Post by Snaq ◢ ◤ on Aug 28, 2023 15:58:48 GMT
Hi! Would you like to introduce yourself?
Sure! I'm Schiavetto (Schia), Pokemon Showdown retiree and resident Mariah Carey apologist™️. I work as a school teacher and spend a lot of my free time playing music, rock climbing or reading. I think I first joined PS back in like... 2013? But I didn't find the mafia room until around 2017. I'd played on and off in the room for a bit, but I remember deciding to make a go for leaderboard one summer and, well, things went from there^^
Sure! I’m Zach, though I went by Ayia throughout my time on PS. I’m an incoming sophomore in college studying math. I was an active member of PS Mafia from late 2016 until my resignation in early 2022!
How did you discover PS! Mafia?
Honestly I think it was like, the first time I bothered actually poking around the rooms? For the longest time I would just play on the battle sim with friends (some of you might remember Shoddy Battle, or Pokemon Lab) but chat mafia was something picked up after the move to Pokemon Online, where folks would play a lot of preset themes in between battles. When I found out people played maf on PS, too, I got hooked pretty quick.
Pretty sure my first game was classic? I don't remember too much, but I do remember having zero idea what some of the roles were, and getting immediately chopped by hawkie after a super confusing D1
I had joined PS in late spring of 2016 and I was semi-active in the Tournaments room for a while. Around November, not quite sure why or how but I was looking through rooms and found the Mafia room! I always really loved Mafia in real life so I thought I’d give it a shot - though obviously it ended up being way different despite technically being the same game. You know how it is.
What was PS! Mafia like when you joined?
Lots of Dethy!
LOL unironically, it definitely felt very different - I can’t quite remember fine details because it was so long ago but I remember it being pretty intimidating in a lot of ways. People took the game pretty seriously so it was hard to ingratiate into the community since I was pretty abysmal at the game for a while, but obviously I still stuck it out. From my perspective, the room felt culturally pretty similar to how it does now - I think nowadays there’s a lot more understanding for when people aren’t as good at the game, but the room definitely still has the same competitive spirit it’s always had. The other big difference now is the script - when I had joined the room the games were run by Mafia Room Bot, which was really great but obviously games couldn’t be nearly as smooth as they are now.
I think the room is more active now than it was? Obviously activity goes up and down but I have very distinct memories of repeatedly playing bot-run Dethy, and bigger games (8+) were pretty rare.
Is there anything you miss from those days?
Well I definitely don't miss the toxicity--I think a lot of us who came up in those days enjoyed the competitiveness, it was insane how intense your average game of ModExe or ESun could get--but there was a lot of outright nastiness, and I think over time it's been really great watching the community try and keep that competitive edge (esp. with us being the best game room), while holding itself to better standards around just being good sports.
I do kind of miss a lot of the poking around and tinkering that went on in those days though? Like, especially with custom setups--everyone loves the room staples, sure, but it was always fun when someone would come up with some weird-ass theme like 1999, or just up and deciding "Hey, you know what, No Setup isn't weird enough - let's make it multiball" (and then even later "Nah, that's still not weird enough, let's make it an Idea theme")
I mean, occasionally you'd get some wild CS roles (not naming names!), but that willingness to just fuck around with things and see what worked led to a lot of really fun and really bizarre games that I'll always appreciate.
This is going to sound silly but I kinda just being a kid and messing around in the room with other kids LOL - that’s less about the room itself and more about the stage of life I was in then vs. now. There were a group of us that were all around the same age and we were all pretty close. In retrospect dealing with a bunch of middle schoolers running around in the room sounds like hell on earth but from my perspective it was a good time!
Apart from that, I think the room has done a good job of constantly improving without losing anything good from the past!
What are some of the wild roles you mention?
I remember I used to keep a pastebin full of them, wish I could dig it up--off the top of my head though, some things that stand out are the safehouse mechanic Meowers came up with (and later worked into a theme), or trying to rework some of those less common Mafiascum roles like Beloved Princess or Faith Healer into things that made sense for PS Maf. Some people will recall that one of the things that makes the SI rolelists so weird is that it's just a mishmash of previously used custom roles. It was nice to see things like that come up every once in a while just to shake things up
What are some of your favorite themes?
I think my favorite was always Classic. Which, of course, is a pretty generic answer but it’s a solid combination of not too overwhelming with PRs but enough PRs to stay fresh. I also enjoy some larger PL themes with minor mechanics like F&I, KAT, and Jungle Republic - I think what all of these do for me is have something that keeps them interesting without being so absurd that there’s no skill involved.
