So there has indeed been a reasonable amount of interest in the idea I posited about starting a Kiwi Farms forum mafia. I'm pleased about this because the Kiwi Farms are by far the biggest, most active forum I've ever been a part of and so I'd be thrilled to have as many players as possible.
I've discussed this in the initial interest thread, but for those who are unaware:
Mafia (also known in some variants as Werewolf) is a party game usually played in groups in real life. The goal of the game is for an informed minority, the Mafia, to rid the game of the uninformed majority, the Innocents. Meanwhile, the Innocents are themselves trying to puzzle out who is the Mafia and get rid of them. Whoever accomplishes this goal first wins the game.
The game is divided into two phases: the night phase and the day phase. During the night phase, all the players are "asleep", except for the Mafia, who wake up and surreptitiously choose one member of the Innocents to kill. That player is then unable to participate in the game further and must withdraw (though of course they can still watch the game in action). The day phase consists of all players trying to vote out a player, Survivor-style, whom they think might be Mafia. Of course, there's no way to be completely informed on who's Mafia, so this phase consists of noticing people who are drawing (or not drawing) attention to themselves, noticing subtleties in body language, etc... or just flinging wild accusations in the hopes it'll be the right person. But I always preferred the former. The Mafia wins if/when all Innocents are dead; the Innocents win if/when they manage to vote out all members of the Mafia.
All of this is accomplished by the work of a Game Master. The Game Master chooses the Mafia, surreptitiously; oversees the night phase and tells the group which player was killed by the Mafia; tells the group whether or not the player they vote out during the day phase was Mafia or not; declares a win condition.
In real life Mafia, the fact that it's using the spoken, rather than written, word as its basis means that games are fairly featureless past the Mafia and nameless Innocents. Occasionally, some games use a Detective, who wakes up at a separate point during the night phase and points at a player, at which point the Game Master signals to them if that player is Mafia or not. (Some variants have the game end in the Innocents' favor if the Detective targets the Mafia, where some variants just continue, with the Detective now having that knowledge to use in the day session.) Some variants use a Healer or Angel, who can protect a single player during the night phase; if that player is targeted by the Mafia, they won't die.
When Mafia is transferred to a forum setting, most of the ideas remain in place. Rather than nonverbally signalling to the Game Master their choices, players with roles instead PM the Game Master (who is also responsible for PMing out every role) their actions during the night phase. The day phase's discussion is conducted via a public thread. It's not very much different... except for one major factor: the written word.
Having records of everything means it's incredibly easy to run a Mafia so that every single player gets a role of some kind, some of which can be utterly obscure and just plain impossible to implement in group settings. There's a lot of these listed here. But basically, the Mafias I participate in, and like to run, give every single player a role of some kind.
With all that being said, the theme for this first Mafia is going to be lolcows. Each role is assigned to a lolcow who best fits it, and each player is given a lolcow. It's just a fancy way of giving out roles, really, but what better way to introduce the game than by using lolcows as the source material? @flossman is helping me out with this, since I don't follow enough lolcows to be able to pick one for every player. If you have ideas for certain lolcows, though, by all means post them here. I'll come up with all the roles in some fashion after I have an idea how many participants we'll have.
If you're interested, just say so in the thread and I'll add you to a signup list which I'll edit into this post once there are actually players. I'm going to give about three days for signups - this should be ample time for everyone who's interested (and more importantly, regularly online!) to post their interest.
If you have any more questions, don't be afraid to ask. I've done several Mafia over the years.
Sign ups so far:
1. exball (Dead)
2. Randall Fragg
3. Surtur
4. Dr. Meme
5. Android raptor (Dead)
6. MerriedManJr (Dead)
7. Marella
8. RogerRabbit1988 (Dead)
9. Pikonic
10. Arctic
11. Amo Bishop Roden
12. Pine Tar (Dead)
13. Dork of Ages
14. Konstantinos
I've discussed this in the initial interest thread, but for those who are unaware:
Mafia (also known in some variants as Werewolf) is a party game usually played in groups in real life. The goal of the game is for an informed minority, the Mafia, to rid the game of the uninformed majority, the Innocents. Meanwhile, the Innocents are themselves trying to puzzle out who is the Mafia and get rid of them. Whoever accomplishes this goal first wins the game.
The game is divided into two phases: the night phase and the day phase. During the night phase, all the players are "asleep", except for the Mafia, who wake up and surreptitiously choose one member of the Innocents to kill. That player is then unable to participate in the game further and must withdraw (though of course they can still watch the game in action). The day phase consists of all players trying to vote out a player, Survivor-style, whom they think might be Mafia. Of course, there's no way to be completely informed on who's Mafia, so this phase consists of noticing people who are drawing (or not drawing) attention to themselves, noticing subtleties in body language, etc... or just flinging wild accusations in the hopes it'll be the right person. But I always preferred the former. The Mafia wins if/when all Innocents are dead; the Innocents win if/when they manage to vote out all members of the Mafia.
All of this is accomplished by the work of a Game Master. The Game Master chooses the Mafia, surreptitiously; oversees the night phase and tells the group which player was killed by the Mafia; tells the group whether or not the player they vote out during the day phase was Mafia or not; declares a win condition.
In real life Mafia, the fact that it's using the spoken, rather than written, word as its basis means that games are fairly featureless past the Mafia and nameless Innocents. Occasionally, some games use a Detective, who wakes up at a separate point during the night phase and points at a player, at which point the Game Master signals to them if that player is Mafia or not. (Some variants have the game end in the Innocents' favor if the Detective targets the Mafia, where some variants just continue, with the Detective now having that knowledge to use in the day session.) Some variants use a Healer or Angel, who can protect a single player during the night phase; if that player is targeted by the Mafia, they won't die.
When Mafia is transferred to a forum setting, most of the ideas remain in place. Rather than nonverbally signalling to the Game Master their choices, players with roles instead PM the Game Master (who is also responsible for PMing out every role) their actions during the night phase. The day phase's discussion is conducted via a public thread. It's not very much different... except for one major factor: the written word.
Having records of everything means it's incredibly easy to run a Mafia so that every single player gets a role of some kind, some of which can be utterly obscure and just plain impossible to implement in group settings. There's a lot of these listed here. But basically, the Mafias I participate in, and like to run, give every single player a role of some kind.
With all that being said, the theme for this first Mafia is going to be lolcows. Each role is assigned to a lolcow who best fits it, and each player is given a lolcow. It's just a fancy way of giving out roles, really, but what better way to introduce the game than by using lolcows as the source material? @flossman is helping me out with this, since I don't follow enough lolcows to be able to pick one for every player. If you have ideas for certain lolcows, though, by all means post them here. I'll come up with all the roles in some fashion after I have an idea how many participants we'll have.
If you're interested, just say so in the thread and I'll add you to a signup list which I'll edit into this post once there are actually players. I'm going to give about three days for signups - this should be ample time for everyone who's interested (and more importantly, regularly online!) to post their interest.
If you have any more questions, don't be afraid to ask. I've done several Mafia over the years.
Sign ups so far:
1. exball (Dead)
2. Randall Fragg
3. Surtur
4. Dr. Meme
5. Android raptor (Dead)
6. MerriedManJr (Dead)
7. Marella
8. RogerRabbit1988 (Dead)
9. Pikonic
10. Arctic
11. Amo Bishop Roden
12. Pine Tar (Dead)
13. Dork of Ages
14. Konstantinos
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