Welcome to the Mafia Discussion Thread! (all the previous mafia threads) What is Mafia? Mafia (also known as Werewolf) is a party game of social deduction, in the vein of Town of Salem or Among Us, that has been adapted to a play-by-post forums game. Mafia games usually have two factions: Town make up the uninformed majority of the players, do not know each other’s identities or roles, and cannot communicate outside the thread. Mafia (commonly called Scum in the SA forums) are an informed minority of players that can coordinate outside the thread, and are able to kill other players at night. Both town and mafia players can have additional powers. After signing up to play, players are assigned a role (via a Role PM) by the Moderator, who is the person in charge of coordinating the game and writing the underlying story. Roles are usually private and sharing them verbatim is not allowed. Most games nowadays are run using Discord for communication with both the mod and with other players. You will probably be asked to join a Discord group prior to starting play, so be sure to have an account! Games have two phases: ● Day phase: All players debate in thread and try to reach a consensus about eliminating a living player. Eliminations happen by majority vote; if a consensus is not reached before the end of the day, no elimination will happen. Votes are registered by the votefinder bot, and need to be formatted in the ##vote [playername] (bolded) format. You can also retract your vote using ##unvote. To change your vote to another player, you usually just need to vote again, but you also might be asked to unvote prior to voting someone else – always check the OP of your game to make sure of the system being used! ● Night phase: Threads are usually closed. If open, players will not be allowed to vote, and may be asked to not discuss the game, at the moderator’s discretion. During night phase, mafia players will be allowed to attempt to kill a player, removing them from the game. Night actions that are part of roles will also take place during that time. Both Day and Night phases have deadlines that are set by the moderator. Always check those carefully; once a deadline is reached, no more actions can be input, and the game will proceed to the next phase. Game ends when one of the factions reaches their win condition. Typically, for town players this will involve removing any threats to town; for mafia players, they will need to control the majority of the vote. Some players may have additional win conditions that will be specified in their role PM. What is this thread for? General discussion about mafia games, rules, strategies and general mafia chat go here, as well as for posting games that are currently looking for players! Feel free to ask anything you want to know about playing or modding, or ask about future games, if there are none open. Don’t comment on any ongoing mafia games here but pretty much anything else goes, both in- and off-topic. Be also sure to check and bookmark the New Game Sandbox & Announcement Thread if you want to be notified of new games starting! You can also join the Something Awful Mafia Discord (with a general chat, mafia game planning, and quick questions) for new game notifications. General tips ● Signing up for a game You can sign up for games by posting in a thread that is currently recruiting players. Most games are announced in both this thread and the Announcement thread, so if you want to play, check those up! If there are no games open at the moment, feel free to ask in this thread - sometimes mods will have a game ready that they are planning to drop soon. If you want to play, but are not sure of how it works, feel free to ask any questions in this thread, or contact the mod for information! Always read the OP of the game you are joining. Some games will be simpler, while others will have more complex or custom rules. Again, when in doubt, contact the mod and ask them if the game will be fine for a new player. Most SA games are accessible to newcomers, and mods will be happy to explain away any doubts you may have before or after signing. ● During the game First rule is - have fun! This is a social manipulation game. There will be times you will be pressed, suspected, or accused of lying, but you should try to take it as lightly as possible. There are many reasons that can lead to being suspected, including other players not being on your side! Dying in Mafia is also not a big deal, since there will always be more games to play. Your death can also end up helping your side, even if you don’t think so at the time - you never know! ● Do not talk about an ongoing game outside of the game thread or designated game communication channels. This is a very important rule that all threads will have, no exceptions, and it will be enforced. Even if you are dead, don’t post in any public threads about how the game went or what role you got. After you die, you will usually be given a way to chat privately with other dead players and