Talk:Mafia Mutation

The distinction is a fuzzy one, and not well defined as yet.

Norinel: Let me give it a shot. I think the distinction between an Experimental Game and a Mafia Mutation is how tweaked the core concept is. I think that if anything were to be The Core Rule Of Mafia, it would be "A minority of the players are evil, and know who else is evil. Everyone else has to figure out who's evil." (Note that I did not specify the manner of figuring out who's evil; lynching and the concepts of day, night, and even perhaps death are, IMO, not at the absolute heart of the game. But some might say that The Core Rules are the rules of Roleless Mafia, and anything that greatly changes those is a Mafia Mutation Having a game based on Improbable Roles or changing the structure of the nights doesn't change that, it just adds on extra rules to make the figuring out who's evil part more interesting. However, once the alignments become any different from informed minority vs. uninformed majority (as described by Dimitry Davidoff), you've entered the territory of Mafia Mutation. There are some border cases though, especially if you think about things that change the days & nights and stuff without touching the alignments. Is a game only composed of lynches, with no pro-town roles or nights at all, a Mafia Mutation? Is "Italian Stand-Down", identical to Spy Hunting Stand Down except that the alignments are town and mafia, a Mafia Mutation?

On a side note, my opinion is that all major Mafia Mutations shouldn't be in the Mafia forums in the first place. Have there been any games classified officially as Theme Games that you'd consider a Mafia Mutation?

PolarBoy: Nothing comes to mind. There was GayMafia, which was run in the NewYork forum as a Normal Game. Various scummers suggested that the game should've been run as a Theme Game though.