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Well I've been in two mafia games now and both fell apart rather rapidly. One fell apart because one mafia got in our mafia's IRC. Another fell apart because apparently there were no townies. Someone was going to make an IRC but my ISP blocks all IRC traffic so I thought I'd make a thread to discuss ideas. I'm not starting a mafia game or saying anything bad about anyone's running of mafia games - I just got bored and curious and decided to throw together a game design document based on stealing my favorite ideas from mafia games on this site and seeing what new roles/tweaks I could come up with. What are your ideas? / What do you think of mine?
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Pyrrhuloxia's Mafia Idea
Mafia is a "battle between an informed minority and an uninformed majority" (Wikipedia).
Mafia objective: kill non-mafia players until the mafia are equal or greater than the number of non-mafia.
Non-Mafia (Town) objective: kill all mafia players.
Rules:
The Mafia kill power equation is secret - it is told to all mafia members in their role PM. Mafia can discuss amongst themselves who to kill before the Don PMs me a kill list. Mafia and any other night power roles should PM me before night if they are worried about being gone during the night phase.
Each morning post that starts a day will contain clues. Clues can come from names, sigs, posts, profiles, blogs, damn near anything. They will be much more difficult earlier in the game. Clues will point out mafia that kill and may point toward blue roles that act at night. Smurfing? Your clues are gonna be easier.
If you don't want to read don't play this game, there will be oceans of text for you to wade through.
Credits
Thank you to Chuiu, Ace, Caller, and anyone else who was run a game of mafia or given advice about the game.
GAME RULES:
- Days will be about 48 hours. Nights will be about 24 hours.
- When you are dead, you are done posting. No last gasp posts even. If you have something you are dying to say, wait till the game is over.
- DON'T GIVE UP. Don't get pissed off and admit being mafia just because you are about to be unluckily hung. The only two games I've played have ended near immediately and I don't want that to happen here unless it an entire side decides to GG.
- Keep posts mafia related.
- Don't post here if you're not playing.
- If you're dead, you are dead in your PM inbox and irc and elsewhere for all things related to this mafia game until the game is over (I can't enforce this but it will make it better for us all).
- There are no given role counts other than there will be 1 Don and 1-2 traitors. Everything else is fuzzy.
VOTING RULES:
- I will make a vote blog. Vote there AND POST NOTHING ELSE THERE.
- You must clearly declare your vote, bold it, and begin it with a # sign.
- YOUR VOTE MUST BEGIN WITH A # SIGN OR I WON'T SEE IT AND IT WON'T COUNT.
- If you want to change your vote, EDIT your post in the vote blog, don't post a second vote.
- No autochanging votes.
- You can only vote for other living players.
- You can abstain but must clearly do that.
- IF YOU DO NOT POST A VOTE OR ABSTAINING IN THE VOTE BLOG TWO VOTES IN A ROW YOU WILL BE KILLED DUE TO INACTIVITY. If you are going to be gone for three days and really want to be part of the game, PM me what's up beforehand and what you want your votes to be and I'll determine if it can be accomodated.
Your role PMs will come from me or are fake.
ROLES:
(A day/night cycle begins with a day and ends with a night)
(Note that certain powers recharge on certain days instead of at certain durations. This is so you don't have to use the power right away, you can balance the risk of dying before you can use your power against the fact that more protection may be focused on days right after recharging and the fact you may want to wait for more info to use your power more effectively / assuredly.) (Roles recharging in this way can't save up more than one charge)
TOWN ROLES:
Detective: You may ask anytime during a day/night cycle if a clue points to a certain person for a yes/no answer. You can do this once per day/night cycle.
Poll Worker: During the night, you may find out how many mafia voted for a specific person during the day that just ended. This power begins charged and recharged every 15 days.
Private Eye: During a day/night You may guess the role of a specific player and recieve a yes or no about that guess. This power is charged on day one and is recharged on every day divisible by five. (You can use it one day from 1-4 and one day from 5-9, etc).
Medic: You can cancel out one hit on a player of your choice during the night. The player you blocked will be informed if he was saved. You will be informed if you saved someone. The town will not be told. You cannot use this two nights in a row.
