New Experimental Concepts for Mafia Games

[UncleSam]

Originally Posted by Fat Alchemator

And then make everyone an announcer aswell :P

An idea I've been throwing around is having a pure neutral mafia, where people get to make their own factions. Great basic idea, but practically it seems to fail when I try to get it to work in my head :( any thoughts?

You would need to make it so that only x number of people can win, and you would need to make some people have to work against others. In fact, a mafia where every player has two players he or she cannot win with might work, as well as a limit on the number of winning players to like 1/4 of the game size or something.

[Yeti]

You could have various duos of "factions" start at the game, say 4, and have each faction possess a converter and another role. The rest of the game consists of neutrals all with a different role/night action.

The converter can convert a certain number of people to their faction and after that they get a mayor vote or something. Some neutrals gets converted and some couldn't, and even opposing faction members could be converted. The converting role couldn't though.

Then there's certain win conditions/restrictions so some factions work together lynching and others try to counter it and the remaining neutrals get new abilities/WC.

[Destiny Warrior]

How about an inverse lynchpin? That is, if certain user x is killed, two facions unite. How useful would that be, if user x had a moderately useful role, and was a mafia inverse lynchpin(unknown to the mafia though)?

[Aura Guardian]

What about two villages and one slightly-extra-powerful mafia? I don't know exactly how it would work, but 27 players: 5 mafia, 10 of village 1, 10 of village 2, and 2 wolves/one wolf pair/wolf + neutral.

Or why not make the village small, but give them very powerful abilities, like a reviver or two, a recruiter or two, a few vigilantes, a couple hookers, etc? Or has this been done?

@Johann: no, the villages wouldn't be able to win with each other. And they would be just as "disorganized" as villages are now (or as they should be... case may vary.)

[Johann]

Originally Posted by Fat Aura Guardian

What about two villages and one slightly-extra-powerful mafia? I don't know exactly how it would work, but 27 players: 5 mafia, 10 of village 1, 10 of village 2, and 2 wolves/one wolf pair/wolf + neutral.

Or why not make the village small, but give them very powerful abilities, like a reviver or two, a recruiter or two, a few vigilantes, a couple hookers, etc? Or has this been done?

Wouldn't this just be one village of 20, or 3 mafia factions?

[Thorns]

Originally Posted by Fat Yeti

You could have various duos of "factions" start at the game, say 4, and have each faction possess a converter and another role. The rest of the game consists of neutrals all with a different role/night action.

The converter can convert a certain number of people to their faction and after that they get a mayor vote or something. Some neutrals gets converted and some couldn't, and even opposing faction members could be converted. The converting role couldn't though.

Then there's certain win conditions/restrictions so some factions work together lynching and others try to counter it and the remaining neutrals get new abilities/WC.

so basically viva la small mafia with some changes

[Blue_Tornado]

Well, I've been thinking of hosting a mafia game for a while so I thought of various aspects and themes that might be the best. I thought about WW2 for a second and then thought "oh cool, it would be awesome if people could make treaties with other people and spice up the game", and then I thought about it some more. Essentially, I have a new concept that might work out just fine; Treaties.

You may PM <hosts> with "Day/Night X - Signing a treaty with <user>". If both you and <user> PM this message with <user> being the other side of the contract, you will complete your treaty <--- or somewhere in the lines of that. Basically, both sides need to agree and user a should send a message with user b in it and then the other way around. Basically, maybe the "treaty" can change with the mafia, but I personally thought of "you are not able to target <user> with any harmful ability (theif, hooker, kill, ect., but inspections, safeguards and revives ect. are allowed) and <user> will not conflict with your win condition". If the latter bit isn't enough to make treaties worthwhile, maybe an added benefit of a new combined power like... anything really. Like, if an inspector and a redirector unite, the ability can be something in the lines of hooker or something else completely new. As an alternative, it may simply bring both users an upgrade. As in, say the former mentioned inspector is a full inspector - then maybe his action will be upgraded as such: "Night X - send <user1> after <user2>", and then if someone can tell who targeted user2 that night the targeter would appear as user1 and not as the inspector. But if we do upgrades like this, maybe a limit of.. two treaties is adequete? Maybe even one? I'm not sure, so I'm hoping you guys can come up with some interesting stuff regarding this.

