Mafia (the party/forum game)

This is that common forum mind-game where one of you's a mafioso (or serial killer or what have you) and the rest have to figure out who. Generally, there's a doctor (who prevents kills) and a cop (who investigates suspects) as well.

You can play it online at Epicmafia, and in slow-paced, forum-based form at MafiaScum. Starcraft 2 has a mod where you can play it, but you'll need to own SC 2 first.

Anyone else here play it? If not, you should totally try it out.

This's in Video Games cause it's a game and it's not a tabletop game.

Edit: how do i does links lol

edited 5th Nov '11 10:15:51 AM by Yinyang107

reminds me of BANG!.

ALL CREATURE WILL DIE AND ALL THE THINGS WILL BE BROKEN. THAT'S THE LAW OF SAMURAI.

I remember playing it in the form of Werewolf.

Anyone who assigns themselves loads of character tropes is someone to be worried about.

I'm always the bad guy whenever I play this, for some odd reason.

UN JOUR JE SERAI DE RETOUR PRÈS DE TOI

Oh, I used to play this back in the day on a random Discworld MUD. It was great fun. I didn't realise that there were entire websites devoted to it though, that's awesome.

I remember one of these, across 3 R Ps. First RP I won and me and my subordinates killed all but one person and I ended up shot in the eye with a nailgun. Second RP, taking place a good while later, I took on a false identity, spent most of the RP in the bathroom and survived to reveal myself.

Third I went mad with power and essentially god-modded my way to victory.

edited 5th Nov '11 4:13:39 PM by Legionnaire

Against all tyrants.

This game was a classic in my youth group, played at many late night events. I've never been able to understand how the online form works. The way we played, 85% of the game was in watching each other's faces, heated debate, and brilliant social engineering. One of my favorite games was the one where my fellow mafia-member remained completely silent for the entire game, thus avoiding suspicion, while I went all fast-talking investigator and instigated a series of executions of innocents and diversions. They eventually caught on to me, but not before becoming completely convinced that my partner was innocent, so we still won.

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An important part of the forum version of mafia is the various roles that people get (Doctor, Detective, Mason, along with the vanillas). This helps to spice up the conversation by people claiming to be of a certain role, people talking about their actions being blocked, etc. The first days do tend to be the roughest, because there's no real info to spread.

I used to play Forum Mafia all the time. Maybe I'll play with some tropers, the next time the forum plays (the forum DOES play, right?)

Taking a break from FE1, for the FE8 draft instead

I'd be down for a forum game of mafia.

I just don't like the games with too many roles. Adding in a few to spice up the game is cool, but in games where everyone has a role and there's practically no vanilla villagers/townspeople it actually becomes pretty boring.

At least the Generally Agreed Upon Word-Of-Mouth Rules of Playing Mafia In The Soviet Union state that those roles are semi-mandatory once you get more than six people playing. Generally, the order of adding extra people besides the default Mafia, Commissioner, Civilian roles are Doctor, Prostitute (negates the killing of a chosen person other than herself AND negates any killing by that person), Maniac (kills someone randomly, when determining whether Law or Lawlessness triumphs, he is lumped in with the Mafia, i.e. if he lives when there is no more Mafia, the game still continues), Policeman (provides a committee for the Commissioner's turn, takes over for him if the Commissioner buys the farm) and then making up your own.

Then there's the Lynch Mob optional rule, which makes any session significantly shorter, but all the more brutal. It is more suited for a sci-fi or Lost-themed version of the rules, but generally - every Day after the first Night the people in town may or may not vote on who gets put to the torch. It provides an alternative way for trumping the Mafia... or giving them an easy victory because the Commissioner was acting too suspicious in his attempts to hide his identity from the Mafia and got whacked by the mob instead. Those sessions are always fun.

Again, this is in the Generally Agreed-Upon Word-Of-Mouth Rules used throughout Russia, and even within Moscow you could probably find dozens of variations on even the basic ruleset.

Videogames do not make you a worse person... Than you already are.

Yeah I always knew that as Werewolf. I used to be on a forum where we had these massive 30+ games, with both Werewolves and Mafia, fighting each other and the villagers.