Bodyguard: You can cancel out one hit on a player of your choice during the night. If that player is hit, you will be killed instead. If multiple bodyguards guard a player and fewer than the total bodyguards are killed in duty, bodyguards equal to the killing power being blocked will be killed. (NOTE: THIS IS A LOT DIFFERENT FROM WHAT THE TERM BODYGUARD MEANT IN OTHER GAMES). You can use this every night.
Good Samaratin: You can cancel out one hit on a player of your choice during the night. The player you attend to will be told that you specifically (by name) chose to protect them that night and whether that saved them. You will be told if you saved them. The town will not be told. You cannot use this two nights in a row.
Elder: You get an extra vote in lynch votes. PM it to me and your extra vote will be marked as "Elder".
Townie: You're green instead of blue. No special powers.
Veteran: It takes two hits to kill you. The hits don't have to be the same night and you have hits blocked by the protective roles.
Vigilante: You can PM me a hit at night (you are a townie and win if the town wins). If you kill a player, clues will point towards you like they would a mafia. This power begins uncharged and recharges on days divisible by five.
Greased Up Mute Guy: Once you get your role, you are not allowed to post in the mafia threads until you are hung by the town. You can't even vote in the vote blog until hung. If the town votes to hang you, you slip out of the noose and regain the ability to speak. You cannot be killed by hanging; all the other ways of death can kill you. Giving a muted player the ability to speak by attempting and failing to hang them gives the town another Town Ability.
TOWN ABILITIES: These are voted on by everyone. The vote must exceed half the living players in order to pass. The town begins with the one town ability to use.
Double Lynch: The town votes on two lynches instead of one. Veterans still only have 1 extra vote. Everyone gets to vote for two people (can't vote for someone twice, unless veteran uses an extra vote on one of two people).
Extra Patrols: The night after this is voted on players of a specific role (specified in vote) are protected from mafia hits. They can still be hit by vigilantes and STDs.
MAFIA ROLES:
Pole Worker: During a night, you may use your seduce power, which can do one of two things at your choosing:
Option one: Use your teasing skills to coax a single player's role out of them.
Option two: Go all the way and give a player an STD. That player will be notified by the morning they have an STD and if they are not guarded by a medic the following night, they will die that following night. The medic will guard the player as usual that night, in addition to curing them.
The seduce power is uncharged at the beginning of the game and is recharged at days divisible by 3.
Mafia: Stay alive and kill off the town while misleading them. You know the other people with mafia roles and collaborate with them. You can't kill other mafia. Your life (and those of the other mafia roles) keeps the mafia kill power higher.
Saboteur: You can role block any player in the game once and then you personally can't block them for the rest of the game. A player can't be role blocked two day/night cycles in a row by seperate players. The player is blocked for the day/night cycle after the night you PM me about it. You can role block beginning night 1 (taking effect day 2) and your power is recharged on days divisible by 5).
Effects:
Detective: Clue check answer goes the wrong way.
Poll Worker: No count is given.
Private Eye: Answer is reversed.
Medic: Can't protect.
Bodyguard: Can't protect - will still die if who they are protecting dies.
Good Samaratin: Can't protect / have someone know they are being protected by them by my PM
Elder: no extra vote during day
Townie: nothing
Veteran: has only one life left for that night
Vigilante: hit doesnt suceed / no clue points to them
Greased Up Mute Guy: dies if hung
In all cases, charges of powers are lost even when they don't go through.
People are not notified until they use their power.
Propogandist: During the night, you can PM me a false clue line of up to 20 words in length that I will insert somewhere in the morning (Day) post. You're on your own to make your diction not stand out from mine and to make sure that you don't try to pack so much into your 20 word limit that its obvious its the fake clue. This power can be used starting the first night (no false clues on the first morning).
Don: You are the leader of the mafia and PM me the list of kills during night after consultation with your underlings. If their alignment is checked, I will respond with the don's preference of roles.
