Commonly Asked Questions on Mafia Theory

[Vi]

I like how this topic is trying to be the premium version of the wiki

[Vi]

I have to agree with kuribo in a sense. The critical thing is finding what works to start with.

To do that, you have to discover for yourself how to find scum, and separately how not to get lynched.

I also agree with kuribo that after some point people will intentionally resist you because they want you to be less effective. Screw them.

[Vi]

One of the concepts of Mafia is 'play to wincon.'

But it seems to me that neutrals rarely win. Games are designed on the assumption that the SK is simply a hindrance for one of the other factions, clogging up scumreads and making night time more deadly.

It is fair to tell people 'play to win' and then have them start in a position where they have almost no chance of winning? It's like setting up a race and randomly deciding one of the runners has to wear a weighted vest.

Is there a way to include neutrals in the game where they are more than a condiment to the real factions, and the game doesn't become overly swingy?

The more factions you have, the more swingy a game is going to be. Multiball is so notorious for this that it's either banned or strongly discouraged in Normal games (I haven't checked).

Most of the time SKs have some form of benefit that helps their odds out. Usually they're NK-immune; other times they get weirder benefits (like the time I drew a role that killed and then recruited targets, in that order). They still generally lose but a lot of people enjoy being on a team of 1 against the rest of the game.

There have been games with third-party groupscum that have their own agendas, but those are usually in the really strange games and the design philosophy is likely difficult to transfer or generalize.