The mafia-themed role names tell me nothing. What I know from Werewolf is:

• Seer (can look up people's roles at night, but of course everybody can claim to be seer when it's lynching time),
• Herbalist (protects one person per night with wolfbane, optional rules is that he can't protect himself or that he can't protect the same person twice in a row),
• Cupido (designates two lovers - when one dies so does the other. If the two lovers are from enemy factions they can win the game as an own faction. In realyl large games there can be more than one cupido, and consequently also several couples, and even love triangles)
• Magistrate (must protect one person other than himself from lynching every day)
• Hunter (shoots a person of his choice when he dies)
• Vigilante (kills one person per night, but is villager-aligned)

edited 6th Nov '11 9:09:37 AM by Octo

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

For the Classic Russian Rules:

• Commissioner (one per game) - hunts the evildoers. Depending on the ruleset (Basic Rules, Asskisser Rules or Police State Rules*
  ^{My names, I tend to be picked to be the GM because I am the only master of on-the-spot Purple Prose in my social circle, and that is important for game enjoyment}
  ), he either identifies the Mafia on his turn and the Mafia wakes up behind bars (and out of the game), or CHECKS whether the person he picked is Mafia or not (all the audience knows is whether the check succeeded) for the daytime Lynch Mob, or KILLS the suspect regardless of them being Mafia or anyone else.
• Mafia ((N-1)/2 rounded down, where N is the amount of players) - the evildoers. They confer on their turn, deciding who to give some concrete shoes =) That person won't wake up in the morning. If all the Law characters kick the bucket under Basic rules, or there is more Mafia left than all other characters, they win the game.
• Civilian (everyone else) - the civilians. They can't do anything but cower and participate in the Lynch Mob. For obvious reasons, it can get VICIOUS if they get paranoid, and they WILL.

The Lynch Mob is a daytime event where all the surviving players try to decide whether someone gets burnt at the stake/taken out back and shot/fed to the dogs, etc. More often than not the Mafia tends to avoid this fate because there is more than one of them and they thus can rig the votes... or use each other as scapegoats. This is a FUN social game, after all =)

The optionals:

• Maniac - the Axe-Crazy murderer. Counts as an evildoer for game balance purposes (i.e. if there are no more cops in a Lynch Mob-less game, but he lives, the Mafia wins), but not for actual game purposes (he counts towards Civilians in the above check for Mafia's victory-by-numbers rule). Kills a person every night. Is only introduced into games of 8+ players because he helps the dwindling a lot. Under the non-Police State rules, the police treat him in the same way as the Mafia.
• Doctor - the Scrappy Mechanic character. He can pick any character on his turn, and that character will not get killed this play. Under Lynch-Mob-less rules, he does NOT protect against police arrests. Under Police State rules, he does. The scrappyness is in the fact that most Doctors heal themselves and to hell with the consequences. Killing one via Lynch Mob is not generally seen as a bad thing.
• Prostitute - the Lady of Negotiable Affection. Picks a person on her turn, that person cannot kill or be killed this turn. If she picks the Doctor, he CANNOT HEAL (that is, if he didn't pick himself). Is a lot of fun for game balance purposes. Yes, she can be killed. If she picks a Mafioso, the Mafia's chosen target still dies if there is more than one Mafia player left in the game.
• Policeman - added after there are more than three evil characters. Acts as the Commissioner's The Lancer, shares turns with him, conferring in the same manner as the Mafia. If the Commissioner gets it, takes over for him.

Naturally, once all the evil characters are dead or arrested, the Law and/or the Civilians win. This does not happen often.

The above are the stone-set character rules. There are also lots of optionals for the Chemist (picks a person, effect depends on who that person really is, hideously unbalanced in the commercial adaptations), the Actor or Spy (picks a person on his turn, if he is to be killed this turn, the one he picked dies instead - this will probably not work more than twice, especially if the Doctor gets offed), the Godfather (his vote counts double in the Mafia's votes, in some versions if he gets killed or arrested, the Mafia skips their next turn), the Billionaire, etc.

There are also commercial adaptations for a Lost-like version I mentioned before, and for versions with LOTS of extra characters and bizarre additional rules and effects, but I never learned their specific rules.

edited 6th Nov '11 10:32:22 AM by Noelemahc

Videogames do not make you a worse person... Than you already are.

Here's some of the more unique Epic Mafia roles. The ones marked 'Sandbox only' are restricted to to just-for-fun Sandbox games; the rest are legal for more serious ranked play. If I didn't specify, then all these roles are town-sided.