The Don can use one mafia ability during the course of the game:
MAFIA ABILITIES
Overkill: Doubles mafia kill power. Cannot be used until night 5.
Astroglide: Can be used during and after day 1. Permanently makes a single pole worker impervious to one hanging. If the pole worker is hung, the town will be told in the night post that they have an extra ability and that the pole worker was a greased up deaf guy (their name will be in blue in the night post). The greased pole worker will turn up in PE, DT, and PW (Poll Worker) checks as Greased Guy prior to a first hanging and as a Pole Worker after a first hanging. A second hanging will kill the pole worker. The town will not actually get an extra ability but will not be notified until the night post after they vote for one they don't have.
OTHER ROLES:
Traitor: This role wins if the mafia wins but shows up as a townie (OR BLUE ROLE) in role checks. The mafia are not told who this person is and the traitor is not told who the mafia is. There will be ONE OF THESE randomly assigned to a non-mafia role to prevent invincible strategies.
Twin: This role can be combined with other blue or red roles. If one dies for any reason, the other is killed. The twins may be on opposite sides of the conflict.
Village Idiot: This player wins if they get hung. They provide comic relief and extra challenge.
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Germany2896 Posts
http://mafiaspiel.de (You can switch it to english)
Lists a number of mafia variants and roles. The rules probably won't scale to the huge games we are playing here, but some of the roles might serve as an inspiration.
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hmm guess I'll post this for now:
part of the reason mafia games haven't been as all around epic as before is the fact that we try to give too many roles to make people happy. Unfortunately this just isn't going to work - people will have to learn how to play just basic before complaining about roles.
In a classic game, there are lots of plain townies and few blues and more mafia than blue. This makes the game more fair as killing for the mafia requires critical analysis, and Detectives aren't overpowered even with infinite role checks since there are so many greens. This is further balanced since DTs technically can only investigate at NIGHT which stops the Day 1 fiasco we always see (lol) even though I think it's a necessary part of the game.
Next, the Mayor/Pardoner setup. We haven't used this for a while but seriously - it is highly successful because of the activity it promotes. Look at the first 2 mafia games run by Chuiu and you'll notice how those threads revolved around Mayor/Pardoner so much and the games at least seemed epic to most people.
I know the complaint - the inner circle problem and the broken bodyguard plan. This was partially solved by 2 things: Godfather/Don roles which screw DTs rolecheck but not clue check which means clue interpretation is still big, and the Agent of Chaos role which destroys an inner circle also.
Now of course the problem is that if we use all the aforementioned, the DTs can't catch an AoC before elections are over. To somewhat solve this the town can just hold elections on Day 2, and Day 1 will proceed as a normal game day. This way candidates can be 'verified' by chance, which assumes there are enough people running for positions. If we go this route, DT rolechecks have to be limited to make it a tradeoff. I don't like it but it's better than nothing. Otherwise we just go the normal setup.
Millers have also been mentioned plenty of times, especially by Ver which does give the town a chance to have an "inner-circle" but the limit is fixed, and it takes a long time to be effective. I know BC, Chuiu, Caller and others have ideas also that they want to share but I wanted to put this out here before I forgot it all 
Basically let's go back to the very basic mafia. All these extras are just killing the spirit of the game and most importantly - players are not getting better and just complain about who's blue and who's green.
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Sydney2287 Posts
I just quickly want to say, the second game didn't fall apart due to the roles. Yes, it probably (Can't say with certainty, but I think most would agree) was unbalanced but blaming the early end on the roles is stupid. It was pretty clear there were no townie roles, if mafia had thought twice before claiming it they would have realised and the initial list of 8 mafia that we had wouldn't have existed.
I quite liked the concept of everyone having a watered down ability. Maybe not next game, but I hope we revisit it in the future. I think if we do it like the last one, changes I would make for balance would be more mafia killing power, remove the ability for people to 100% confirm someone as a townie through clever use of abilities (I.e. rolechecks, fine, using extra votes, less fine). The town abilities were a nice touch too.
To reiterate what I can see at the bottom of Ace's post, I think it would be best to go back to the formula we had in the first and second games, with only slight alterations (Stuff like, election/no election and following on, body guards or no body guards).
