Manipulation, Bleed, Player-Characters, and the Purpose of Mafia

[Cook]

This thread is a migration of a discussion found here and after, relating to events discussed about a moderator action. The topic of this thread is separate from the discussion of the mod action: it's about what this thread is titled.

i'll use this as representational of the discussion.

Gaslighting is particular among forms of abuse in that some of the behavior inherent to it can be considered part of a mafia game.
...
A person who attempts to make someone doubt their observations are true and real is not only playing a game, but are often required to do by their win condition. If a Mafia player's scumslip is noted, they should be expected to say something to the effect of "No, you misinterpreted, that's not what actually happened, you are confused, in fact I think you are only saying that because YOU are the guilty one" even when they, of course, know the person was correct in identifying them as scum.
...
This {the moderator action, which I (Cook) am not talking about in this thread} isn't "You should not allege people are gaslighting you ever under any circumstance, even if you truly believe it" so much as it is "Please be aware this is a term of abuse. Please do not use it to describe normal Mafia play."

first, food for thought: why do you feel a need to make other players doubt their own reality? there are other ways to betray confidence. be more creative

second off: i'd like to talk about the concept of

bleed

in a roleplay scenario.

within roleplay, a person is playing a character. that character has emotions, ambitions, desires, perks, quirks, all sorts of things that make them a character that's distinct from other characters or distinct from the player playing that character.

within a roleplay (that is, interaction behind the masks of characters between two roleplaying people, acting as the characters they are roleplaying as), there will almost certainly be conflict as the interaction continues. cross words are exchanged, an argument had. if the players walk away from the roleplay feeling bad or upset or genuinely hurt by anything that went on in the roleplay (which is

not directly targeted at them, the player; note this specific phrasing

), then there may be

bleed

. bleed is whenever a character's emotions or desires extend to the player who's playing them. this is

bad

. you don't want this to happen — it can lead to genuine animosity between players where their interaction probably didn't intend to do that. in the end, both people agreed to the roleplay, and they're roleplaying for enjoyment. (at least, i hope. if you're not roleplaying for enjoyment then you're probably

actually

hiding something, which is a different bag entirely.)

basically, when players fight with each other, people get hurt. when

characters

fight with each other, people play a game.

so here's what i'm proposing.

mafia is a

roleplay

, in which you are playing as your mafiascum character to play a game where you have to identify (or conceal the fact you are) a traitor in a larger group of characters conspiring with one or more other characters. a skill that players, especially newbies, need to develop is the ability to

box

their feelings about the game and let it be just what it is -- a game. likewise, players whose characters are manipulative need to learn to keep that manipulation

to the confines of the game

.

this doesn't excuse gaslighting, real or perceived. but there needs to be a layer of separation between the player and the character as far as who is the target of any deceptive action. attack the play, not the player. if you're

going

to gaslight someone, gaslight the character, not the player playing them.

i think also part of the reason that we have a toxicity problem within the forum and that this problem doesn't seem to translate outside of the game comes from the fact that there's not enough

player-character separation

within the forum. this may be something incredibly stupid, like "we see the same name and picture associated with a person we see in the discord versus in the cagematch we're presently wrestling in and make the unconscious assumption that they're the same person", or it may be that it's easier to disassociate someone from their face when you, well, know what their face looks like compared to when you just have the avatar to interact with.

one way you may be able to solve this is to do what some folks do like Bingle/Jingle, where the same person has separate accounts and avatars for playing and moderating/socializing. i wonder if people would have entirely different opinions and perhaps interact better with people onsite if the playing persona was boxed to playing the game only and social interaction were kept outside of that.

frankly the LSG/ORG community onsite serves as the best example for this. those games are all under pseudonyms and you have to play a character in however way you see fit to win the game.

i think that philosophy may serve the mafia side well

TL;DR

the site's gaslighting and toxicity problems may actually be a roleplay bleed problem and necessitate that we more strongly remind players they are playing a character of themselves, and not actually putting themselves in the situation of the games they're in.

[Cook]

some addenda to the post (will make edits as i think of things):
1. bleed isn't necessarily a bad thing (many games use it as an integral part of storytelling) but here i think 'bleed-out' (character's feelings translating into real-world feelings) is a bad thing for mafia.

