Video Game / Epic Mafia

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Epic Mafia is a game of Informed Minority (The Mafia) attempting to beat the Uninformed Majority (the Villagers), with Third Party roles individually attempting to beat both of them. Sounds simple enough?

Here's where it gets fun. There are over 100 roles over the three sides, making each game setup wildly different. These roles include Policemen, Doctors, Gunsmiths, Spies ,Janitors, Thieves, Monks, Cultists, and Traitors, not to mention Drunks, Samurai, Santa Claus, Yakuza, Ninjas, Voodoo Ladies, Zombies, Werewolves, and Cthulhu, and everything in between. All of them are in complete psychological warfare with each other.

Don't take things too seriously, unless it's a ranked game.

Sadly as of March 20th, 2021, the official Epic Mafia site was axed by its owner after a number of mods were outed for predatory/pedophilic behavior.

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Tropes associated with Epic Mafia Roles:

Village Roles

• Action Bomb: A villager playing the Bomb is the equivalent of this—killing attackers if killed over night.
• Almost Dead Guy: The Bleeder role does not die instantly upon being killed, instead surviving to the end of the day. They'll exemplify this trope if they have any crucial information or if the townies use them as a confidant, because they'll have the chance to tell all they know before dying.
• Face–Heel Turn: The Turncoat does that if targeted by mafia.
• Invisibility: The Invisible Man, of course, who can follow someone at night and eavesdrop on them if they attend a meeting.
• The Medic: The Doctor and Nurse roles, fittingly enough. They can protect someone from dying by visiting them at night, and they can also cure someone who has been poisoned.
• Never Mess with Granny: And how. The Granny role in the game will kill any player who has the misfortune to visit her at night, for whatever reason, regardless of their alignment.
• Police Are Useless: Downplayed. Whilst the Cop role (The normal one, anyway) is mighty useful for discovering a chosen player's alignment in most situations, some EM setups utilize the roles of Millers (villagers who show up guilty), Lawyers (mafia role who can make other mafia show up innocent) and Godfathers (mafia role who shows up innocent), which can undermine the cop's use. Not only that, the "Special Cops" also have varying degrees of usefulness:
  • The Insane Cop sees everything in reverse (ie - Mafia as innocent, Townies as guilty), which isn't so bad if you can put two and two together, however...
  • Paranoid Cop sees everybody as guilty. Yes, everybody. Hence he's pretty useless for making any deductions and serving as anything but clear. However, a little known fact is that he can still find aliens so he isn't completely useless.
  • ...Much the same as his cousin, the Naive Cop. Same issue, only he sees everybody as innocent.
  • The Lazy Cop is actually useful, and can't be roleblocked, but he gets his reports a day late.
  • ...And the Confused Cop gets a random report each day, regardless of the actual alignment of his target.
• Taking the Bullet: If the mafia (or anybody else) decide to kill the Bodyguard's target, there's a 50% chance that the Bodyguard will die in the victim's place, invoking this trope.
• Taking You with Me: The Bomb role explodes if killed, taking down his assailant at the time (Unless the killer happens to be protected by the doctor).
• Vigilante Man: The Vigilante role, obviously. He's sided with the village but can target one player each night and kill them, hoping that he's hit mafia. Of course, there's no guarantee that he won't shoot a villager.

Mafia Roles

• Amoral Attorney: The Lawyer in this game is a mafia sided role. Yep. His ability makes his fellow mafia partners appear innocent to any cops who investigate them.
• Cleanup Crew: The Janitor can clean up the body of the mafia's kill, meaning the town won't know what role he was (but the janitor does and will probably tell the other mafia)
• Dead Person Impersonation: The Disguiser role functions like this - they kill a player and take on his name. Of course, how well the actual impersonation goes depends on the skill and know-how of the actual disguiser.
• Evil Counterpart: Most of the mafia roles are evil counterparts to some of the villager roles. Examples include: Doctor/Quack, Deputy/Sniper, Agent/Spy, Drunk/Hooker, and many more.
• Face–Heel Turn: The Yakuza's special ability allows him to turn a village sided player into mafia (Well, in exchange for his own life, unless the doctor is protecting the Yakuza.).
• Hollywood Voodoo: The Voodoo Lady chooses a target and places a curse on a specific word each night. If the target types that word the following day, they'll keel over and die right then and there.
• Man on Fire: The Pyromaniac douses a target in gasoline each night. Once per game, they can throw a lit match into the crowd and set all their targets on fire.
• Poison Mushroom: The Fabricator gives out fake items which appear to be real; the vest, bread, and crystal ball are all useless, and the gun will actually backfire and kill the user.
• Taking You with Me: The Terrorist is equipped with a bomb, and during the day they can choose to charge someone and explode, killing them both.

