Chainbreaker Mafia: A discussion on a unique mafia idea

[Amb]

Chainbreakers
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This is a concept im currently playing with in my head. It may not work, but it could be an interesting experiment later on. I'm looking for any feedback and suggestions.

In Chainbreaker Mafia, there are 17 players. 7 Mafia are chained together. 7 Town are chained together. There is 1 cop, and 2 chain breakers. No doctors initially. No one knows who anyone is, including the mafia.

The chains are arranged in heirarchies, like follows:

[Courk]

Lynchings don't cause an entire chain to die -- this goes for mafia and town. Maybe if you allowed the town chain to stay intact during night targetting, but vulnerable during the day, it'd be a bit more balanced? Top townie being able to die during the day would create caution during lynchings.

This makes sense to me because it's the town's job to kill the mafia during the day, and the current rules prevent destroying the whole chain at that time. It's the mafia's job to kill everyone at night, so it only seems fair to prevent the destruction of the whole chain at that time.

The only problem I see is that the mafia wouldn't really be targetted at night like the townies would be during the day.

[Amb]

Hence why I thought about leaving the corpses in the chains. Otherwise if you lynched a key person of the town, the town would screw itself.

The interesting thing would be the use of tactics, you could by being freed gradually turn the game into a full communications mafia - meaning the mafia need to kill the chainbreakers fast... Full comms mafia seriously disadvantages the mafia. Thus the mafia should have someway of finding the chain breakers and the town some way of hiding them.

What im also after is something to take the randomness out of the strategy of normal mafia. I think Llaynes current Belgoody mafia achieves this, and I wouldnt be too upset if that 'variation' became much more the norm. The GL is a place where, if anyone can invent an intelligent mafia game, it should happen here.

[Courk]

I've actually been toying with the idea of locking people up instead of lynching. Like, you couldn't out right lynch someone, you had to send them to jail. The next day you voted for a new person to send to jail, and decided what to do with the guy in there: lynch, release, keep. Maybe set a limit for number of cells, and anyone in prison wouldn't be able to use their night power. I haven't gotten very far with this idea, though.

[Edit: Maybe allow prisoners to post a limited amount per day, like the one-phone-call thing.]

[Chuck]

I'll play that. Can I be a parole officer?

[Amb]

Lets run with that a little.

Imprisonment Mafia:

When the town votes you to be scum, you are arrested and jailed. From within Jail, you may post, but not vote. You also may not use your night skills.

Lets assume there are five cells belonging to the town. In order to put a sixth person in prison, one of the five have to be executed, picked by a mason group of executors.

Or

The mafia could also have a night break out skill - if 4/5 mafia are in prison and the jailbreaker role is not, he can free them all. Of course, what he would do is free 1 Mafia and 3 innocents, so that the innocents all get put back in jail while the killing still continues...

I think it has interesting possibilities. PM me Courk and ill suggest a few other ideas, that might be best not to discuss publicly (might ruin a prospective game).

[Chuck]

I think I posted this a few years ago:

Bloodless Mafia

If you don't want people dying in a game we could use robbery instead. The roles would be Mafia (thieves), police, and merchants. The merchants have money and earn more each day. The Mafia and police want money.

Each day, each cop decides which merchant to guard and each Mafia decides which merchant to rob. Mafia who try to rob a guarded merchant are arrested unless the Mafia outnumber the guards by at least 2 to 1, in which case the cops withdraw and the robbery succeeds.

If a robbery succeeds the Mafia involved divide up the merchant's current cash stockpile equally among themselves. The merchant is left with nothing but still gets a daily income. If a robbery fails the cops involved capture the Mafia involved.

A captured Mafia is out of play until helped by any cop to escape, possibly in return for a bribe, or until no cop gives a 'guard jail' order for a day in which case all of the prisoners escape.

Players can communicate freely, both in the thread and secretly, and can also give money to each other at will. Merchants might want to pay the cops for better protection or pay the Mafia to leave them alone. Mafia might want to bribe cops to leave a certain merchant unguarded on some particular day. Bribed players don't have to keep their word but won't be trusted in the future if they don't.

Each day, each player emails orders to the moderator. Any player can give any amount of cash to any number of other players, but cannot go negative. In addition, each Mafia who is not in jail can choose to rob a merchant or do nothing. Each cop can do one of: guard one merchant, guard the prisoners, or do nothing.

