(January) Interviews: ajhockeystar and Aelita
Jan 8, 2023 20:36:39 GMT
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Post by Snaq ◢ ◤ on Jan 8, 2023 20:36:39 GMT
10 Years of Mafia : January Interviews
AJHOCKEYSTAR and AELITA
[Snaq Comments]
AJHOCKEYSTAR is the Mafia Lifetime Award winner of 2014, and a long-serving RO who lasted from 2014 until 2018.
AELITA was a partner in crime to aj, being RO from 2013 or 2014, until 2018 as well.
With their resignation, an era of Mafia came to an end. Let's see what they have to say 5 further years down the line...
AJHOCKEYSTAR and AELITA
[Snaq Comments]
AJHOCKEYSTAR is the Mafia Lifetime Award winner of 2014, and a long-serving RO who lasted from 2014 until 2018.
AELITA was a partner in crime to aj, being RO from 2013 or 2014, until 2018 as well.
With their resignation, an era of Mafia came to an end. Let's see what they have to say 5 further years down the line...
Hi there! Would you like to introduce yourself?
sure! hey everyone, i'm AJ, i'm currently 23 and I live around the Toronto area. I started using PS all the way back in 2011 back before rooms existed! i used to be on PO and got hooked to mafia there, then when i started using PS more i naturally started to love the mafia room there. i worked my way up and was eventually the room owner, and i stuck around for a few years before calling it quits. nowadays i am just working! i graduated a few months ago so i am now living the adult life pretty much haha
i graduated this past april, and since then i've been working as a mechanical engineer! in terms of my free time, i hang out with my friends, my so, play games (board games, switch games, random pc games), watch hockey, go rock climbing, and watch survivor! i'm also still around on smogon a bit as head of circus maximus, we host survivor games there that have been going on for a while.
in terms of the mafia-type games i play, it's basically nothing except for when my friends and i play one night ultimate werewolf. that is easily my favourite boxed game, similarly to this style of mafia i love the short paced high intensity lying and figuring things out. not to mention you are usually in person so that adds to the fun! pulling off a sick lie face to face with others feels so good.
Hi, I'm Aelita! I'm a former Room Owner of Mafia, and I was around soon after the room was created. I've been one of the longest Mafia players on PS!, and enjoy it immensely.
I believe you were both Room Owners from 2014 until 2018?
that sounds about right!
I joined in 2013, but I was still a regular at that point and did not hold any authority.
I was RO for Mafia from at least 2014 until March 2018. My activity did drop towards the end, but I was more active at the backend for policy and to make sure the room ran smoothly. Before that, I was a regular player and user like the rest of the room.
How did you get into PS! Mafia?
someone called theflamingspade introduced me to PO. i just checked his youtube now and looks like he still uploads videos on and off, which is pretty cool.
yeah so on PO there were two main styles of mafia - there was forum mafia, which is a lot slower paced, each phase is a couple days. and then there was server mafia, where each phase is 30 seconds. so there was this huge contrast between slow paced, long drawn out messages and speed-based wagon voting type of games.
at some point, someone made the real time mafia room and invited a bunch of regulars to it. i really started to enjoy it, as it was a hybrid between the two styles. each phase was a few minutes long, so there was actually time for strategic discussion without it being too slow or too fast and random!
Back when I first joined, the room had to be run as a RTM (real time mafia) room. There were no forums at that point, there was no script, no bot, and we had to regularly keep the Mafia wiki open on the sidebar in case someone picked some complicated themes! As for what attracted me to it, I was a former Mafia Admin on Pokemon Online before I joined PS!, and that interest carried over. I enjoy the bits of strategy, arguments and reads that come from a regular game of Mafia. It's even helped me in real life at times.
Could you describe what the Mafia room was like when you joined?
it was a different time! things were a lot less structured - there was no script/bot, no hosting queue, no website, no officials, it was only manual hosting, people could just host their random user created themes which were role chaos... so yeah, it was nothing like how it is today. it was the norm though back then! and so it was still a lot of fun for all the same reasons it is today, hanging out with the community and playing mafia
What were the differences between PS! Mafia and PO?
PO Mafia had a script that ran, and people were allowed to submit themes for vetting, I believe it was in Javascript. However, the process wasn't very good - there were quite a few unbalanced themes and just themes that were not played as much. Conversely, some themes were so good and I remember it fondly. PS! Mafia didn't have any script or bots as I mentioned, but now has a very efficient script that does a lot of what PO Mafia's script did, if not more.
