F.A.Q.
What is an Alignment?
Each player in Mafia is randomly assigned to a faction at the start of a gane. A faction is a team of players who share the same alignment. Any true game of mafia will have an "Informed Minority" (that is, a small group of players who know who each other are) and an "Uninformed Majority" (a large group of players who do not know who each other are). Most of the time these are referred to as the Mafia and Town, respectively. It is also possible to have players who are aligned with third parties, such as Cults; or aligned with themselves, such as Survivors. However, as a general rule the Town vs. Mafia conflict should be center stage.
The decision on who wins or loses a game of Mafia is essentially always decided on a factional level. For instance, if the Town is the only faction remaining in the game, every member of the Town wins, even if they are not alive at the end of the game.
Players who are Modkilled are usually removed from their faction, and since they are dead, they are guaranteed to lose.
What are the various forms of utility a Role can take?
Each Power Role in a Game of Mafia has additional abilities when compared to a Vanilla Townie. These abilities may be beneficial, disadvantaging or wholly neutral. The MafiaWiki has sorted these roles into groups which share similarities with one another.
- Investigative Roles: These are roles which have the ability to learn information otherwise unaccessible to a player. The most well-known example is the Cop, which can discover the Alignment of a player each Night.
- Killing Roles: Killing roles provide players with the ability to kill another player in some form or another.
- Manipulative Roles: Manipulative roles are roles which allow a player to interfere with the actions of another, thus changing their intended outcome.
- Communicative Roles: These roles are capable of confirming information regarding themselves or others, an example being the Innocent Child. They may also allow players the ability to communicate with each other outside of the main-thread.
- Voting Roles: Voting roles affect the voting-mechanics during the Day-phase of a game.
- Passive Roles: Passive roles do not require any active action from a player, an example being the Ascetic role.
What are Role-Modifiers?
A role modifier is an additional ability or property that alters a role's normal operation or adds a new element altogether. Generally, only one modifier is given to a role (if at all), but some theme games have given a role two or more modifiers in effective and creative ways. There are many reasons why mods use modifiers; balancing strong roles, improving/altering the dynamic of role combinations, creativity and other meta reasons. Strictly speaking, any type of trait can be attached to an existing role.
Some common modifier/role combinations are Macho Cop, Weak Doctor, 1-Shot Vig, Even-Night Vig, Non-Consecutive Night Commuter, and Backup Cop/Doctor (often simplified to Deputy/Nurse).
What are Normal Roles?
On the MafiaScum forum's we have created a set of rules as to dictate what we think creates a balanced, standard game. Games that follow the Normal guidelines can be ruin in the New York queue (also known as the Normal queue). All rules for a Normal-game can be found here: Normal Game. Furthermore, all roles deemed Normal can be found in the category Category:Normal roles.
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