Balance in Face to Face (Party Game) Mafia

[cicero]

A friend of mine is really excited about hosting a living room game of mafia on her birthday. We can expect 12-15 people in a game, I think. I think she underestimates the importance of game balance. For my part, I've played very little real life mafia so am not sure of the dynamics.

So my main question is: Does the face to face nature of the game change the balance dynamics in any material way? (Is a cop overpowered for example). What set ups would you suggest for living room games?

Any other comments or advice on living room mafia?

[shaft.ed]

Never done it, but scum are much easier to catch given facial expressions and body language often give away people who are lying.

I think the night game is actually a bit of a distraction from face to face, but I could be wrong.

[Meransiel]

The most important thing about face to face games is role distribution, if you ask me. Unlike forum mafia play, in real life games people have more real and stronger urges against each other (so basically ALL lynches before lylo will be policy lynches). That means, careful who you give what role.

[IceGuy]

Scum are much easier to catch in f2f mafia, and scum can't talk. So depending on your group of players, even 2:5 can be balanced.

Tone down on the night actions. Eight night actions aren't a problem in forum mafia, but nobody wants to wait for eight people being called in f2f mafia.

When speaking during night, do not speak to the people you're calling, speak to a corner in the room.

If you're starting from scratch, get index cards and someone who can draw. Vary the roles a bit but don't forget to explain them beforehand (explaining them in the cards is bad since it will make a good PR hunting tool to see how long everybody reads his card). Don't forget to randomize the roles so there is no "whom would cicero choose for that role"?

Number of scum goes down when number of drinks goes up.

[Faraday]

A friend of mine is really excited about hosting a living room game of mafia on her birthday. We can expect 12-15 people in a game, I think. I think she underestimates the importance of game balance. For my part, I've played very little real life mafia so am not sure of the dynamics.

So my main question is: Does the face to face nature of the game change the balance dynamics in any material way? (Is a cop overpowered for example). What set ups would you suggest for living room games?

Any other comments or advice on living room mafia?

For 12 people friends and enemies is very balanced, in f2f. That's 3 scum, 3 masons and 6 townies. it's also REALLY fucking fun. Nothing like running fake mason gambits game after game so you can eventually claim mason with fate (and actually be masons) and have everyone scoff at you for fakeclaiming.

Don't underestimate the power of people being easy to read - unlikely forum mafia where yes, some people are easy to read a lot of people can be very easy to read in f2f. I'm talking uncontrollable giggling when scum, level easy to read. So just bear that in mind.

Just start off with something relatively simple, too. Not too many night actions.

Best thing to do for night actions we found was to just go around and tap people on the shoulder and get them to point at who they target. Wake up mafia as a group and allow them to work out a kill via hand gestures. Very few times did people get caught for 'moving' during the night, so it's not a big deal.

So yeah, let's see.

Friends and Enemies is a REALLY good set-up. It depends onnhow good the group is, but it was reasonably balanced at goofbash.
For 15...eh, it gets difficult, we didn't play that many 15 player games. You could try something like Near Vanilla, which is an open set-up.
http://mafiascum.net/wiki/index.php?title=Near_Vanilla play it with 13 or add a vt and make it 14.
Jungle Republic is pretty fun too as it has 2 scum groups, but can lead to scenarios where claiming scum is the best option.

[shaft.ed]

Would Friends and Enemies and That Other Guy work for a 15 player FTF?
Maybe add in a Mafia Doc?

[Faraday]

What's that?

2 goons
2 werewolves
2 masons
1 back-up mason
8 vt's

That could be fun, though I'm not sure if that's the one you're talking about.

[Magua]

Expect the level of play for a bunch of first-timers to be far less than Faraday's.

...

Oh, wait.

Nevermind.

[Faraday]

I catchin' scum, don't be mad now, stop hatin' is bad.

[shaft.ed]

What's that?

2 goons
2 werewolves
2 masons
1 back-up mason
8 vt's

That could be fun, though I'm not sure if that's the one you're talking about.

I was thinkin 3/4 v 1 v 2/3 masons + remaining vts

[callforjudgement]

Expect a face-to-face game among inexperienced players to start off with several policy lynches in a row for stupid reasons. (It always seems to happen.) I tested this once by putting a hyper-jester role in a meatspace game that only won if they were lynched with unanimity, not just majority (we were using a hammer-timeout rule at the time); the player managed it in less than a minute.

I find that mid-experience meatspace players tend to have more fun with a reasonable amount of power on both the town and scum sides, but that can lead to problems processing night actions. (The solution I use in my own meatspace games, when I normally deal with that sort of player, is to have a huge number of relatively weak day abilities (including some that are probably anti-town to use but people tend to use anyway), that flip role but not alignment when used, and randomized independently of alignment, as well as some standard roles like cop and doc. There are probably other solutions.)

[Hrezs]

my F2F games were usually 2/3 v 5-7 with a cop
seemed to be fairly balanced

[Xalxe]

At camp we play 2 maf + cop + doc always and forever.

