BANTER

zomg

@ THE REPRESENTATIVES

Remember that you all need to complete the steps below before your game starts.

1) You need to get your PM's enabled by following these steps in order:

• Click on "My 2+2" in the upper left corner.
• Choose "Edit options".
• Click on "Group Memberships" in the left side menu.
• Mark off "Join group" for "POG Messages". Click "Join Group" below this as well.

Also, you may want to do these steps as well:

• Get an avatar. Go to "Edit avatar". If you have a picture that you want to use, but it doesn't fit the format, you can go to www.picresize.com and get that fixed.
• If you want to not show as online when you're online (almost everyone does this, so people aren't aware when someone is online and not posting), again go to "Edit options" and at the very top, the first option to change is "Use invisible mode" - mark that off.
• If you want more posts to show per page, go to "Edit options" and scroll down to Thread display options under which you will see "Number of posts to show per page". You can change that to 100 if you'd like.

2) Send me your bio.

3) Read these rules! Note that for example editing posts, discussing your role PM, sharing your account with others, asking questions to the mod in the thread and contacting others outside the game thread is NOT allowed!

4) When I send you a PM at some point stating that we are now in the confirmation stage you need to post confirm (so don't do it now) in this thread to acknowledge that you're prepared and willing to play this game and that you've read the rules in step 3 above. By confirming you are stating that you are aware that this game will require a lot of your time and that you will need to be very active on a daily basis.

THE 65 PARTICIPATING COMMUNITIES

Art of Problem Solving
Atheist Foundation of Australia
Bay 12 Forums
BoardGameGeek
Bulbagarden
Canucks Community
Captain Luffy
Chocolate Pi
CivFanatics
Comic Fury
DailyMafia
Dark Lord Potter
Dominion Strategy
Draft Countdown
Dragonmount
DuelistGroundz
EpicMafia
Feed the Beast
FlashFlashRevolution
FlopTurnRiver
Football Forums
GameFAQs
Giant in the Playground
HeroClix Realms
InsideMDSports
Jesus Toast Mafia
JetNation
Last Life
MafiaManiac
mafiascum
Malazan Empire
Millennium Forums
MindRomp
MMO Champion
MTG Salvation
Naruto Forums
Neoseeker
NinSheetMusic
OMGUS
OneHallyu
Otaku Central
Part Time Poker
Play Diplomacy
Playstuff
PokerNet
PokkeriProd
Rate Your Music
SC2 Mafia
Serenes Forest
Smashboards
Something Awful
Super Mafia All Stars
TaleWorlds
Talking Time
Team Liquid
The Grey Labyrinth
The Org
The Syndicate
TW Center
Two Plus Two
Ultimate Mafia
Vendetta Strada
Walter Football
Wrestling Forum
xkcd

These are all confirmed with the exception of mafiascum. And except for 5 of them they have all already elected their representatives. The line-up for the 5 games will be revealed sometime this week.

THE GAME SETUP

The games will have a very basic setup - many sites call it vanilla - consisting of 13 players:

• 3 mafia
• 9 vanilla townies
• 1 cop (with a pre-game randomized view on a vanilla townie

This is regarded as a very balanced setup that mainly lets the result depend on the pure mafia skills of the players; Are you a skilled liar or good at detecting lies? The setup has been run approximately 200 times on this forum and town wins 52 % of the time.

The first season featured a semi-open setup with a fair amount of power roles, so a different setup was chosen this time for the sake of diversity. The third season will feature a completely new setup as well.

THE RULES FOR ADVANCEMENT AND WINNING

• There will be 5 qualifying games. From each of these 2 people will advance based on post-game votes.
• 3 additional players are granted wildcard spots.
• In the finale the winner will likewise be decided by a post-game vote.

The players themselves are voting in the post-game votes. This will be specified again once it's time to vote, but the players won't be voting for an MVP and neither will they be voting for the player they find the most likable or entertaining. Rather, they will be voting for Best Player, which is defined thusly: "The player(s) who were most succesful in convincing you that they are the best player(s) in general, regardless of whether or not that resulted in actually having the most positive impact on the game in question".

