Mafia
hey all! So I'm fairly new here, a forumer from a design clan I'm in told me to come. By the looks of it you guys don't play mafia. Has anyone here ever hosted or played mafia? If no-one has I will host a simple game to get you into it
Link for a simple guide: http://www.mafiascum.net/wiki/index....e=Newbie_Guide
Link for a flash guide: http://cataldo.freeshell.org/mafia/mafiascum04.swf
List of mafia roles & terms:
Roles
General:
Town/"Townies": The "good guys" of the game. Townies alone without any modifiers do not know who anyone else is, and don't know who to trust at face value. Their objective is to eradicate all scum and leave only townies standing.
Scum: General label for anybody anti-town, be it mafia, serial killers or cult. Their objective is to get rid of all town members and leave themselves the lone victors. There are typically multiple scum groups, who are all competing with each other. Scum groups know who the members are of their own group, but do not know who anyone else is.
Cult: A group of people that grows as it recruits more people each night. Converted people normally retain their powers, but for balancing purposes this may not always be the case. They start with one person, the cult leader. Sometimes the death of a leader disbands the cult, sometimes it just stops it from growing more.
Masons: A group of two or more, but almost always just two, town who know each other's roles and are allowed to communicate to each other outside the game thread.
Survivor: This is more of an alignment than a role. It means that the player can win with any other faction, be it cult, mafia or town.
Common Roles:
Godfather: Traditionally the leader of a mafia faction and the person who sends in the kills. Depending on game setup, there may not be a specific Godfather for a faction. Sometimes Godfathers, when present, give off "Innocent" investigations and sometimes they give off their true result "Guilty" based on implementation.
Mafia Hitman: A mafia member that sends in the kills. The hitman's kill is not passed on to other mafia members upon his death, unlike a Godfather's kill. Is it not a necessary member to constitute a mafia, but it is a common role nonetheless.
Mafia Goon: A mafia role with no specific powers. Sometimes referred to as Vanilla Mafia, but this is very uncommon.
Vanilla Townie/y: A role with no powers.
Serial Killer "SK": An unalligned player who normally must kill every night. They win by themselves when nobody else is alive. What used to be a somewhat uncommon role is now a staple in nearly all mafia games.
Doctor: A protective role that protects their target from all nightkills that night.
Roleblocker: This role targets one player and stops all actions that player tries to use that night.
Vigilante: A town player who can kill a player each night. Please, if you are new, don't get overly trigger happy with this role.
Jack of All Trades: A role that has multiple abilities that are normally only usable once. The abilities vary from game to game and sometimes if all abilities are used, then they can all be "recharged" and used again.
Investigative:
Cop: An investigative role that normally receives results in the form of "Innocent" (town) or "Guilty" (scum) upon a player that they choose to investigate each night. Cops have what are called "Sanities." See below under modifiers for some of them.
Role Cop: Not as common as cops. Receives the role of the player.
Tracker: They target one person and receive the name of any person(s) that player targeted.
- Paranoid Tracker: No matter who a paranoid tracker targets, he always gets that they targeted him.
Watcher: They target one person and receive the name(s) of any person(s) who targeted that player.
Forensic Investigator: A role that targets the dead people to gain some clue. This can vary from simple clues like "The wounds on this body match the wounds on player X" to "This was the cause of the Y mafia" to anything the host desires. General idea is just clues from dead players.
Ghost: Cop investigations always turn up "Innocent" on these players. As such, it is a role assigned to scum.
Lie Detector: Allowed to copy paste parts of the game, ranging from a sentence to a whole post depending on the game host, to the host so that he can tell if there was a lie in it and where. Hosts, make sure to heavily restrict these players or they can easily exploit the role.
Miller: A town role that returns a "guilty" result to a cop.
Thief: A role which is able to steal items from a player each night. These are often clues to the person's role or alignment but can also be abilities, depending on implementation.
Brain Surgeon: Alters the investigations of cops in a variety of ways, based on the host's discretion.
Framer: A scum role that makes another player appear guilty, even if they are town, when investigated that night.
Vote-Oriented:
Governor: May stop a lynch one day. Some implementations have the governor stop ALL lynches that day and some just prevent them on a single person.
Jester: A role that wins when they are lynched. These really are useless roles that hopefully won't show themselves here.
Noble: This person's votes count for two.
Politician: This person can force a player to vote for somebody of their choosing (done through the mod, don't email people directly). Normally only allowed to be used once per day. There are many different variations.
Pariah or Hated: A role that gets lynched with less than the normal votes.
Loved (not to be confused with Lover): A role that takes more than the normal votes to be lynched.
Suicide Bomber aka Bomb: Kills the person who placed the last vote when they are lynched.
Other:
Assassin: A role that can kill any person they wish once per day session. Same name for scum or town, though the role is more commonly scum. (See Dragonball Z Mafia)
Beloved Princess: A very important role, that if it dies, the next day phase is skipped, ultimately hurting the town immensely as it gives scum two kill opportunities right in a row.
Bodyguard: Similar to a doctor in that it protects a player one night from all kills, but the bodyguard dies after the first successful protection. Another common variation is that the bodyguard kills whoever attempted to harm his protection target.
Bus Driver: An uncommon yet widely-known role. Bus drivers target two people and then all actions perpetuated against them switch targets. All actions that would have gone to player A go to player B and actions that would have gone to player B go to player A. This role causes a hell like you wouldn't believe, for the host and players. Be careful if you want to use it in a game.
Inventor: A person who starts the game with a certain amount of items that do certain things. The things vary from game to game. They may hand these out to other players to then take advantage of. For example, an inventor may be able to hand out a gun which then gives a one shot vigilante action.