[Cook]

from

Thestatusquo

I think its an interesting framework but I think a pretty big difference between roleplay and Mafia is that roleplay is generally not a competitive game in the same way that mafia is.

from

Jake the Wolfie

is to do what some folks do like Bingle/Jingle, where the same person has separate accounts

Wait. They're the same person? How did I not know this before.

first, food for thought: why do you feel a need to make other players doubt their own reality? there are other ways to betray confidence. be more creative

It's not so much The One Tactic To Rule Them All, but rather A tactic in the scumbox. If you want to attack this tactic from a reasonable angle, you could try going for "this particular form of psychological manipulation is bad for moralistic reasons."

the concept of

bleed

in a roleplay scenario.

This post piqued my interest, as I had considered the "In-Game / Out-Game" disconnect while contemplating this situation. In theory, someone could drop all preconceptions and engage with the game as a player rather than a person. If someone accuses you of lying to them, you can understand this as a IG attack on you with IG reasons behind it. You wouldn't confuse it with them accusing you of being an immoral person.

[Cook]

I think its an interesting framework but I think a pretty big difference between roleplay and Mafia is that roleplay is generally not a competitive game in the same way that mafia is.

let's take a look at another social deception-adjacent game for a solution to this

Space Station 13 is a massive multiplayer game in which there are a lot of ways to grief people. you are generally prohibited from griefing other players, but the capability is still there. one of its features is that (most) every round features an antagonist — be this traitors within the crew, technophobic wizards, a shapeshifting changeling alien, or even a crazed blood cult trying to summon their deity to end the round. usually, the identity of the antags is not known during the round, and it is up to the crew to keep doing their jobs, keep the station running, and fend off the threats as the station inevitably goes to shit.

does this sound familiar enough (or just barely adjacent to) mafia to make my point?

antags are given objectives, ranging from stealing things to murdering specific people or trying to blow up the entire station. whatever it is, they're trying to pull one over on the crew, and can actually be assessed on this ("getting the greentext" is what this is referred to in slang, as a reference to the color of the "win condition achieved" text you get). to do so, they're given license to break grief rules to a certain extent: they can't break rules on harassment, for instance, but they are allowed to kill people at random (though this is usually counterproductive to whatever plan you're trying to execute).

in this way, the game is competitive — both sides cannot win and are at odds with each other, trying to find each other out. you'd expect then this means things devolve into "how can i root out the antags and kill them quickest", but in ss13, trying to play in the most optimal way possible is actually a bad faith thing often. it's powergaming. it's not creating fun for the other players.

i think this can be applied to mafia in a strange and narrow sense — reframing rolling scum from "i need to lie to everyone to win the game" but instead "i need to create the most enjoyable game possible, because i am the conflict in this story."

granted, this results in some counterproductive moments, like scum being encouraged to bus someone if they're on the way to a perfect win after nuking the tracker/doctor combo by n3, but the general principles of playing mafia still apply. for instance, if there's an investigative closing in on you, narratively it makes sense to kill them. it makes sense to create a plausible lie for one of your members to claim if you're trying to fabricate a setup that you know isn't true.

i think even this is what players like mastina and ranger see scumplay as, though in a more competitive sense — good scumplay is able to create a narrative that the town believes, so that you can control said narrative and direct mislim after mislim.

this'd be more of a focused approach to that, which might eliminate some of the "game" aspects of mafia, but sits as an interesting aside regardless.

i also haven't considered the idea of the mafia setting their own objectives within a game. it's a very novel idea, sure, but possibly by building this as a narrative game, you're creating a sort of barrier between player and character, allowing people to act more fully as immersed

characters

(and thus reduce personally-targeted attacks and discourage "tryhard" metagaming) while keeping the player squarely separated from the character they're playing.

i think if you read some of the very very early mafia games, you'll see some elements of people "playing a character" at least in opening posts. we had less of a sense of mafia being a game back then, and even mith had a very experimental idea after the first game on the Grey Labyrinth (giving mafia a post-restriction "tell" to make the game easier for town). i think afterwards the mafia players realized that there are ways to tell when someone's lying without enforcing it, and that's where we got the very naturalistic interactions between

players

that characterize "pure" mafia. it is, after all, most advantageous to town to play

themselves

as characters, as they'll be read genuinely when doing so; conversely, scum players need to play

town!themselves

as a character to blend in with townies who

are

playing character versions of themselves.

