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Given the advent of Private Messaging on the site, it's finally possible to run a game of Mafia (also known as Werewolf in other places) on the site, which is what I plan to do.
Mafia is a really enjoyable game, playable online and offline. There are two sides, the Mafia and the Town. The aim of the Mafia is to eliminate all the townies, whilst the aim of the townies is to eliminate the Mafia. The Mafia know their partners, but the townies need to deduce it by analysing players actions.
There are two phases, the day time and the night time. During the day everyone gathers together, discusses the state of play and decides by majority vote on someone to lynch. During the night, the Mafia choose one player to kill, and some players have special powers that either give them information or counter other players. This sequence of day and night continues until either side wins.
I will be using the 2of4 set-up, from the popular mafiascum.net website. This is a solid play tested set-up, that gives some variety and uncertainty in the set-up, without overwhelming players with too many complicated roles. There are nine players; two will be members of the Mafia and seven members of the town. One of the mafia will be a Goon and one will be a Role Cop. The town will have five normal Townies, and two randomly selected from the below:
As a result there will be one of the below combinations in play, although this will be kept secret from the players so you can't be certain which roles are in the game.
- 1 Mafia Goon, 1 Mafia Role Cop, 5 Vanilla Townies, Cop, Doctor.
- 1 Mafia Goon, 1 Mafia Role Cop, 5 Vanilla Townies, Cop, Jailkeeper.
- 1 Mafia Goon, 1 Mafia Role Cop, 5 Vanilla Townies, Doctor, Jailkeeper.
- 1 Mafia Goon, 1 Mafia Role Cop, 6 Vanilla Townies, Cop.
- 1 Mafia Goon, 1 Mafia Role Cop, 6 Vanilla Townies, Jailkeeper.
- 1 Mafia Goon, 1 Mafia Role Cop, 6 Vanilla Townies, Doctor.
I'll take the first nine people to sign up below, and will answer any questions that people have. Also feel free to look around the mafiascum website and wiki to see about the possibilities and read through some example games.
This really is a fun game and I've only played the Werewolf version of it but I'm a little skeptical about a game like this played over the internet, a lot of this game is reading nonverbal cues and it's kinda hard to do that with an online post. I mean it's like playing charades via PbP, it's doable but it just seems awkward.
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It's true that the game runs a little differently online than in real life. Yes you lose the non verbal stuff, but you gain perfect recall of what people have said, who they voted for etc, which is also really useful information to analyse in finding the mafia.
I'd suggest you take a quick look at the games running over at mafiascum.net, and see if the way they play is something you'd enjoy.