Third Party Roles

• Bomb Throwing Anarchist: The Anarchist can give someone a bomb at night, triggering a round of Grenade Hot Potato the following day until it explodes and most likely kills whoever's holding it at that point. If the Anarchist had the bomb when it went off, they'll survive, but will be outed to the other players.
• Creepy Child: There is a role that is based on a creepy child.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Some roles can kill cthulhu role
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: The Zombie, of course. Zombies can infect other players, turning them into new Zombies after a day.
• Guardian Angel: The Angel is assigned a person to protect at the start of the game, and if they suspect that person is going to be killed, they can choose to sacrifice themselves and die in that person's place. The Angel wins if the person they were protecting survives to the end of the game, regardless of whether or not the Angel survived.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: The Fool has one objective: to get himself lynched and win the game. This is often how he goes about doing it.
• Serial Killer: The Killer. Who kills people. That's it.
• Sleazy Politician: The Politican, who switches at random from playing for town or mafia.
• Zombie Apocalypse: The win condition for the Zombie role; everyone in the game must be either infected or zombified.

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Tropes associated with Epic Mafia Gameplay:

• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: On the "Roles" page and in general, Mafia is Black, Town is Blue, and Third Party is Yellow. The role icons tend to follow these color themes fairly closely, with town roles generally incorporating blue and other bright colors, mafia roles wearing almost exclusively full black, and third party roles wearing more neutral, often earth-tone colors (non-hostile) or darker greys and blacks (hostile). The downside to this, however, is that the game's dedication to color coordination causes confusion when it comes to roles that don't follow this trend (such as Demolitionist, a town role that wears dark grey and white).
• Dying Clue: Wills are used primarily for this, although in less serious games, they're generally used for jokes.
• Everyone Is a Suspect: The only way to play and succeed if you're graced with being a cop.
• Game-Breaking Bug: The website is absolutely full of them. These are sitewide, even reaching into the ranked and competitive circles, and singlehandedly led to the "refund" system, in which red heart or gold heart games which were prematurely ended by bugs or other such issues would get their wasted hearts back. In addition to this, some of these bugs become potentially dangerous exploits which, when discovered by the wrong person, can put players' accounts and information at risk. Some of these include:
  • The Suicide Bug. If a player must leave the game for whatever reason, there is the option to leave the game, or "suicide," which makes ranked games unranked and is generally frowned upon unless it is absolutely necessary. The primary reason for suiciding to be discouraged, aside from ruining ranked games, is because it has a tendency to break the game itself - whenever someone suicides, there is a chance that the voting system will no longer work. Players will try to vote, but nothing will occur, putting the game at a stalemate. In these cases, the game is essentially ruined, and is promptly vacated by the remaining players.
  • The Driver Bug. Driver is a mafia-sided role whose secondary action is to select two players. Anyone who visits one of those two players will end up visiting the other one, causing some confusion and potentially killing them in the process. Driver overrides almost every form of protection in the game, such as the Doctor saving the lives of mafia targets - if Driver has swapped the original hit target with another player being saved by the Doctor, the Driven function overrides the Doctor's save and kills that player anyway, making the Driver extremely overpowered.
    • An extension of this problem is the Driver-Mason Glitch. Mason is a town-sided role whose job is to recruit more masons for the town. They cannot recruit mafia members, and will die if they visit one by mistake. The glitch comes in when the Driver drives the original Mason target with another mafia - if this happens, the Mason can successfully Mason a mafia, making them a member of town. The game-breaking nature of this bug is highly debatable, as it could be considered a Good Bad Bug instead, but in ranked games or games where there need to be a certain number of mafia, it can be extremely detrimental.
  • The Jailer-Interrogator Bug. Jailer and Interrogator are essentially the same role, with their only difference being alignment (Jailer is Town, Gator is Mafia). Both pick one person during the day to imprison, and if they so choose, can end the meeting by killing them. However, if these roles manage to imprison one another, they end up trapped in a stalemate, as neither one can take their actions due to being stuck in the other one's prison. This situation usually ends with both players "vegging," or being removed from the game due to inactivity.
  • The Associate Gun Bug. Associate is a mafia-sided role who creates guns and can distribute them only to members of town - however, their guns will only kill town members and third party members, not mafia. There are many glitches associated with this role, likely due to its slightly more complicated functions, such as:
    • If there is a non-meeting member of the mafia (such as Hitman), the Associate can still gun them as if they were town, and the gun will not kill the other mafia.
    • If Associate is played in a multiple mafia setting (meaning one mafia against another), the game does not check which specific mafia team the Associate is on, merely whether the role is "Mafia" or "Town" - consequently, any Associate guns used in these games will not kill whatsoever.
    • Lastly, in a regular Town vs Mafia game, the town-sided role Deputy cannot kill the Associate at all, neither with his own gun nor with guns from other town members (such as Gunsmith).
