Quick Guide to Mafia

The Point
The basic idea of Mafia is that out of all the people playing, a small group of players, the Mafia, are working against the larger group, the Town, to try to bring them down. The Mafia, also known as scum, are the enemies, where as the Town are the innocents.

The Town's job is to weed out the Mafia members one by one until none are left. Each Day phase, all players vote to lynch a fellow player. The Town must attempt to get a majority of people to lynch a member of the Mafia. The Mafia's job is to outlast all of the Townies until they make up the majority of remaining players. Once they've done that, they have won. The Mafia must do this by avoiding getting lynched as well as killing Town aligned players at night.

Basic Rules
Before the game officially begins, the Host randomizes roles and alignments and PM's one to every player. It's against the rules to directly quote or screenshot your role PM to any other player.

The game starts with a Day phase, Day 1. This phase lasts 24 hours and all players vote publicly to lynch a fellow player based solely on first impressions. To vote to lynch, you must post "##Lynch: Name". You may switch your vote at any time during the Day phase. To do this, you must post "##Unlynch" before choosing a new target.

At the end of the Day, the player who received the majority of votes will be killed. The Host will post a short story of their death, followed by that players' role and alignment.

The game then heads to the Night phase, where the Mafia conspires in secret and chooses who to murder. The Mafia are able to meet on an off-site board where they can talk to one another. Unless your role permits it, talking to another player at Night is strictly against the rules. While this takes place, any Town players with a Night Action has 24 hours to submit their action to the Host. Once all Night Actions are received, the next Day is posted and the cycle continues.

The game ends when either all of the non-Town players have been killed, or the Mafia gains a majority over the Town players.

Power Roles
Hosts will often include Power Roles for both the Town and Mafia. These roles are added for fun, variety, and balance. Examples include:


 * Cop - Once per Night, a Cop can choose to investigate a player. They will learn if they are a member of the Mafia or not.
 * Doctor - Once per Night, the Doctor may choose a player to protect from night kills.
 * Vigilante - At Night, a Vigilante may choose to kill any player of their choice.
 * Roleblocker - Once per Night, the Roleblocker can choose a player and prevent them from using their Night Action, if they have one.

FE tends to utilize many roles per game; some variations of popular roles, others entirely new creations. To learn more, visit the Roles page.

Game Types
There are a few types of Mafia games played on FE. The most standard being an on-site game. Each on-site game will receive its own subforum and include sign-ups over the course of several days.

An anonymous game takes place off-site on a forum devoted entirely to the game. These games find players either creating or receiving a character to play as, helping to hide their identity. The anonymity makes for fun games that cannot rely on metagaming.

Mini Mafias are smaller games that take place in a single night. More often than not, these games include open set-ups, meaning all of the roles included in the game are known from the beginning. These games tend to be quick and lighthearted.