What kinda roles do you like to play?
Imo the best roles are the ones where it can really change how the night/day plays out without being too centralizing. Like I've never been a huge fan of investigatives that turn the game into follow-the-cop (fuck 12), but then you get something like Journalist, where it ends up being more about the long game, and how you can make the most of your inspects when you flip--or some of the cooler protective roles like Jailkeeper or Babysitter, where depending on play, you have to decide if you want to play it like a doc, or play it like a roleblock, or risk taking down another player with you. Stuff like that keeps the solving interesting without getting too by-the-book
This is so bad-player of me but I hate playing VT haha I want like something special about my role. In general, I think playing scum has always been what I’m more fond of - the idea of having to act like you don’t have information that you do have is super interesting to me and I love finding strategies to mask my own tells. In terms of PRs, I think something with middling power is ideal - playing something like BH is annoying because once you claim you’re kinda doomed to die instantly after.
What is your playstyle like?
I'm a big believer in strong day play, as either alignment. Like, there's for sure a lot of strategy that goes into nightplanning on either side, but the day phase is where it really counts: because really for the most part, the dayvote is where all of town's killing power comes from. If you're town, you absolutely want to capitalize on that in every way you can, and if you're a wolf, you're playing to disrupt that.
So with that in mind, I think a lot of my villageplay goes into trying to make people as readable as possible, and trying to organize a solid towncore to make wagons effective. When you have a solid bloc of townies, it helps to avert mischops down the line, and it also gives you a solid group of players to bounce ideas off of and cover your blindspots, or get second opinions if you might be giving scum too much leeway. It's a lot easier to play as town PR with that in mind too--you want all that stuff to be something that helps town survive, without it being the only reason town survives.
As maf, I think my style's changed a bit over the years, I'd say these days it's far less deepwolf and much more often powerwolfing or openwolfing? The common thread, though, is always just playing to either a) drown out effective town voices or b) knowing when to step back and let town fall on itself. Like, there's no quicker way to lose as wolf than letting town have a moment to get it's act together--so whatever I can do to get in the way of that, whether it's trying to muddle the towncore, or hamming away at an obvious mischop until it goes through, blatantly wolfsiding so a partner can go deep.... I'm doing it lol. Wolves like mess, and I try to lean into that
God I am so washed up so take everything I say with a grain of salt
One of my biggest playstyle quirks is that I refuse to have a playermeta established for me - I intentionally switch up the way I talk and act in order to mask tells between games. For better or for worse, a game of Mafia isn’t isolated, so changing the way I act is an easy way to set myself up for the future without doing anything to harm the game I’m playing right now. Another thing I do as scum is I genuinely try to convince myself I’m town and I make almost all of my actions from the perspective of what I should be doing as town. That’s not a strategy that’s for everyone - I know a lot of players like openwolfing and are very good at it but this is the strategy that generally is most effective for me. This has admittedly backfired on me a few times - the one that really comes to mind is Game 1 of Summer Circuit 2019, where I was universally townread but ended up bussing a little too hard.
From town, my reads are extremely tonal - unfortunately I can’t really give great advice on that because it’s a lot of intuition, but I think one of the most difficult things to mask as scum is your tone, so using that to make reads is something I’ve found to be particularly effective!
What are some of your favorite things you've done in the PS! Mafia room?
I think it's kind of of weird trying to narrow it down to one or two things, because really, I feel like all of it was just... all those little steps into giving the room staying power, you know? Really taking toxicity seriously, hammering away at that ugly cycle of staff burnout, finally getting a whitelist going.
I mean, I remember a lot of our chats staffing together, and the thing you and I always circled back to--the thing that stuck with me, and that I hope has stuck with folks since--was just how important it was to give this community continuity. And I think all the work I'm proudest of in the room really comes down to that, you know? Like behind all the guides and workshops and staff organizing and player/event suggestions, it always came back to what structures can we put in place to make this a welcoming place, and keep that energy going.
From a user side, I think a lot of the forum games I did well in were super fun - the Forum Official that I managed to win was super super fun, and a lot of the Summer Circuit games in 2019 and 2020 were super exciting for me. Another one of my favorite moments was competing with TBZ for Official Winner in like June 2017.
Other than that, all do my favorite moments are staffing related! I absolutely love setting up events, so UGO and Summer Circuit were some of my favorite things to run. It was also really fun to contribute to the script, especially from the perspective of like, “oh I wish the script did this”, and then actually putting that into action. Being staff took a lot of time for sure, but I have no regrets and I really loved the time for which I did it.
What are some events that you have hosted?
