Hi, all -
I am looking to gauge interest in a game of Mafia to be played here on the Dope. Long-timers will know that there used to be a game running pretty much constantly for a period of several years; at this point the majority of players have moved to other locations and I haven’t seen a Dope game in a few years. Seems like as good a time as any to see if anyone around here is still interested, or if any new players would like to give it a go.
For those who have never played, Mafia is a game that pits superior numbers against superior information. Players are randomly divided into two teams: the Town, who represent goodness and kindness and all that is right and decent about the world, and the Mafia, who represent cruelty and evil and the New York Yankees. There are significantly more Town players than Mafia players, but as the game begins each Town player knows only his or her own status as Town; each Mafia player knows the identity of all of the other Mafia players.
The game is divided into “Day” and “Night” cycles. During the Day, all players chat and discuss and ultimately vote to “lynch” a single player, removing him or her permanently from the game. During the Night, the Mafia players meet in secret and choose a single Town player to “kill,” removing him or her from the game. Whenever a player is removed, his or her identity is publicly revealed. This repeats until: (1) all the Mafia players have been removed from the game, resulting in a Town win; or (2) the number of remaining Mafia players is equal to the number of remaining Town players, resulting in a Mafia win. Some players, Mafia or Town, may have additional abilities that complicate matters a bit. The whole thing is overseen by a moderator (that would be me!), who is not part of the game, knows everyone’s identities from the start, and counts the votes, and so on.
There are much more complex variations, but since I was hoping to make this a game friendly to new players this would be a pretty straightforward set-up.
So: anyone interested? Post here if you are, and feel free to ask any questions about the game that you might have. We’d need at least 10-12 players for a good game, but we can accommodate more - even many more - if there’s interest.
