I like to create things, sometimes even more than playing. I created 4 different mafia games just for the fun of the creative process. I don't know if I will ever host any of them, and I simply don't care. But I don't know exactly what people may like in a mafia game, and this thread is for this purpose. I know I like crazy mechanics, the crazier the better. But what do you like?

Answer the poll and if possible say what you want in a mafia game.

Here are my 4 games:


The Room

This is a very simple game, and yet it is very different than a normal mafia game. There isn't a mafia team and all players have more or less the same chance of winning. Two or three town teams against each other. The main idea behind this game is to provide a fair chance to all players. If you like fairness, this is your game.

Number of players: 10 to 18.

Ideal number: 13 to 16

The Vortex:

This is a very complex game. It is pure chaos and also a bastard game. It can be an extremely easy game or an extremely difficult one, depending on luck, because the setup and some other points are designed to be random. Potentially it can be a very long game too. If you like chaos, this is your game.
I showed this game for Zinger to review, because this was a complex one, and Zinger appears to like things like this.

Number of players: 12 to 28.

Ideal number: Random

Battle Royale

This one can be hardly called a mafia game. There are no votes and no lynches, but every player is a killer. This is the hardest mafia game to win, because there can be only one winner or no winner. Prepare yourself to make hasty alliances, bluff, backstab and cheat your way to victory.

Number of players: 7 to 12.

Ideal number: 10

Clash of the Elementals

This is my favorite from these 4 games. It has a medium level of complexity, but it has a very elegant design, at least in my opinion. Two equal factions killing each other, where almost all players have day and night abilities. And nothing is what appears. If you like mystery, this is your game.

Number of players: 9 to 29

Ideal number: 17

Edit:

Tarot Upheaval

New game based on the tarot cards. It is also a bastard game with some random elements. It has a normal mafia team, but it doesn't have the same proportion of 1:4. The proportion is 1:7 to 1:8, but town players have a unique win condition that can make them still lose the game, even if they win. If you like games with a hard win condition, this is your game.

Number of players: 22

Ideal number: 22

Big Brother Mafia

New game based on the Big Brother. It is a very simple game with a unique mechanic, anyone can vote (players and non-players). This a mafia game mixed with a popularity contest... Why I am trying to lie? This is a popularity contest with a mafia suit. If you are popular, this is your game.

Number of Players: 13 to 18

Ideal Number: 16 or 18

Battle Royale does not sound at all suited for long form forum mafia. Its suited for quick fire chat room mafia. There is no reason to be invested in the weeks long process of mafia, in an everyone kills, solo winner variant.

I believe it can, due to other changes in the rules. But that is exactly the reason I say that it is not a mafia game, and only share some mechanics.

I feel like none of these can really be described as mafia, but I'd be interested to hear what sets The Room apart, since "everyone has an equal chance of winning" is pretty much the goal of any mafia design. why are you convinced that your version is more fair than normal?

the first two are potentially traditional mafia setups

You are right from these games only the Vortex has a Mafia team, although with some differences.

In The Room, there are are only lynches, night kills don't exist or any other way to kill a player. There are different roles, some slightly better than others, but players can change factions, which means he can be losing only to change to the winning faction at the last moment.

Also some players have less chance than others, but most of them has exactly the same chance of winning at the start of the game.



OBS: I requested the mods to move this thread to PBP area. It was created at the wrong place.

the crux of traditional mafia is the concept of an uninformed majority competing against an informed minority

I like traditions, but I am not a traditionalist.

sometimes it is nice for a game to evolve into something new

That is my idea. Traditional mafia games appear to be biased towards mafia, at least here, specially if they have powers. That is my experience in the games I played and the ones I read. Being able to chat and kill are powerful enough in itself, they don't need extra powers, unless you make really awesome powers to town players.

So I toyed in cheating with that idea. Not giving awesome powers to town, but messing with the mafia team. And one game pushed the other as I tried to reinvent that formula. The first one having no mafia team, the second one with a crippled mafia team, third one with just one possible role, and the forth one mixing the best part of those ideas into just one package.

No preference is a type of preference too.

I've played 4 games of mafia on NGA and I've won all 4 of them. Three as town and one as scum.

I haven't personally noticed a mafia bias, at least not in any of the games I've been in.

traditional mafia is generally fairly well balanced. the problem here is that we don't really play very traditional mafia, we play super-complicated versions with a bunch of roles the designers have no idea the impact of, and thus can't properly balance for, and it's generally easier to overpower the mafia than the town because mafia can coordinate.

Meta probably impacts winrate a lot. When I joined Px2 mafia was on a massive winning streak and it had gotten to the point where town was given multiple power roles and mafia generally wasn't given any to compensate, and mafia still had a near 100% winrate.

I guess you could argue that town power roles could decrease town win rate.

From what I read the more traditional version does not have a mafia team chat. They know each other, but they cannot chat. That is enough to balance the game with few power roles to town, but chat is a very powerful tool for mafia and tips the scale for them.

Traditional mafia (as far as I've played since '04) have always been able to talk to each other.
Back then in MPFG you had the 'classic' setup with an alternate setup running next to it. They both tended to attract different players as well.
Duskyblue and Bounty Hunter for example were great fans of the classic games.

Classic setup was usually
3 mafia, able to talk.
7 vanilla
cop
doc
With sometimes one of the 2 power roles missing.

The alternate setups could've had anything, but tended to be extensively reviewed or tested at other places first.
I feel like we've lately had some people design complicated alternate games that put too much stuff together. Making it less about the talking and manipulating of the game and more about power.

I got that information from a Mafia site, and the party game version of the game.

my image of vanilla net mafia would be 9 or 7 townies, and 3 or 2 mafiates, who can communicate at night. Chat restrictions on the mafia are probably a good balancing mechanism and considering the origins of the game i'm surprised it hadn't occurred to me as an option before.

These are the rules from Battle Royale. I use a template and then change what needs to be changed to fit that game.





There are some secret rules as well, but mostly to clear some situations that could arise during the game or at the end.

Just one more game. Rules from The Room.