Dig something up? I don't think I could do that.

The basics of mafia are that you have two competing teams, town and mafia. Mafia comprises a smaller group that aims to take control of the town via killing a player each night. Town's aim is to remove mafia from their ranks. The tool they have to do this is the daily lynch. Each day players make cases on why they feel another player is a member of the mafia and try to convince others of the same to aid in voting for that player to be lynched.

At it's core forum mafia is probably more of a debate game since you aren't privy to what the original design intended. IRL, mafia is intended as more of a deduction game, watching people for physical tells, changes in behavior, etc.

"Standard" make up is 13 town, 1 cop, 1 doctor, 5 mafia and the GM.

Day/Night cycles could be a set amount of IRL days, or just until enough votes for a lynch are cast, or everyone with a night role sends in their targets.

So an example of play would be:

Day One : Everyone debates back and forth, finally enough votes are cast and a player is hanged.

Night One : Mafia picks a target to kill. Cop picks one to investigate, and doctor picks one to save from death (if targeted)

Day Two : Everyone analyses the choice of night kill, points fingers, argues, and hangs another person

Repeat above until either all mafia are hanged, or enough townies are dead that mafia controls majority.

Forum mafia is the only way I've ever played, and it is super fun.

So once you're hung/killed you're out and can't participate?

I assume there is a moderator to assign parts? All mafia players know who are the other mafia players?

If town gets it right and hangs a mafia, do the other mafia still get to kill a town?

in the second format with a cop, what does investigate entail?

I can see that happening. I vaguely remember you posting a jank Vintage Snake deck once while drunk... Before Kamigawa made it possible for snakes to be viable.

Bingo.

Yes to both.

Yes.

There are multiple versions of the cop. The standard cop investigation reveals whether a player is town or anti-town. Other cops can learn a player's special abilities.

bun seems fun to get drunk with.

I knew a guy that ran a snake deck before creatures were creatures (circa Arabian Nights-ish). It was so-so. He was not drunk.

I have been lovingly referred to by friends and family as "a handful" on more than one occasion.

And Naf's Asp is the bestttt omg.

I've only played are you a werewolf (the same basic game, different theme) in person. And it's sooo much fun! By the end of the night, we're all drunk and making wild accusations against each other. (I play in a group every year at GenCon that has anywhere between 30 and 40 people show up, depending who came to the show that year.)

I fully intend to start with the easy games here and keep my more intricate designs for after we establish a player base.

Basic outline has been mentioned but to keep it all in one post:
One organizer makes a setup. Normal is a playerbase dividable by 3. 1/3th or 1/4th mafia, 2/3th or 3/4th town, depending on the amount of extra abilities in the game.
A round is divided in day and night.
In day everyone posts and tries to find mafiates by voting for them. If someone has a majority of votes, or a deadline has passed the person with the most votes is killed and we move to night.
In night no-one can talk in the thread. Mafia and special roles send PMs to the organizer with their role targets.
When all results are in, the organizer reopens day with the announcement that player x was killed by the mafia and the cycle continues anew until a side wins.

In classic games you have the following roles:

• Mafia. A team made of a third of the player base. They know from each other who they are. Each day they try to keep pressure off themselves. Each night they can PM the organizer to kill someone as team.
• Vanilla town. A basic player without special abilities. Tries to find mafiates through posting habits.
• Cop. A town player with the extra ability to investigate someone at night. They PM the organizer with a target, after which the organizer will send a PM back with the result if said target is town or mafia.
• Doctor. A town player with the extra ability to protect someone at night. They PM the organizer with a target. If that target would die that night, they live instead.

There are more noncomplex roles possible, but I think those are best mentioned in a big sticky about what mafia is all about. This is just the basics.

The goal for Town is to kill all mafiates by lynching them at the end of each day. The goal for Mafia is to kill enough townies so they end up being 50% of the player base (because at that point, lynching mafiates is impossible because a majority can never be reached anymore).

Of course, because mafia is mostly about information gathering, when killed you are no longer allowed to post in the thread and out-of-thread discussion is strictly prohibited, unless specified by the organizer.

The more mafia posts I read, the more I want to run a game. I wonder if I could get a 12-person game going.

See, this is why I was so bothered when Paranoia Paradise got kicked out of the Wizards boards and into a group. Lack of drawing other people in.
I've been playing forum mafia for almost 10 years now with hosting at least 30 games and playing in about 75. I really like it.

I think I'll post a sign-up thread for a 12-person classical game later today, seeing how I got to go to work soon.
If we don't reach that number, the setup is easily changed to 9-player.
As organizer I think I can answer a lot of the questions that new players may have, if the players can't figure it out themselves. At least better than if I was a player myself.

I've said this elsewhere, but I'll say again. I think "groups" was an honest effort from WotC to improve, particularly for the various play-by-posts. One of the things I consistently argued for with whoever was the community manager (WizO_Paradox, Gamer_Zer0, Solace, WotC_Trevor) was that GMs needed some moderation tools in order to do their job. I actually had convinced Paradox of it and we had them for a while. The G0 took them away. Solace had it on her to-do list to push to get us limited tools, but then she got canned. Trevor was coy at first, then told me about the group functionality.

I think their sincerity shows in the fact that during the "upgrade" from vB to... whatever that software was (I forget the name), all the pbp GMs were invited in as early testers, given access to everything, and were able to make requests for changes along with the moderators and a few other posters. The problem was they didn't foresee that a lack of connection between groups and the forums would spell doom for most of the pbp groups.

Anyway, I'm totally in on playing a game or two. I just have to decide if I'll do it "in" uniform or out...

I've started up a mafia game over in the PbP Section. If you are interested, please hop over there and check it out.

I'm prepared to lower the 12-count if we are short on players, but fingers crossed we get a good-sized crowd.

Anyone interested in a Freeform Roleplaying PbP game?

Hey Glare!

Umm, never done a Freeform game, how does it work?

~SE++

Hey again Glare.

Dont mind the mess while I sort things. Let me know if you need any thing in particular in the PbP area... and any input on the guides and FAQ etc is more than welcome.

Like I said I'm still typing stuff up at the moment. And hopefully traffic in the future will prove the need to break out some more organized subforums.

What type of freeform you have in mind? I could prolly sneak a post or two in between running three D&D games, being in 4 more, moderating here, and rebuilding a car. Heh

@BH: Total freeform. MotP, CoF and Gleemax RP type of Freeform.

@squinty: It's basically a d20 campaign without d20 or a GM. Think of it as multiple people writing NaNoWriMo, but each person only writes on one (or a few) characters, even campaign bosses, etc.

Never finished writing a NaNoWriMo....

~SE++

Well lucky for you, in a Freeform RP there's no such thing as a finished story. If you're not free you can just exit the party (just come up with some random reason) and reenter another time.