EDIT: Just adding this, I really don't think there should be a plethora of roles. Keeping it simple leads to more discussing the players and their actions, which is what makes mafia interesting imo.
EDIT 2: Could someone please elaborate on the Agent of Chaos role?
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Damn not this again. Just give a chance Bloodycobler to run his game, afaik mafia resurrection was well balanced and quite fun. He asked for a time before starting a new one and caller rushed his game, imo he won the right to run it by making an interesting game. The rest is just the discussion about less blue more green more simplicity etc. vs all degraded blues./mandatory vote or not/village idiot or not/
Rather than start this discussion again (ver made a thread with nice ideas and high participation) we better trust BC and then blame him if the game doesnt turn good 
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On March 03 2009 22:31 Bockit wrote:
EDIT 2: Could someone please elaborate on the Agent of Chaos role?
Agent of Chaos - A devious mafia henchman with the uncanny ability to sabotage those that protect the town leaders. If an AoC is elected to either the Mayor or Pardoner position then the town may be in trouble. At any point during the game, the AoC can choose to sacrifice his or herself at the expense of the town by killing almost all of the remaining Bodyguards. One BG will be randomly allowed to live. However if only 1 BG is alive at the time, that person is killed.
If the AoC is never elected into office then this role has no powers and is just a normal Mafia member.
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If anyone would like some help hosting a game, I would be more than willing to help out!
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I personally thought the most successful games were Mafia 2, Mafia 3, and BC's mafia. I don't think a mayor/bodyguard circle is necessary at all and it really screws over some players who want to be useful but just can't because they aren't in either circle.
That being said, I think the "everyone has a role" idea could have worked but the role numbers were just way off and the mass abilities weren't really balanced.
The one idea I really liked from this last game was the new hatter. I don't think they should be able to suicide the same turn they drop their bomb, but otherwise I found it to be a far more balanced version of the vigilante.
malongo, I felt that BC's game actually favored the town. While I agree that it was probably the most balanced of the games, the mafia basically had a list of almost all of the blues on day 1 and still would have lost if the town remained active.
I agree that it would be best to go back to a relatively simple game. We just need to make sure what we are playing is pretty balanced and let people gain experience with the game. Right now, if you weren't part of a major circle, you probably didn't learn much from the game you just played.
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I think with my ruleset I would add an elder vote to the propagandist.
But lets play just mafia and townies. I'd run it but I think someone else probably wants to do it and mostly I've just been having fun coming up with clue ideas today.
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Northern Ireland22208 Posts
Yeah I say give it a go
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I've been thinking of hosting my own mafia game, though without ever playing on this forum that might be difficult. :p With regular townie vs mafia games though, you would have a problem with over-roling obviously, which makes it harder to balance, but with too many townies, many people just drop out as inactives because they want to be roled.
I think an alternative that has never been tried yet here is separate factions that would need to eliminate each other. With factions, it is possible then for everyone to be roled, since every other enemy faction would also share similar benefits. Though my experience as a spectator sport seem to be that the threads get less busy because people are scared of revealing their role (though that may help mafia). An example that I was thinking of is in the framework of a Song of Ice and Fire:
Factions, the goal of which is to claim the throne and eliminate the opposition, though they strangely do not know their own faction members:
Baratheon
Stark
Lannister
"Mafia": Daenerys Targaryen and others, eliminating the dirty Westeros inhabitants
purely fanboyish, but something like this I feel offers a new dynamic. It would not be essential at first to kill the mafia since a lagging faction might benefit from their services, and at the same time teaming up with the other houses against the mafia might expose you later.
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On March 04 2009 05:38 Syxygy wrote:
I've been thinking of hosting my own mafia game, though without ever playing on this forum that might be difficult. :p With regular townie vs mafia games though, you would have a problem with over-roling obviously, which makes it harder to balance, but with too many townies, many people just drop out as inactives because they want to be roled.