Jailer: A role that roleblocks and protects the player that they target.
Janitor: Causes the role that died to not be revealed. A mafia role.
Lightning Rod: Redirects all actions going to the player they targeted onto themselves.
Lover: A role that will commit suicide if its other lover dies. It can also switch alignments, such as to a Serial Killer or mafia (or town if it was mafia), when its lover dies.
Mind Flayer: On the first night of targeting somebody, it roleblocks and post restricts them. On the next night of targeting the same player, it kills them.
Mind Prober: Same as mind flayer, but it investigates instead of kills on the second night.
Necromancer: Acts as a Reviver/Cult Leader hybrid. They convert players to their "cult" like a normal Cult Leader, but there's a catch -- they can only convert players that have already died. (See Secrets Mafia(
Redirector: A role that redirects the action of one person they target onto another person they target. Say Player A targets Player B. If the redirector targets Player A and Player C, the end result will be that Player A's action will go to Player C. Player A is not often informed of this happening.
Reviver: Not too terribly common, but can revive people from the dead.
Territorial/Paranoid Gun Owner: Whenever they are targeted at night, the player who targeted the player has a chance to be killed. Their action will fail if they are killed.
Reverse Territorial: Exactly as above, but for day.
Traitor: A role that can switch alignments. Most often starts off as town and can switch to mafia. Sometimes its the other way around, though if they start as mafia they normally do not know their teammates and communicate with them through the game host.
Veteran: Essentially a one shot Vigilante. Included because it pertains to how roles are often assigned (military people often get one shot vigilante powers). Try to use "One Shot Vigilante" to describe it for clarity's sake.
Waterboarder: Protects, roleblocks, and investigates the target. The investigation has a 50% chance of being guilty despite the investigated player's true alignment.
Modifiers
Faith: This is normally tacked on to another role as a type of modifier. It means that the action has a chance to fail. This chance is normally 50/50 but does not have to be.
One-Shot: Like Faith, this is a sort of modifier for a role. This means that this action is usable only once per game.
Unstable: This role modifier is going a bit out of use and wasn't used all that widely even before. A person could do one of two actions based on chance. For example, an Unstable Vigilante Doctor would target a person and, based on chance, either kill him or protect him. It usually entails a 50/50 chance.
Informed: Two roles know of each other, but at the same time, cannot communicate outside the game thread, making them different from masons. In rare cases, a town member may be "informed" of a mafia member or other scum player in the game. (See Hamlet Mafia)
Iron: Immune to night all kills.
Semi-Iron: Typically immune to night kills, but there is a chance the iron does not work. Typically, semi-iron means that a player has a 50% chance of surviving a night kill.
Stone: Has several variations. The most common is immune to one kill, and one kill only. Other variations include being immune to one night kill per night, being immune to multiple kills for one night, etc.
Restricted: Exactly as it would sound. Its a restriction of some sort. Most commonly used with posting restrictions or vote restrictions. These aren't too terribly common but they do pop up from time to time. What the restriction is and what it applies to varies from game to game. (See Half-Life 2 Mafia)
Sane: Normal cop results.
Insane: Reversed cop results
Naive: Always-innocent cop results
Paranoid: Always-guilty cop results
Random: Results are determined by a coin toss. DO NOT USE THIS ROLE AS A HOST, AND IF A HOST SHOULD USE THIS ROLE UNDER YOUR SUPERVISION, KICK HIS ASS AND NEVER ALLOW HIM TO HOST AGAIN.
Terms
OMGUS - "Oh My God You Suck" - Tacted onto statements that are said out of immaturity, such as when someone gets mad at someone else in a mafia game. Quoted from MafiaWiki: OMGUS stands for "Oh My God, You Suck (for voting for me)!". it is sometimes used as a shorthand to indicate that you are voting for someone primarily because they voted for you. Players do not generally actually say this expression, but others generally refer to players as acting in an OMGUS manner because of their immaturity.
WIFOM - "Wine In Front Of Me" - Derived from the film The Prince Bride, this is a tactic scum make. Essentially, it is saying "if I was scum, why would I do that?" For example, if a player is accused of killing a player who is not that experienced in mafia, the accused player could say "why would I kill a player who isn't very good at the game? It would be advantageous for me to keep him around and root out a better player." That is a WIFOM argument that has no proof, and is generally frowned upon due to potentially reverse psychology.
Straw Man Argument - This means that someone has taken someone else's argument and then exaggerated it, promptly refuting it. For example:
Bob: "We should raise taxes on the rich."
Jim: "So you're saying that the people who have their hard-earned cash should lose more
money than those people on welfare who don't do anything and are too lazy to get a job?"
As you can see, Jim took Bob's plan into extremes and casted a negative light on the idea as to make Bob's plan look weaker. He deliberately disregarded the potential positive outcomes. This is an extremely common tactic in every day life, and as you can imagine, in mafia when debates arise.
FoS - "Finger of Suspicion" - This is a rare term, but it is used when people are simply discussing who they find suspicious without actually voting for them. Players who prefer discussion over simple pressuring/voting tend to use this method. It is also used when players are voting for another, more suspicious one, while also stating their lesser suspicion of another player with a simple "FoS".
LoL - "Lynch or Lose" - This is a situation when the town must make a decision that, if they lynch a fellow town player, they lose, and if they lynch a scum player, they are still able to win. It happens when the town and scum factions are even or very close to being even.
Condition: These are preset in the game and alter results of actions. These are usually based on trying to get theme realism and generally trump all other actions when a special condition applies. For example "Role X's investigations will always fail on Role Y."
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