After some fixed number of days the players are ranked in order of the cash they have. The winner is the player with the most cash. The game doesn't automatically end if all of the Mafia are in jail since the cops can demand money from the merchants to keep them there and might let them out if the merchants don't pay.

[Jedo the Jedi]

Chuck, you're a genius.

Courk and amb, please run with that. I'm already thinking up possible play styles for being on the mafia or the town.

amb, about the chainbreaker mafia, I think your biggest problem is the chainbreakers. If they just want to keep the mafia from being able to talk to each other, they just don't use their power. I mean, the town is used to not being able to talk at night, so it would really be no big deal. As for the doc not being released, that's not a big deal either because the mafia have just as much a chance of killing themselves as they do the town. More so because they could possibly sever their chains at night killing many at one time. Just some thoughts I had.
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Paragon Tally: 18 mafia, 3 SKs (1 twice), 1 cultist, numerous chat scum...and counting.

[Courk]

Chainbreaker might require a test run. There's no better way to find holes in games than to have them exploited by players.

[Jedo the Jedi]

I'm /in for a test run.
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Paragon Tally: 18 mafia, 3 SKs (1 twice), 1 cultist, numerous chat scum...and counting.

[Amb]

Chucks idea is one I called "Economafia" and floated past Mole once, where if you ran out of money you were out of the game.

Ill do a trial one, but I have to finish Time Travel Mafia first.

Also, I will be watching closely the belgoody mafia. If it works, I think I will launch a Cluedo mafia - where there is more logic.


The other concept I have wanted to do was a Mafia Reality Show. I wrote some plans a year or so ago, but I could never guarantee that 5/20 mafia to town wouldnt finish inside 5 episodes. Not a good risk... But the idea would be test run on GL if I could do it. There are no Cops, no docs, in fact no specialist roles bar Mafia and an SK. Each day the contestants would have to compete to win a prize. The prize would be a night skill to use that night. Eg A protection, Investigation etc. Obviously the mafia would target the winner. It would be easy to run on the GL as you publish a challenge and no one knows who wins until the next morning. But what a bad thing if the Mafia had ZutAlors! as a GodFather or Dethwing or other GL geniuses.

[Amb]

And Im glad Jedo thought of that 'minor' problem before I launched a game. I will have to think about that.... (obviously compulsary night choices is a possibility)

[Samadhi]

I'd be happy to be in for a test run.

[Amb]

I dont know if any one remembers Neo's GME mafia. GME stood for great mafia experiment and were games with no townies, and four factions of three mafia each, and 1 SK, and a handful of body guards... For me, my best ever game, as I became the first GLer to win a full size mafia game as an SK, although the setup helped.

I think the next evolutionary step in mafia is the addition of clues or points to cause discussion. If we combined Mafia and Dethwings "The Mole" games we could get a real winner.

Back on topic, I think we should dedicate a thread to ideas for trying to break mafia out of its norm. This is why I quit mafia for more than a year... It was too predictable.

[ralphmerridew]

Only GME1 was like that. GME2 was a "recycled mafia" (Designer Mafia where roles must come from previous games), but was canceled due to lack of interest. GL Mafia Mafia was also part of GME, though it wasn't labeled as such (more randomness than is usual).

[Jedo the Jedi]

I think we should have another mafia tournament sometime. I would be in for that too.

All of these ideas make me very excited for the future of mafia on the GL. Keep it up, guys.
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Paragon Tally: 18 mafia, 3 SKs (1 twice), 1 cultist, numerous chat scum...and counting.

[Courk]

When I was compiling the old mafia games in FRSP and came across mafia 25, I had the same thought.

[Ctorj]

I would love to do a test run as well.
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"Love is the absolute expression of the human perfection" -Me!

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[Amb]

In good time. I have a few ideas up my sleeve. Chess Mafia is still lurking after even Dethwing said hed play that one...

Lets create a thread for mafia ideas and concepts. Ie Roles such as Habitual Liar, Journalist, School Teacher (is that town or mafia), HyToFry Replica.

I have one role in mind for my next game, that promises to be a laugh. (Watch them die night 1 now I say this).

[Courk]

You actually started a mafia roles thread before. Here it is.

[Amb]

That link loads a post reply window???

Anyways I probably did years ago. That hardly counts

[Courk]

I was going to bump it, then decided to just link it here, except I copied the url from the reply screen. So close.

The link's correct now, though.