Rules of Mafia
The introduction. On this page, we present the rules of Mafia for people who have played a little before. If you have never player, you can see our
introduction.
The scenario. There are 2 teams, the informed minority and the uninformed majority, often known as mafia and villagers, respectively. Generally, a mafia member knows all of his or her teammates, while a villager only knows that he or she is a villager and has no idea who the mafia are. The aim of the game is to be the last team standing. The game happens in 2 phases, nights and days. During the night, mafia members choose to kill some villager. During the day, everyone talks among themselves, trying to figure out who are mafia are. If a majority of the surviving people think that someone is mafia, they lynch that person. There does not have to be a lynching during the day. If for some reason at least half of the village wants to go to sleep without lynching anyone, they can choose to do so. The mafia have the advantage of having complete information, while the villagers have the advantage of numbers.
Special roles. Generally we play with special characters, who are villagers or mafia with extra powers. The red face cards are used to denote the special villagers and the black face cards are used to denote the special mafia. Each special character has either a night time ability or a day time ability. For people with night time ability, the moderator wakes them up one at a time, and allows them to perform their ability. Even if a special role is dead, the moderator still has to wake them up to ensure that the moderator does not reveal the information that the special role is dead.
Card numbers. In Mafia, the different
roles are identifiable, but the
card numbers are not. This means that players cannot claim which card they have.
Number of players. Seven players are ideal for your first few games of Mafia. See our
recommended games for ideas on how to distribute roles. The most common special characters, apart from the
villagers (
2-9♦) and the
mafia (
2-10♣,
2-10♠), are the
detective (
K♦,
K♥) and the
doctor (
Q♦,
Q♥).
Free mistakes. If during a day, the number of villagers exceeds the number of mafia by 2n+1 or 2n+2, then we
say
that the villagers have n free mistakes. The idea is that the villagers can afford to lynch n innocent people
without necessarily losing the game. This is usually why in most games, we prefer to have an odd number of people
alive during the daytime.
Free nights. Another important concept is that of free nights. If the number of villagers exceed the number
of mafia by m+1, then we say that the villagers have m free nights. So the number of free nights is around twice the
number of free mistakes. The idea is that the villagers can afford to go to sleep without killing anyone for m days,
while still maintaining a possibility of winning the game. This can only be useful if villagers have some special
night-time abilities, like that of a
detective. Usually if there are an even
number
of people
alive during the day, the
villagers opt to go to night without killing anyone as this does not decrease the number of free mistakes.
Mob rule. What happens when the village is unable to decide what to do one day? The moderator usually places a time limit on the day; when this is exceeded, the village descends into
mob rule and majority vote is replaced by plurality vote. No further speaking is allowed. Players are choosen one at a time at random (this is usually done by numbering the players, and then choosing numbered cards from another shuffled deck of card). Each chosen player either votes against another person, or votes to go to night. After everyone had a vote, whoever has maximum number of votes dies (if most people voted to go to night, then the day ends without a lynching). If there is a tie between some outcomes, we do another mob rule (the order of votes is again chosen randomly), but this time people are only allowed to vote for the people tied with the maximum votes in the previous mob rule. This process repeats until either a resolution is reached, or the number of outcomes do not decrease in two consecutive mob rules (in which case, the village goes to sleep without any lynching).
Evil eye. Sometimes everyone wants to play. In this case the Mafia can kill in the first night by a process known as evil eye. Everyone goes to sleep, and someone pseudo-moderates, i.e. moderates with their eyes closed. The mafia are woken up and they choose their victim within a fixed amount of time (usually 5 seconds) and then they go back to sleep. After this, people wake up one at a time, and announce that they are awake. If the mafia had decided to kill someone, when that person wakes up, the mafia look at him with their
evil eyes, thereby killing him and making him the moderator for the rest of the game. The moderator then oversees the other night-time activities (like the cop investigation).
Powers. By default, no power is compulsory — the mafia don't
have to kill, the doctor doesn't
have to save anyone, etc.
Moderating. There are several things a moderator should keep in mind. When the moderator is speaking to someone (say the detective) during the night, he should not keep facing the detective, because it fairly easy to figure out the face direction even with eyes closed. The moderator should also be careful about not revealing information that is not public. For example, every player might know that someone is the detective, but everyone might not know that everyone knows that he is a detective, so that is not a public information.
Variants. There are thousands of variations on the theme of Mafia. See our pages of
roles and
variants.
The Graduate Mafia Brotherhood of Princeton University