Balance in Face to Face (Party Game) Mafia

[Hoopla]

I don't get it ... Doesn't announcing which mini-night it is announce which roles are in the game?

That is easily solvable. If you have a game that has 6 night actions for example, tell everyone to put their blindfolds on, turn up some noisy electronic music to stifle out sound and movement tells, and then as the mod individually tap a player on the shoulder and remove their blindfold and get them to point to their target. Once that's decided, put their blindfold back on repeat the process for the other PR's. For scum, you can tap them all at once for their turn to interact and pick a target - the same goes for masons if you want to give them 30 seconds of interaction.

Make sure nights go for similar amounts of time to eliminate tells of how many roles are in the game.

[Magua]

If you have a set pool of roles that is not too large, you can also simply announce, "Doctor, wake up," wait 10 seconds or so, "Doctor, go back to sleep," even if there is no Doctor.

[zoraster]

how about everyone has to text something to the moderator on their cell phone at night. VTs just do "checking in" or whatever, but the power roles text their target. I wouldn't do this if it's a small group as it's quicker just to do pointing and multiphased night. But if you've got a large group with lots of possible power roles, then this might be a good idea.

[Hoopla]

But I don't have a cell phone!! I don't want my action randomised.

[Mr. Flay]

Yes. Almost all F2F games are Open, by virtue of the circumstances.

The only way to maintain secrecy is to announce ALL possible roles each Night, which I'll do sometimes when I don't want them to know if there's really an SK, for example. That makes it Semi-Open.

Struck for missing the new page.

I thought about posting about cell phones, but there's way too much metagaming there for my liking.

[zoraster]

But I don't have a cell phone!! I don't want my action randomised.

Okay... then have everyone write on scraps of paper... first their name* (best to have them prelabel their pieces before the game... maybe even have them do so in a different color of ink) and second their target's name. Everyone hands in paper. Night is done.

Again, I think this is something only worth doing for largish games (say 10+ people) as it just seems sort of needlessly fussy with fewer players.

*If you don't have double roles, maybe best to have them label it with a role name instead of their actual name... makes the mod's job easier... remember that as a mod in a face to face you want to be able to calculate night results very very quickly or your ADD friends are going to start to get restless.

[Faraday]

That is easily solvable. If you have a game that has 6 night actions for example, tell everyone to put their blindfolds on, turn up some noisy electronic music to stifle out sound and movement tells, and then as the mod individually tap a player on the shoulder and remove their blindfold and get them to point to their target. Once that's decided, put their blindfold back on repeat the process for the other PR's. For scum, you can tap them all at once for their turn to interact and pick a target - the same goes for masons if you want to give them 30 seconds of interaction.

This works, though you don't need music or blindfolds, although music could probably help I think the amount of times anyone was caught via movement tells at Goofbash was pretty much never. We did fine at Goofbash running fairly convoluted closed set-ups this way.

[callforjudgement]

I don't get it ... Doesn't announcing which mini-night it is announce which roles are in the game?

For what it's worth, my solution to this is typically an open setup with respect to night actions, closed with respect to day actions. You can have some fun, though, like including no doctor and telling an SK (that you don't want the players to know the existence of) to act in the Doctor phase (although for practical purposes, the Vigilante phase works better). Or claim rolenames the players don't recognise to cause mass paranoia (whether or not they're actually in the game). As I said earlier, my F2F games tend to have a lot of day actions (using them confirms that you have them, but not your alignment) because they're easier to mod, make nights shorter, and can be quite a lot of fun), so mini-night leakage is less of a problem in that sense.

[Xalxe]

I've never tried a F2F game with day actions IIRC. Perhaps I shall...

[Mr. Flay]

Daykill Vigilante is hilarious. We had one at Dragon*Con with 'balefire' flavor...

[quadz08]

Question: when you all play IRL / F2F mafia, do you typically do reveals? There's a group singer and I have played with a few times that only do reveals on lynches, but not on NKs.

We find it kind of awful. Thoughts?

[CremePudding]

There's an extremely simplified variation of mafia played in Hong Kong known as "MC Killer".

There's always only one scum and one doctor (sometimes more doctors), and in case a townie is lynched, all these who vouched for the lynch also dies.

......Yeah. It is much harder because everyone smirks.

Everyone

.

[Xalxe]

Question: when you all play IRL / F2F mafia, do you typically do reveals? There's a group singer and I have played with a few times that only do reveals on lynches, but not on NKs.

We find it kind of awful. Thoughts?

what is this i dont even

Nope, reveals happen.

[quadz08]

Question: when you all play IRL / F2F mafia, do you typically do reveals? There's a group singer and I have played with a few times that only do reveals on lynches, but not on NKs.

We find it kind of awful. Thoughts?

what is this i dont even

Nope, reveals happen.

That's pretty much what we thought.

New question based on that question: what's a balanced setup for that reveal mechanic? Is that even possible?

