Mafia Play Guide
Mafia is an educated guessing game in which the “town” attempt to use questioning, vote analysis, and behavior/demeanor to hope to discover who the killers are among them. In mafia the game is divided into a 48 hour day phase where players discuss, vote, and reply to one another. At the end of the day phase, typically a player is lynched/executed. The process of deciding who is to be lynched is always a matter of opinion and strategy.
In the case of a town aligned player the goal is to lynch a member of the mafia if able. The game is large however and it is not always possible to discover who the mafia may be. Strategically it is reasonable to target and attempt to pressure players who seem unusual, dodgy, spammy, or any other adjective to describe their playstyle. Remember that it is after all is said and done – a game of opinions.
There are power roles, and specialists along the way to provide town and mafia with certain advantages. Some roles can reveal what role someone is. Other roles can protect someone. For the villains it is common to have a role which stops the towns specialist power if the bad guys guess. Additionally, each night phase the mafia gather to meet and discuss the game privately. This chat commonly referred to as the Mafia QT or Maf QT is a private location known only to the mafia members.
During the night phase all players may talk in the general thread. There is no specific rule against discussion. However, be advised that many players shy from speaking at night because town wants to provide mafia as little information as possible. The mafia select someone and kill them.
This keeps the game fluid, dynamic and provides information. Mafia is absolutely a game of information and deduction. You must discover motive from what happens in the game, and learn to establish connections between what happened and why. This is well known to the mafia too however. So it is entirely common for the bad guys to kill people to frame others. Sometimes the mafia make their night kill decisions based on who seems like a specialist, some on who is playing well, and some mafia teams use their kill as a means to play mind games with players, i.e keeping veteran players alive to make them look suspicious.
Any strategy can backfire, and typically town wins more often, so as scum you do want to appear to be as casual and unconcerned about dying as possible. Its usually not a bad idea to mention everyone in the game at some point. The player lists can be large and some people do not have time to establish reads on everyone. But its not a bad idea to try to have some reads, especially if you hope to survive as scum pretending to be town on this forum.
List of commonly used webdip mafia terms and colloquialisms
Wifom – wine in front of me. It tends to be misconstrued as occams razor. Generally wifom is referred to as simply being scummy behavior which is used to establish false connections between players of town alignment.
Omgus – a defensive form of voting. Typically this behavior is not alignment indicative. Omgus is a term often used to describe someones vote for another person.
Situation:
Maurice accuses Vladmir of being scum. He votes vladmir and posts a huge case against him, showing his past voter habits, his press, ect.
Vladmir gets angry and posts: “to hell with you man, you are obviously scum ##vote Maurice”
(An example of voting by being triggered or upset/ omgus. This player targeted me so I will get mad and target back)
-Once again this is not alignment indicative, an omgus is an emotional reaction typically.
Occams Razor – doing exactly what a bad guy would do in a certain situation, and bluffing that they wouldn’t do it--- because its exactly what the bad guy would do. (reverse psychology bluffing tactic)
Chainsawwing – attacking a case against a player when it has nothing to do with you. It comes off as you defending a possible bad guy. Chainsawwing is common and is not alignment indicative typically. It can be rarely possible that a scum is defending a case vs a teammate. But such strategy is dangerous for the bad guys to brazenly engage in.
Bussing – voting for a fellow mafia member, or heavily pressuring them. (fake scum vs scum argument typically to establish 1 of the 2 as a false innocent.)
Sheeping – following the logic of another player, or voting beside them without reasons of your own.
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Non-Symmetrical Phase Lengths
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