I'm just now figuring out this is badly balanced and randomly removing the PRs.

Also having a mafia silencer is fun because mafia will
1) mute annoying newbies
2) Mute themselves as WIFOM
3) Mute good players
but never 4) mute confirmed PRs

[Quilford]

I frequently get annoyed at my friends for playing heavily town-sided setups when f2f mafia is already disadvantaged to the scum.

[Faraday]

Yeah, mafia silencer is hilarious in f2f.

[Mr. Flay]

Scum are much easier to catch in f2f mafia, and scum can't talk. So depending on your group of players, even 2:5 can be balanced.

Tone down on the night actions. Eight night actions aren't a problem in forum mafia, but nobody wants to wait for eight people being called in f2f mafia.

When speaking during night, do not speak to the people you're calling, speak to a corner in the room.

If you're starting from scratch, get index cards and someone who can draw. Vary the roles a bit but don't forget to explain them beforehand (explaining them in the cards is bad since it will make a good PR hunting tool to see how long everybody reads his card). Don't forget to randomize the roles so there is no "whom would cicero choose for that role"?

Number of scum goes down when number of drinks goes up.

This.

[Amrun]

Can someone explain how f2f mafia works? Like how does night work? Day is fairly simple.

[hasdgfas]

Can someone explain how f2f mafia works? Like how does night work? Day is fairly simple.

Night depends on a lot of things. There are a ton of ways to do it, depending on how complex roles your group goes with.

Day may be fairly simple, but there are definitely issues with it.

[izakthegoomba]

I've mosses some f2f.

The only roles you should use are Townie, Cop, Doctor, and Mafia.

For 12/13 people, 3 scum. For 14/15 people, 4 scum.

At night, have everyone close their eyes AND put their heads down on the table. For a Cop, give thumbs up/down for scum/town.

Don't introduce multiple scum groups unless you're REALLY sure they can play well with it.

In my experience, you will get at least three day phases of policy lynches. Probably a couple of policy NKs, too.

[callforjudgement]

Can someone explain how f2f mafia works? Like how does night work? Day is fairly simple.

Typically, every player closes their eyes, and there's a whole sequence of mini-nights, one for each power role; a typical sequence is along the lines of roleblockers/tailors/mafia factional kill/cops/vigilantes/doctors (with the power roles I most commonly end up playing with). (Tailors/framers are more convenient than millers for weakening cops in F2F mafia, incidentally, because they're rather easier for the mod to track.) This requires that you don't duplicate power roles. In a particular mini-night, everyone has to close their eyes, then only players with the appropriate roles are allowed to open their eyes, and they point to choose a target. (Scum all get to see each other when choosing their factional kill, allowing them to communicate frantically with hand signals for a few seconds. You can add a similar mason phase to allow masons to communicate if you want, but more often in F2F mafia, the role is just a "you know X is town, and X knows you are town" sort of role.) Typically, pointing upwards corresponds to deliberately choosing not to perform an action, and pointing at a player to target them. Cops get their results immediately; players who were shot at don't actually die until the end of the night.

Day phase works similarly, except that everyone gets to point in order to choose their vote. (It means that vote-counting is unnecessary, and when someone has a lot of fingers pointing at them they have a tendency to squirm…) Typically, I've seen F2F games played with an "unhammer" rule, where a player on the wagon can cancel a lynch by unvoting within five seconds or so of the hammer (unless the wagon is large enough that the player would be lynched anyway); it's necessary because the timing of quicklynches is otherwise very hard to judge (an unhammer rule makes scum quicklynches useless, so they don't happen). Unvoting/not voting is not pointing at all; a vote to no-lynch is pointing upwards.

The other problem is in role distribution; typically this is done via dealing out cards. The game typically needs a night-0 for factions to identify their members to each other (scum and masons typically have phases where they open their eyes and put their hands up to identify themselves to each other, but typically with no kills or other PR actions done). The moderator doesn't actually need to know anyone's role except for handling cops; if investigative roles come after the scum's factional kill in action resolution sequence, like in the sequence above, then it's possible for everyone present to play, and the moderator to be whoever gets lynched day 1.

[Max]

callforjudgement
When I've played it historically it normally goes:
"I pose a motion to lynch <Insert Name>" then people put their hands up to decide if they want to lynch the person. Give a minute cooldown between each motion to lynch a person and it works fine.

Also, just to throw this out there. If you have a small enough group you can say "Michael, please can you wake up" and go round everyone before finally asking the mafia to wake up. It allows more than one role of the same kind and to have a closed game.

[Faraday]

I prefer the pointing method, it allows you to see vote shifts in real time which can be kinda useful at times.

[zoraster]

You mean you guys don't use digital vote counters and a projection tv to monitor people's votes? What are you? amateurs?

[Xalxe]

You mean you guys don't use digital vote counters and a projection tv to monitor people's votes? What are you? amateurs?

That would be BADASS

[Amrun]

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