[Xalxe]

No reveal is just bad. Removes setup speculation, etc. Unless you've got like a one-shot janitor, everything should be revealed.

[zoraster]

setup speculation has less of a place in f2f i think. In forum mafia you have a few things that make weird mechanics, setups, etc. optimal: 1) you play these games over and over again; 2) there are realistically few ways of detecting scum.

In a f2f you can really let scum hunting shine because personal interaction is fun regardless of who wins. While I think many people here secretly realize they have a lot of trouble actually detecting whether someone is lying and is scum, I think f2f most people believe they have a better than good chance at figuring out who's lying to them. So if someone is scum and gets away with it, it's more fun because of the "I can't believe you were able to lie that well!" factor. If you catch someone, well, that feels good too.

My point of all that is that f2f and forum mafia are substantially different and should be treated as such. I don't think most people want to spend much time with setup speculation when they're playing in real life.

If you don't have an SK or a vigilante in your game, then no reveal at night doesn't really do that much harm in a face to face. In fact it's kind of fun because you might allow a scum to fake some other power claim.

[callforjudgement]

The group I'm in typically reveals alignment, but not full role, upon death. The main reason is so that scum can come up with plausible fakeclaims during a massclaim; with night roles mostly known, scum would otherwise have no real scope for claiming anything other than VT after a couple of days. (A fullclaim on LYLO day is very common.)

[Xalxe]

See my group doesn't understand the concept of claiming.

Or some dumbass claims during twilight and gets killed.

*sigh*

[Isa]

I was introduced to Mafia through my SSBM buddies here in Sweden. The traditional way of playing is this:

Open setup. 16 players is ideal, but one game had 27 players with this setup. (I was scum, and we managed to kill the Doc night 1 and Cop night 3.)
1 Cop
1 Doc, cannot protect the same target twice in a row unless he successfully saved someone last night
25-33% Mafia, aiming for 25%

No reveals. None. Some mods slip on this unintentionally but only on claimed persons.

Days have a set deadline of roughly 10 minutes, this always gets extended though. During the day, people discuss and eventually nominate someone they'd like to see lynched. Each player may only nominate one other player at a time. At one point in time, the mod calls for the voting phase to begin, and everyone goes silent. In order of when they were nominated, with the one being nominated first starting, they all defend themselves for roughly 30 seconds. After everyone has held their defense speech, voting begins. No Lynches don't happen, or at least haven't so far.

Nights are standard - "Mafia wakes", "Mafia sleeps", "Doc wakes", "Doc sleeps", "Cop wakes", "Cop sleeps", and the next day starts.

[quadz08]

I definitely like the pointing system of voting, rather than the whole "nominations" business. It's a little more work to keep track of stuff, especially in large games, but I think the outcome is a more cohesive, sensical day phase.

[Xalxe]

My players are usually fairly good about voting; if necessary, I tell them to STFU and ask "who wants to lynch Matthew?" They raise their hands; if majority happens, lynch, otherwise carry on.

[Blackberry]

I've probably played the most f2f Mafia more than anyone here.

I started a 'Mafia Club' at my college and we played at least once a week. We would play from 8/9pm-2/3am in the morning. I started it my first few weeks of my freshman year... you do the math of how many games I played .

If you have any specific questions you still think need answered, feel free to ask. =)

For first-comers: Start off simple. Make sure you have a compotent moderator (you'd be surprised how difficult this is for some people...).

Maybe start a game with just mafia and one cop. Then add in a doctor. It might be a good idea to let everyone know they're allowed to lie and pretend to be a cop or doctor. It's not uncommon for town to fake-claim cop or doctor for fun, especially with new players. Don't discourage them from doing this, let them figure out the game for themselves and have fun =).

For the moderator:

Double-check with mafia who they're killing, as they're pointing, it can sometimes be difficult to make sure you know exactly who they are pointing at (same with Doctor and Cop).

Make sure when you double check that none of your actions reveal who is or isn't the mafia.

Make sure you keep track in your head or on paper who is dead/saved.

As mentioned earlier, make sure you don't talk at someone, continue moving around the circle, or talk in one specific direction.

[Seraphim]

My best f2f gaming tip: always fakeclaim doctor.

Always.

If/when you hit lylo, get real doctor to claim, team up, lynch scum.

Or lynch town, depending on your alignment.

[Elliterate]

I've played a few irl mafia and I think the body and voice tells you can pick up on aren't as advantageous as having a chat and voting log.

[Quilford]

I've played a few irl mafia and I think the body and voice tells you can pick up on aren't as advantageous as having a chat and voting log.

I disagree. If you know that person well, which usually happens after you play with them a few times, you can deduce their alignment very fast.

e.g. I'm really obvious when I'm scum because I can't smile. I just can't. And a friend knows how to pick up on this really well >__>

And even when you don't know them too well or you can't even see their body language (i.e. Skype mafia), their tone of voice says wonders. Scum are more likely to trail off or to let themselves be drowned out, for example.