Quick Guide to Mafia

History

Original Publication: Sometime in Jan/Feb 2012 by Vi
Recovered from Crash: March 8, 2012 by Vi

Welcome to mafiascum.net!

This is the largest site devoted to playing Mafia on the Internet, and the home of the authoritative Mafia wiki. We're a community centered around playing Mafia - and to get it out of the way early, we're talking about a game you'd play in a youth group; if you're looking for actual organized crime we aren't going to be able to help much. Mafia is originally played face-to-face, but we play on the Internet. This page will help you either way!

This page is going to quickly go through the very basics of what the game is and how it works. If you have any questions, by all means stop by, join our forum and ask in our Mafia Discussion area. There's no harm in it and plenty of people have done just that in the past - don't let being shy stop you from getting an answer. Of course, if you want to see for yourself how we play, we'd love to have you. Just follow the instructions here and you'll be on your way!

As an aside, Werewolf plays by more or less the same rules as Mafia - basically only the names have changed. There are a handful of commercial games that basically co-opt the Mafia concept with slight changes to the rules, too. No matter what you're playing, this guide should get you up and running.

The Big Idea

The basic idea of Mafia is that out of all the people playing, there's a small group of betrayers trying to bring everyone else down. The betrayers are the Mafia, sometimes called "scum" or other unpleasant names. Everyone else is in the Town, otherwise called "villagers" or "innocents" or so forth.

The Town's goal is to get rid of all the scum players. They do this by taking a majority vote each game Day for who they want to get rid of. The Mafia's goal is to outlast all of the Townies until they control the majority vote, at which time there's nothing the Town can do to stop the scum from completely taking over. They can do this by avoiding being voted out and killing players at during the Night phases following each game Day. The crowd that starts the game gets whittled down until eventually only Townies or scum remain in the game.

So strategically, the game comes down to Townies finding and voting out the Mafia as often as possible. The Mafia tries to avoid getting voted out and kill off the players who threaten them at Night.

Ground Rules

Exactly who the scum are and aren't are determined before the game begins. In face-to-face games, each player is given a card of some kind that tells them what their role is. This can be as generic as using standard playing cards where everyone who was given a King is a member of the Mafia. Online, players receive private messages telling them explicitly what they are. Either way, no matter what happens you're not allowed to show people your card or Role PM until the moderator says you can (which will only happen when you're "dead" in game terms).

Face-to-face, games usually begin with a Night phase. Night phases are intended to allow for secret activity. Most of the time, this just means that everyone puts their head down and closes their eyes. The moderator will call upon the Mafia to "awaken", at which time only the players in the Mafia are allowed to open their eyes and move. The purpose of the first Night is so that the Mafia players can learn who else is on their team. Online, this can be done via private messages or secret chat threads so this step is unnecessary.

Then the game goes into Day. How exactly the game progresses to a majority vote is up to the moderator, but eventually a player will be forcibly removed from the game by the collective will of the entire player list. Players thus removed cannot participate in the game in any way until it's over - they get no vote and cannot communicate with the other players. On their way out, the moderator will instruct them to show their card in what's called a flip so everyone will know the alignment of the person they just cast out.

After that, the game goes to Night. As before, everyone "goes to sleep" and the moderator will call upon the Mafia to point out the person they want to kill at Night. Face-to-face, the scum can try to strategize during this time, but they would be foolish to think that the nearby Townies aren't trying to listen for movement! Online, again, secure chat threads are provided and the scum can talk to their hearts' content. The player who is killed by the Mafia flips and is removed from the game much like the player who was voted out.

The cycle of Day and Night continue until either all of the Mafia are voted out or all of the Townies have been removed from the game. In most cases, the game can be called when the Mafia gains veto power over the Day's vote - that is, when all of the Mafia voting together can prevent a majority from ever sentencing one of their own.

Power Roles

Frequently moderators will mix the game up or give one side an edge by throwing special roles into the mix. These power roles have special properties. For instance, a Doublevoter is a player whose vote counts for two when deciding the majority, and a Vigilante is a player who can kill someone else at Night (the moderator wakes them up separately from the Mafia). You don't see these as often in face-to-face because they can start to make one side more powerful than the other, plus it's hard for the moderator to keep track of it all and drags Nights out. Online, though, it's a rare day that you see games without at least one or two power roles in the mix.

If you're interested in what's out there, take a look at the Roles page for some fairly well-known examples. If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, take a look at #Category:Roles.

I'm Town! What do I do?

Face-to-face Guide

There are two things you need to keep in mind about the scum: They have to pretend to be part of the group, and they have to try to stop themselves or their partners from getting the boot. Most people are not natural liars, and under pressure will give themselves away if they're trying to hide something. Of course, some people just can't manage poker faces to begin with, so it's up to you to decide whether they're actually nervous or flustered because of your questioning or because you're right.