Yeah! Honestly nothing I did for either event (UGO 2021 or Summer Circuit 2021) was super novel, admittedly - especially with Summer Circuit, it was a lot of using the groundwork that you and Schia had set up in the last two years and building off of that. I think the one big thing that I changed and really liked was making the social games (Survivor and EiMM) anonymous. In previous years it was really easy to meta people based on how many points they had, so having those later events be anonymous really helped combat that! It also added a pretty interesting element to the social games that I really enjoyed. Overall though, I was very happy with how smoothly everything ran and honestly that chalks down to the really amazing team we had in the room at that time.
UGO 2021 was definitely a bit more involved for me - I was a moderator for all of that event but that was the first time I really stepped into a leadership position for the room. While I’m having trouble remembering specifics (I’ve learned recently that my memory recall is pretty terrible), I remember being really happy with the event distribution and how we were able to get a lot of wide-ranging events onto our schedule that really highlighted all of the different facets of the room. That event was super fun for me, because it was a lot of administrative stuff - deciding what events would be done, when they would happen, who would do them, etc. - and I’ve always gravitated towards that type of work a little bit more.
How did you like staffing the room? Was it as you had expected beforehand?
Honestly? I loved staffing the room--global staffing, not so much, but staffing the room was a special experience imo.
I think at it's best, roomstaffing is like doing a group project, or putting together a volunteer project at school, you know? A bunch of folks working together, putting in time and effort to create something cool to share with folks.
Back before I got voice, I for sure had a different perception of what it was like--no ill will toward anyone, but it was easy to feel disconnected from it, you know? Like you had +%@# handing things down, and as a reg it was hard sometimes to get the 'why' behind it all. As I went through promos, though, I gained a lot of appreciation for the work that goes into it though, and how important it was to make that stuff transparent
I think I went through that phase everyone goes through when they’re 12 on PS where I really wanted to become Voice. Unsurprisingly, it was when I stopped really caring about being Voice that I got it. Bit of a tangent - I definitely thought of the ROs as these like crazy cool people that I would be lucky to talk even talk to when I was younger, as silly as that was. It’s particularly funny because AJ is now a really close friend of mine, so thinking about how I viewed him when I was younger is really wild.
Staffing, again, was definitely my favorite part of my 5 or so years in the room. Being able to help run and continue to build a community I was super passionate about was extremely rewarding! Especially as an RO, it was a lot of that administrative stuff that I really enjoyed as well. My favorite bad joke about RO is that the entire job is telling people to do things I don’t feel like doing LMAO - this isn’t really true of course; there were things I didn’t really feel like doing that I did (honestly having a strong presence in the room was a big one while I was RO), but there were a lot of things that I didn’t enjoy doing that others were willing to do instead! That’s the great part of being on a team of course.
I think the biggest thing that you miss out on as a reg of what goes on behind the scenes is policy discussion - obviously we do talk a lot about themes and hosting and the like, but a lot of staffing energy goes into policy. Coming out of it, it’s like “duh, of course that’s what staff should be mostly doing” but it was definitely a surprise to me when I first became driver. It also might go unnoticed how much planning and discussion goes into like, every decision that the room makes. Obviously, everyone on staff cares for the room a lot, so even little decisions hold a lot of weight!
There was a pretty long discussion on how to approach consolation points, and the standard way to give out consolation points for Official games in the event of a gamethrow. Because it wasn’t standardized, the way we were giving out consolation wasn’t really fair, so there was warranted frustration from users about how it was done. While this could’ve been a quick, “we’ll just do this”, we spent a lot of time going through different options to decide what was the best and most fair way to do this. I like this example because in the grand scheme of things, consolation points are not something that come up that often - even so, we spent time making sure our solution to the problem was as good as it could be.
Do you think it'd be good to be more transparent as staff, then?
For sure - and I think that's something that applies from the very top to the very bottom. To go back to the group project comparison for a bit, it's like... you want everyone to be involved, right? And for that to work, you have to be willing to be open about some things.
Like, a lot of that comes from taking the time to just be present and active in the room or on Discord, but it's important to be purposeful about that sort of thing: making sure there are clear and open avenues for room suggestions and player feedback, or finding ways for folks to get involved in room activities and event planning... all that stuff goes a long way toward building trust and keeping investment.
What are some memories you cherish from Mafia?
I have a lot of really fond memories of taking 9PM fish hosts with commie and neo, back in the driver/mod days - late night games were way more lowkey than the sorts of games you'd get for weekend officials. You'd get a lot of the same crew logging on in those hours, when everyone's just kind of looking for some downtime after school, work, etc. The energy was always super chill, and occasionally you'd get some weird shit -- like the one time we ended up having to figure out an idea game with a sacrifice, a masoncore, and a shitton of journo inspects.
