Welcome all to Viva la Mafia!
If you have been keen on reading some posts in the Mafia Policy Review or have been active on IRC you will know how I have been preaching that this game is vastly different from any mafia game ever played at smogon before. In this post you will learn that I am not just blowing wind. I highly advise any person playing in this game to read this post carefully and more than once so you fully understand exactly how this game will be played. All new game mechanics will be explained in this post, and all flavour necessary to the game itself and the RULES will be on the forum.
So first thing's first: Viva la Mafia has no village. There is no "uninformed majority" as we are accustomed to. In their place, we have a usergroup called Freelancer. The difference here is that every freelancer is alligned only with themself. Their win condition will be to be the last user alive. This group will include more than half of the game.
Now, we did not eliminate factions completely. There are FOUR factions within the game comprised of 3 members, each completely against each other. Each faction will be designated a faction leader/captain. The captain has the ability to recruit users from the Freelancer usergroup to join their respective team. This will change the freelancers alliance and win condition to win with the faction who recruited them. Only Freelancers can be recruited. Also the power to recruit has successors, so do not think simply killing the Captain will disable a team from recruiting.
The idea of game progression is for the 4 factions to assemble their own team via freelancers until every freelancer left alive has a team, at which point it will be a simple free for all between the four factions to determine a winner. Strategy will be key as recruiting has plenty of factors to consider, but I will leave it to the captains to figure out how to best assemble their team.
Recruits will fail if the user being recruited is not a freelancer or if a freelancer is being targetted by more than 1 recruit. A freelancer will not have a chance to accept/deny the recruit, if the recruit is successful it is automatic. Recruits are the highest priority actions in the game.
The game will also have those who are not alligned with any faction and are not freelancers. These people will be considered neutral and have custom goals/win conditions.
The last major functional change is how items are handled, specifically what happens to items when a user holding one dies. Unlike in other games where the item will just perish or be awarded to a scavenger, we have established what we call the Junkyard. Any item that "dies" will be sent to the junkyard and given a priority (oldest in there to newest in there). Users will not know if a person that died was holding an item, but every day we will update you on whether the Junkyard is EMPTY or NOT EMPTY. At night, any NON-FREELANCE user can forego their night action to visit the junkyard (they have been instructed how). For balance purposes, a faction can only successfully take an item from the junk yard 2 times, but they can visit the junkyard as many times as necessary. Visiting the junkyard allows you to see what is there. Feel free to ask about this if you are still confused, but freelancers need not worry about this until they are recruited!
Most everything else in the game will be fairly familiar, and we havent gone *too* crazy with new shit as the main purpose of this game is to test the viability of the above stated system. I encourage everyone to have fun and take advantange of the fact that it IS a new system; try to be creative and find new ways to plan/decieve. We as hosts understand that this game is likely not going to be perfect; there will be things we may have overlooked or some thing may go completely wrong. This is to be expected. We have tried our best to create as balanced and fair game as possible but this formula is just so incredibly dynamic that it is impossible to ensure a perfect game. So again I ask you guys to test the system, don't be scared of it. This is a trial run for everyone, hosts included, and it won't work unless people actually roll with it instead of just sit around and wait for someone to fuck up. People will fuck up, I guess the winner will just be who fucks up the least!
With that said, I still will ask everyone to read the RULES of the game on the forum, as some things are slightly different, and more information on some things can be found there. Also, I ask you to have fun with the game, but please do not BREAK the game. Use your discretion/talk to us if you dont know if what you want to do is legal.
I think that covers everything, so again I don't want anyone to be intimidated, just have fun :)
Here is a list of players who signed up:
mekkah
shiv
toothache
jumpluff
captain kirby
thunda
evan
rev
gmax
shade
lesm46
avatar st
doomsday
earthworm
raikage
matamato
fishin
moi
hip
jedil
gts
ipl
jimbo
cookie
moot
pookar
stoo
lightwolf
brain
strangerdanger
porgyon3
billymills
stallion
outlaw
hobo joe
supermarth64
kannon
kotw
b_l
bass
pidgeot79
andenken
amelia
seo
magicmaster#
asim
kinneas
378
thorns
cyzir vish \o/
accént
anihilator zero
flounder
aznfgt#
sikh
umbreon dan
mister escalanté
kharozz
twash
ap#
darkie
da letter el
eo ut mortus
lonelyness
any of these players are eligible to play!
Now for the moment we have all been waiting for...the forums!
Viva la Mafia
ALSO EVERYONE COME JOIN US AT #havana FOR 24/7 GAME TALK!
Your role PM will be in your inbox, and PMs are being sent out to tell you your alias/pw as I post this.
Good luck and have fun everyone, and don't be scared to ask dak or myself any questions, we actually hope you do as we dont want anyone confused!
