Vengeful Mafia

Name: Vengeful Mafia Setup Size: Micro Players: 5 Setup Type: Micro Open Micro Designer: Kelly Chen

Vengeful is a 5-player Open Setup devised by Kelly Chen.

Setup

The following roles are used:

• 1 Flagbearer
• 1 Mafia Goon
• 3 Vanilla Townies

Mechanics

The game uses standard mafia rules, with the following exceptions and details:

• Nightless. The mafia have no night kill.
• If the flagbearer is eliminated at any point, the town immediately wins. (This is the only special quality of the flagbearer.)
• If, on Day 1 only, one of the townies is eliminated, this townie immediately gets to make a kill. (See Vengeful)
• The town does not automatically win by having the flagbearer killed in this way.
• Mafia wins when there are at least as many mafia as townies, and the town doesn't have a vengeful kill to use.

Notes

Assuming all elimination and vengeance decisions are made randomly, mafia will win 60% of games and town will win 40%.

The mafia's win odds are:

• 20% chance of flagbearer elimination D1 * 0% chance of mafia win in this case +
• 20% chance of second mafia elimination D1 * 75% chance to survive final four * 67% chance to survive final three +
• 60% chance of townie elimination D1 *
  • (50% chance of vig kill targeting a townie +
  • 50% chance of vig kill targeting mafia * 67% chance to survive final three)

The current statistics are:

• Total Games: 65
• Town Win: 38.46%
• Scum Win: 61.54%
• Draw: 0%

Myths

1. Mafia should be able to win by quickelimination;

   However: Due to the eliminated townie's vengeful kill, it's not likely that the mafia will be able to pull this off without losing a member. If it's obvious who the mafia are, one will be vengekilled, and the other eliminated on Day 2.

1. Getting a successful vengekill D1 is almost as good as eliminating scum on D1.

   However: If the town eliminates one of the mafia D1, the town's odds of winning become 75%: 100% if the flagbearer is eliminated, or 50% if the second mafia is eliminated. On the other hand, when a townie is eliminated D1, the town's odds drop to 16.7%: There is only a 50% chance that the town can even continue the game (by getting a mafia member killed), and in this case there is only a 33% chance of going on to correctly eliminate the remaining mafia in the final 3.

Variations

Seven-player variant

See Vengeful Mafia 7p for information on the 7-player variant.

History

The initial setup included 2 generic mafia and 3 townies. Anyone who died Day 1 was able to submit a nightkill, townie or scum, essentially keeping the town always at Eliminate or Lose. The odds strongly favored mafia (76.7%), and skilled players could easily manipulate the town. This thinking led to Rosso Carne developing the so-called "Vengeful Gambit." Night 0, he told his scum partner to make small slips, and he would call out every single one of them continuously, and push extremely hard for his partner's elimination. After pushing the gambit, either Rosso was eliminated, revealing scum, and half-confirming his partner, or his partner is eliminated, making the town's trust of Rosso rise. Either way, the eliminated mafia could make a nightkill, and with a town at ELo day 2, scum would ride to an easy victory. In his next game, Rosso played smooth and actually made good arguments, and through reverse psychology, led to another scum win. The early games had no recorded town wins.

The early scum dominance (and indifference of scum to being eliminated) led Kelly to add the rule saying a eliminated mafioso would not get a nightkill. If town eliminated good day 1, it would be 4v1 day 2. Still, this did not help town enough, as no town wins have been seen with this setup.

The next and current step in the evolution of this game is splitting the mafia into a GF and vanilla mafia. If the GF is ever eliminated , the town wins. If the vanilla is eliminated day 1, it goes to day 2. This greatly decreased the gambit play, as it was risky to obviously expose the mafia if one elimination could result in a loss.

One previous trend was Mastermind of Sin's "pairing" system, wherein he made pairs of the other 4 players, eliminated one of a pair, and if that person was not scum, they vengekilled the other person in the pair. The obvious problem is that if MoS is scum, he can manipulate the pairings to make conditions for a scum win easy. This led to his being eliminated at least three times for making pairings.

One factor that led to increased town wins early on (pre 2007) was that it became much rarer to see townies ask to be eliminated, or be obliged if they did. The town was even managing to eliminate the flagbearer D1, which formerly never happened. Players seemed to be putting more time into creating and looking over voting patterns.

In 2010, Open 234 set a record for fastest non-Marathon Mafia game on the site.

The Flagbearer used to be called a Godfather in this setup.