What was hosting like back in the day? How did you like hosting with a bot compared to hosting without a bot?
back in my day, we had to host everything manually. there was no GI script, there was no automatic modchat setting. not to mention, we had to walk uphill both ways to school!
but yeah, especially as RO i preferred adding my own flair to hosting. i liked using those htmlboxes, and with bot/script hosting i couldn't use them as much. not to mention, as those were getting added in it was around the time i was getting less active, and so i didn't necessarily know how to use everything LOL. so i stuck to manual hosting!
It was a learning process, for sure. However, once you've hosted a proper RTM game, you learn very intricately what each role does and how it all fits together, and that's actually very valuable experience that can help you both while playing and while hosting Mafia.
Did you ever rig the game as a manual host?
i never did it actually - that's against the spirit of hosting smh!!
maybe i did it when like
hosting an event or something lmao
and so i rig who gets the king in aitc
hahahahaha
it'll balance out eventually haha
and i think over time people stopped like
all preferring scum
so that was nice lmao
What kinda themes do you remember that might not be popular anymore?
it's hard to say what is and isn't played anymore since i haven't really been around lmao, but in terms of ones i enjoyed:
-7p classic is always a classic to me, it's like the best standard starter theme to me and it has tons of replayability.
-lighthouse was always fun too, especially with the chaos of when the lights go out.
-triplets was one i always enjoyed - on phase 1 there's 3 separate votes to keep track of and influence, and vanilla themes are always fun to me too.
-so on a similar note, vanilla can be a lot of fun!
-there's something i would host called pick your power roles, where everyone is given a list of power roles, and could pick 1. then, out of ones picked more than once, extra ones would turn into VTs, and then all of them would get randomized among all players (including mafia). that one would be fun too, you always have a bit of knowledge about what is out there and there's no role chaos since each role appears a max of once
Sure! From PO I really enjoyed Final Fantasy, Fruit, Kogent, and regular Mafia. I'm sure I'd remember more themes if I actually went back to PO Mafia to check the theme list, but those were my favorite ones overall.
From PS, there weren't too many different themes we used to play until the script came about. I really enjoyed Mafia as a whole though, otherwise I wouldn't have stuck around.
It was scripted so I unfortunately do not have the docs or explanations. I do remember some FF roles because they were iconic - Kefka was the equivalent of a Mafia role (i believe additionally there was Ganon, Ganondorf etc in the same or different teams if there was more than one Mafia), Sephiroth was a One-shot dayvig that revealed himself upon kill, Kuja's vote used to count as 9999 so whoever he voted is guaranteed to be voted off, but you couldn't tell upon the actual voting phase until the night began. Moogles were regular villagers. Unfortunately that's all I can remember.
There was also an excellent Smash Bros theme but I don't recall the roles.
PS! version of Smash Bros theme
What was Lighthouse like with manual hosting?
playing it was cool, but manual hosting sure was a time. when the lights went out you essentially got spam DM'd, and had to put the messages in chat as they came in. good luck keeping up with it!!! what i would do is keep on the "show DMs in chatrooms" setting and copy/paste them from there as they came in so that I had the exact order, but it's obviously still difficult to keep up because people spam when nobody knows who's talking. and of course, you have to make sure to not get banned by boTTT for flooding!
So what is Pick Your Power Roles?
i just tried to see if i had the pastebin on my account but couldn't find it lol
yeah it was most of the basic stuff! and some of the roles had slightly different functions if mafia rng'd into it. for example if mafia rng'd into cop, it would turn into rolecop or vanilla cop (i forget which). one of the options was also miller, if mafia rng'd into it they would turn into godfather. etc! otherwise the hosting process is pretty much as i explained it - just know that all roles and factions are rng'd after everyone chooses, so you don't even know what faction you will be when choosing!
How would you describe your playstyle?
I enjoy investigative roles in general. Even a villager can be an investigative role the more you play and start understanding people's personalities and figuring out different ways they act. Cop is probably my favorite role.
You have to take an active role when it comes time to discuss. Start accusing people, find out their responses, and build on that! Actively participate in discussion, and you can also build yourself out to be a valuable asset to the Town team.
The way I play it may not be the way everyone else plays it. I would usually claim cop D1 if I survive and the doc isn't killed, and then request doc to protect me until I'm able to find out who the mafia is. In PO this used to be supplemented with a PM from the doc saying he's on me, and what that does is to reduce the chance that I waste an investigation on someone that's not really new information. It may not be the same in PS!, but it's a high risk high reward strategy if it can be pulled off successfully.
