Real Life Mafia Setup Ideas

[vizIIsto]

Hello,

Can some of you help me with the following?

1. Provide a

list of common roles

in mafia or werewolf. A couple for Town, a couple for Mafia/Werewolves, and a few Third Party ones. There are many roles out there and I know about the most basic power roles like Cop, Doctor, Mafia Roleblocker, Serial Killer and Jester.
If possible, please list the ones that work well in a real life game of mafia.

2. Help me with figuring out some

setups for 3 to 10 player games

. They should work well in a real life mafia game. For 8 players, preferably a setup along the lines of 5 town, 2 mafia, 1 third party, things like that. You don't need to give me exact roles, but just tell me what a great setup would look like for each number of players

(for example: 7 players = 2 town, 2 power role town, 1 mafia, 1 power role mafia, 1 third party player. Don't need to give me exact power roles but just the setup format)

Reason I'm asking this is because I'd really like to play some of these games with family / friends but I'm not so sure about what setups to use. They should be easy to explain/understand and work well for players that normally don't play Mafia/Werewolves.

These are the setups I was thinking of:
3 players: 2 town, 1 mafia. Kinda boring so I'm not really looking to this.
4 players: Starts with night phase. 1 mafia goon and 3 townies, of which 1 power role like cop. Game should go to LYLO with only one day, so it's good for quick games. Power role is preferably not a protection role because 4 player day starts aren't that suitable I guess.

5 players: I'd say 4 town and 1 mafia, maybe 3 town 1 mafia and a jester, or other non-killing 3rd party role. Something like 1 vanilla, 1 doc, 1 cop, 1 mafia and a "friendly" 3rd party role.

I'm really looking for 5 player setups by the way. I'm going to a youth installment (of some sort) soon where I'm in a group with 5 other teenagers, all of which also have autism, and I reckon communication games like these would be good as some sort of friendly exercise. Same therefore counts for 6 players in case I want to join too and let a mentor supervise the game.

6 players: Probably 4 town 1 mafia 1 3rd party. 4 town 2 mafia seems mafia biased. I think one power role for town is enough. I might consider a 6 player setup of 4 vs 2 with power roles only, but I'd need some good power roles.

From here on it's mostly for big parties and with the entire family, which is not likely to happen, but I'd still enjoy some ideas.

7 players: Obvious is the 5 town with doc+cop vs 2 mafia with 1 power role. The old Newbie game setup. Perhaps making it 4 town 1 mafia and 2 third party roles would be decent? It kind of eliminates teamwork aspect of mafia though.
8 players: 5 town, 2 mafia, and a 3rd party role. How many power roles? I was thinking of 2 for town and 1 for mafia.
9 players: 6 town 2 mafia 3rd party seems good enough. From here on I'm struggling a bit more with what setups work well and what not and besides I'm probably not going to use these a lot.
10 players: 7 town 3 mafia, or 7 town 2 mafia 3rd party, depending on what you say is more balanced.

Final note, for all setups I'd prefer one setup with few power roles and is easy to understand and explain to beginner players, and one (or multiple) variations for when we're bored of playing the same setup.

BIG THANKS!

[vizIIsto]

I'll use this post as a reference for when I want to host a game, or for someone else to host a game to explain them the setup (in case I want to play too).

3 player setups:

4 player setups:

5 player setups:

6 player setups:

7 player setups:

8 player setups:

9 player setups:

10 player setups:

Maybe also 10+ player setups, but I don't think many situations will arise in which I have the opportunity to host such a game. My family ain't that big and I don't have this many friends or relatives I can think of to put them all together on a day other than my birthday. My birthday is pretty much the only day on which I have some sort of chance to bring this idea to attention and get it to happen because it's my birthday and I can decide a bit more on this day than other days.

[vizIIsto]

Well, there's is one setup that were quite popular on discord and easy to play. There is no power roles, just town and mafia or whatever you like call them. At the start of the game 1 town is designated gun owner and therefore confirmed to be town. This person's goal is to shoot mafia before day ends and rest players can suggest targets. There is no voting or anything, day ends after someone is shot or time is up. If mafia was shot, new day starts and same person is gun owner, if town was shot, gun owner dies and targeted town becomes new gun owner, if time is up, gun owner dies and new gun owner is chosen randomly from all living towns. Goal is for mafia simply to reach parity with town. To divide players to teams it's simple formula - if players number is odd, town has 1 more player than mafia, if number is even, town has 2 more players than mafia. This setup is quite fun even for 3 players - gun owner has to figure out which one of other 2 players is bad, while other 2 players are trying to convince gun owner that it's the other one is bad

That's a great alternative version of mafia! It doesn't really look like mafia because it has different rules (also, it is hard to explain how a TOWNIE has a gun while usually the MAFIA kill the players), but it works for small setups! Bigger setups become more difficult though.

Also, I'm going to put in my own few ideas tomorrow. If they are unbalanced, please let me know so I know to remove it.