killed, but those words don't carry the same connotation because we choose to continue using them in other contexts. I'd say the racist connotation behind the word "lynch" depends on intent, but again, the game is supposed to be fun, so if using a different term makes it more so for most people, then we should do that.

Did it surprise you? Actually made sense to me, avg mafia rating was lower than avg town rating, so a mafia win meant a big jump. Also only 2 mafia players instead of 3, so each of them got a larger share of the elo won.

I'll submit the result

test

adding test

test