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[TriBeCa]

I fell in love with this theme, and since it seems highly unlikely that EM will run it any time, I thought I'd offer to run it myself.

Of course, it needs to be discussed, but it's pretty out of the ordinary.

Besides, I probably wouldn't have a chance to run it before the beginning of January anyway.

Here it is, with some minor tweaks of my own:

Mafia Wars

The game starts with three small crime families, each one consisting of a Mafia Don and his Enforcer.

All the rest of the players start as civilians, but they can be recruited to one of the familes, at which point they become Mafia Members. Each civilian also posseses one secret power which they can use as described during the course of the game.

The winners are the last remaining Mafia family.

Each day the police (non playing character) will arrest one player for suspected criminal activities, but because the police are corrupt they will arrest the person that most people vote for during the day.

Note that each player may use only one Special Action per day-night cycle.

Roles:

The Don

The head of a mafia family, and if he dies or is arrested his Enforcer becomes The Don. If his Enforcer is already dead (or he was the original enforcer) the family is destroyed.

Each Don starts out with $10,000 which they can use as follows during the course of the game. For simplicity, all spending amounts must be a multiple of $50.

Special Actions:
Recruitment
Bribe

Recruitment:

Each night they can try to persuade someone to join their family. People don't come cheap though - they need a financial incentive to join! The Don needs to notify the GM who they wish to approach and how much they wish to offer them.

If the Don approaches a civilian they will automatically join the family that offers them the most money on that particular night. Lower offers will be pocketed and passed on to the players new Don.

If the Don approaches someone who is already a member of a family, that person will take the money offered but pass it onto his families Don instead.

Bribe:

The Don can bribe the police to forget about making an arrest that day, OR to make sure that they do carry one out.

Should more than one Don bribe the police in a single day then the police will carry out the instructions of the Don who paid them the most money (they will still pocket all the payments, however!)

When the police are bribed the amounts are not revealed, but the fact a bribe has been made will be noted in the daily thread.


The Enforcer:

If the Enforcer's Don is killed or arrested, the Enforcer will become the Don. In this case he will all of his Enforcer abilities and take on the Don's abilities instead.

Special Actions:
Spy on a player to learn his affiliation and role [seer]
Attempt to kill a player [nightkill]
Attempt to protect a player [GA]


Mafia Member:

Special Actions (in addition to any Civilian Abilities):
Attempt to kill a player [nightkill]
Attempt to protect a player [GA]


Civilian Abilities:

Each civilian will have 1 additional power from the list below once they are recruited to a Mafia Family.

Scout:
Special Actions:
Spy on a player to learn his affiliation and role [seer]

Bodyguard:
Special Actions:
GA action counts as two defenders

Hitman:
Special Actions:
Nightkill action counts as two attackers

Accountant:
Special Actions:
They can investigate the financial affairs of 1 player. If their chosen target is a member of a mafia family they will discover how much money the Don of that family currently has.

Businessman:
Special Actions:
May take an action to gain $1000 for the Families Don.


Night Kills / Protection

A player will be killed at night if the number of people attempting to kill him is greater than the number of people trying to protect him.

Therefore chosing when to defend and when to attack is crucial to each families strategy!


The Death of a family:

If a Don is killed / arrested his Enforcer will become that families Don. No other character may become a Don. If the Enforcer is already dead, that is the end of that family. If only 1 family remains that family wins the game.

If two families remain, all the surviving members of the dead family become civilians. If recruited to another family they regain all abilites that they had before.

[Elvengirl]

interesting theme...

[s_stabeler]

it sounds a good theme, although I can see a problem- couldn't the enforcer simply protect the don while the don bribes civilians the have the mafia members do the killing? could provide some interesting games..........

[TriBeCa]

Yup. But if an opposing family sends *2* people, or the hitman, to kill the don, the Enforcer won't be sufficient to stop it....

Also, unless they recruit the scout the enforcer is the only way they can determine roles...and of course if they bribe other family members they're just throwing money away....

[s_stabeler]

maybe, but realistically they;'ll be converting for the first few days.

[TriBeCa]

of course don's will be converting...but it's dangerous to do conversions blind. i would expect that enforcers would start out by 'seer-ing' people, looking for people for the don to convert.

[TriBeCa]

POSSIBLE VARIATIONS:

First, the order of actions is incredibly important. For the first game, it was run like this:

"Lynch" votes are counted.
Bribe actions are considered.
Recruitment actions are considered.
"Lynch" (arrest) occurs according to voting and bribes.
All seer powers occur.
All GA actions considered.
All nightkill actions occur (only succesful if they overpower GA actions--attackers and victim are not revealed if unsuccesful, though victim will know they were a target).
End.