[Cook]

Yall just forgetting that I coined a term years ago for making someone doubt their perception. Or at least, for guiding them to the perception of the game state that you want them to see.

I always called it "spreading mist" because you spread your mist into the game thread and leave the other players (or even just one other player) lost and confused with no idea which path can lead to their own victory, letting you call to them through the mist to guide them to their doom.

Also as someone who has spent seventeen years on this site playing a character and kayfabing during mafia games I can't say I recommend it lol

[Cook]

I think its an interesting framework but I think a pretty big difference between roleplay and Mafia is that roleplay is generally not a competitive game in the same way that mafia is.

there's also one different argument that i can see:
"it's just a game, bro"

certainly usable to justify or condemn toxicity within a game space, but that's not as relevant to my point.

what i'm trying to say is that ultimately mafia is

just

a game. i think it's always helpful to keep it in that context. box things that are in the game as being just part of the game, a role that you're playing to enjoy first and foremost with other people, and secondly yourself.

if you feel the need to manipulate things outside the game (OOC emotions, et cetera), then that is functionally cheating (as while bleed is a thing to avoid, it is regrettably an unignorable influence on how players play the game).

it's possible that what i'm saying is impossible to do in reality. it is possible that there's no such thing as "being gaslit as a character but not as a person". but i hope that by understanding the player and the character as separate things and engaging in mafia with other people who understand the same, the type of behavior that may lead to sanctions or worse, the loss of faith from the mafiascum community at large, can be reduced and possibly eliminated entirely.

edit: struck the above text from the post, for the purposes of clarifying my argument

Yall just forgetting that I coined a term years ago for making someone doubt their perception. Or at least, for guiding them to the perception of the game state that you want them to see.

I always called it "spreading mist" because you spread your mist into the game thread and leave the other players (or even just one other player) lost and confused with no idea which path can lead to their own victory, letting you call to them through the mist to guide them to their doom.

to me that's very distinct from gaslighting. spreading mist is probably a good tactic? the facts are not at dispute, but what they imply

is

at dispute.

Also as someone who has spent seventeen years on this site playing a character and kayfabing during mafia games I can't say I recommend it lol

that's also entirely fair feedback. it may not be for everyone.

i might also suggest alt accounts as a way to kayfabe. you keep the self and the character separate that way in a way that you don't necessarily have to forge within the game state.

[Cook]

Ah, ss13.

Thanks for reminding, maybe run game based on it once.


But calling emotional manipulation cheating... Is wrong.

Then any person who throws tantrum for being suspected are conftown, because doing this as mafia is cheating.

Besides, by playing for fun you undermine your own chances. Nothing prevents from elaborate hilarious plans though.

If you think mafia intentionally manipulating emotions is cheating, you should not allow town players to do the same thing, even unintentionally.

first, food for thought: why do you feel a need to make other players doubt their own reality? there are other ways to betray confidence. be more creative

We don't have much stake in this discussion but we'd like to add that sometimes doing this sort of play is the only viable wincon; especially for 3rd party, solo scum, or a scumteam that can't afford to lose another member, especially especially when it's against someone with a red check

[Cook]

crossposting this from the other thread:

At risk of sounding pretentious (like every time i post ever), I love how many ideas and how much nuance there is in this conversation about the wording replacement. I actually think referring to a lot of misrepresentation in a mafia game as 'gaslighting' is pretty reductive. It can be anything from spinning a narrative, to spreading mist, to capping, to just good ol' failing to see someone else's perspective.

Perhaps the term replacement is such a complicated discussion because there isn't a linear replacement. Perhaps there's not a linear replacement because sometimes, a wide spectrum of game decisions are attributed to gaslighting, whether falsely or not.

I'm generally someone who's fairly anti label because I feel like so many descriptors can end up ironically becoming prescriptive. It could be really healthy that we're having an explosion of ideas once
as we peel back the incorrect categorisation.

