Why: We haven't had a big fun mafia game in a long time.
When: Starting sometime in January.
Will it trainwreck in a morass of planning and never get off the ground like that Arkham game I still hope to run sometime: no, this time I actually did plan ahead!
What: A big ol fun game of Mafia, using the Soldiers/World at War model, for hopefully 26-32 players!
Except not quite, because this will be run as TWO SEPARATE SIMULTANEOUS GAMES of hopefully 13-16 players each!
To explain how this variant works...
On one side, the forces of Richard Hawk, Vice President of the Great United States, Balk's right hand man (does that make Balk the President?) and Morbol trainer extraordinaire!
On the other side, Ko, the undying Time Mage legion!
- The Richardites and the Kos will each have their own separate game thread, in which their respective faction is town, and the scum are a handful of infiltrators loyal to the opposing faction. Both games will run almost completely separately from each other, interacting only through Battle (Night) actions. As an additional experimental touch, I'm considering having one thread be designated "serious business players" and the other "casual laid back players", if people would like that. Of course such designations would mean only what the players make of them.
- Each faction, in its own thread, will have a "King" player. The ultimate goal and win condition of both factions is to kill the other faction's King! The Kings are mod-confirmed town players in their own thread, and their primary responsibility is selecting their thread's battle party at the end of each day. Kings can only die if they are lynched (which is obviously only possible if the scum in their thread reach a majority) or killed in battle (which is also difficult, and explained below).
- Days will run on "lights out" mechanics, meaning that the towns are not limited to only one lynch per day. When a player is hammered for lynch, they are considered dead immediately and all votes are reset, but they do not "flip" their information immediately, nor does the day phase end. Days in both games will end at the same time, on a real time deadline. After the deadline is reached and both Kings have submitted their battle parties (again, more on this below), but before battle actions are chosen, the flips of everyone lynched that day will all be revealed.
- There will be no normal Night phases, no normal night roles, and indeed the scum factions may not even have normal night kills. Instead, after each day there will be a Battle Phase, and every player will have a unique assortment of at least 3 battle actions they can choose to perform.
- At the end of each day, but BEFORE lynch flips are revealed, both Kings must select a certain number of players (probably 4 or 5 depending on how many people are playing) from their thread to form a battle party. The Kings themselves cannot join the battle unless/until their thread's population becomes so low that they have no other choice to fill a party.
- The parties then go out and, well, fight each other! Every player participating in the battle will pick one of their possible actions to perform. Town players will want to help their side and hurt the enemy combatants, but if a King has chosen unwisely and sent infiltrators in their party, well, there might be a wee bit of sabotage going on!
If your eyes are glazed by now, rest assured, it all sounds more complicated than it will be in practice. I'm putting this up now to try and spark discussion/get players/what do people think. So what do you think!
Vague signups:
Richard's Morbols
1. Rat?
2. Soppy
3. Excal
4. Cid
5. Kilga
6. Fnorder
7. Xanth
8. Strago
9. Ciato
10. lmm
11. Glen Veil
12. Kiro
13.
Legion of Ko
1. Tai
2. Gate
3. QR
4. Mage
5. Hal
6. Bard
7. Rou
8. Snowfire
9. Shale
10. Hungry Youkai
11. Alice
12.
13.