What if there's no doc in play?
Then there's a quiet investigation until/unless I'm killed or if someone drops an accusation on me when they're trying to be active and contribute.
Would you quietly push someone if you got an incriminating result, or would you claim and accept likely death?
Claim and accept likely death after, because that would then confirm my claim. It's a risky strategy, but hopefully you aren't playing with total morons who would then lynch my previously accused person the next day.
Do you prefer OC or NOC games?
OC games are fine in general, I prefer them because at times it is beneficial to have OC. However, I don't play games based on OC or NOC so it's really a matter of which it actually is. Same as forum games, it just influences whether I'd want to talk to other players outside of the game for the purposes of the game or not, and I'm okay with both.
Would you play differently in OC games compared to NOC games?
It would affect the severity of the accusations I place on people. I might say something like "I feel X is mafia" if it's an OC game, and then discuss with X on whether they feel the accusation is founded or unfounded before posting a followup. In a NOC game I would be a lot more direct because everything the other person would have to refute would be in a post that can then be interpreted.
What are your favorite events that you hosted or took part in?
oh man, there are so many here. the awards streams were always a blast, we would host 30 player caitc games and those were so chaotic and fun. all the games i hosted on the proboards forums were so much fun - whether it be the oc games, parroting, or the talent show, they were all great. the anonymous forum mafia games (psanon) were so much fun too, i have a bunch of great memories from hosting those. those are the things that stick out the most!
Your anon games used to be a huge part of the Mafia community. Want to tell a bit more about them?
sure!! so the anon games were a set of forum mafia games i hosted - there ended up being 30 something in total. each person was given an anonymous account (with the profile picture and name of random side characters from the pokemon anime lmao), and they would play the game under this account. they wouldn't be allowed to hint at their identity at all! then after the game people would try and guess the identities of everyone else. i also had a points system so that people could climb up the leaderboard by playing different games. it was a lot of fun to host!
there are 2 very iconic moments which i can think of. one involved drookez, playing under the account "Osashi D." in a setup called "vengeful mafia mafia", where the mafia don't get nightkills but instead get a kill if they get lynched. that's beside the point though - drookez was town and had a very good read on the scum, he had all 3 as his top 3 scumreads in his read list. unfortunately though, earlier in the phase he unlynched the one he had his vote on, and shifted plurality to himself. this resulted in him getting voted out, and town going to lylo and losing the game the next day. don't pull an osashi and shift plurality onto yourself y'all!!!
the other iconic moment was in the first super active game, game 6. one of the scum members was not very active - it was Benjgbro (who always seems to be online and afk in mafia for like, the past 7 years) and their account name was "Bailey E." it was a vanilla setup (black flag nightless). they ended up making literally 1 post, and got lynched day 1 as a result. their post was very iconic:
it is a beautiful pun - they're confirming their role by saying they're here, but they're saying "i here i'm villy right?". or maybe it was a typo. i don't know! either way this post has been memed over and over throughout the years. it's iconic.
How has Mafia impacted your real life?
oh it's absolutely changed my life. the people i've met is definitely #1, but in terms of other things... being an RO taught me so much about running things, whether on a day to day scale or on an event scale. it taught me a lot about dealing with people! and being around led me to other communities and those have of course affected me in their own ways.
Absolutely. I used to work in HR at one of my past jobs, and used to work with newly hired people. Once you've had experience with reading people in Mafia, you can use that to look for tells and where someone might be embellishing an experience or outright not being honest. There's always something that a Mafia player says that hints or gives away options of what their role might be, and same thing with real life. It happened to be useful for me that way, and on a more practical aspect, you can use this skill during interviews to get a sense of what the interviewer or manager thinks about you. I'd say Mafia gives you a psychological advantage.
you look for inconsistencies, run through the options in your head, flush out as much information as you possibly can. With RTM being chat based, there's ample opportunities for you to corner someone to validate a claim or prove they must be lying because of information you have on hand.
What changes have you noticed in the Mafia room over time?
the first thing that comes to mind other than automation is order. things are a lot more clear cut in terms of rules, and that's a big positive. in terms of playstyle, people have improved a lot in general. and people have especially improved as town! before everyone would want to be scum only and nobody would know how to properly pin down scum behaviour, and I think that's changed a lot. people like being town now and so naturally they've improved in that regard!