observers, should you wish to comment, but it is not a given. Games do rely on secrecy to work, so don’t spoil the fun for everyone, or you will probably not be allowed to play anymore. ● Communicate with your mod. They are there to help you play. If you have any doubts about how your role plays, how the game mechanics work, or anything of the sort, always ask them! ● Always remember to be civil. You are playing with other people. Things getting heated from time to time are not unusual during a game, but any personal attacks on other players are extremely not OK. If you feel that you are not taking things well, take a break from playing and return later. ● When in doubt, always post. Do not lurk. You may not be confident in reading the other players’ intentions, but posting your thoughts will always help them read you. If you are not sure who is scum, you can at least make sure the other players have enough readable material from you to make them think you are not scum. Lurking in a mafia game is also extremely frowned upon. Most games will have a minimum amount of posts, typically ranging from 10-20, that need to be made during a game day. Real life also happens - if for some reason you are unable to play at a given time, always contact the mod about it. ● Remember that people can lie. Taking everyone’s word as gospel is not a good idea in a Mafia setting. Scum players are liable to be lying on principle, and there are valid reasons for someone to be withholding information as any alignment. ● Odd alignment and role combinations exist. Just because someone claims to be an oddly specific or dodgy sounding role, does not mean they are lying, or that they share your alignment! ● Don’t feel bad about making mistakes. Everyone, from newbies to experienced players, gets fooled sometimes. There is an old saying that goes “everyone is bad at Mafia” . If you get played by someone else, that is just part of the game! Common Mafia terms and abbreviations ● Town - A player who is part of the uninformed majority. Town players do not know each other’s alignment and, except for some specific cases, cannot communicate outside the thread. ● Mafia (Scum) - A player who is part of the informed minority. Mafia players know each other’s identities and can communicate collectively outside the thread. ● Third party (3p, Self-aligned) - A player whose win condition does not align with that of Town or Mafia players. ● Masonry/Masons - Two or more players of any alignment that are allowed to communicate outside the thread. Can be confirmed if the Mod reveals the masons’ alignment to each other, or unconfirmed if not. ● Vanilla - A player that has no powers apart from voting. ● Role madness (Role heavy) - A game that will have everyone or almost everyone have an action they can take, as opposed to being vanilla. ● Lunch (Launch, Execute, Eliminate) - Removing someone from the game by majority vote during the day. The term “lynch” is frowned upon and seldom used due to unpleasant connotations. ● Hammer - The final vote that reaches majority, aka “dropping the hammer” on someone. This causes the Day phase to end, and some mods may request that all players stop posting at hammer. (If you are the one hammered, you should absolutely stop posting immediately.) ● EoD - End of day. Typically used in reference to actions that resolve after hammer. ● Flip - When the moderator posts the role/alignment details of a player who has died, aka “flipping the role card”. ● Night Kill (NK) - Removing someone from play during Night phase by killing them. Typically the scum team will have a shared NK that anyone in the team can perform, but other killing roles may exist. ● X-shot - Refers to an ability that can only be used X times. ● Bus - From “throwing under the bus”, refers to a situation where scum players knowingly vote or campaign for the elimination of a teammate. Not to be confused with “Busdriving” , an unrelated night action. ● Win condition (Wincon) - Your condition for winning the game. Typically for town this is “remove all threats to town,” and for scum this is “gain unassailable control of the vote.” Always play to your win condition! ● Lylo (Exlo, ELO) - “Lunch or Lose” (also known as Exlo or ELO for “Execute or Lose”), referring to a situation where the players must vote someone out that day, or scum are likely to win through gaining control of the vote after another Night Kill. ● Mylo - “Mislunch and Lose”, referring to a situation where executing a town player is likely to result in an immediate scum victory. (Remember, sometimes executing no one at all can be a preferred outcome!) Common Mafia roles As a reference, below is a quick, simplified list of roles that can be found in Mafia games. This list is nowhere near comprehensive. Not all games will have all or even most of those, and a lot of variants, combinations or custom roles can also exist in a given game! If you are not sure how your given role should work, always ask your mod. ■ Protective roles ● Doctor - Protects one