Some other memories that really stuck with me are making that leaderboard run in July '18 with folks like jodram or justin and shitposting through officials--or back when Flush hosted a walrus on a whim, and peach subbed Soulja Boy for every. single. cat. It was dumb fun, but it was good fun, you know?
Pretty sure Arby will have mentioned this, but seeing how many states he could name is just one of those moments hanging out and shooting the shit that I'll always appreciate. This goes back a bit to the competitive stuff from earlier, but in all the fuss it's just that much nicer when you get that time just spent making friends and enjoying folks' company.
Back during the first Summer Circuit, I remember just how amped we all were to get into all of the events--stuff like the INSANE streak from French Polynisia Core (FrenPoCo :el_flames: ) in the Survivor event, or playing OC-style Fire and Ice out by the park.
Or even, you know, having those open Stardew Valley sessions in the PS Maf discord with Arsenal, VigVig, Toni and folks, or brokenpicturephone... all that stuff goes beyond the game room and right into the people that make the gameroom so great
the first SC survivor game is one of my all time favorite things too, that was so hype
Right?? Like sitting down with folks in the room and across site to create a pokemon, or spamming lyrics during that consecutive-DM challenge (only to realize half the submissions didn't count lol). Stuff was wild
I definitely have Flush to thank for the walruses, too - nowadays it's one of my favorite pasttimes (despite having NOTHING at all to do with maf, ha) but really what it always came down to was just being able to enjoy something as a community--especially, too, with the pandemic hitting and burnout setting in for a lot of us
Gosh yeah, because my memory recall is kinda bad, I definitely moreso take with me the vibes of certain periods of time more than specific moments. An example would be like the general excitement behind the first Summer Circuit - it was something that was never really seen before at least for me, and having all of these events in almost an Olympic-style format was such an exciting concept. Another one would be the feeling of knowing by like Night 3 or 4 that I was probably winning the OC game in SC2020 as scum - especially in a large-scale game like that, the general feeling of being that dominant was super super fun. Lastly, I’m not a CS person by any stretch so it always felt great when there was a positive response to one of my contributions to the script - even though they were small, it still felt very rewarding to have something I worked hard on be so well received!
How has Mafia impacted you?
I think playing mafia has really affirmed for me just how differently people can see things - and that doesn't always mean people are wrong or lying or not thinking or whatnot, but it does mean that you have to be willing to explore other perspectives to really get the full picture, and that takes communication and patience.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that it’s fundamentally impacted the trajectory of my life. A big thing is that staffing on Mafia really helped kick off my interesting in CS, which is something I’m really considering doing long term!
While I’m not involved in the PS Mafia community anymore, the community I’m primarily in now (SmORGon) was one I joined because of my involvement in Mafia - so between the two, they’ve been a huge part of my life for nearly 7 years. A lot of my really good friends now are people I’ve met through Mafia, and for that alone I’m extremely grateful. Again, I really don’t think my life would be the same without PS Mafia.
Are there any users you'd like to give a shoutout?
God, so many. Major shoutout to Flush and Fenrir getting me involved in the larger forum maf community & also just being great company.
Chapter Seven, Joddy, Pass and the rest of the Chaphouse crew for the incredible vibes.
Quax, Kaif and blurb for the levity; Zeito and moto for the rivalry and the conviction. Commie, ZoL and Neo for the latenight hosting memories.
Noted abolitionist and IDEA townpicker John Brown, iykyk.
You and peach a thousand times for being willing to lend an ear back in those days when I was solo ROing, whether bouncing ideas or just talking games or music. Hoeen for always taking the time to check in, even when he was taking on more global responsibilities. SirM, Gim, and Arby for letting me rope them into taking the # when the much saner thing to do would have been logging off and going for a walk or something.
I'm absolutely missing some folks and I don't want to get mushy, but yeah. Y'all rock.
I would but I’m too scared to miss out on anyone honestly!! I will say that I’m grateful that Spiderz, Alex, and Micro were able to pick up my slack when I left so suddenly last year - they’re doing a really great job with the room, and I feel really good about leaving it in their hands.
Do you have any final words?
If I had to add anything, I think maybe just that popping back into the room these past couple months, it's been really cool to see some of the newer folks coming up. Expecting big things from a lot of you o7 Take care of yourselves & keep taking good care of the room.
Not too much - just that I’m very grateful to have had this community when I did! Really appreciate you taking the time to interview me as well, it was super nice reminiscing on my time in Mafia.