As you introduce more and more complications in the room, you have to learn to adapt to the way others would accept and play those roles. For example, when you introduce the concept of a gunsmith or PGO, you would need to learn then how both regulars and new players would play that role and play towards or around that accordingly. Over the time I've been RO, this compounded to make a very complex and interesting playerbase which is a lot of fun to read. Additionally, as I advanced in rank to RO, people usually target me first as an authority figure, which forced me to play a lot more conservatively if I survive night 1, as best I can. I still use my above strategy if I feel it would be beneficial.
Do you have any advice for the current players?
my biggest advice is to cherish your time! make sure to have fun. the reason you're coming online to play mafia is to have fun, so don't take it too seriously if things go awry. life is gonna hit you eventually and you'll spend less time in mafia, and you will look back on these times fondly. keep contact with your friends - at least for me i've met some life long friends from my time in the room. so the tl;dr is to have fun!
Don't be afraid to be voted off or to die. That's a natural part of life, that's a natural part of the game. You play it the best you can, but don't regret a play or a chance you took. That's the biggest part of a mindset change from the olden days that I would love to pass on.
What are some beloved memories you could share with us?
i think when it comes to things that are most beloved to me, it's the people. it's all the inside jokes i have from hosting those events i just talked about, it's reminiscing about times in the room with people, it's the happiness of the promotions we did and the bittersweet goodbyes when someone wanted to be demoted. everything relating to the people i have met over the years is what i will cherish most.
i have one screenshot on my computer involving him that's really funny - there was some reg hosting classic, and they were setting up the game with modchat on. they then said "no pm = cop and hawkie says "uhhhh", then aelita says "i think he meant no pm = villy". then the reg speaks again being like "don't talk or you'll be modkilled hawk and aelita". i was DYING
There's no one single good memory that I can pinpoint, but some highlights are when we played the PS! Smash Bros theme, that was actually fun. I think that was when we started really introducing different types of Mafia, like the Choose Your Role types of Mafia, No Setup and Great/Greater/Greatest Ideas. That, starting the website, and Mafia awards were probably some of my best memories. We had a excellent player base, an excellent group of staff, and I would be proud to call most of them my friends.
Do you want to give a shoutout to anyone?
from when i first joined, there was aelita, steeledges, wolv&bats, champetero, 000xxx, present evidence, and definitely a lot of names that i am forgetting lmao
absolutely!! a huge shoutout to aelita in general, after a certain point he was prioritizing adult life and getting less active on PS but he was always around to help out when i needed. and of course he's a very cool guy, i enjoyed talking to him and hope he's doing well!!
the other person on the list who i really want to shout out is wolv! i still talk to him regularly, and he's been a great friend of mine for a long time. we actually live pretty close to each other irl (about 40 mins i'd say) so we've met up a bunch of times!!! he's a fun person to hang out with and i'm glad to have known him for so long (:
oh god, i could honestly go on and on here. i'll try and keep it to a reasonable length at least. in terms of people who have had the biggest impact on the room, i'd say you and transmuter are the big two. transmuter's biggest strength was always "forward progression" imo, he always wanted to make things bigger and better and he really did. he helped grow the room a lot in his time, whether through advertising well and getting in new users (like the voice challenge!) or through good staff management. and your biggest strength is coming up with good ideas of all kinds. events, themes, variants, you name it. and you execute your ideas very well every time too - so many people have these ideas and don't go through with them or don't put in their full effort, but you never failed to impress.
in terms of people that have had an impact on me... i have so so so many close friends that are a result of the mafia room. drookez, hannahh, sanjana, superstarsrock, rssp1, slimshadow, wolv&bats, vigvig, reddo161, ayia - these are all people i talk to on a regular basis after all this time, which is pretty amazing, and it's not even to mention all the people that i was great friends with that i've lost touch with! i'm sure i could go on and on lmao
I would like to shoutout to this one guy Snaquaza for still hanging around the room, ajhockeystar, KRageT (if you're old you know who this guy is), HoeenHero, and all the regulars that have seen me and play with me throughout the years. You all are too numerous to name one by one, but Mafia would not have been the same without you, and your continued patronage is very much appreciated and recognized. Here's to (at least) another decade of Mafia!
Do you have any closing remarks?
my only closing remarks are: thank you for having me!!! reminiscing about the past and reflecting on it has been a lot of fun, and i am excited to see the full set of interviews (:
and of course, thank you to everyone who read this, and to everyone who has helped make my experience a great one. the mafia room will always hold a special place in my heart!
No, not really. Thanks for your time and your effort in preparing the interview!
