Mafia Guide

✘ OVERVIEW

Mafia is a game based upon misleading the other players. There are two primary teams: the uninformed majority, Town, and the informed minority, Mafia. Occasionally, there is a third neutral faction with their own objectives.

The game is split into a series of day and night phases, during which players on each team will strive to eliminate players from the other team. Traditionally, the mafia kills one townsperson each night, and everyone votes during the day for one person to eliminate. Town will try to vote for suspicious players while mafia members will pretend to be townspeople and sway the votes towards scapegoats.

There are a variety of additional special mechanics, such as special abilities, items, events, or extra rules. These are generally up to the individual hosts of the games to decide.


✘ TEAMS

TOWN
The Town is typically the largest group. A townsperson is not aware of the alignments of other players. The Town aims to kill all of the Mafia members. Their main way to play is through discussion during the phases about the events of the last phase, and deciding upon who to lynch if it’s a day phase. Townies should be wary of anyone offering information, since there’s a possibility of the person being a Mafia member!

MAFIA
The Mafia are normally the smaller group. They aim to outnumber the Town and secure their own win. Sometimes they will have to take out all non-Mafia players. Their main advantage is the fact they know who the other Mafia members are, thus being able to coordinate their moves. During the night phase, the Mafia gets a Night Kill that they can use to kill a selected target. Any Mafia member may send it in.The Mafia needs to be careful to not stick out too much, otherwise they may find themselves being lynched.

NEUTRALS
Neutrals are players that are not aligned with either Town or Mafia, and have their own separate goals. The win conditions and abilities of the Neutral depend on the Host. They can side with whomever they please, if they decide to work for the benefit of either Town or Mafia.They, however, run a high risk of being killed by either the Mafia or the Town, due to their unpredictable nature.

✘ GAMEPLAY

The game alternates between two phases: day and night. Most actions can only be taken during a certain phase. Phases usually last 24 hours, and the results of the phase are summed up by the host in a post known as Rollover. Traditionally, games start with a night phase.

DAY PHASE
the Day Phase is when the Town and the Mafia gets together to discuss who to lynch. The Mafia will often try to sway the Town to vote for a Townie or Neutral. Roles with special abilities that activate during the day usually involve manipulating the lynch in some way, either by changing votes behind the scenes, or by protecting the lynch target.


Voting
Players vote for a candidate they want to be lynched. A player casts their vote by including the bolded phrase, vote: [NAME] in a post in the thread. All votes (unless manipulated by a role ability) are made publicly so that players can analyze each others' votes and ask for reasoning.

Lynches
The player with the highest number of votes will be lynched at the end of the day phase. This means the player is killed, and their role and alignment are revealed during rollover.



NIGHT PHASE
The other phase is the Night Phase, which is when the Mafia can send in their Night Kill, and when most roles with special abilties will act. Most night actions, including the mafia night kill, are performed in secret by PMing the action to the host of the game.


Standard Night Abilities
The roles tend to change from game to game, depending on the host, but there are several main ones that tend to be used in most games.


• Investigator: A player that can look at another and find out either their role or alignment. Sometimes called: detective, cop
  
  
• Protector: A player that can stop another player from being killed or stunned/jailed. Sometimes called: doctor, bodyguard
  
  
• Killer: A player that can attack and kill another player. Sometimes called: vigilante, serial killer
  
  
• Action Blocker: A player that can prevent another player from performing any actions. Sometimes called: stunner, jailer
  
  Any side can have any number of roles with special abilities. Players without special abilities are called vanilla, or as some people like to say, "The vanilla's role power is discussing and voting in the thread."
  

✘ BONUS MECHANICS

ITEMS AND EVENTS

Some game hosts will include random events or items into the game, with varying effects. Items often work as one-time special abilities. Most games won’t have this feature, and if they do the host will explain them.

REVERSE GAMES

Some games will swap the position of the Town and the Mafia, making it so that the Mafia is the larger group that doesn’t contact one another while the Town has the advantage of directly being able to speak to one another. In this setup, the night kill is chosen by mafia members PMing the host secret votes during the night, while the day votes remain public. Town usually cannot kill at night, and must sway the outcome of the night kill with clever manipulation.