You can find the tl mafia subforum here!
You can find the newest game here
What is Mafia?
Mafia is an educated guessing game of epic proportions. The objective of the game is to lynch or kill all mafia members before they outnumber the rest of the town. It's much like a game of poker because mafia members are also part of the town during the day and may manipulate the vote to their liking. If the mafia at any time outnumber or equal the townspeople, they win. The town's goal is to lynch all the members of the mafia.
Wait, what?
It's quite simple, actually. You will be given a single role, of which some exciting examples are shown below:
Townie:
You are a townie! You may not have a special role, but you are the most important part of the town. You are armed with three deadly weapons that will serve you well in defeating the mafia: they are, your vote, your brain and your life. Now, go and kill the mafia before they kill everyone in the town. You win when all threats to the town are dead, and at least one town aligned player is left.
Vigilante:
You are a vigilante! You are armed and dangerous. You are more than happy to take the law into your own hands, using your trusty gun, and the only bullet you could find. Once per game, at night, you may PM me a player to be shot. If your kill overlaps with a mafia your bullet will be refunded (unless the player has some form of protection). If your kill overlaps with another vigilante, the first hit sent in will take precedence (again, unless the targeted player has protection). You may not kill on night 1, as you will be too drunk from the post lynch celebration party. You win when all threats to the town are dead, and at least one town aligned player is left.
Detective:
You are a detective! During the day you walk around like a normal townie, not revealing your identity as a super secret ace investigator. During the night you can analyze a player, figuring out their alignment, either town or mafia. Your sanity is not guaranteed, that is, you could be either sane, insane, paranoid, or naive! You win when all threats to the town are dead, and at least one town aligned player is left.(sanities explained here)
Mafia Godfather:
You are the nefarious leader of the mafia, the Godfather himself. The mafia chooses the godfather from amongst themselves on night 1. The godfather always appears town to detectives. The Godfather must be chosen from the mafia goons, as non-goon scum have other duties to fulfill. You win when you outnumber the town or nothing can stop that from occurring
Many roles have special powers, but not all do. The full role list can be found in the Mafia subforum, there are plenty of fun ones.
and...?
Ok, so you will have your role. Regardless of your role, you will have an overarching objective: If you're town, you want to find and lynch the mafia as quickly as possible. If you're mafia, you'll want to avoid detection as long as possible and sneakily murder the crap out of townies at nighttime. There might even be a third party, lurking in the shadows, with their own separate win condition...
Mafia will know who their teammates are (organized crime is organized). Town, however, will not know the roles of anyone besides themselves! The goal of the game is to learn to read people and find out who's trustworthy, and who's a scum in disguise.
The game is split into day and night cycles. During the day, the town gets to discuss the happenings and decide who they think is the shadiest out of them all. They then vote on who to lynch, and that player is removed from the game. In a very short, violent fashion.
During the night, roles with special powers may use those powers (for good or ill), and the mafia gets to run around murdering people. In other words, the mafia will send in a hit-list, and barring external events, everyone on the list will get, well, hit. With a hammer. Hard.
In the end, one of the two parties will emerge the victor - either all the mafia will meet their end by mob justice, or the mafia will successfully avoid detection and pick the town off one by one.
but why should I play?
There isn't much more I can say that will successfully transmit the absolute exhilaration that is mafia. Playing mafia is something that has to be experienced, from spending 5+ hours working on a mega long post that proves without a doubt that your prime suspect is mafia (only to later have him flip town) to logging in after waking up in the morning, to find that someone has managed to peg the entire scumteam but that another townie with a bomb decided suicide bomb into the medic instead, costing you the game, to contesting a hard fought lynch in which the entire fate of the game quivers in the balance, suspended only by the strength of your convictions. Mafia is a boatload of fun, it is a serious time commitment, but one that is rewarding and exceedingly fun.
Its not just the games either. From playing mafia I have met some of the coolest people on teamliquid, from well known people like Ver, flamewheel and BloodyC0bbler, to people most of you have never heard of, like Qatol, kavdragon, wherebugsgo, and many, many others. Once you play with us, you are forever part of a circle, and that by itself makes all the bitter defeats and exhilarating wins pale in comparison.
Right now there is a game waiting for signups, that promises to be as exciting as mafia gets, with a large number of players, a day 1 election, plenty of roles, some of our regular players playing, and a team of experienced and awesome hosts it can only end well.
So, come play with us! become a member of a mob! Lynch people! Have fun and get to know one of the hidden gems of TL.
Ok, fine, I guess I'll give it a shot, where can I find this? I'm blind and totally missed the huge links at the top of the page!
Once again, in case you missed the big text at the top of the page, you can find the tl mafia subforum here!
You should all come and play in the super-massive, newbie friendly game, which can be found here. Its guaranteed to be a blast for everyone, even that unfortunate sod who gets lynched day 1.
Credit to brownbear for writing the mega awesome explanation of what mafia is, exactly,and for the general format of this post. I shamelessly stole it from him. Also thanks to Plexa for allowing us to post recruitment posts in S&G, much love ^_^