What is Mafia?

Overview

Mafia is a forum game for a group of people (often upwards of 12) which pits the "uninformed majority" against the "informed minority". All players are supposedly law-abiding, innocent citizens, but some are secretly conspiring mafia. There's going to be a lynchin'...

Game Structure

The players as a whole form a "town". Most of the players are on the side of the town, though they may have differing abilities. Generally pro-town players cannot communicate privately, and rely on what they see and post to the main game thread to determine who's evil. A minority of the players are secretly mafia, and work together. The moderator will randomly and secretly allocate roles prior to the game starting. Players cannot share what roles they got, except in the main thread during the day (where everything is subject to scrutiny and suspicion).

The game is divided into alternating "day" and "night" phases. Day phases end when a player is lynched and knocked out of the game. Night phases end when all "night actions" have been sent in, one of which will be the mafia killing a player and knocking them out of the game.

Day

During the day, everyone who is still alive in the game may post to the thread and share their thoughts and suspicions on who amongst them is evil. For most players, this will be their only communication with the rest of the group. Mafia will lie to try to convince the pro-town players that they too are pro-town and in search of the mafia. The purpose of the day is to agree, by majority vote, on whom to "lynch". Everyone has one vote, which they may place and withdraw at any time during the day. As soon as more than half of the town is voting for a single person, that person is lynched (removing them from the game) and night falls. The moderator will reveal their role and allegiance, lock the thread, and call for night choices.

An essential rule here is that you may not under any circumstances edit or delete your posts. This is enforced by the forum itself for the most part, so you don't need to worry about it - but what's said is said, and can't be unsaid. So if you're evil and give yourself away, or good and put yourself in a tight spot, you'll have to cope as best you can!

Mafia may not talk to each other privately during the day. In fact, no players may talk to each other privately during the day - only the public thread may be used for communication.

Night

During the night, most pro-town players will have very little to do. Some may have roles which require them to send the moderator a choice, but nearly all will be unable to communicate with the other players. The mafia however use the night phase to discuss strategy and decide upon one player to kill off. They may not communicate privately during the day, so this is their only opportunity to plan. They must decide which player represents the biggest threat, or whose death they can use to manipulate the town into making non-mafia lynch choices.

When all choices have been sent to the moderator, a fresh day will start. The moderator will resolve the choices received, and post to the thread announcing the mafia's victim, their role and allegiance. They will then unlock the thread and call for open discussion. Each day starts afresh, with nobody voting for anybody else.

Winning the game

The game ends when one side, pro-town or mafia, are the only ones remaining. Games will often end at the end of a day - if the last mafia is lynched, then the town have won. If the town have lynched one pro-town player too many, then the mafia are in a situation where they are no longer at risk of being killed by majority vote, and will kill the remaining pro-town members.

When the game ends, the moderator will post the outcome, and everyone's roles will be made known. Mafia is a team game, so even if you die, you can still win, as long as your allies pull through.

How to vote

Each player has one vote, which may be placed on up to one other player at any one time. That player may withdraw their vote or move it to a different player after placing it any number of times, even during the same post.

The syntax for voting for a player is to, in bold, write "[b]vote <player's name>[/b]". To remove that vote, write "[b]unvote <player's name>[/b]". The pickiness of moderators differs from game to game, but generally the following rules should be kept to (else your vote may be invalid and may not be counted):

- You must always put your vote in bold, else it won't be counted. Example - "Well, that cop result proves it - vote Dasquian."
- You should say who you're unvoting when you unvote, rather than just typing "unvote". Example: "Because the guy accusing him is mafia, I am going to unvote Dasquian."
- You may not move your vote unless you unvote first. Example: "Crazy Dave's arguments have persuaded me - unvote Crazy Dave and vote Dasquian."

Twilight

Twilight is an administrative pseudo-phase. It's not really part of the rules, but is important enough to get a mention. When the final vote is cast on someone, it's rare that the moderator is there waiting and ready to end the day. Even if they are, there will be a short gap while the moderator writes up the death scene. The period between the final vote being cast and the moderator closing the thread is known as "twilight".

During twilight, votes don't count. Technically the day ended, but since everyone's able to post on the thread still, they do. Any unvotes or votes in this time will just be ignored, but of course all players (including the one who has just been lynched!) can say relevant things to help their team win.

Different moderators have different ways of handling twilight; some may choose to announce that the lynch has been sealed, but not announce any more, and give the town some grace time for discussion. It's also worth remembering that due to hidden variations (see below) the moderator may have placed on the game, what the town thinks is a final vote may in fact not be - if this is the case, votes of course will still count, it's still day! The moderator will usually post if what appears to be the end of the day isn't.