This is to ensure that it doesn't become a game of being the funny guy (Entertaining player award) or a game of trying to survive for a long time in the game just for the sake of being remembered or having a chance at having the most impact on the game (MVP award). Plus the MVP award is a very variance-based award - the worst player in the world can end up getting lucky and being the deciding factor in a game, even though it's clear that that player ordinarily wouldn't be expected to perform well because of his/her style or approach to the game or whatever it might be. As we all know it's often a reality that, for example, the most skilled townies in a game are killed off very early by the mafia team to ensure that they can't pose a threat later in the game. This means that these players will never realistically stand a chance of being MVP because they weren't there for the endgame, but that doesn't mean that they aren't the best player. It also doesn't necessarily mean that they are the best player, of course.

But in case the players get it wrong, an additional rule is set in place to rectify this: At least ONE player from the winning team will advance. Season 1 showed an unfortunate bias amongst townies to have a preference towards voting for other townies even in games where the mafia curbstomped the town. So this rule ensures that the winning team to at least some degree is fairly rewarded for actually winning the game. If for example the mafia team wins, but the post-game vote results in 3 townies being the top 3 vote-getters, then it will only be the number 1 vote-getter advancing along with the mafia member who got the most amount of votes.

JURY

A jury has already been formed, consisting of finalists from season 1. The names won't be publicly announced, but trust that there is both diversity and a lot of skill and a sense of fairness present in this jury.

This jury will be responsible for picking the 3 wildcard spots. Also, should it happen that someone who qualified for the finale can't or won't play the finale, they will also be picking the replacement for said person(s).

Lastly, I will leave this up for public discussion: I am considering whether or not the jury should get a say in deciding the ultimate winner. Whether it be 25 % or 50 % of the power or whatever. I don't personally have any doubts whatsoever that the jury would get this decision right, so the only thing I am worrying about is whether or not the representatives themselves feel comfortable about this.

LINKS TO SEASON 1 (AND SUMMARY OF RESULTS)

Qualifying game #1
Winning team: The mafia

Directly advancing players:
traz
captain binkles
soah
AngryPidgeon
weareking

Wildcards:
marvellosity
Murska
Avin

Qualifying game #2
Winning team: The mafia

Directly advancing players:
Top Tier Tom
well named
TommyDanger
dbmurph22
yamato77

Wildcards:
lenC

Qualifying game #3
Winning team: The mafia

Directly advancing players:
Arcbell
merk_sa
tweedybirdd
Crunkus
Thingyman

Wildcards:
tappokone
monstrman

Qualifying game #4
Winning team: The mafia

Directly advancing players:
The Moocher
Luckbox Inc
DWetzel
Phelanpt
Rokk_Krinn

Wildcards:
jcohen
corycurren
Gamer Dude

Finale game
Winning team: The town

Top 5:
DWetzel
The Moocher
corycurren
jcohen
Thingyman

So stoked you found our communtiy (The Syndicate) Thingyman! We know Turnip Head will make us proud!

Cannot wait to follow these games tbqfh!

I'm very grateful to you for pointing me in their direction! It seems like a super cool and kind community and I'm glad to have them participating

NOTE TO THE REPRESENTATIVES

You cannot change your avatar or your location after the game has been randed. Please set them before that.

man, game #4 was stacked in retrospect, definitely the Southwest Division of werewolf games

fixed an otherwise excellent OP, good luck to everyone, will be railing

[3/30/2015 10:26:05 PM] Cory Curren: i wonder who will represent teamliquid
[3/30/2015 10:26:10 PM] Cory Curren: RESEND YAMATO
[3/30/2015 10:26:21 PM] JP: can yamato play?
[3/30/2015 10:26:30 PM] JP: you arent eligible if you played in the ultimate game
[3/30/2015 10:26:33 PM] JP: so I guess he can

Skype highlights

LOLOLOLOLOLOL

Sup

wolfy

Why can't I be Captain Luffy. Captain Luffy always gets to be the race car. I don't want to be the thimble AGAIN! And don't even try making me the stinky ol' boot. Can I at least be the wheel barrow?

you can be the top hat

I guess we can all rely on inter-site style differences to generate conflict on Day One...

shots were, in fact, fired

hello

this guy gets it