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

[JacksonVirgo]

ego

[Ythan]

[the worst]

ego

gonna digest this later i've really enjoyed your perspective cook

[usesPython]

We're gonna bring up something completely unrelated cause we think it's pretty relevant to what's happening here:

The asymmetric horror game Dead by Daylight suffers from the problem that optimal gameplay (i.e. gameplay that maximizes winrate) and fun gameplay don't align. On the killer side camping and tunneling are extremely effective strategies designed to turn the game from a 4v1 to a 3v1 as soon as possible. It's also very boring for pretty much everyone; 3 survivors do basically nothing and 1 survivor gets taken out of the game early. Additionally camping means that killers deprive themselves of the actually fun part of the game (chases) and basically go afk for 2 minutes.

The way to counter this playstyle on the survivor side is also extremely unfun: Survivors are forced to end the game as fast as possible by maximizing generator efficiency so that by the time the killer tunnels out one person the game is already over. This means that with optimal play 3 people are basically doing nothing the whole game.

This also creates a vicious feedback loop: If survivors aren't maximizing generator efficiency and the killer decides to camp and tunnel they will lose. If the killer decides to play chill and avoid camping and tunneling when going against survivors rushing gens they will lose. It's a prisoners dilemma. Both sides would have the most fun if they both played chill, but if one side is playing chill and the other is not then they'll have an even worse experience compared to both sides sweating from the start.

In an attempt to solve this problem the developers made two major changes: the first was giving survivors a 10 second grace period when they got unhooked so that they didn't just die immediately (and instead had time to make it to places where they could continue the chase without going down), the second was to implement a system that let survivors unhook themselves if they were being facecamped for long enough. They then rebalanced the game around these buffs with a variety of perk changes and basekit killer buffs


A similar thing is happening here: gaslighting can be an extremely effective tool for scum (and to a lesser extent town) but it can also be pretty toxic and unfun if it goes out of hand. Actually banning it would also simultaneously require a shift in how games are balanced to take into account scum being nerfed, otherwise you end up in a situation where maf enjoyers end up feeling cheated. Gut feeling this feels like where the pushback is coming from

[usesPython]

Alternatively you go the complete opposite route and get people to accept that gaslighting is just part of the game and isn't personal but that's probably a complete pipe dream

[usesPython]

On a personal level we'd prefer gaslighting is kept as a viable strategy because there's plenty of skill expression to be had in successfully gaslighting someone as well as resisting gaslighting from others

as long as players are prepared for it

. At most it should be decided at the ruleset level similar to how geriatric games were run here in an effort to deal with hyperposting. If people want to play in spaces without gaslighting, sure, give them the space for that. But there's also people who want to play games were gaslighting is acceptable and there should be the space for that too (as long as it's made clear that gaslighting is acceptable in that space so that players know to either avoid the game or be ready to be gaslit)

[Enchant]

I think people take game too seriously and start forbidding words because they don't like them.

[Ythan]

I think a number of people explained their motivations themselves much better than that.

[Gamma Emerald]

Taking what I was about to post in the moderation feedback thread and posting it here

I may be reading the wrong thing into this post but:

For instance, a similar argument can be (and was!) made frequently in response to our sitewide decision to do away with the word "lynch" and this rule continues to this day to cause confusion among both new (from other sites especially) and returning users.

We deal with these bits of confusion in the same way, with reach outs, escalated to warnings if users do not heed the reach outs, followed by bans if they continue to persist.

99% of the time this conversation ends after the reach out. The result is we have almost no one saying that word on the site anymore outside of some genuine slip ups.

Gaslighting as a word in game is being handled in the exact same way.

This feels like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. As I see it, the L-word was used as a setpiece to explain how voting people out removed them from the game. It was easily replaced when the issue came up, because set dressing is easily replaceable. Gaslighting I don’t think is really comparable, as it relates to actions within the game. If you were to try to express the idea through other words, I feel like it would be muddled.
I guess my takeaway is “I don’t think treating usage of both words the exact same is fair because one is essentially a conscious choice to be an ass, and one is potentially a lack of any other effective way to describe a scenario”.

[JacksonVirgo]

Gaslighting is a manipulation method and it’s a game of deceit and manipulation, banning it seems like a slippery slope

[JacksonVirgo]

I’m quite ignorant for the majority of this, planning to properly read the conversation in the other thread after work tonight

[Lycanfire]

I don't think it's possible to abuse someone by misrepresenting facts in a mafia game.

If you were to make them doubt anything outside the 'box', it could be abuse.

On the topic of separating the player from the character maybe it's a good idea to encourage a handshake phase at the end of the game? Mods could include this in their end game mod PM, "hey could you say something short about your time in this game in the thread?"

[Lycanfire]

I’m quite ignorant for the majority of this, planning to properly read the conversation in the other thread after work tonight

Seems like the issue is with the word rather than the act. My understanding is that the mod team wants you to report posts for gaslighting, not use the term in mafia games because it could make light of abuse.

[JacksonVirgo]

That’s arguably even worse, if you see something as gaslighting in the context of mafia calling it out being disallowed feels goofy so I doubt that’s the whole thing.

If it’s out of the context of a game, being banned/warned for vocalising issues seems equally problematic. If people do it in a toxic way that’s different but that goes for everything.

I feel I’m not understanding properly, I’ll read up before commenting more

[JacksonVirgo]

Making light of abuse and using the word are totally different things. It’s a descriptive term for an action

[Enchant]

I think a number of people explained their motivations themselves much better than that.

More words = Better?


Again gaslighting (in game) not problem. People lose shit when it's called gaslighting.

[Ythan]

I think a number of people explained their motivations themselves much better than that.

More words = Better?

No.

[TemporalLich]

The manipulation tactic of causing someone to doubt their underlying thought process maybe should be called "

warping

" (though idk if that term has any underlying problems, as I shortened it from "mind warping")

An example of warping would be causing someone to believe that they have misrepresented someone when they haven't.

afaik Town don't really benefit from warping, as Town benefit more from honest and pure thoughts, though it can be useful for even benign third parties like Survivor (despite that alignment being awful to play).


The main idea for a new term is to strengthen the argument that the term "gaslighting" lies outside the bubble of Mafia and can be considered OGI and unsportsmanlike conduct at worst