Sure! I'm Schiavetto (Schia), Pokemon Showdown retiree and resident Mariah Carey apologist™️. I work as a school teacher and spend a lot of my free time playing music, rock climbing or reading. I think I first joined PS back in like... 2013? But I didn't find the mafia room until around 2017. I'd played on and off in the room for a bit, but I remember deciding to make a go for leaderboard one summer and, well, things went from there^^
Sure! I’m Zach, though I went by Ayia throughout my time on PS. I’m an incoming sophomore in college studying math. I was an active member of PS Mafia from late 2016 until my resignation in early 2022!
How did you discover PS! Mafia?
Honestly I think it was like, the first time I bothered actually poking around the rooms? For the longest time I would just play on the battle sim with friends (some of you might remember Shoddy Battle, or Pokemon Lab) but chat mafia was something picked up after the move to Pokemon Online, where folks would play a lot of preset themes in between battles. When I found out people played maf on PS, too, I got hooked pretty quick.
Pretty sure my first game was classic? I don't remember too much, but I do remember having zero idea what some of the roles were, and getting immediately chopped by hawkie after a super confusing D1
I had joined PS in late spring of 2016 and I was semi-active in the Tournaments room for a while. Around November, not quite sure why or how but I was looking through rooms and found the Mafia room! I always really loved Mafia in real life so I thought I’d give it a shot - though obviously it ended up being way different despite technically being the same game. You know how it is.
What was PS! Mafia like when you joined?
Lots of Dethy!
LOL unironically, it definitely felt very different - I can’t quite remember fine details because it was so long ago but I remember it being pretty intimidating in a lot of ways. People took the game pretty seriously so it was hard to ingratiate into the community since I was pretty abysmal at the game for a while, but obviously I still stuck it out. From my perspective, the room felt culturally pretty similar to how it does now - I think nowadays there’s a lot more understanding for when people aren’t as good at the game, but the room definitely still has the same competitive spirit it’s always had. The other big difference now is the script - when I had joined the room the games were run by Mafia Room Bot, which was really great but obviously games couldn’t be nearly as smooth as they are now.
I think the room is more active now than it was? Obviously activity goes up and down but I have very distinct memories of repeatedly playing bot-run Dethy, and bigger games (8+) were pretty rare.
Is there anything you miss from those days?
Well I definitely don't miss the toxicity--I think a lot of us who came up in those days enjoyed the competitiveness, it was insane how intense your average game of ModExe or ESun could get--but there was a lot of outright nastiness, and I think over time it's been really great watching the community try and keep that competitive edge (esp. with us being the best game room), while holding itself to better standards around just being good sports.
I do kind of miss a lot of the poking around and tinkering that went on in those days though? Like, especially with custom setups--everyone loves the room staples, sure, but it was always fun when someone would come up with some weird-ass theme like 1999, or just up and deciding "Hey, you know what, No Setup isn't weird enough - let's make it multiball" (and then even later "Nah, that's still not weird enough, let's make it an Idea theme")
I mean, occasionally you'd get some wild CS roles (not naming names!), but that willingness to just fuck around with things and see what worked led to a lot of really fun and really bizarre games that I'll always appreciate.
This is going to sound silly but I kinda just being a kid and messing around in the room with other kids LOL - that’s less about the room itself and more about the stage of life I was in then vs. now. There were a group of us that were all around the same age and we were all pretty close. In retrospect dealing with a bunch of middle schoolers running around in the room sounds like hell on earth but from my perspective it was a good time!
Apart from that, I think the room has done a good job of constantly improving without losing anything good from the past!
What are some of the wild roles you mention?
I remember I used to keep a pastebin full of them, wish I could dig it up--off the top of my head though, some things that stand out are the safehouse mechanic Meowers came up with (and later worked into a theme), or trying to rework some of those less common Mafiascum roles like Beloved Princess or Faith Healer into things that made sense for PS Maf. Some people will recall that one of the things that makes the SI rolelists so weird is that it's just a mishmash of previously used custom roles. It was nice to see things like that come up every once in a while just to shake things up
What are some of your favorite themes?
I think my favorite was always Classic. Which, of course, is a pretty generic answer but it’s a solid combination of not too overwhelming with PRs but enough PRs to stay fresh. I also enjoy some larger PL themes with minor mechanics like F&I, KAT, and Jungle Republic - I think what all of these do for me is have something that keeps them interesting without being so absurd that there’s no skill involved.
What kinda roles do you like to play?