[Exarius]

B_T, I could see that work with a game having many factions, and each of them having to be last man standing. Then there's a faction leader, that passes on if he dies. Now, if the leaders of 2 factions send in a treaty, where they state that they want to make a treaty with the other faction, they would "unite", ie they don't need the other faction dead to win. Obviously, they could be able to backstab, etc, but that's how I see it at least.

[Blue_Tornado]

Alchemator and I have actually started working on a possible idea that coincidentally works like that too -- small factions lead by leaders, when the leaders are annonymus to say the most (actually it's similar to MGS but it'll have it's tweaks of course :P). Basically, we're working on it as I type this so I might just edit some stuff in lol.

[Outlaw]

Originally Posted by Fat Blue_Tornado

Well, I've been thinking of hosting a mafia game for a while so I thought of various aspects and themes that might be the best. I thought about WW2 for a second and then thought "oh cool, it would be awesome if people could make treaties with other people and spice up the game", and then I thought about it some more. Essentially, I have a new concept that might work out just fine; Treaties.

You may PM <hosts> with "Day/Night X - Signing a treaty with <user>". If both you and <user> PM this message with <user> being the other side of the contract, you will complete your treaty <--- or somewhere in the lines of that. Basically, both sides need to agree and user a should send a message with user b in it and then the other way around. Basically, maybe the "treaty" can change with the mafia, but I personally thought of "you are not able to target <user> with any harmful ability (theif, hooker, kill, ect., but inspections, safeguards and revives ect. are allowed) and <user> will not conflict with your win condition". If the latter bit isn't enough to make treaties worthwhile, maybe an added benefit of a new combined power like... anything really. Like, if an inspector and a redirector unite, the ability can be something in the lines of hooker or something else completely new. As an alternative, it may simply bring both users an upgrade. As in, say the former mentioned inspector is a full inspector - then maybe his action will be upgraded as such: "Night X - send <user1> after <user2>", and then if someone can tell who targeted user2 that night the targeter would appear as user1 and not as the inspector. But if we do upgrades like this, maybe a limit of.. two treaties is adequete? Maybe even one? I'm not sure, so I'm hoping you guys can come up with some interesting stuff regarding this.

I am the mafia, goo goo g'joob!

EDIT: All mafias from that time period are a blur to me. I meant: Unbreakable Vow mafia

[Anachronism]

I mentioned the possibility of a Chess Mafia in the request-a-host/propose-a-game thread, but let me post it here too.

Essentially you have 2 teams: Black and White. Each user is given a piece as their role, and they must move that piece and may have night actions that do various things.

Move decisions are reached during the night in an anonymous forum where each user is instead given a chess piece alias corresponding to their role.

During the day, it is revealed what actions each team has taken (I am not sure if it is best to have the teams move at the same time or seperately). Captured pieces/users are removed from the board/game, and everyone decides on a person to lynch.

Incorporating neutrals would be difficult but possible. There could be a neutral that does not appear on the board and has access to both team forums but dies if either team moves to the square his or her piece is occupying.

This seems like an interesting idea but the execution would be rather difficult and the roles would have to ensure that the game doesn't basically become team chess.

I would like to know if this sounds workable, and if so, how would it be implemented?

[Blue_Tornado]

Heh, so Alch, Exarius and I will probably try something on my idea. (unless alch drags in more people that is D:) We're trying to make several even factions that lack something rather obvious and need to contact and possibly treaty with others to gain it --well that's the basic idea anyway, we're still planning and everything.

