Happy (belated) birthday to Alatar.

A couple of days ago I linked to Mafia. For those who haven’t tried it, I recommend it. About 8 or 9 people (or more) is a good number; 7 is probably close to the minimum. Why? Well, the entire game really comes down to the one special position in the game that’s really not optional: the Cop (Detective/Sage/whatever), the player who can determine during the night whether a given player is Mafia or not.

Without this role, the good guys are in the dark completely. The game’s essentially a crapshoot to determine whether the townsfolk can get lucky and lynch both Mafia before the Mafia executes them; and with the Mafia voting down their own executions, of course, the odds aren’t good. With the Cop, there is someone innocent who has useful knowledge who can subtly guide the discussion. Sure, he can’t be too obvious (or the Mafia will kill him) but the Mafia can’t be too obvious either (or the Townsfolk will lynch them.) The 8 or 9 people mark usually gives the Cop two pieces of information to work with (since two people are killed per day/night cycle), while with 7 or fewer he’s likely to have only one.

In a pinch, also, the Cop can reveal himself and name names. He’s virtually certain to be either lynched or murdered, of course, but if the Townsfolk still have a majority, they can mop up the Mafia.

When choosing what roles to include, consider the following variant and why it ruins the game. Instead of just “Townsfolk”, players get specific roles, “Townsfolk 1” up to “Townsfolk 8” or whatever. There is no cop—it’s not even necessary. All of the townsfolk just list off their numbers to each other. The Mafia can try to lie, but the Townsfolk still have each Mafia member narrowed down to two people (and many of their own number eliminated from suspicion.)

Some people work around this by creating a list of possible roles before the game; players know who might exist, but nobody can enumerate the people. In theory this works fine; in practice, the players need to accept that the moderator might come up with a grossly unbalanced set of roles.

The last time I played we tried Masons, a group of 2 or 3 Townsfolk who mutually know each other’s innocence. With 3 people, this is grossly overpowered; they form an nearly-invincible voting bloc and enjoy the benefit of being able to reveal their own innocence without the Mafia really being able to interfere. Even with only two people, the extra knowledge is a big advantage for the Townsfolk, probably worth at least a Mafia member.

And now, I’m off to play Oblivion. In case you hadn’t heard, it’s excellent and highly recommended. I won’t go so far as to say it’s bug-free, but it’s at least stable, which makes it way better than any previous Bethesda game.