Imo the best roles are the ones where it can really change how the night/day plays out without being too centralizing. Like I've never been a huge fan of investigatives that turn the game into follow-the-cop (fuck 12), but then you get something like Journalist, where it ends up being more about the long game, and how you can make the most of your inspects when you flip--or some of the cooler protective roles like Jailkeeper or Babysitter, where depending on play, you have to decide if you want to play it like a doc, or play it like a roleblock, or risk taking down another player with you. Stuff like that keeps the solving interesting without getting too by-the-book
This is so bad-player of me but I hate playing VT haha I want like something special about my role. In general, I think playing scum has always been what I’m more fond of - the idea of having to act like you don’t have information that you do have is super interesting to me and I love finding strategies to mask my own tells. In terms of PRs, I think something with middling power is ideal - playing something like BH is annoying because once you claim you’re kinda doomed to die instantly after.
What is your playstyle like?
I'm a big believer in strong day play, as either alignment. Like, there's for sure a lot of strategy that goes into nightplanning on either side, but the day phase is where it really counts: because really for the most part, the dayvote is where all of town's killing power comes from. If you're town, you absolutely want to capitalize on that in every way you can, and if you're a wolf, you're playing to disrupt that.
So with that in mind, I think a lot of my villageplay goes into trying to make people as readable as possible, and trying to organize a solid towncore to make wagons effective. When you have a solid bloc of townies, it helps to avert mischops down the line, and it also gives you a solid group of players to bounce ideas off of and cover your blindspots, or get second opinions if you might be giving scum too much leeway. It's a lot easier to play as town PR with that in mind too--you want all that stuff to be something that helps town survive, without it being the only reason town survives.
As maf, I think my style's changed a bit over the years, I'd say these days it's far less deepwolf and much more often powerwolfing or openwolfing? The common thread, though, is always just playing to either a) drown out effective town voices or b) knowing when to step back and let town fall on itself. Like, there's no quicker way to lose as wolf than letting town have a moment to get it's act together--so whatever I can do to get in the way of that, whether it's trying to muddle the towncore, or hamming away at an obvious mischop until it goes through, blatantly wolfsiding so a partner can go deep.... I'm doing it lol. Wolves like mess, and I try to lean into that
God I am so washed up so take everything I say with a grain of salt
One of my biggest playstyle quirks is that I refuse to have a playermeta established for me - I intentionally switch up the way I talk and act in order to mask tells between games. For better or for worse, a game of Mafia isn’t isolated, so changing the way I act is an easy way to set myself up for the future without doing anything to harm the game I’m playing right now. Another thing I do as scum is I genuinely try to convince myself I’m town and I make almost all of my actions from the perspective of what I should be doing as town. That’s not a strategy that’s for everyone - I know a lot of players like openwolfing and are very good at it but this is the strategy that generally is most effective for me. This has admittedly backfired on me a few times - the one that really comes to mind is Game 1 of Summer Circuit 2019, where I was universally townread but ended up bussing a little too hard.
From town, my reads are extremely tonal - unfortunately I can’t really give great advice on that because it’s a lot of intuition, but I think one of the most difficult things to mask as scum is your tone, so using that to make reads is something I’ve found to be particularly effective!
What are some of your favorite things you've done in the PS! Mafia room?
I think it's kind of of weird trying to narrow it down to one or two things, because really, I feel like all of it was just... all those little steps into giving the room staying power, you know? Really taking toxicity seriously, hammering away at that ugly cycle of staff burnout, finally getting a whitelist going.
I mean, I remember a lot of our chats staffing together, and the thing you and I always circled back to--the thing that stuck with me, and that I hope has stuck with folks since--was just how important it was to give this community continuity. And I think all the work I'm proudest of in the room really comes down to that, you know? Like behind all the guides and workshops and staff organizing and player/event suggestions, it always came back to what structures can we put in place to make this a welcoming place, and keep that energy going.
From a user side, I think a lot of the forum games I did well in were super fun - the Forum Official that I managed to win was super super fun, and a lot of the Summer Circuit games in 2019 and 2020 were super exciting for me. Another one of my favorite moments was competing with TBZ for Official Winner in like June 2017.
Other than that, all do my favorite moments are staffing related! I absolutely love setting up events, so UGO and Summer Circuit were some of my favorite things to run. It was also really fun to contribute to the script, especially from the perspective of like, “oh I wish the script did this”, and then actually putting that into action. Being staff took a lot of time for sure, but I have no regrets and I really loved the time for which I did it.
What are some events that you have hosted?
