I think it's cool that you count wins however you want, this is all for fun.

That being said, I do feel like mods should go ahead and put in their game threads what rules they'd like to follow as far as counting a win in their own games.

I'm good with any and all of it, honestly.

I don't think anyone is that concerned with the number. The win tally hasn't been updated since before I started playing, and that was 4 years ago. Realms mafia only started in 2007.

I agree.

It's my opinion that this has more to do with our games being full of power roles rather than victory conditions. It's easier to rely on tracking/copping results, character/power claims, and writeup copping. I don't foresee a change to make entire factions win making players less passive.

Nah Girathon, I disagree.

If you think that people don't get invested because they don't think they'll get an individual win...just wait until you tell them there is a "TEAM" aspect to it where they can really get carried to a victory.

People are people, and I don't think adjusting the win condition in these games will change their level of participation all that much.

But I'd love for you to try it.

Yeah, I don't think just changing a win to a "team" component would help with participation. In fact, I can see the opposite effect, as there would be no incentive to try to survive til the end. That's half the fun of the game.

I treat a win as if I hit my win condition. Which is almost always survive and defeat threats. Am I happy when I get a MVP award even if I die? Sure. In fact I Cherish those. But if I die endgame and my team still wins? That's a loss. I'm proud of my team and what I did to get them there, but it's not a check in the win column. But I also can let a game go immediately and move onto the next one much easier than others.

This is something I'd like to circle back to. How can you write powersets in such a way as to encourage discussion and discourage players from coasting, or simply waiting for the cop/RT results? I think draggers actually tend to encourage discussion (if done well), as they create info that's equally available to all players. This leads to people coming up with theories to explain who's who and what's happening.

Ultimately, I think that you have to give people a real incentive to participate. Around the Realms, I don't think "wins" hold that big of a weight, and so no matter whether you go with team or individual wins I don't think the incentive will be big enough to change how people play. However, you can get some of this by giving people different victory conditions than the standard Town/Mafia/SK/survivor, such as Dennis Nedry in Girathon's JP game. Did that role probably need some tweaks? Sure. But I like the basic idea behind it, mechanically speaking.

I think Thawmus wrote something really great on this topic a while ago.

The gist of it is something along the lines of "Mafia punishes you for being good at Mafia"

I agree with that sentiment.

If winning the game mattered to me I'd go crazy. I'm happy to play the game though.

As long as I get a chance to do something fun, I don't care about the win. That's my goal.

So my question is, why is this even the case here to begin with? As a relatively new player, why did this rule get changed here to begin with? This is the only site I've seen to use it. And if so many people don't care if they win or lose, why do we have such a different rule at all? Can someone help fill me in on some Realms history here?

Well, I just wasted a lot of time looking at old Mafia threads. I was pretty active once!

It seems to pretty much go back to the very beginning here? Certainly before my time. I'd say send a PM to Peers and ask him, as I believe he's the one that ran the very first mafia game(s) here.

There has certainly been a certain amount of bragging rights associated with the wins tally, though I am not sure how serious it has been.

I don't really care about counting wins per se. But If I die, before the win condition is met. Then I didn't win. If my faction wins, while I'm not alive. I did not win. I likely assisted in the win, but I did not win. Part of winning to me is the actual survival of me as a player.

Who cares about wins and losses?

I'm here for the stories.

I think there could be incentive for certain roles, though. I think a town bodyguard that dies for bodyguarding another townie should have and meet an alternative win condition.