[Thorns]

i was mulling over an idea in #moo, i'd like to see it played but it has some serious issues that need to be worked out. the game is basically regicide mafia. we have a single mafia faction (the royals), versus the village (the villagers). there is one player (the king) in the royals that, when lynched, causes the entire royals to lose. this gimps the royals heavily, but consider the existence of a lynchpin within the village. when said lynchpin dies, a group of users (who aren't notified of being seperate from the village beforehand) turn evil and try to defeat both the royals and the village. the royals only lose if the king is lynched, if he's killed, a new one is selected. feel free to throw reasons why this can't work at me, or solutions to fix any broken bits of the idea

[Aura Guardian]

The Royals would only lose if the kingh is lynched, so if they all suicide they win by lack of other results. Also, what would be an approximate split for the alliances?

[Thorns]

obviously they lose if they are all lynched or killed before the king is, lynching the king just speeds it up -.-
as for numbers something like 7/14 with 3 or 4 split villagers could work

[the interwebs]

a mafia in which everyone, or only certain factions, get a really, really annoying posting restriction(only able to talk using smileys and such things) and communication through IRC/pm is not allowed, basically, you have to find a way to communicate effectively through your posting restriction, or fake a good one if you didn't get any

[blisserene]

I don't ladder on Shoddy (shawty?) much or host any mafia games on Smogon, but I do host a mafia group on Facebook.

One experimental game I made was one where everyone was mafia, of different factions. Belonging to a faction would give you a faction role, and you would also get an individual role as well. Each faction had the same number of each individual roles. The twist was that no one knew who they were aligned with or what their roles were. I would randomize the list of names and then put them next to the player list and PM them a random full profile of a player at the start of each day, which may or may not have been them. They would then have to gamble and barter information with others, some smarter players giving false information to others in exchange for true information through PMs and the Wall (remember, this is on Facebook.) Also, each player had the option of playing with their faction, or playing with players that had the same individual role as they did. This was intended to add another layer of suspicion on everyone. I intended it to have a stage where people developed their identities, and then a stage where people developed their allegiances. The daily lynch was meant to allow smaller, incomplete factions to overcome a faction that had already pretty much found out who their faction was.

What happened was that in the first few days, few people voted, because they were all scared to vote out their own people, or be voted out for being the first to vote. Eventually, the factions started to become more defined to the players through almost a week of stalling, and then a developed faction blitzed all the other undeveloped factions, not allowing for the intended second stage of the game, although one player did consider dealing with a cornered faction so that they would survive longer in exchange for having them kill off some of his own faction (he was trying to win solo).

I included a medic (i think you call it bodyguard around here) role, a mayor role (that's the one with double votes, right?), a glass cannon role (a vote by them would negate any attempts to save the target, but they could not be saved by medics themselves), and a majority/minority flipflopper, who could cause the majority vote and minority vote to flip during the night, intended to allow conspiracy against their own faction.

The faction roles were an immune-to-roles-role, a disabling-role (hooker, i think that's what it's called?) role, a role where only 50% (rather than more than 50%) vote was required by a faction to kill someone at night (helps with early faction development), and a role that allowed a faction to have two votes for each player, as if their were two mafias. First votes only competed against the first votes, and second votes only competed against the second votes...like if they were on two channels or something.

The game was played with no revealing of identity of victims of the night (they could still get their identities through the daily random profile), there were no cops needed since everyone was kinda a cop, and all kills by mafia were made through individual private votes to me, so that a person could conspire against their own faction.

It was a PAIN to host since I had to send out many PMs for the daily random profile, and I had a couple of mistakes that messed up the game a little. I don't think I will be trying this one again for a long time.

[wickdaggler]

So, I've thought out an idea for a mafia game that promises to be... interesting, at least.

The game would have a pre-set channel for the village to talk amoungst themselves, and decide on votes, as well as having some general chat etc.
The mafia would be rather large in comperison to normal games, and there would only be one.

(30 players, 12 mafia, 2 neutrals, 16 village)

The thing is, each mafia wouldn't know the other one is a mafia player, but they would have a "password" that they have to speak in the main chat.

As well, each player would know one other person's password, which would eventually unite the entire mafia. The thing is, this would also allow for villagers to mole into the mafia, as opposed to where the opposite is usually true.

