Real life Mafia

[willows_weep]

well sure. Hm I will check out where you live in a moment...if its there . I so far have my summers free! I dont think I have my email on here but you can pm it I suppose.
thanks

[Pie_is_good]

crap, I don't live anywhere near a mafiascum member...

I play mafia during brunch and lunch at school with a group of friends. WE've figured out how to do just about everything modless, with the exception of communication. We've done newspeople, cop/insane cop/naive cop/paranoid cop/ whatever cop you want, doctor, mafia, mad scientists, masons, cults, you name it.

RL mafia is alot different, as 99% of the time we don't rely on logic but on facial expressions. With practice, we can pretty much read each other, so the most common question is not "why did you say that?" but "Are you the mafia?". I personally like this version (online) better, as it boils down to logic and psychology instead of if you can read somebody or not, which hardly seems like mafia.

-pie

[mathcam]

crap, I don't live anywhere near a mafiascum member...

Location: Earth

Earth? I feel like I've heard of that. Is that anywhere near Alpha Centauri?

Cam

[PolarBoy]

I think it's closer to Proxima Centauri, or in the neighborhood of Sol, or whatever that insignificant yellow star is called. You know, out on the unfashionable western arm of the milky way.

Anyway Pie, two thoughts. 1.) Could you elaborate on some of the things you've been able to do with no mod? I'd love to hear. 2.) Have you tried masking your tells at all? I mean figure out what it is you do as mafia that clues people in, and either stop yourself from doing it, or, if you can't manage that(most people can't), start doing it as a townie too. It'll get you killed as a townie a few times, but then people will stop using it as a tell. On the same note look for how people know it when you're a special pro-town role. Then you can trick the mafia into killing you as a plain townie.

[Pie_is_good]

Polar-- 1) it's kinda hard to mask your tells. I try to do that, but it makes me look self-concience and people can tell then. I have a group of 8 or so at school who can't read me for beans and I either win when I'm scum or get killed when I'm pro-town, then the group at home has 1 person who can read me. I don't like it as much, the setup is townie-townie-townie-scum and no kill just lynch. I tried being suspicious when I was a townie too, and they still used it against me and I was lynched first every time until I stopped doing it.

2) We pass out cards and decide what each card is beforehand. If you get lynched you flip your card over to show that you are dead and what you are. AT night:

1)decide on somebody to be announcer. They say "mafia wake up, mafia go to sleep, cop wake up... etc." but they have their eyes closed the whole time (unless they have to wake up in the night). The mafia kills by flipping over the card of their victim.

2) Cop looks at somebody's card and puts it back face-down for their investigation.

3) for doctor, you switch a card in the middle for the card of whoever you want to protect. Then, when the mafia kills, if they flip over the middle card then the person was saved.

4) masons are 2 of the same card. Announcer says "masons, wake up", they see each otehr, then go back to sleep.

5) cult-- they look at somebody's card, like a cop. If they're town, they tap them and that person wakes up and becomes part of the cult. If they're scum, the cult person announces their death in the morning.

6) any weird kind of cop-- let's say you're playing with a cop, insane cop, naive cop, and paranoid cop. Pass out cards that are "cop1, cop2, cop3, and cop4. Everybody goes to sleep. Mafia wakes up and makes 4 piles of cards in front of each player-- they choose a pile to have all guilties, a pile to have all innocents, a pile to have whatever the player really is, and a pile to have the opposite of what the player really is. Let's say the mafia chooses to have the guilty pile be #3, the innocent to be #1, the opposite to be #4, and the regular to be #2. The announcer then says, "cop 1 wake up". Cop 1 wakes up and investigates somebody under their pile1 card. Since Cop 1 will always get innocent, he is the naive cop. then, "cop 2 wake up". Since they will get regular, they are the cop. "cop3"- guilty, so they are paranoid, and cop 4 is insane.

wow, that was confusing. let me know if you have questions.

7) Mad scientists- works like a doctor, except have a different card. If they save somebody, it works like a doctor. If they don't, then everybody checks their card and somebody announces that they were hit by the mad scientist last night.

8) Newspeople-- have a seperate "newsperson" pile that only has "home" or "away". They may choose to investigate home/away, or use a doctor protection method on themselves.

arite. that was weird.

-pie

[shelper]

I've been playing around with the idea of a dutch get-together on this board for a while. I think we have about 6 or 7 active dutchies, and if people bring some friends along, we could have a few good games.

Anyway, to keep this on-topic i was wondering about a way that you could play mafia in real life, without exluding the possibility of insane roleclaims (my favourite part).

In standard RL mafia, the role names are called out one by one (cop, wake up; doc wake up; scum, wake up). This ofcourse stops people from claiming roles that are not announced at night.

(except for passive roles, anti-lynch vest, no ending-vote and so on...).

So what about, instead of role names, you call player names.

(jimmy, wake up; steve, wake up; dave, wake up).

And you go through all the players this way. You can set say, a 30 second deadline in which every night action MUST have chosen a target. Townies and passive players don't do anything in those thirty seconds. Nights will take a while this way, especially with larger groups, but mafia isn't really a game for the impatient anyway.
The only thing left to work out is scum/mason/cult discussion. You'd still want to let those players communicate. Since masons don't usually have much to talk about you can just put the names of the other masons on their playing cards but it's still nice to know you have the option of communicating with fellow masons.

(two fingers followed by a point = i think he is scum. one finger followed by a point = i think he is innocent, or something along those lines).

Mafia and cult would need more complex communication ofcourse.

If you spot any major errors in my reasoning here of have any idea how i could make more complex communication work your thoughts would be appreciated.

[Phoebus]

In effect, you're suggesting this. A variant of it anyways.
It sounds rather fun but from how I see it, the only way you could have scum/cult conversation would be to go over to each member and tap them on the shoulder so that they open their eyes. However your movements might give hints to the remaining players.
However, in case you are playing with cards and not roles written down on paper, it really precludes any fantastic claims for there is only so much a card can convey.
If you have the enthusiasm to come out with a full blown theme, I'm sure I'd rather play a couple of games it takes in the time for you to explain theme mechanics and background, write down roles and abilities on paper and hand them around, get started etc etc.

A couple of solutions:
Random roles
OR
Secret roles

These might just be the solutions you need while doing away with the need for a full blown theme. Yoiu can still say, scum wake up and let them talk but you'll also have to ask vig/doc/cop to wake up even if they're not in the game and do so every night for consistency's sake.