Mafia-style Go

[MountainGo]

This sounds really fun, can I play?

I'm in.

Another idea might be to make move suggestions and votes pseudonymously. Players would post under some sort of secondary account with an assigned name. That way nobody knows the identity or true strength of the other players. The would be voting off Mr. Green or Mr. Blue instead of Fwiffo or Jordus.

This is a cool suggestion.

[Kirby]

I think the temptation to look under the hide tags would be too great.
Since there is a gamemaster anyway, the analysis could be sent by PM to him, and then he'd post it at the end.

I'm going now, but if people are interested, I'll start a thread for a game tomorrow.

Yeah, maybe it's too tempting. However the rules pan out, though, it sounds like fun. 楽しみにしています！

[Solomon]

So if I'm reading this correctly...kind of like The Weakest Link? - I'd be down for it.

[daniel_the_smith]

Actually, with an even number of people, it seems the opposite to me.

Let's say that there are two teams of 4 and 4. I'm on team black. So there are three other people on black, and four on white. If I make a really good move for black, then if my team cares about winning on the board (which they don't have to), three people will not want me to leave. But the four white opponents would want me to leave since I made a good move on the board. If I make a bad move for black, there are only three black people and four white people, so it seems that I'd have better chances (since there are more people on the white team to vote for me).

I don't see the problem with playing for the actual game result. This way, people will want to play good moves so that their team can win. At the same time, they don't want to play *too* good of moves so that they don't get voted off by the other team (which at least at the start, has more voting power to vote you off).

You left one voter out of your analysis. Are you planning on voting against yourself?

[Kirby]

...

You left one voter out of your analysis. Are you planning on voting against yourself?

No, I wouldn't vote myself off. That's the point. In this example, there are 7 other people besides myself that could all vote against me. Four of those people are not on my team. Hence, it's to my benefit to please the majority --> those that are not on my team.

But this is all based on the assumption that people are going to vote based on how well you are playing in the game - which has no merit if the game result doesn't mean anything. That's why I think we should have the points on the board be the deciding factor. People getting eliminated will make it easier for one team or another to have more points on the board.

[Joaz Banbeck]

Once you folks get the rules ironed out, I'm in.

[MountainGo]

No, I wouldn't vote myself off. That's the point. In this example, there are 7 other people besides myself that could all vote against me. Four of those people are not on my team. Hence, it's to my benefit to please the majority --> those that are not on my team.

But if your ultimate goal is to get your team to win on the board, what use are you if you're making bad moves on purpose? You have to make good moves to help your team, just not so good that the other team votes you out. (I assume voting will be anonymous.)

How's this for a plan. When the last member of a team would be voted out, instead they stay in the game. Everyone's color is announced, and the game is played out to the end with no more kick-offs.

EDIT: On second thought, you wouldn't have to reveal anyone's color or cease kickoffs at that point. The host would just announce, "Mr. Blue was voted to leave, but he is the last member of his team, so he stays." Then no one can vote for Mr. Blue anymore. Eventually you will get down to one player from each team, at which point the colors are finally announced and they finish up the endgame (or, more probably, one of them resigns).

EDIT 2: Nevermind to the first edit. As soon as the host says Mr. Blue is the last of his team, of course everyone knows everyone's team, so you might as well announce it for the audience's sake. And since that would be known, it would be silly to continue kicking people off since it would just be the bigger team voting off their own weak players.

[Kirby]

No, I wouldn't vote myself off. That's the point. In this example, there are 7 other people besides myself that could all vote against me. Four of those people are not on my team. Hence, it's to my benefit to please the majority --> those that are not on my team.

But if your ultimate goal is to get your team to win on the board, what use are you if you're making bad moves on purpose? You have to make good moves to help your team, just not so good that the other team votes you out. (I assume voting will be anonymous.)

How's this for a plan. When the last member of a team would be voted out, instead they stay in the game. Everyone's color is announced, and the game is played out to the end with no more kick-offs.

This is exactly what I am trying to suggest! I think that there is some sort of a miscommunication here.

The original rules do not say that the ultimate goal is to get your team to win on the board, and I think that they should. If they do not, it does no use to play bad moves or good moves on purpose, because the objective is arbitrary.

I think that the rules would work exactly as you described, and it's what I had in mind as well - except that I didn't consider announcing the color, and I think that this is a good idea.

[MountainGo]

This is exactly what I am trying to suggest!

Haha, oops, I guess I didn't read your posts carefully enough. I completely agree that the winning team must be decided by which color wins the go game.

[prokofiev]

This is a nice idea. I agree with Kirby/MountainGo/others that winning should mean winning the go game. One still needs to be careful that the game isn't degenerate in some way, though.

