Mafia Variants Thread

[Milldawg]

Post your mafia variants! The idea is to share variants in order to develop them better. As such, comments/questions/criticisms are encouraged.

Here are some I've come up with already.

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MAFIA: GHOST TOWN

In Ghost Town, dead players are ghosts, and they exist in the ghost world. But ghosts can be reincarnated back into the real world, so there's no "elimination" from this game.

Roles:
Mafia. The mafia are just like normal mafia: they work together to kill one living person per night.
Ghost shamans. Ghost shamans are the opposite of mafia. They work together to resurrect one ghost per night.
Detectives. There should probably be only one detective, who can investigate as long as he's alive, and can only investigate currently living people.
Villagers. Everyone else. When they're alive, they vote to lynch people. When they're dead, they vote to resurrect people.

The mafia win by all being alive at one time. The villagers win by keeping all the mafia dead at one time. At the beginning of the game, the GM assigns roles, and then splits the population in two: half alive, half dead. (If there's an uneven number, probably start with more alive. The numbers may change as the game goes in since it's possible to abstain from either lynching or resurrecting.) There will be a greater number of mafia than normal, since there is a lot of resurrecting going on. It will always start with at least 1 mafia dead and at least 1 mafia alive. Mafia can consult with each other, and ghost shamans can consult with each other, but there must be at least 1 ghost shaman dead to resurrect people.

Night/day cycles are reversed in the ghost world. Ghost shamans resurrect during the day, and ghosts vote to resurrect during the night. This helps keep ghosts and humans separate. While the humans are discussing lynching during the day, the ghost shamans are plotting silently who to resurrect. And while the ghosts and discussing resurrection during the night, the mafia are plotting silently who to kill. When the mafia consult on kills, they can all take part in the consultation regardless of whether they're alive or dead. The same goes for ghost shamans.

In a game of 10 people, there would probably be 3 mafia, 2 ghost shamans, 1 detective, and 4 villagers (just an example).

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DEATH ISLAND

In Death Island, everyone has a unique occupation/role which is publicly known (!), but one person is ALSO secretly the DEATH ISLAND KILLER. This variant is ideal with 6-8 players. Players get to choose which occupation they want (usually determined by first-come-first-serve). Aside from everything being known, the game mechanics are much like normal mafia.

The roles so far are:
DOCTOR: The doctor can protect one other person at night, preventing that person from being murdered that night.
PSYCHIATRIST: The psychiatrist hypnotize one person at night, preventing that person from voting the following day.
PRIEST: The priest can bless one other person at night, preventing that person from being lynched the following day.
JUDGE: When there is a tie, the judge may choose to break the tie.
DETECTIVE: The detective can guess who is going to die at night. He picks two people. If one of them is accurate, then he can choose someone to investigate, but he doesn't learn which of them is going to die. (Basically a nerfed version of the normal detective.)
WITCH: The witch can call upon the spirit of a dead villager for one day, allowing them to vote.
ACUPUNCTURIST: The acupuncturist can nullify another player's occupation for one day/night. (This does not affect murdering. Nullifying himself/the accountant has no effect.)
ACCOUNTANT: The accountant is too boring and lame ever to be the killer. Basically, a guaranteed innocent. (7+ only)
SENATOR: The senator gets two votes. (7+ only)

Some of these are experimental and have weird interactions. Accountant and Senator should probably not be used in small games. In larger games, it might be possible to duplicate some roles, and/or to have two killers, possibly working independently.

In this variant, actions are not made public until they become relevant. For instance, if the psychiatrist hypnotizes Zilla, Zilla will still get to cast his vote. But once the votes are tallied, it will THEN be revealed that his vote does not count.

[Rocco]

I would like to be a detective, (might be on randomly)

[Milldawg]

this isn't an actual game, just a list of suggestions for variants

[Ricky_Honejasi]

BASIC IDEA : PANDORA MAFIA

Similar to the usual Mafia we play, the huge difference is that everyone got a custom role thought and assigned by the game creator WITHOUT the players knowing its existence, related rules, etc. The ideal behind it is for the sudden surprises from the roles' feats that come in play.

Since the custom roles can vary a lot, some specific constants :

-> The game starts with a known number of "bad guys" (Mafioso and any custom role on the "evil side")
-> If a detective inspect someone, he will know of the inspected player's role in addition of any rules/feats regarding it.
-> If a player's role have a "public" effect and uses it, his role (and related rules) will be revealed (ex : a Mayor role that allows to gain +2 vote count and then show his "Mayor ID" to gain benefit of the +2 vote count).

[Milldawg]

I tried something like that once. It was awful. But that's probably because the roles I made up were completely ridiculous.

[tipereth]

I am still hugely in favor of a villager who can kill people at night. (Obviously this only works in large games)

[Zilla-]

I am still hugely in favor of a villager who can kill people at night. (Obviously this only works in large games)

this

[Mucky]

MY NAME IS ZILLA I'M A BILLA FROM THE VILLA ON TOP OF THE HILLA AND I HAVE SEX WITH GAY PEOPLE

fix'd

[mAc Chaos]

There should be one where the people in the middle aren't automatically on the side of the people trying to find the bad guys.  In other words, they can choose their allegiance, so that makes it so you have people trying to tempt others with corrupt bargains and so on.  The last group standing wins!

[AA7Dragoon]

Third Faction, anyone? o_0

[mAc Chaos]

Isn't that a game?

EDIT: Wait, no, that's Red Faction.

[AA7Dragoon]

mAc is on the right track.  If we can get a really big game, we could create a third faction:

Mafia
Hitmen
Town

The Hitmen become a sort of middle-man, where both sides try to recruit them.  There's a variety of factors and rules that would be needed to make it all work but I believe it's possible.  We're possibly looking at 1-2 Hitmen at the most.

[Milldawg]

Don't forget that game of chatroom mafia where I had three teams of mafia

[Thalraxal]

Don't forget that game of chatroom mafia where I had three teams of mafia

Yes, that was insane.  Shadowflare and I ended up assassinating each other.  It was awesome.

[Lavarinth]

I've been developing a variant that uses a truer sense of mafia and instead is mafia war.