This isn't meant to shoot down the convo either btw, just, like, enjoying the brainvibes

and reminding everyone that this isn't the feedback thread, there are other topics of conversation that i wanted to cover within this MD thread that would have been ignored if further mod action happened that required feedback in the feedback thread.

[Cook]

i.e. read the OPs -- you are also welcome to keep talking about this. i don't know. this is an MD thread. this is about mafia.

[Cook]

1. psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one's emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator.

Obviously, the first definition is a form of abuse that is obviously not acceptable and completely outside the scope of the game.

Hot take: That's a legitimate strategy that should be allowed as long as everyone playing agrees to it beforehand (i.e. it should be allowable on the ruleset level) since it introduces the additional skill ceiling of gaslighting, resisting gaslighting, and helping other townies resist gaslighting/helping your scumteam gaslight townies

I have two things to say to this:

First, from a personal viewpoint, I play mafia because I want to have fun with other people, and I happen to enjoy deduction, especially of the social kind. Obviously it can be stressful but at the end of the day I do it for fun. Now, being manipulated into thinking that I am insane, or incompetent or stupid, and having others question my sanity is so far removed from my idea of fun that I'd rather not play at all. It's just a violation of the purpose for which I am playing. It's also just not something I'd ever do to somebody else. If this ever becomes a thing, I sincerely hope it is opt-in and limited to a small number of games.

I do, however, get the appeal for people who really like to play scum to try for something like that, in a twisted sort of way. And I guess there's technically not much harm done if all parties consent before the game starts. But I don't think what you presumably want (being able to influence the player's IRL mindset and toy with their esteem and cause them to trust you over themselves) could work very well unless you play it with secret alts, just because things happening in other ongoing games or even casual interactions will very probably undermine this, unless you actually decide to manipulate the person out of the game thread which I think you see why that would be problematic.

Say, you correctly accuse someone of being scum? What do you expect them to do in turn? Convincing you that you're "insane" may be pushing it, but convincing you that you didn't see what you think you saw and that even if you did it didn't mean what you think it meant, well... that's kind of what they have to do isn't it? If you're particularly good at catching scum, then scum have to attempt to convince you that you're incompetent. Perhaps even over an extended period of time, as a game can last quite a while.

The alternative is ignoring you completely while trying to convince everyone else you're incompetent instead, which is incredibly conspicuous and personally I find even more frustrating, or to just go "Damn, you got me!" which is... obviously not advisable.

There are of course limits here, like. After a game is over, continuing to try to hammer home the bullshit is taking it too far, and if you can see that you're adversely impacting another player's IRL mental health, it's time to back off regardless of wincon. But the general concept of manipulating others into doubting themselves and distorting their "reality" (within the context of the game) is just how the game has to be played as scum, especially with strong Town players or PRs. To me, signing up to a game of Mafia IS consenting to that.

this is where, again, player-character separation may be a good thing

if you're attacking another player directly (ad hominem, etc. against the rules already) as opposed to attacking the character they're playing (there's no separation because mafia isn't as distinctly a roleplay as, say, pathfinder is), those are two different things

i think manipulation extends in a similar way. it'd be bad to manipulate someone out of a mafia game, but the contract is that within the game you're allowed to lie towards the goal of achieving your win condition. so you shouldn't gaslight users onsite. but you can 'gaslight' (a subset of manipulation and deception, which

are

licit things to do inside the confines of a mafia game) characters in a game.

so if we're friends playing a mafia game and we act as somewhat trusting friends within the game, and i then talk to you outside the game and manipulate you outside the game to try to get you to act differently in the game, that is bad and not allowed. but if we're friends outside the game and then you manipulate me inside the game to try to get me to act differently in the game, that's fine and allowed.

this is why i argue for that separation of player and character. without them, we have a contradictory reality where it's sometimes allowable to lie and manipulate a person and sometimes isn't. if we're players who are friends and our characters are lying bastards towards each other, we are still friends and have always been friends. this is something we're agreeing to act out.

[Cook]

this also raises the question about whether or not it is the site's prerogative to enforce cultural linguistics.

if a term that has touchy connotations enters into the popular lexicon and it is a term that members of the site find objectionable, is it administration/moderation's place to bar the use of that term?

furthermore, does restricting the language one can use onsite necessarily impede the enjoyment of the site as a service?