I think an alternative that has never been tried yet here is separate factions that would need to eliminate each other. With factions, it is possible then for everyone to be roled, since every other enemy faction would also share similar benefits. Though my experience as a spectator sport seem to be that the threads get less busy because people are scared of revealing their role (though that may help mafia). An example that I was thinking of is in the framework of a Song of Ice and Fire:
Factions, the goal of which is to claim the throne and eliminate the opposition, though they strangely do not know their own faction members:
Baratheon
Stark
Lannister
"Mafia": Daenerys Targaryen and others, eliminating the dirty Westeros inhabitants
purely fanboyish, but something like this I feel offers a new dynamic. It would not be essential at first to kill the mafia since a lagging faction might benefit from their services, and at the same time teaming up with the other houses against the mafia might expose you later.
Guess it depends on the rules but the game with 2 mafias ended pretty quickly (though that had to do with someone running an irc script that helped him infiltrate our irc).
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In that game though, town was still a majority faction. By splitting the town into smaller factions, each faction would be considered a minority numerical-wise, as each opposing faction is an enemy. The games I've played with townie factions usually lasted pretty long, though a downfall is that inactives really hurt your faction since there are fewer people on your team.
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United States2186 Posts
On March 03 2009 22:31 Bockit wrote:
I just quickly want to say, the second game didn't fall apart due to the roles. Yes, it probably (Can't say with certainty, but I think most would agree) was unbalanced but blaming the early end on the roles is stupid. It was pretty clear there were no townie roles, if mafia had thought twice before claiming it they would have realised and the initial list of 8 mafia that we had wouldn't have existed.
I quite liked the concept of everyone having a watered down ability. Maybe not next game, but I hope we revisit it in the future. I think if we do it like the last one, changes I would make for balance would be more mafia killing power, remove the ability for people to 100% confirm someone as a townie through clever use of abilities (I.e. rolechecks, fine, using extra votes, less fine). The town abilities were a nice touch too.
To reiterate what I can see at the bottom of Ace's post, I think it would be best to go back to the formula we had in the first and second games, with only slight alterations (Stuff like, election/no election and following on, body guards or no body guards).
EDIT: Just adding this, I really don't think there should be a plethora of roles. Keeping it simple leads to more discussing the players and their actions, which is what makes mafia interesting imo.
EDIT 2: Could someone please elaborate on the Agent of Chaos role?
This recent game was horribly balanced with vets (no guaranteed innocents ever), and the format is poor in itself because it eliminates targeting strategy and just promotes mass killing of smart townies. Like Ace said, people just have to realize that everyone can't get a role and play even if they are townie. There's so much to do as townie but everyone is so lazy and apathetic when they are townie, it's ridiculous.
I am fine with mayor/pardonner if there are millers/godfathers. Others don't like the inner circle system (and I can totally understand). But at the same time, with the uncertainty roles there is no way to determine a mayor's alliegance outside of his actions, so there wouldn't be any early inner circles unless the mayor is very clever. I'm not quite sure how applicable those first 2 games are though, as the level of play has dramatically improved. I,e game 1 was pure newbies, while game 2 had good town organization and good mafia infiltration the mafia had no idea of targeting strategy. Mafia in game 3 had a really bad strategy as well, although town did quite well. Games 4 and 5 were quite good but plagued with inactivity. Let's not go into game 6.
Pyrr the effort is appreciated but you are making the classic mistake of putting in too many new roles. The best approach is to take the classic formula, keep it simple, and slowly add things on once people are used to it.
Anyway if you guys want to throw out more ideas/discuss on merits of mayor/pardonner with godfather + millers (agent of chaos is too direct imo) go ahead. We'll be finalizing things in the next couple of days.
Here are the two setups that seem to have the most merit right now (just putting them in written form go ahead and comment):
1) Mayor/Pardonner (1st day election)
Say 50 people:
8 mafia (4 KP, 3KP at 5, 2 KP min). 1 Godfather is included. Shows up as a role of his choice to a rolecheck (not vet) but is not immune to cluechecks.
2 DTs
2 Vets
2 Medics
3 Millers
3 Bodyguards
30 Townspeople.
Mayor can order a double lynch twice.