• Tracker: sees what players their target visits. If someone visits someone that ends up dead in the morning, well...
  • Watcher: Similarly, watches to see who visits their target.
  • Lookout and Scout: Mafia-aligned equivalents to the watcher and tracker, respectively.
• Insane Cop: Sandbox only. Finds townies to be guilty and Mafiosos to be innocent.
• Paranoid and Naive cop: Sandbox only. Paranoid sees everyone as guilty, regardless of role, and naive is the opposite.
  • The various cops all think their role is a regular 'Sane' Cop, at least until one of their reports die and show that the cop got an inaccurate report. If they die, the graveyard shows their role as a Sane Cop.
• Bulletproof (AKA BP): A regular villager, but wears a bulletproof vest that protects him from being shot. The vest only works once and doesn't apply to a lynch.
• Blacksmith (BS): May supply one player per night with a bulletproof vest, with the same properties as the BP's.
• Sheriff: Sandbox only. May shoot one player at any time in the day, killing them (with some exceptions, such as B Ps or Grannies). The sheriff is revealed upon shooting, clearing him if there's no Gunsmith or Thief in the setup.
• Deputy: Sandbox only. Identical to the Sheriff, except that he's not revealed. This means the town can't necessarily trust him, but he's less likely to buy it the night afterwards.
  • Sniper: Sandbox only. A mafia-sided Deputy.
• Gunsmith (GS): Provides one gun to a player of his choice each night. These guns have a 50% chance of revealing the shooter, so if a GS is present, a revealed shooter might not be a cleared Sheriff.
• Cultists: Sandbox only. Each night, they may convert a player to their cult. If the 'Cult Leader', the first cultist, dies, the rest of the cultists do as well. They win when they outnumber everyone else.
  • Cthulhu: Sandbox only. Difficult to play; he wins if the Cult do, but does not take part in their meeting. Anyone who visits him becomes unable to vote, and anything they say is scrambled and hidden among random letters, making it difficult to understand. Anyone who cannot vote will have 'does not vote' displayed as their vote during the day, so everyone knows.
• Treestump: Sandbox only. One of the most unique roles, a Treestump may choose to grow into a tree at night. After it's all grown up, it does not vote, like a Cthulhu-visitor, but cannot be killed except by a Werewolf. As the only roles that cause 'does not vote' are Cthulhu and Treestump, and a tree can talk normally, they are automatically cleared. As such they generally lead the town, taking role-claims via whisper and checking stories. He does not count for purposes of determining majority.
• Werewolf: Sided with no-one; you could say he's a lone wolf. Each night, he may attempt to match a player to their role; if he's right, the target is eaten (dies), and the werewolf is immune to lynches and guns the next day. If he guesses wrong, though, his role is revealed to everyone. He may decide to skip a night if he's not sure of his guess. He wins if he's one of the last two living players.
• Oracle: Chooses a player each night. If and when the Oracle dies, that player's role is publicly revealed, giving the town either an obvious lynch or a clear who they can trust.
• Granny: Anyone who visits her, bad guy or no, dies. (The flavor is that she's paranoid and keeps a gun under her bed.) Whether or not the visitor's action goes through depends on its specific role: Gunsmiths leave a gun before they die, for instance, but no killing roles (except the Werewolf) are successful.

If you folks are interested, I could list some more.

edited 7th Nov '11 8:37:53 AM by Yinyang107

As for the roles I listed above, Seer and Herbalist (and Wolves of course, but that goes without saying) are essential. The rest are optional.

Oh, I forgot some optional roles:

• Spy - Funnily enough, I only know the Mafia-themed name for this role. Seer, but for the Wolves/the Mafia. And different to the villagers, who don't know who their seer is (always funny when they lynch their most important person) the Wolves/Mafia knows who their spy is and hence trust his word.
• Fool - Thinks he is a seer, but instead is fed by the gamemaster with either random or always false information.
• Witch - can once in the game resurrect somebody. Usually at night time, so nobody gets to know who the witch is.

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

That reminds me; there's a 'Fool' role in EM as well, but it's completely different; yours is more like EM's various cop sanities. The objective of the EM Fool is completely different; in short, he wants to be lynched. His presence in a game means the town needs to be much more careful with their scumhunting

, because if they lynch him, it's game over, even if the town would still have majority.

I'd love to play with you folks; you should totally check out EM. Actually, if we got enough interest we could play an all-troper game there.

edited 7th Nov '11 12:57:34 PM by Yinyang107

I'm currently playing a Mafia on Webdiplomacy. It's lots of fun, but I'm struggling to be as active as some of the other people spamming Walls of Text.

edited 15th May '14 9:42:31 AM by Qeise

Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.

Oh hey I had forgotten about this thread. Good place to mention Town of Salem, a witch-themed webgame that's practically identical to the SC 2 version.