person from a night kill. Typically cannot target themselves or the same person twice in a row. ● Bodyguard - A weaker version of a doctor, where if they successfully protect another player they die instead. (e.g. throwing themselves in front of the bullet) ■ Investigative roles ● Cop - Finds out their target’s alignment (or simply “SCUM”/”NOT SCUM”). ● Gunsmith - Finds out if their target has the ability to kill at night. (note that this does not necessarily indicate alignment!) ● Tracker - Finds out who their target visited at night, if anyone. ● Watcher - Finds out who visited their target, if anyone. ■ Disruptive roles ● Roleblocker - Causes another person’s night action to fail. ● Jailor - Causes another person’s night action to fail, and causes all other actions targeting that person to fail. (Note: There are multiple interpretations of this role - when in doubt, confirm with your moderator!) ● Redirector/Bus Driver - Redirects another person’s night action to a different target of their choosing, or causes two people’s night actions to target each other. The action is usually referred to as a redirection or “busdrive”. ■ Passive roles ● Bulletproof - Protected from being killed at night. Note that this is usually X-shot, and you may or may not find out when it’s been expended - ask your moderator. ● Stump - May continue posting after being killed, but may not vote. ● Godfather - A mafia player that will return a result of “NOT SCUM” or equivalent if targeted by a Cop. ● Miller - A town player that will return a result of “SCUM” or equivalent if targeted by a Cop. ● Survivor - Has an alternative win condition to survive until the end of the game, and can win with any faction. ■ Killing roles ● Poisoner - Their target will die the following night. (Typically, a Doctor protection or equivalent on that night will save their target from death) ● Ninja - Will not be seen while performing the kill. (Applies to Tracker/Watcher and equivalent) ● Juggernaut (Strongman) - Cannot be stopped while performing the kill. (Applies to Doctor/Jailor/Roleblocker/etc.) ● Vigilante - A town-aligned player who can kill. Typically X-shot. ● Serial Killer - A self-aligned player who can kill, typically with a win condition to be the last one left alive. Modding A Game: Dos and Don'ts and What Am I Even Doing (original post by EccoRaven) So you want to mod a game of mafia! The most important thing to know is the basics: how the mechanics of different roles work and how they affect each other in tandem. For instance, a Cop is a standard town role, as well as a Doctor. But if the Cop claims, the Doctor can protect the Cop while the Cop investigates and clears players, meaning the Mafia can only stop the Cop once they find and stop the Doctor! This makes the game a lot harder for the Mafia than the moderator might have otherwise intended. However, giving the Mafia a Roleblocker or Godfather are helpful ways to organize the game so that, in case the Cop and Doc team up, the Mafia aren't left totally high and dry. Ultimately you want a game that's balanced: a game where everyone has an equal chance of winning the game through roles alone, meaning players win or lose based solely on luck and skill. General pointers and balancing strategies:
● Other modding notes ● When designing a game, you may want to take into account the type of setup you are aiming for. More vanilla games tend to favor scum players, who find themselves unchecked by the town. Power-heavy games will favor town, as they get a bigger array of tools to box scum in. No matter the type of game, roles should aim to balance both sides in. ● There are a number of small, fixed traditional setups that can be appropriate for a first-time mod, such as C9 (for nine players - 2 Mafia, 0-1 cop, 0-1 doc, 3-5 vanilla town players) or F11 (for eleven players, four fixed variants). ● Modding/Co-modding help If you feel like you need a bit more help in designing your game, or you want a more experienced mod to take a look at your setup and check for any balance issues, feel free to ask! You can do so in the thread, and below is also a list of experienced mods that are up to helping you with questions or acting as co-mods for your setup. ○ Grandicap ○ Yami Fenrir ○ Opopanax ○ Somberbrero ○ CapitalistPig Community Stuff and Resources ○ For Players ○ The Mafia New Game Sandbox & Announcement Thread - Use this thread to find new games that are looking for players, or to announce your game. ○ SA Mafia Wiki - Has a lot of information in common and not so common roles that you may find while playing in SA, as well as a list of old games and a lot of useful tips for both playing and modding games. (Still a work in progress, if you'd like to join the effort) ○ MafiaScum Wiki - Another Mafia Wiki with useful information (please note - some roles in there may differ from their SA implementation!) ○ Spreadsheet with some more roles (common and uncommon) ○ General SA Mafia Discord for chatting about various things! ○ A more lightweight SA