How to actually play

All of this so far only tells you the mechanics of the game, not how the game itself plays out, or how you should play if you're pro-town (generally assumed to be the good guys) or mafia (generally assumed to be evil). How do you go catching the mafia? How do you go leading the town in circles? Well, this is the problem the game revolves around, so I can't tell you much before you have to just try it yourself, but here's a starter.

If you're pro-town, your goal is to identify which two, three, four, however many people, are working together to screw you over. Tell-tale signs might be people keen to defend each other, or sharing the same suspicions... though of course, pro-town players do this too if the suspicion is justified! You should try to be vocal about your thoughts and suspicions, because being quiet is seen as an easy way for a mafia player to avoid unwelcome attention, and a town with a lot of quiet players is easy for the mafia blend into. Kick up some noise, and see where the dust settles! But be careful that you don't draw the heat away from the mafia...

If you're mafia, you just need to make sure that you and your accomplices help the town make enough bad lynches to bring their numbers down - when you are in the majority, you've won! Make sure you aren't too closely linked to your friends. If one of your friends is lynched, everyone will find out that they're mafia and if the thread is full of you defending them and agreeing with them, you'll be next! Your goal is to set up lippy townies as being mafia, and not be too obvious about - and don't be afraid to attack your own mafia friends to distance yourselves from each other.

The rest is up to you - Mafia allows any amount of psychological strategy, you'll have to come up with your own ploys and ruses.

Variations

The other main feature of Mafia games is that no two are alike. Every moderator brings something new to the table, even if it's just a style of writing or a thematic change. A Mafia game is still a Mafia game even if it's cops vs robbers, cowboys vs indians, or aliens vs zombies. However, there are several mechanical changes any game might have too.

Every single rule I've written above may be ignored or circumvented by a devious moderator. They may allow people to have two votes; they may have mafias who can talk during the day; more usually, however, variation will be achieved by the role setup of the game. It's usual for there to be several interesting roles on the town side, and some variation on the mafia side too. Often there are multiple, separate evil groups who are competing against each other as well as the standard town/mafia dynamic.

Some common roles on the town side are the Cop, who can choose one person a night to investigate, and learn the allegiance of, and the Doctor, who can choose one person a night to protect, and negate one kill attempt against that night. A common role on the mafia side is the Godfather, who is nominally in charge of the group and who is seen as being innocent by the Cop.

The Golden Rules

1) Have fun. It's a game of confrontation, but it's a game nonetheless - it's frustrating to be voted out of the game but don't take it personally! Remember that your team winning is still a personal win even if you died.
2) The mod's word is law. Take it up with them privately if you disagree about something.
3) The game relies on the honour system. If you're going to play, don't cheat and privately talk to other players, it just ruins it for everyone.

Sounds fun, I want to play!

Requirements

Everyone is welcome to play games of Mafia, even if you've never played before. Like modding, there are requirements to meet:

- You must be able to commit to the game. Although a player isn't as important to the game as the mod, being absent for protracted periods of time will hold the game up and get in the way of everyone else's gameplay. Please don't sign up if you know you're not going to be able to post at least three or four times a week.
- You must have read the rules and understand the basics of what you're doing. This shouldn't be too hard - everything you need to know is detailed above, so you already read it, and any questions you might have will happily be answered if you raise them in this forum. Also, we recommend reading through old games to get a feel for the style of play.

How to sign up to play

There are two types of games - Normal-sized and Mini. You can be playing or be in signup queue to play one of each at any time, though don't bite off more than you can chew! To join a game, go to its signup thread, and post that you want to join the game. The mod will add you to the list and send you your role PM when the game starts.

As signups can sometimes take a few weeks, remember to keep checking the site to see if the game has started or not.

The rule that you can only be in one game of each type may be ignored by certain moderators if they are having difficulty finding enough players. If enough time has passed for anyone not currently in a game to join a game, the moderator for that game may decide to open up the thread to anyone. At this point, you may join that game even if you are in another one of the same size. But remember, Mafia can be time-consuming so don't join a second or even third game if you can't commit to them all!

How to play a game

There aren't many tips that you can pick up except by just playing the game, but here are a few starters for being a good, social player:

- Post regularly. There'll often be situations where people are waiting on your response, so don't keep them waiting too long!
- Be nice. Mafia is a fundamentally confrontational game, but remember that it is just a game.
- Often you will get lynched, sometimes on Day 1. This is all part of the game, so take it with good grace.
- Remember that it's a team game, and even up to the last you can give your team a better chance to win.
- Be vocal. Mafia is a game of discussion and debate, so don't hold back waiting to see what everyone else has to say!
- If circumstances change and you can't commit to playing, inform the mod that you need to be replaced as soon as you can. It's not ideal, but better than you becoming dead weight.
- Don't forget, you may never delete or edit anything you post to the thread. If you slip up and say the wrong thing - too bad! Deal with it as well as you can.