This goes both ways, of course - you need to come across as honest as possible because people are going to be scumhunting you. The Mafia can only win because of Townies who come across as untrustworthy, so making sure people don't get the idea that you should be voted out is pretty important.

Online Guide

Online play is much more difficult than face-to-face because most of the cues that make face-to-face Mafia what it is are gone - no visual cues, no verbal tics, and so forth. What you have to rely on instead are what the players are actually saying (and/or are NOT saying) in text form. As a result, tells tend to be quite different - things like people avoiding mention of other players (who turn out to be their scumpartners) or jumping on vote bandwagons for reasons that thinly conceal how much they just want to see someone other than them kicked out come to mind. Thus, online Mafia more resembles a battle of wits - especially as players gain experience and learn what the common pitfalls of newbie scum are.

In addition to the above, some other examples of behavior to watch for is the following:

• "Lurking", or posting much less than usual so as to avoid notice
• "Tunneling", or concentrating excessively on a single player out of proportion to what would be necessary
• "Active Lurking", or continually making placeholder or unenlightening posts

Town players can and sometimes will do some of these things, but scum players have more motivation to do them - tunneling on a player excuses them from looking at other potential bandwagons and may allow them to distance themselves from their scumpartners, lurking and active lurking keep them from being noticed by the other players while the Town turns on itself, and so forth. Obviously if you draw Town, you want to be careful that you don't do these things or risk getting called on them.

The important thing to remember is that Mafia is a game of finding scum, not punishing what's considered bad play. In other words, the person who commits the most of the above scumtells (the scummiest) is not necessarily going to be scum, and in fact may have actual scum serving them up as a justified bandwagon.

Or perhaps the scummiest player IS scum. You have to use your own judgment to decide what you believe.

I'm scum! What do I do?

Face-to-face Guide

This depends on how good you are at not cracking under pressure. If you're one of the many people who can't stay strong when people suggest that you might be scum, there are a few ways to get around it. Aggressively pursuing other players may give you a decent chance of getting other people to crack before you do. Alternatively, try not to be noticed by staying silent and watching what others do.

If all else fails and you know you're deep-sixed, try not to out your entire team. If the Townies pick up that you're scum, they may try to take advantage of the situation by watching your visual cues to your scumpartners.

Online Guide

The Mafia's greatest strength and weakness - indeed, almost the point of the game - is that they already know who the scum are. On the one hand, this is great - they know almost exactly who they have to get rid of in order to win, unlike the Town who has the additional obstacle of finding the scum on top of getting them booted out. On the other hand, they have little real reason to take scumhunting seriously - they already know who the scum are, so much of the hypothetical scenarios and accusations flying around are not particularly interesting and there's little real incentive to participate. However, NOT participating will become noticeable pretty quickly, so the scum have to "fake it until they make it".

How you interact with your scumpartners is up to you or your team strategy. Working together, the team can use their collective voting power to sway public opinion in their favor. Alternatively, they can selectively turn on each other so they don't look like they're all connected. In most cases it's best to keep as many of your teammates alive, so don't actually go all the way and bus your scumpartners unless you know you'll look more like a Townie for it.

At Night, when deciding who to kill you'll need to be on the lookout for power roles. Being caught by a power role like a Cop can ruin your whole day unless you kill them before they investigate you.

Game Moderation

Most games will need a moderator to make sure everything runs smoothly and there's no cheating. (Mafia tends to rely on the honor system anyway.) For face-to-face games, an ideal moderator will be charismatic enough to keep everyone's interest in the game, disciplined enough to avoid giving off their OWN tells (remember, mods know who the scum are too!), and have some means of distributing roles (like a deck of playing cards). Games don't need to be very complicated - check through your roles beforehand and make sure about a third of the total players get scum roles, but beyond that, power roles are more for novelty than anything; players have a fairly easy time reading each other.

Online, it gets a little trickier because without power roles (i.e. a twelve-player game with two scum) scum tend to have a clear advantage. Thus, you have to find a way to rebalance the game. Exactly how you do this depends partly on your own preference but more often it depends on what the players want to play. Some player groups prefer to play games where there is only one scum (a "Silent Assassin") and no other power roles. Another group may prefer for most players to have a power role and let role madness fly in the Night. Still others prefer to play speedy games (over and done over the course of an hour) with the rapid-fire deadlines driving the players to find the scum on the quick, forcing on-the-fly reactions that mimic the impulsive tics of face-to-face Mafia. And then there's the (relatively) slow, methodical pace we at mafiascum.net take. Check what your players are familiar with or liked out of the styles they've played before, and work with them.

Regardless of the venue, the most important thing about moderating is that you, the moderator, are not a player in the game and should strive to be impartial (except maybe in face-to-face games with friends, but we're not responsible for bowls of snack food being dumped on your head should you go that route).

Come Join Us!

If just reading about the game isn't enough, we're always open to new players! A link to our Mafia-playing forum is at the top of this page. If you would like a little bit of a guided tour of the forum that will get you acquainted with where to go and what to do, click here and we can get you started.