Yeah! Honestly nothing I did for either event (UGO 2021 or Summer Circuit 2021) was super novel, admittedly - especially with Summer Circuit, it was a lot of using the groundwork that you and Schia had set up in the last two years and building off of that. I think the one big thing that I changed and really liked was making the social games (Survivor and EiMM) anonymous. In previous years it was really easy to meta people based on how many points they had, so having those later events be anonymous really helped combat that! It also added a pretty interesting element to the social games that I really enjoyed. Overall though, I was very happy with how smoothly everything ran and honestly that chalks down to the really amazing team we had in the room at that time.
UGO 2021 was definitely a bit more involved for me - I was a moderator for all of that event but that was the first time I really stepped into a leadership position for the room. While I’m having trouble remembering specifics (I’ve learned recently that my memory recall is pretty terrible), I remember being really happy with the event distribution and how we were able to get a lot of wide-ranging events onto our schedule that really highlighted all of the different facets of the room. That event was super fun for me, because it was a lot of administrative stuff - deciding what events would be done, when they would happen, who would do them, etc. - and I’ve always gravitated towards that type of work a little bit more.
How did you like staffing the room? Was it as you had expected beforehand?
Honestly? I loved staffing the room--global staffing, not so much, but staffing the room was a special experience imo.
I think at it's best, roomstaffing is like doing a group project, or putting together a volunteer project at school, you know? A bunch of folks working together, putting in time and effort to create something cool to share with folks.
Back before I got voice, I for sure had a different perception of what it was like--no ill will toward anyone, but it was easy to feel disconnected from it, you know? Like you had +%@# handing things down, and as a reg it was hard sometimes to get the 'why' behind it all. As I went through promos, though, I gained a lot of appreciation for the work that goes into it though, and how important it was to make that stuff transparent
I think I went through that phase everyone goes through when they’re 12 on PS where I really wanted to become Voice. Unsurprisingly, it was when I stopped really caring about being Voice that I got it. Bit of a tangent - I definitely thought of the ROs as these like crazy cool people that I would be lucky to talk even talk to when I was younger, as silly as that was. It’s particularly funny because AJ is now a really close friend of mine, so thinking about how I viewed him when I was younger is really wild.
Staffing, again, was definitely my favorite part of my 5 or so years in the room. Being able to help run and continue to build a community I was super passionate about was extremely rewarding! Especially as an RO, it was a lot of that administrative stuff that I really enjoyed as well. My favorite bad joke about RO is that the entire job is telling people to do things I don’t feel like doing LMAO - this isn’t really true of course; there were things I didn’t really feel like doing that I did (honestly having a strong presence in the room was a big one while I was RO), but there were a lot of things that I didn’t enjoy doing that others were willing to do instead! That’s the great part of being on a team of course.
I think the biggest thing that you miss out on as a reg of what goes on behind the scenes is policy discussion - obviously we do talk a lot about themes and hosting and the like, but a lot of staffing energy goes into policy. Coming out of it, it’s like “duh, of course that’s what staff should be mostly doing” but it was definitely a surprise to me when I first became driver. It also might go unnoticed how much planning and discussion goes into like, every decision that the room makes. Obviously, everyone on staff cares for the room a lot, so even little decisions hold a lot of weight!
There was a pretty long discussion on how to approach consolation points, and the standard way to give out consolation points for Official games in the event of a gamethrow. Because it wasn’t standardized, the way we were giving out consolation wasn’t really fair, so there was warranted frustration from users about how it was done. While this could’ve been a quick, “we’ll just do this”, we spent a lot of time going through different options to decide what was the best and most fair way to do this. I like this example because in the grand scheme of things, consolation points are not something that come up that often - even so, we spent time making sure our solution to the problem was as good as it could be.
Do you think it'd be good to be more transparent as staff, then?
For sure - and I think that's something that applies from the very top to the very bottom. To go back to the group project comparison for a bit, it's like... you want everyone to be involved, right? And for that to work, you have to be willing to be open about some things.
Like, a lot of that comes from taking the time to just be present and active in the room or on Discord, but it's important to be purposeful about that sort of thing: making sure there are clear and open avenues for room suggestions and player feedback, or finding ways for folks to get involved in room activities and event planning... all that stuff goes a long way toward building trust and keeping investment.
What are some memories you cherish from Mafia?
I have a lot of really fond memories of taking 9PM fish hosts with commie and neo, back in the driver/mod days - late night games were way more lowkey than the sorts of games you'd get for weekend officials. You'd get a lot of the same crew logging on in those hours, when everyone's just kind of looking for some downtime after school, work, etc. The energy was always super chill, and occasionally you'd get some weird shit -- like the one time we ended up having to figure out an idea game with a sacrifice, a masoncore, and a shitton of journo inspects.
