The key to success in a good Mafia Round is a good plan. You need a good idea, good setup, good story, and then good time management. Hopefully you've already got some sort of idea for what your story will be for your Mafia round, but if not, then I suggest you start thinking of one. Try come up with something creative and exciting. New and Original, but not confusing. Although for the purpose of this guide, I will be using the basic game mechanics, it wont' feel so simplistic when I add a story too it.
Your Mafia Round story needs good guys and villains, so no having people die by an earthquake or tsunami- unless your villains cause the earthquake or tsunami. Maybe it's superheroes, and that's possible, or maybe it's Old Western, where it won't be. For example, the setting is a small mountain village, and there's loads of gold hidden in the land surrounding... The Mafia could be a group of people who come to the village in hopes of finding this gold, but they're greedy and don't want anyone else to get it, so they start picking off the villagers one by one until all the mountain's gold is theirs.... But the Detective, a local store clerk who knows a thing or two about everyone in town, is a suspicious of these new arrivals and sets out to investigate. When things start to get rough, the village's Doctor takes the mission upon themselves to rescue the endangered villagers and keep them safe at their practice while the Mafia are on the loose. There's your four basic roles. Mafia, Detective, Doctor and Villagers.
On this site, I've put a basic Mafia Game template that your should refer to with this guide for designing your Mafia Game. The template is the basic Mafia game mechanics and in includes notes (in red) that you should read to help explain the use of the different explanation sections. Copy it to a text document and tweak it as you go along though this guide (and I suggest you remove the notes from your final version). If you want to rename the roles, I've specifically written role names in CAPITAL LETTERS to make them easier to notice for you to change.
You'll notice I mentioned the Mafia, Detective, Doctor and Villagers before, but not the Storyteller mentioned on the template. That's because the Storyteller isn't a player, they're you! That section of the template basically summaries your job. Yes, you will have to get online to check your game every day. Nothing is worse than a storyteller not knowing what's going on in their own game.
So you've got your roles renamed on the template, and you understand the time periods, special rules and such... But it mentioned something about "NUMBER ROLE"... Ratios between roles is important. You CANNOT have 1 Mafia with 1 Detective, 1 Doctor and 12 Villagers. That'd just be unfair on your Mafia. For a basic round, you should have either 10 or 15 players. There's not really a special formula for picking the number of special roles in a round, as that's as hard as guessing who will play your round. The players themselves bring a whole 'nother dynamic to the round and how it's played. But generally, if you have 10 players total, I'd recommend... 2 Mafia, 0 Detective, 1 Doctor, 7 Villagers. If you have, say, 15 players, then I'd recommended 3 Mafia, 1 Detective, 1 Doctor and 10 Villagers. Pick the number of players and roles and tweak these in the template.
2. Writing your intro
Your intro, positioned only second to your title, is what will either draw people to, or away, from your game. Earlier in designing your round, I mentioned a basic story of a mountain village with gold laden surrounds. Now you take that a step further; a story. This will be the basis of every update in your round. An into example:
The mountains painted a dark silhouette, hiding the dying sun in the west. Dusk turned to night, and Frederick saw three people enter Molly's inn. Not casual travellers by the looks of them, and not friendly folk either, he guessed. Each wore a dark Stetson, pulled forward to shield their eyes from the sun and Fred's view. Their garb was similar, mucky browns of the mud-laden lands to the south. Some people moved north after the hills were exhausted of gold down there. Maybe these three were just more of that lot. He wouldn't be surprised with the sack they lugged along. It was oddly shaped to be filled with coin though. Oh well, he thought, best close up shop... Frederick cleared the till, set the small bag of coin in his pocket, closed up shop and headed for the bank.
"Did you see them new lot that arrived an hour ago, Shaun? On their way up to Molly's inn?" Shaun didn't respond to Fred's question, he was paralyzed. Fred turned around and stared up the barrel of a handgun. What happened next was a bit of a blur to Fred. The man holding the gun was one of the three he had seen earlier. Shaun was shot, and dropped the key to the till, which slipped down under the building through a crack in the floorboards.
The dark man left without any money thankfully, but Shaun was horribly injured, his left forearm now rendered unusable. Sarah, the local doctor, would be working late tonight. Also unfortunately, in shock he hadn't gotten a good look at the shooter, and with so many new arrivals in town lately, if the man changed clothes, it would be hard to pick from the innocent. And then what if the dark man- or his friends -tried to kill him next, as a witness? Gold diggers after money, armed and dangerous. The Sheriff would have to find out about this!
3. The Player List
4. Sign-Ups
