The Syndicate

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:To be honest, my preferred games (open or closed) tend to be vanilla-heavy. I love the purest form of the hunt.

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:I believe the primary appeal of a closed setup is that it empowers a host to be more creative. Closed setups are much harder to break, meaning there is more freedom to tinker with them without worrying about that. For the players, they allow roleclaiming to be legal (I understand why roleclaiming is not typical here where open setup role madness is the norm), and more important it allows for roleplay. That's the thing I miss most when I play in an open setup: I can't claim my character and roleplay within my game-relevant effort.

In closed setup games where characters and alignment correlate, roleplay is still possible because the mafia team (and anyone else potentially affected, like rogues or power roles) are given fake characters by the moderator. This prevents their exposure through character claim investigation.

Turnip Head wrote:Outing is discouraged in open setups because it inevitably leads to mass outing, where at endgame all the civvies have claimed roles and there's no longer anywhere for the mafia to hide. It's an evolving attitude as more hosts are building mechanics into the game to combat the downsides of outing: in Long Con's upcoming World Reborn game, roles are listed without alignment. You can claim a role but you're not making the mafia's job harder by doing so.

In my upcoming Warcraft game you can try claiming a role but it won't reveal your alignment and will have the added effect of potentially letting one of your enemies (who has the same exact role) know that you aren't on their team.

I'm of the belief that role claiming can be an essential strategy but it relies a lot upon the host's game design. As such, each game is different. I think that's part of the appeal of The Syndicate, we're not afraid to experiment with our own standards.

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:It's an interesting culture here. I had truly never previously encountered a Mafia community where info dumping is frowned upon. I'd never even considered the notion of disallowing it. I can see the appeal -- it forces players to stay within the original mafia-hunting atmosphere that Mafia is supposed to be about. At the same time though, incorporating power roles with legal info dumping adds a completely different informational element to the game. I don't think it negatively affects balance either, at least not in places where it is typical.

One setup which could probably use a rule which forbids info dumping is the single cop setup being used in the Champions games on 2+2. Those too often become a mess of logic-based reads and suspicious behavior ceases to be relevant.