Hey, how do you go about balancing real-life mafia? I have a group that's going to play a few rounds. I would think it's more town favored because you can interrogate someone and try and get them to break.

How would you go about balancing a huge game of like 50-60 people?

Ver

United States2186 Posts

May 07 2012 17:40 GMT

#682

What the....50-60?

Honestly in my experience any game that's over 16 or so people is not that fun. I think if you have that many people, depending on the environment, it might be best to just let everyone wander around and talk to each other privately because trying to cram 50 people in a room sounds like a nightmare; it's already really bad with 20.

As for setups, you'll probably want to go with something along these lines:

-no role/alignment reveal upon death. Pretty much a necessity for irl games in general.
-some number of 1 shot vigis, just so people can die.
-not a large amount of mafia kp. 4 maybe?
-Keep the roles basic. Maybe a traitor, godfather, roleblocker at most for mafia. For town you can either have normal roles like we do here or 'team' dts or medics where there are 2 people who are masons and share the role. It kinda dumbs it down but people do tend to like it from my experience.

Honestly though you'd probably be better off breaking it up into multiple games. Most people will probably get bored of it way too quickly; our 10-15 person games often take 30-50 minutes per game, so just imagine how much longer a 50 man one would drag out, not to mention 60.

EchelonTee

United States5256 Posts

May 07 2012 17:53 GMT

#683

Yeah lmao, it's for this organization/program thing I'm doing; it's a tradition for nearly everyone to join in to play a massive game of mafia. Last year when I played though (when I had no experience with TL Mafia), it was hilariously imbalanced because I think it was ~60 people, but only ~6 mafia, 2KP or something like that, and all the Mafia just got starved to death over time. I spose it would be impossible/not worth it to balance a game of this size anyways, but what's a good ratio split in general, compared to forum Mafia? Since TL Mafia is usually around 1:5.

I like the idea of the role masons. Makes it also a bit easier to have multiple roles, but progress through the night smoothly.

Hidden flip after death? o.O I've never played with that rule in irl Mafia over the years; why would that be considered a necessity? I feel like it would frustrate casual players.

Ace

United States16096 Posts

May 07 2012 20:22 GMT

#684

Last big irl game I hosted I used SK/Medic/Godfather/Goon/DTs. Just so much easier to keep it simple and this was with a bunch of first time players of around 20 I think.

Easiest way to organize: get a deck of cards, designate the roles to specific cards and hand em out. Collect the cards and tell people don't show their cards. You can probably start up a game in a little over 5 minutes this way.

The thing with irl mafia is there are a ton of distractions and lots of talking (especially about shit that doesn't matter

). Have fun!

wherebugsgo

Japan10647 Posts

May 07 2012 20:54 GMT

#685

On May 08 2012 05:22 Ace wrote:
Last big irl game I hosted I used SK/Medic/Godfather/Goon/DTs. Just so much easier to keep it simple and this was with a bunch of first time players of around 20 I think.

Easiest way to organize: get a deck of cards, designate the roles to specific cards and hand em out. Collect the cards and tell people don't show their cards. You can probably start up a game in a little over 5 minutes this way.

The thing with irl mafia is there are a ton of distractions and lots of talking (especially about shit that doesn't matter

). Have fun!

yeah this was how I was introduced to mafia like almost 2 years ago.

group of around 12-16 people is perfect, I can't imagine it being larger (or even smaller) than that.

Good memories of shooting my own scumbuddy because of the lack of role reveal :p