Mafia Discord for new game notifications, planning and questions about games! ○ For Mods ○ VoteFinder - Tracks votes happening in thread and allows mods to register living and dead players and spectators, get a list of players, set deadlines and other utilities. Can also be used to post a list of current votes in the thread. ○ Random.org - Allows to create RNG lists, useful to assign roles to players prior to game start. ○ Time Zone Converter - Easy conversion between time zones. While most Mafia players are from North America, not everyone is, so being mindful of time zones is always appreciated! ○ For Help with Discord ○ Step-by-step instructions to setting up your Discord server for a Mafia game (in .pdf format) ○ A Discord Mafia server template with moderator/observer/unspoiled/player roles set up and basic channels with permissions, based on the above. Just clic it to activate it - will ask for a name and image, and net you a basic, hopefully working, server for your game that you can edit and mess up with. Sandwolf fucked around with this message at 18:43 on May 1, 2023 |
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# ¿ Mar 17, 2022 19:45 |
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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 14:05 |
Sandwolf fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Mar 17, 2022 |
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# ¿ Mar 17, 2022 19:45 |
TammyHEH posted:Dumb bad game 4 losers who stink this is covered in the first post smh
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# ¿ Mar 17, 2022 20:19 |
Jose Valasquez posted:How many still play Mafia in 2022? If you use a sample size of like 3 months I’d say, honestly, 30-35 people
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# ¿ Mar 17, 2022 20:27 |
That’s right baby, we’re going to Regionals. If you have any questions feel free to ask me here or discord or PM or you can fax me
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# ¿ Mar 17, 2022 20:32 |
Mordiceius posted:Maybe I should get back into Mafia, I tell myself for the 50th time. Then I remember that I only like running games and not playing in them. Also, the games I run are bad. Run the bad game
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# ¿ Mar 17, 2022 21:01 |
This game!
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# ¿ Mar 18, 2022 17:36 |
t a s t e posted:It’s an excellent teaching game Good to see we’ve known each other almost a decade, taste
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# ¿ Mar 18, 2022 18:41 |
tpink posted:Is it really that low? That’s a bummer. Is it just part of forums being less active now than they used to be (though other sub-forums still seem to be cranking along just fine), or something more specific to SA mafia? Probably both, less people around in general means less people wander through means less of a community to prevent burnout.
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# ¿ May 11, 2022 17:27 |
Podima posted:Praise/blame Sandwolf for the new thread subtitle. please redirect all praise + blame to shwinnebego
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# ¿ May 13, 2022 20:53 |
let's start a SAMaf scholarship for mafia players to join
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# ¿ May 15, 2022 19:37 |
Thanks man
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# ¿ Jun 5, 2022 18:20 |
Only two more needed for this!
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# ¿ Jun 11, 2022 18:18 |
Opopanax posted:May as well ask here since you're all a bunch of nerds and live in my computer anyways, what are the must play PC exclusive games from the last decade or so? Just got a steam deck and I haven't had a gaming capable computer in like 20 years Disco Elysium has been ported to a bunch of stuff but if you haven’t played is 100% worth playing
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# ¿ Jul 14, 2022 07:06 |
John Cena’s just opened a mafia game! Come join!! Heavy Metal Mafia!
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# ¿ Jul 25, 2022 19:11 |
Shellception posted:So I did A Thing... this extremely valuable information is now found in the OP if anyone is looking for it going forward, it's right at the end under it's own subheading
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# ¿ Aug 15, 2022 21:56 |
Thank you dearly Alli, for the little bot that allows this community to hum-along peacefully. We could always crowdfund a server, if no one has one or any space available.
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# ¿ Sep 7, 2022 19:50 |
blooddasbootcelery posted:what's happening here mafio
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# ¿ Oct 9, 2022 02:01 |
I think they mean Duck Duck Goose bro
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# ¿ Oct 9, 2022 03:27 |
Why would you need to warn people not to order *bees* oh Opop?
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# ¿ Nov 7, 2022 05:02 |
Game Up! Come play!