Some other memories that really stuck with me are making that leaderboard run in July '18 with folks like jodram or justin and shitposting through officials--or back when Flush hosted a walrus on a whim, and peach subbed Soulja Boy for every. single. cat. It was dumb fun, but it was good fun, you know?
Pretty sure Arby will have mentioned this, but seeing how many states he could name is just one of those moments hanging out and shooting the shit that I'll always appreciate. This goes back a bit to the competitive stuff from earlier, but in all the fuss it's just that much nicer when you get that time just spent making friends and enjoying folks' company.
Back during the first Summer Circuit, I remember just how amped we all were to get into all of the events--stuff like the INSANE streak from French Polynisia Core (FrenPoCo :el_flames: ) in the Survivor event, or playing OC-style Fire and Ice out by the park.
Or even, you know, having those open Stardew Valley sessions in the PS Maf discord with Arsenal, VigVig, Toni and folks, or brokenpicturephone... all that stuff goes beyond the game room and right into the people that make the gameroom so great
the first SC survivor game is one of my all time favorite things too, that was so hype
Right?? Like sitting down with folks in the room and across site to create a pokemon, or spamming lyrics during that consecutive-DM challenge (only to realize half the submissions didn't count lol). Stuff was wild
I definitely have Flush to thank for the walruses, too - nowadays it's one of my favorite pasttimes (despite having NOTHING at all to do with maf, ha) but really what it always came down to was just being able to enjoy something as a community--especially, too, with the pandemic hitting and burnout setting in for a lot of us
Gosh yeah, because my memory recall is kinda bad, I definitely moreso take with me the vibes of certain periods of time more than specific moments. An example would be like the general excitement behind the first Summer Circuit - it was something that was never really seen before at least for me, and having all of these events in almost an Olympic-style format was such an exciting concept. Another one would be the feeling of knowing by like Night 3 or 4 that I was probably winning the OC game in SC2020 as scum - especially in a large-scale game like that, the general feeling of being that dominant was super super fun. Lastly, I’m not a CS person by any stretch so it always felt great when there was a positive response to one of my contributions to the script - even though they were small, it still felt very rewarding to have something I worked hard on be so well received!
How has Mafia impacted you?
I think playing mafia has really affirmed for me just how differently people can see things - and that doesn't always mean people are wrong or lying or not thinking or whatnot, but it does mean that you have to be willing to explore other perspectives to really get the full picture, and that takes communication and patience.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that it’s fundamentally impacted the trajectory of my life. A big thing is that staffing on Mafia really helped kick off my interesting in CS, which is something I’m really considering doing long term!
While I’m not involved in the PS Mafia community anymore, the community I’m primarily in now (SmORGon) was one I joined because of my involvement in Mafia - so between the two, they’ve been a huge part of my life for nearly 7 years. A lot of my really good friends now are people I’ve met through Mafia, and for that alone I’m extremely grateful. Again, I really don’t think my life would be the same without PS Mafia.
Are there any users you'd like to give a shoutout?
God, so many. Major shoutout to Flush and Fenrir getting me involved in the larger forum maf community & also just being great company.
Chapter Seven, Joddy, Pass and the rest of the Chaphouse crew for the incredible vibes.
Quax, Kaif and blurb for the levity; Zeito and moto for the rivalry and the conviction. Commie, ZoL and Neo for the latenight hosting memories.
Noted abolitionist and IDEA townpicker John Brown, iykyk.
You and peach a thousand times for being willing to lend an ear back in those days when I was solo ROing, whether bouncing ideas or just talking games or music. Hoeen for always taking the time to check in, even when he was taking on more global responsibilities. SirM, Gim, and Arby for letting me rope them into taking the # when the much saner thing to do would have been logging off and going for a walk or something.
I'm absolutely missing some folks and I don't want to get mushy, but yeah. Y'all rock.
I would but I’m too scared to miss out on anyone honestly!! I will say that I’m grateful that Spiderz, Alex, and Micro were able to pick up my slack when I left so suddenly last year - they’re doing a really great job with the room, and I feel really good about leaving it in their hands.
Do you have any final words?
If I had to add anything, I think maybe just that popping back into the room these past couple months, it's been really cool to see some of the newer folks coming up. Expecting big things from a lot of you o7 Take care of yourselves & keep taking good care of the room.
Not too much - just that I’m very grateful to have had this community when I did! Really appreciate you taking the time to interview me as well, it was super nice reminiscing on my time in Mafia.