1. I would recommend moving recruitment actions until after the Lynch. Basically, if you declare an action it will go through unless you get arrested (with the exception of a Don's own bribe action).

2. I would recommend not resolving tie votes with dice rolls. Just have no arrest happen instead. It's possible that there would be a point in the game were 2 teams with equal numbers were left, and the lynch vote (and quite possibly the game) in that case would be decided by a die roll....

3. The GM could decide to have all civilians automatically take a 'protect self' GA action each night until recruited. However, this would likely cause enforcers to take a random kill action on the first night--if it failed, you could be pretty sure the person was recruitable, if it succeeded then you'd definately just taken out an enemy.

4. The accountant and businessman roles seem weak to me. The accountant is essentially a variant of the scout (since their action will determine if someone is a mafia member or not). Also, the scout is only really useful very early on, when they're not likely to be recruited. By the third day (as you'll note from this game) nobody really takes Seer actions anyway. The point here is that you could run a version with all the civilians being hitmen or bodyguards (or those two plus scouts).

5. Another variant would be to allow any remaining member to take on the role of Don (whoever was recruited first, if there are multiple options). This could be quite interesting, and would mean recruiting was of extreme importance. It could also lead to some very long games....

[JuntaJoe]

It definitely needs refinement, but the theme is quite different from the linear nature of the TWG.

Even the "Double Trouble" theme falls into the classic good and evil format.

This is because the non-team players cannot ever win. So the non-team players have no incentive to take out a "bad guy" just to survive or win.

I must admit this game is really hard on the original dons, however. :P


We should make a point to revisit this theme occasionally to help refine it into a stable format.

[TriBeCa]

I'd love it if we brought this theme back from time to time, mostly because I desperately want the chance to play it.

And you're right, the game is structurally quite different--the lynch vote serves an entirely different purpose, and the balance of defending your own team versus making a kill adds a whole knew element to the game.

...and I think the original Don's might've stood a better chance if there were more of a policy of protecting them after the first night. I was surprised that two players (on different teams) were the targets of failed bribe actions on Day 0--and neither of them was protected by a GA action on Day 1, despite the fact that they knew their enemies had 'spotted' them.

[Brf]

Well....
This was certainly an interesting game, and fun to play with its unusual rules and roles.

It seems to me that there could be some real conniving strategies though.... considering JuntaJoe's outting....

The fact that a family is disbanded after the two original members are eliminated seems to be an unbalancing rule.... Suppose the recruited villagers rebelled and revealed their Don and Enforcer roles to one of the other teams, with the understanding that they would be recruited?

[TriBeCa]

Good point Brf...that's a good argument for having recruits be able to take on the Don role. Like I said, it could lead to some long games, but I think it would enhance the game.

It also makes recruitment actions more important than bribe actions, as long as the recruitment is 'sure' to go through...because a new, unknown, member is more valuable than one that's liable to be voted out again. Unless, of course, recruitment actions happen after an arrest, and the lynch victim is the Don....

One other variant that occured to me, which I forgot to post, is a 'jailbreaker' civilian, who can take an action to free someone from jail....

[Brf]

Yes. I had a jailbreaker villager-role in my Ski-hotel theme. I also had secret jailbreaker roles in each of the two bad-guy teams.... but they could not break out alone.... They had to cooperate with the jailbreaker from the other team, so the two could break out only together.

[crispybacon]

I love this variation. I might even be talked into GM-ing one (not now. Maybe in a game or two)

Also, why not have the recruits become the new Dons (in order of seniority i.e. recruitment) but not be told where the some of the money was stashed (say, half)? It could cut down game time. Also, same thing could happen when the Enforcer takes over, as an additional penalty.

And for the record, I do NOT like losing powers to become the Don. Possiblities: for the new Don to "train" another as an Enforcer and have them lose thier skills, or just have the new Don able to do his own dirty work.
________
HOT BOX VAPE

[TriBeCa]

Having another player take on the Enforcer doesn't seem like a major change to me (in fact it would actually weaken some characters, for example the hitman and bodyguard roles).

I'm not sure I like having the Don be able to do nightkill and GA actions. It really changes the game strategy. A don and another character both targeting the same player for nightkill shouldn't be able to overpower a single character's GA action, in my opinion. Part of the game's flavor, I think, comes from the most integral character being useless on it's own. As things currently are, a lone Don can't do anything unless he can recruit someone....

Mind I don't think this would change the game enough that it wouldn't still be thoroughly enjoyable 8)