Pardonner can pardon someone twice.
DTs: Have infinite rolechecks (must wait until first night to use) and Infinite Cluechecks (to get the godfather). These take the form of 'link X person to X codename yes/no' (normal way is pretty awful but could keep that if ppl wanted it).
Vets: +1 Life
Medics: Normal
Millers: Townsperson that shows up as mafia to a rolecheck. They do not know that they are a miller.
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2) No offices
8 mafia (4 KP, 3KP at 5, 2 KP min). 1 Godfather (same).
2 DTs (same)
2 Vets
2 Medics
36 Townspeople
Town can vote for a double lynch twice
Additional possibilities:
Miller: Same. But I'm not sure if its necessary and might be overkill (would just be 1-2).
Mad Hatter (from this current game): Can place 1 bomb on anyone at night. After the bomb has been placed for 1 day on the same target, they can suicide, killing themselves and the target the bomb is on. (Would have 1 probably, mayyybee 2)
I'm not quite sure on balance of mafia numbers and KP (Blues are getting reduced heavily so mafia must be reduced appropriated too).
Goals are:
1) to reduce the impact of first few days by having a more stabilized KP on both sides.
2) Eliminate the ability for the mafia to autowin by killing every blue immediately. DTs are strong but they are not necessary to win, unlike vigilantes.
3) Make rolechecks not absolute but strong and reward DTs that can stay alive.
I could see either of these formats working. Remember, keep it simple and fun. Uncertainty and simplicity are the root of fun in these games.
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I think I like number 2 because being a miller would suck.
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Actually I think 1 would be better because with reduced KP it would help to have the town have a bit more hesitancy to kill and would force the town to focus on the clues. I want to see a game where the town debates more about the clues than some foolproof plan of organization.
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I do like the idea of no offices, though, because it would keep townie backchannel organization from being too easy / powerful / alienating to greens.
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only townies vs mafia.
maybe some town abilities:
1.) sanctuary: not for classes, but for certain people. might seem useless, but you never know: as the game goes on, certain people will gain more and more power. 3x per game, cannot be used on consecutive terms.
2.) double lynch: can be used every other turn
50 townies vs 10 mafia
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unfortunately you can't do only townies vs mafia. With no DTs and no medics the mafia will almost always win. They literally have nothing to do except kill smart players as there is no risk in failing and nothing to break their behavior.
Now to explain also why Mayor/Pardoner works so well:
with this setup, the only guaranteed innocents are the Bodyguards. Like Ver said this is generally terrible for the game as a guaranteed innocent just gets heaps of protection and all the role info. However with BGs the difference is they actually can't come out because they protect 2 high profile players, and they don't know each other anyway unless the Mayor tells them. This kind of ideology should be the basis of any future major game play changes: roles that are crucial but not powerful on their own. They ARE important but they actually don't have any "real" power. I think this would go a long way to solving this "Im mad I didn't get a role" mentality.
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On March 04 2009 06:58 Ace wrote:
unfortunately you can't do only townies vs mafia. With no DTs and no medics the mafia will almost always win. They literally have nothing to do except kill smart players as there is no risk in failing and nothing to break their behavior.
Now to explain also why Mayor/Pardoner works so well:
with this setup, the only guaranteed innocents are the Bodyguards. Like Ver said this is generally terrible for the game as a guaranteed innocent just gets heaps of protection and all the role info. However with BGs the difference is they actually can't come out because they protect 2 high profile players, and they don't know each other anyway unless the Mayor tells them. This kind of ideology should be the basis of any future major game play changes: roles that are crucial but not powerful on their own. They ARE important but they actually don't have any "real" power. I think this would go a long way to solving this "Im mad I didn't get a role" mentality.
Problem is I think we have already established that the best way to play a game like that is for the mayor to give all BGs info about all the other BGs. If they don't, a BG comes out and they lynch the mayor. I thought it might be somewhat interesting to have 1 BG really be mafia (and not actually protect anyone) but still be on the list. At the very least, it would slow down BG plans and force the town to be a lot more careful.
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EPT