Finally, given that the mafia is pretty large, the roles would be pretty weak, and the village would have a couple pretty powerful roles.

Sure it still needs fleshing out but... what do you guys think about it?


Oh, and another idea I thought up was haveing Weather Mafia, where certain elements will come in to play based on certain user's roles (if one user died, it would be so depressing it would start raining, etc) and these effects will affect certain roles negativly, or positivly.

[Blue_Tornado]

well if anyone was wondering what was happening with my idea, it just got more and more complicated that I just said "fuck it", especially as I'm still rather new and it was my first time planning a game. I just wanted something simple tbh :|

speaking of it, I had a rather simple idea where there is a standard mafia game layout, only when the wolf (or wolf team) has a much higher chance of winning than usual, be it by moling the village and hell, even moling the mafia. This might have some obvious drawbacks that I'm simply not aware of, so I wouldn't mind some thoughts.

and if this goes somewhere a co-host would be helpful :3

[vonFiedler]

So I was toying with the idea for a mafia game involved a mystery that certain characters had to solve. Think of it as sort of a side game just for kicks. It shouldn't affect the main gameplay, so maybe it'd even be ok for a beginner mafia game (but if it's not that's okay, I'm just saying I don't want the game as a whole to be too complicated). But the more my game designer brain kicked around the idea, the more it evolved into a concept where you start with a powerful mafia, and have villagers that become more powerful by unraveling clues behind the mafia. You could even have mafia powers that allow them to leave red herrings and such. Needless to say, this is the opposite of not complicated and not affecting gameplay. But if the kinks are ironed out, it could be very interesting. Any thoughts?

[Seven Deadly Sins]

This isn't a crazy concept, but it's still an interesting one.

Itemafia

Basically, all players are vanilla. Vanilla villagers, vanilla wolves. (there are also 2-3 neutrals but we'll get to them later)

However... there's a catch. The game is centered around the ability to "search for items" during the night, and players will accrue items over the course of the gamethat will act as their "roles" and give them powers similar to many standard roles and some non-standard ones as well. Part of the attraction of this game is that it's largely random every time it's hosted, so gameplay stays fresh even without a ruleset change.

In order to "search for an item" there would be an 7x7 (8x8 or 9x9 for larger games?) grid where each square contains an item. Most of the items have special powers that will be made immediately apparent upon holding them, some are useless, and some have unknown abilities or may need to be combined with other items.

The neutrals would be Thieves. They have the ability to steal from players, or follow them and boost any item they find in the night. These neutrals would be competing against each other, and only one of them would be able to win: the one that makes it to the end of the game alive with the most stuff. At any time, a thief can "flee", removing them from the game as if they were dead, but not counting as death for their win condition.

Once I get the items all sorted out, I'm hoping to host this as a standard mafia game.

[shade]

It'd be interesting to see how you went about solving if two players went for the same square. Creating a priority list would be tedious and unfair on those below it, whilst no-one getting an item would have an adverse affect on the game.

Other than that, I think that would be a fun game to play SDS!

[Blue_Tornado]

If you go about with that game, making so that the neutrals have the highest chances of winning isn't pretty fair; there should be something to balance it out, maybe a special village role or maybe something else, I really don't know.

[Seven Deadly Sins]

@shade: Priority lists are gay, I'd just go for whoever sent me the first PM. "They got there first."

It also provides incentive for people to send in their PMs fast. First one there wins!

@Blue Tornado:

Neutrals are competing against each other. Either 0 neutrals will win (they all die) or 1 neutral will win (the survivor with the most stuff), but the neutrals winning does not preclude any faction from winning.

Essentially, there will be a "Faction Win" and a "Neutral Win". The neutrals are just there to spice up the game and cause minor havoc, but they have an incentive not to piss a whole lot of people off, since working with the village heavily makes them a target for the mafia and vice versa.

[Objection]

Originally Posted by Fat Seven Deadly Sins

@shade: Priority lists are gay, I'd just go for whoever sent me the first PM. "They got there first."

What about timezones?