  • The Vote-Kick Bug. Vote-Kicking was implemented to prevent players from slowrolling, or dragging the game on to run out the clock, and allows active players to vote to kick anyone who has not voted or taken their actions. While the vote-kick is perfectly functional at night, during the day, it has a high risk of breaking. When a player is vote-kicked, after the autokick finishes its countdown, if anyone has remaining day actions (such as Governor or Jailer), the timer breaks, trapping the players in an endless game until the players with day actions complete them.
  • The Hidden Link bug. A frequent problem for many years on the site was the potential to be hidden linked, in which other users - generally banned users evading on alternate accounts - would insert hidden links into messages containing photos or other, unrelated text. This exploit in the messaging system led to a great deal of users having their accounts hacked, and in extreme occasions, their systems compromised; more than once, a mod or admin themselves was hidden linked, giving the banned user access to their account and mod powers, allowing them to do whatever they wished on the site until they were caught and demodded or booted out of the account.
• Good Is Dumb: When a player fails at putting together basic mechanics or generally fails at utilizing logic in some games, this is passed off as "dumbtelling". Which many players (sometimes wrongly) tend to associate with "towntelling", or being a member of the town, since the mafia are not only an 'informed' minority, but would generally be too careful to mess something like that up.
• Good Bad Bugs: The sloppy coding of the site creates a great deal of these, to many players' delight. Some of these bugs have special setups dedicated to witnessing them in real time. Some of these include:
  • The Voodoo-Bleeder Bug. Voodoo is a mafia-sided role, designed to kill by picking a certain word which, if spoken by the target, kills them on the spot. Conversely, Bleeder is a town-sided role which can take one hit from mafia or a gunshot without dying, but instead they begin to "bleed," as denoted by an in-game message, and will die the next day if not saved by a Doctor. However, when Voodoo targets Bleeder with a word, for some reason, the system message continues to pop up every time the Bleeder speaks, as displayed in this screenshot.◊
  • The Caroler Bug. Caroler is a town-sided role who visits another player at night and sings a "carol" which reveals the name of three players, and states that at least one of them is mafia. Disproportionately, the player whose name falls in the middle of the three names tends to be mafia, even though this statistically should not be the case. This has led to the unofficial adage of "middle rule," especially in Sandbox, where the town will uniformly bandwagon the middle name in a carol. Whether this is a Good Bad Bug or a Game-Breaking Bug depends entirely on the individual, especially if they are mafia.
  • The Loudmouth Bug. Loudmouth is a town-sided role which appears to themselves as a regular villager, but announces the next day the name of whoever visited them that night. On occasion, with some roles which interact with players during the night but don't technically visit, the in-game message system can't seem to figure out how to handle the situation, and so relays the message without giving any names. This leads to the in-game message reading: "Curses! , woke me from my slumber!"
  • The Voodoo-Tree Bug. Treestump is a town-sided role which, once a game, can choose to become a full "Tree," removing their ability to vote but also making them impervious to all forms of attack. However, in spite of this invulnerability, Voodoo can still kill Tree with the chosen word, leading to much confusion.
  • The Forager Bug. Forager is a mafia-sided role which can change the message left in a player's will, obscuring any information they may have revealed in it. While wills themselves have character limits, the fake will which Forager plants does not, allowing players to paste absurdly long messages into them.
• Gosh Darn It to Heck!: Enforced. The site used to have zero filtering whatsoever, with truly obscene or offensive comments receiving violations from moderators. However, after persisting issues regarding usage of slurs and a brief scare in which the frequent obscenity on the site nearly led to it losing Adsense funds, the admin created a filter to catch certain words, replacing them with the names of fruits.
• Instant-Win Condition: Each group has a win condition, and that group wins the moment the condition is fulfilled no matter what. If you're about to outnumber the town as mafia, and you kill one more person, it doesn't matter how many people suspect you — you still win. The same is true of a lot of third party roles, who have their own unique win conditions. It's also possible for some third-party roles to "joint win", by fulfilling their win condition at the exact same time as another group.
• Mêlée à Trois: Happens in cases of a hostile third party - the game quickly becomes town against mafia against the unconnected killer. Often becomes Enemy Mine, with the hostile third given the choice of trying for a joint win with mafia or town.
• No Saving Throw: Many roles rely on this to be successful. Primary examples are Bomb (town), who takes their killer down with them; Terrorist (mafia), who can blow up any random player during the day, and Driver (mafia), whose ability overpowers almost every protection in the game and can kill with ease.
• Non-Standard Game Over: If three days and nights pass without anyone dying, a meteor will crash down and kill everyone.
• Out-of-Character Alert: Often invoked to try to catch a player who's been disguised.
• Red Herring: The Fool (third party) relies on this. He can visit at night, but the visits do nothing - his entire goal is to draw town's attention in the wrong direction and get himself lynched, thus winning the whole game.
• Shoot the Medic First: Since the doctor and nurse roles can protect people from dying, it's in the mafia's best interest to find and kill them quickly. This is especially true if there's also a cop in the game — the cop can reveal himself early and start taking down mafia members without fear of retribution, because the mafia will first have to deal with the doctor protecting him.