Rules

The first step of any game of Mafia is to decide on the roles. In a basic game, this may be as simple as "I want a game with 20 people. 4 Mafia members seems a good number for this size."

During the day, everyone can post whatever accusations they like. Voting is generally done in some specific format (such as Vote: IS) to make it easier for the Moderator to keep count. Once someone reaches a majority, that player is lynched and the rest of the players find out whether or not they have lynched a Mafia member.

In more complicated versions, (which is most any game played on MafiaScum these days) there are different roles on each side that can do various things at night, or somehow break these rules. Players with these roles communicate their choices to the Moderator at the same time as the Mafia. Different types of roles that can be used are described in detail in the Roles Section.

See the FAQ for more specific information on playing Mafia online.

A Flash Guide to Mafia may be helpful (created by mikeburnfire).

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This information is probably out of date, and needs to be edited by someone who knows what has happened since the last update.

A more up-to-date telling of the rules in a nutshell, this one assuming the Newbie Game Open Setup:

The GameModerator secretly sends everyone a role. Two people are the Mafia, who know who the other is and are trying to kill everyone else. One person is a Cop, who can investigate people to determine their allegiance. One person is a Doctor, who can protect people from the mafia's kill. Three people are Townies, with no special powers. Everyone confirms receiving their pms, and then the game moves to Day 1.

Due to the New Newbie Setup, there are four possible setups which the moderator chooses randomly from. This was done to balance the Breaking Strategy of the town Cop claiming and then reducing the game to a process of elimination. The Game Moderator selects from:

• 2 Mafia, 1 Cop, 1 Doc, and 3 Townies
• 2 Mafia, 1 Cop and 4 Townies
• 2 Mafia, 1 Doc and 4 Townies
• 2 Mafia and 5 Townies

The game consists of cycles of Day and Night. During the day, everyone can post basically anything in the thread, (with a few ground rules, found in the top post of the Read This First thread, and more specific ones in the top couple posts of the game thread) with the intent of finding and lynching the mafia. Everyone has one Vote for whom to lynch, which they can allocate by bolding vote:player and/or unvote:player (or No Lynch, which is a vote to lynch no one, as opposed to simply no vote) in their posts. When a majority is reached, that person (if any) is Lynched, the mod reveals their role with a Death Scene, and the game moves to Night.

During the night, the mafia discusses and living players with Night Choices (i.e anyone but a Townie) send their targets to the mod via PM: whom the mafia kill, whom the cop investigates, and whom the doc protects. Once all the choices are in, the mod sends the cop the result of his investigation and posts in the thread with the identity and role of the night victim (if any), and day begins again.

Repeat until all the mafia are gone (in which case the town wins) or there are as many town as there are mafia, so the mafia can't get lynched (in which case the mafia wins).