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# ¿ Dec 7, 2022 20:27 |
Voodoofly posted:This is just an anonymous tip to a potential secret santa: I’ve had the flu this past week and my entire life is behind by a week so don’t give up on me yet
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# ¿ Dec 15, 2022 20:06 |
Green Wing posted:I hope my santee got their gift, I got a picture of it outside their door at least. It was a bit, um. lmfao that was you? the roasted eel made me think gacha, the Galician mussels made me think Shell. Sorry I didn't post yet, flu, etc. any recommendations for consuming either? ty for not sending jellied eel I wouldn't have been able to be a good sport about that e; I'll post a pic in the discord
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# ¿ Dec 15, 2022 21:23 |
ObamaAkbar. posted:I don’t know a single person who eats jellied eel and have never seen it sold anywhere either and OA is *BRITISH*
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# ¿ Dec 15, 2022 21:35 |
Happy Birthday “Retro Futurist”
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# ¿ Dec 16, 2022 21:15 |
Happy Birthday if you were born
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# ¿ Dec 18, 2022 21:11 |
We’ll give Harold Krell a thread title shoutout before Jemery
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# ¿ Dec 20, 2022 20:49 |
I am also down to change the thread title to something funny and in-jokey but Shell should set up a poll or something in the discord
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# ¿ Dec 20, 2022 20:50 |
this is really nice, thank you Opop <3
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# ¿ Feb 27, 2023 19:30 |
Yami Fenrir posted:Happy birthday! Thanks Yami
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# ¿ Feb 27, 2023 21:49 |
Mafia will outlive us all
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# ¿ Mar 20, 2023 02:17 |
Cloacamazing! posted:This thread and the discord: https://discord.gg/xT5vBE5MkY Everyone, new and old, is welcome to join this chat and talk about mafia, movies, whatever. This is the place where 99% of mafia planning occurs for this forum though.
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# ¿ Mar 20, 2023 18:23 |
chaoslord posted:I did not realize there was a second mafia discord. Which scoundrel caused this look, bud, I simply hate Mary Worth
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# ¿ Mar 20, 2023 19:06 |
Mordiceius posted:I think one problem I have with mafia is that I want to like it more than I do. I'm a loving dogshit terrible mafia player. Like seriously, I'm really loving bad. I'm terrible at playing games. I'm not too good at running them either. So generally, I just admire mafia games from afar. Being dogshit at mafia is the gold standard
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# ¿ Mar 21, 2023 19:00 |
Paranoid Dude posted:I've lurked in SA Mafia threads for decades at this point, super excited to do some playing in the camelot game! This is awesome, welcome!!
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# ¿ Mar 22, 2023 17:28 |
Leperflesh posted:Hi folks. I have never really paid any attention to the Mafia community on TG, and when I became a moderator I knew Podima basically covered all of TGR and just left it all to him. Hey Leperflesh, first and foremost, none of our poo poo here is roleplaying. Many of our community roleplay but there is very little actual overlap with Mafia and RP these days. I know a lot of the drama that just unfolded was all mafia-adjacent and we've had a lot of community wide conversations about the bad poo poo that has happened in the history of SA Mafia. However, the current community of mafia players are all pretty sensible people. We do not run offsite Mafia games (we do use discords for organizing and information dispersal). The biggest in-community issue we have these days is rudeness. I am more than happy to come up with a disclaimer to be put in all Mafia OPs to address the need for comfort, communication, and anything else to cut back on any possible abuses. e; We are not a monolith, would love other members of the community to chime in here Sandwolf fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Mar 22, 2023 |
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# ¿ Mar 22, 2023 19:20 |
Leperflesh posted:My impression has been that the Mafia community is great and trouble-free and part of that is that I have literally never seen a report on a Mafia game, not even once. it's amongus play by post
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# ¿ Mar 22, 2023 19:29 |
Leperflesh posted:My impression has been that the Mafia community is great and trouble-free and part of that is that I have literally never seen a report on a Mafia game, not even once.
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# ¿ Mar 22, 2023 19:30 |
Voodoofly posted:Honestly it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a list of people that we nominate as resources for someone to talk to about any problems, potential problems, abuse, need for support, etc. and to have those people listed in the OP of every game so that you would (hopefully) be able to contact one or more of them that are not directly involved in the game itself and not worry about talking about a game out of game etc I'd be happy to participate in something like this and put it in the OP here at the very least
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# ¿ Mar 22, 2023 19:46 |
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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 14:05 |
Leperflesh posted:Yeah this is about having tools that you don't anticipate ever needing but reasonable people aren't really gonna object to, it doesn't have to be made a huge deal of but maybe like one sentence in the OP right after you say "keep secret stuff secret no cheating no out of game talking about the game" you could also say "unless someone is being gross or abusive in which case of course tell on them immediately, tell the organizer or a mod or someone" and that'd be that? Would you be willing to be a point of contact outside the community for people who have issues within the community to come to? We will also have some in-community folks but it's not a bad thing to have a higher authority to be able to go to.
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# ¿ Mar 22, 2023 20:00 |