Here's a complete proposal (please modify if you like, but it seems best to lay out a complete idea):

Proposal:
a) Players rotate choosing moves (voting for moves just complicates things and would take way too long)

b) Every N (say for 9x9 with 8 players, i.e. 4 per side, use N=1; for 19x19 and 8 players, use N=3 maybe) cycles through each player moving, everyone votes someone off

c) Players voted off are no longer in the rotation for choosing moves, but still vote off players (the team with greater numbers getting an advantage on the board and in terms of voting people off seems too lopsided to me, especially if they know they have greater numbers)

d) Ties in the voting are broken by coin flip (or other random method) by the moderator

e) The last player on any team may not be voted out, and voting keeps going until there are only two players remaining (i.e. MountainGo's suggestion). If such a player gets votes, they're discarded and the next highest vote getter is voted out.

e) Discussion by players is allowed, but only in the thread, no side collusion, and no specific suggestions for upcoming moves (makes it more fun/social and suitable to a discussion board to allow discussion, but it is possible it'd be better for the game instead to disallow all discussion)


Regarding the choosing of N:
If there are 8 players, then there are 8N + 7N + ... + 3N moves in the game before we're down to two players (one on each team). That's 33N moves. I'd guess you'd want to make 33N roughly the start of the endgame (the two remaining players will then play the endgame if it's close). Hence my suggestion of N = 1 for 9x9. I think N = 3 for 19x19 is perhaps close enough to the endgame while not being so long that people will lose interest before interesting voting happens.

(In general, with k players, it's N*(k^2+k-6)/2 moves.)

[daniel_the_smith]

No, I wouldn't vote myself off. That's the point. In this example, there are 7 other people besides myself that could all vote against me. Four of those people are not on my team. Hence, it's to my benefit to please the majority --> those that are not on my team.

But this is all based on the assumption that people are going to vote based on how well you are playing in the game - which has no merit if the game result doesn't mean anything. That's why I think we should have the points on the board be the deciding factor. People getting eliminated will make it easier for one team or another to have more points on the board.

Ah, so your non-vote + the other team's non-vote conspires to keep you on the island. Effectively you can keep a majority of the players liking you by screwing your own team on the board. This isn't a stable strategy, though-- if everyone uses this logic, the black team will end up trying to make good moves for white and vice versa. It'll just be like everyone swapped sides...

I think making decent moves for both sides is likely to be a good strategy.

[daniel_the_smith]

a) Players rotate choosing moves (voting for moves just complicates things and would take way too long)

b) Every N (say for 9x9 with 8 players, i.e. 4 per side, use N=1; for 19x19 and 8 players, use N=3 maybe) cycles through each player moving, everyone votes someone off

How do you ensure people have to make moves for both sides? Especially when there's an even number of players? Although I agree about how long voting for each move will take, I think we lose a lot of information without it. Perhaps to compensate we have to encourage a lot of table-talk: everyone tries to persuade whomever is moving next of their preferred move...

I don't think it's fair to hold the first vote until we've seen everyone make a move for both sides.

[Kirby]

No, I wouldn't vote myself off. That's the point. In this example, there are 7 other people besides myself that could all vote against me. Four of those people are not on my team. Hence, it's to my benefit to please the majority --> those that are not on my team.

But this is all based on the assumption that people are going to vote based on how well you are playing in the game - which has no merit if the game result doesn't mean anything. That's why I think we should have the points on the board be the deciding factor. People getting eliminated will make it easier for one team or another to have more points on the board.

Ah, so your non-vote + the other team's non-vote conspires to keep you on the island. Effectively you can keep a majority of the players liking you by screwing your own team on the board. This isn't a stable strategy, though-- if everyone uses this logic, the black team will end up trying to make good moves for white and vice versa. It'll just be like everyone swapped sides...

I think making decent moves for both sides is likely to be a good strategy.

The point is, playing bad or playing good doesn't "screw" anybody if the game on the board isn't taken into account. If the result on the board doesn't matter, all that matters is that you are not voted off. But nobody has any basis or reason for voting a particular player off if the result on the board has no value.

If we put value on winning the game on the board, then everything falls into place: you have incentive to vote people off that are hurting your team on the board. You have incentive to play well enough to help your team to win. You have incentive to play poorly enough not to get voted off.

But without putting value on winning the game on the board, it's the same as if we weren't playing on the board at all - we're just voting people off. It doesn't matter who, because the game on the board doesn't matter.

[daniel_the_smith]

Yes, I should have said that I agree the situation on the board definitely needs to count for something.

[Phelan]

Okay, a new attempt at a ruleset:

Players are divided into two colors, black and white. Each player knows only his own colour.
For every move(black and white) participants publicly nominate and vote on moves.
After a pre-determined amount of time, the move with the most votes is played. The nomination also counts as a vote.

After every X move played, where X depends on the board size, the players publicly vote on a player to kick off the game.
(Probably using something like Kirby's suggestion of expected game length divided by players?)

The team whose colour wins the game on the board wins the mafia game.

The gamemaster should balance the teams and the game's handicap/komi in a way that makes it hard to know who is on which team.