Mafia sumarized in less than 500 words

What is Mafia?
Let’s open up with a metaphor. Some of you are super heroes (town), and some of you are villains (mafia). For super small games, there are seven total of you. Out of the seven, there are 5 town and 2 mafia.

Break it down for me, I still don’t get it.
Introducing my appallingly bad metaphor:
You ever seen those Marvel movies? You know ‘bout Loki, right? Imagine Loki locked up two of the avengers in a closet and duplicated himself… somehow. Now there’s two Lokis disguised as one of two of the Avengers. They’re going to try to blend in as well as they can to deceive the innocent heroes for his nefarious plans.

Your job, as a super hero, is to sniff out any weird stuff about your pals, any quirks you deem unusual, whatever. If you’re Mafia, your job is pretty simple: deception and making sure you don’t stick out like a sore thumb and act like town/imitate town.

Town is in the dark about you; Mafia has the advantage of being able to talk during night and day phases (typically lasting 24 hours).

The host will announce when the night phase (where the thread is essentially “asleep”) or day phase. You cannot post in the night phase and neither can Mafia.

Can there be bigger games than just seven people?
Yes. That usually happens with bigger forums, however. Typical vanilla (basic) mafia games have 12-24 players.

How do Mafia converse?
Either through Quicktopic or the Conversation feature on here. It depends on the host’s preference whether you’re going to converse offsite or in PMs onsite.

What can I do as Town?
Some of you will receive specific roles (investigation or protective) or ordinary roles.

If you don’t have a specific role and your assignment simply just says ‘Town’ all you can do is read and talk as much as you can during the day phases and sniff out Mafia.

What do I do as cop?
Send who you want to investigate to the hosyt during the night phase.

Who should I protect?
Who you believe is most likely going to get hit/who you think is Town.


What is some Mafia lingo I need to know?

Scum = Indie/Mafia
OMGUS = Oh My God You Suck (voting for someone because they voted for you)
WIFOM = Whine In Front Of Me (questioning whether a player wants you to think the opposite of what they’re implying)​

Here is a better representation of the game then what I just shat out:

Wiki Mafia's elaborate guide: https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Main_Page
Rohan's guide: https://sugoidesu.net/threads/old-guide-content.15327/​

TL;DR:
Mafia bad, win condition is to eliminate townies. Town good, win condition is to eliminate Mafia. You will feel lost your first game, do not let that discourage you. Veterans must respect that and be patient with you (I hope they are). Ask the host any questions if you are lost--or any player in general!

 

you were tagged in inky's thread but i'll note this down for future ref