Over the years, players have created Mafia variants that include additional rules. Some of these are listed here. The baker is on the side of the innocents. During the night, the baker gives one player a loaf of bread, potentially revealing their identity. If the baker dies, the innocents have just three nights to dispose of the mafia, or the innocents starve, and the mafia win. The Cobbler, [33] Villager, or Jester has the objective of convincing the town to kill them, or is required to vote in favor of all proposed eliminations. Sometimes, successful elimination of the Village Idiot results in the mafia being able to kill two people that night. Complicated roles [ edit ] The Hunter appears in Werewolves of Miller's Hollow, for example. The Woodcutter is a (less common) equivalent name for the role. Wired recommends including the hunter in even the most basic games: "Original Werewolf characters". Wired UK. January 2010 . Retrieved 2010-06-13.

The Traitor is not a mafioso (in that he does not awake at night and is not revealed as a mafioso by Detective type roles), but works to protect them and hamper the town during the day cycle, and wins only with a Mafia victory. [35] Conversely, the Undercover Cop is a mole within the Mafia group who acts with the Mafia but wins with the innocents. The stool pigeon may be the only optional role in play, [36] and makes up one of the few modern game forms to be played without an investigative role. Distinct from the alignment-role Godfather, the double-agent Godfather behaves as a standard mafioso, but wakes again (after the Mafia sleep) to perform an extra kill. This Godfather-role wins only if he survives. Role manipulators [ edit ] According to some rules, the role of dead players should be revealed; according to others, for example, if the protector dies, nobody should know that. [6] [18] In both cases, dead players are not permitted to attempt to influence the remainder of the game. History of the game". MafiaScum. 31 January 2007 . Retrieved 21 July 2016. "mith had been visiting [The Grey Labyrinth] since 1996, and started posting in the forums soon after they started. mith had played face-to-face Mafia with his church youth group in the late 1990s, and one day decided it would run well on the forums. The original thread can still be found here." This article was taken from the March issue of Wired UK magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online Another variant requires the night-time vote to be secret and unanimous, but allows multiple players to be added to the execution queue to ensure unanimity.Lisicin, D. (2005). The Mafia is Immortal (rus) Retrieved from https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/862298

This role is taken in addition to the assigned role, and it endows the player with additional, overt, powers (particularly during the daytime). Empowerment can be random, but is usually made by vote. For instance, the Mayor or Sheriff can be elected each morning, and gain two elimination votes, [46] or a Judge could moderate discussion in parliamentary fashion (to the advantage of their team). The elected President has the sole elimination vote. [47] In the popular online Mafia variant Town of Salem, the Sheriff is a role which can interrogate people at night to discover their role. Generally, most Town roles appear innocent; and most roles that are considered evil appear suspicious to the Sheriff. However, roles such as the Godfather and the Arsonist, despite opposing the townsfolk, are undetectable by a Sheriff, and the Framer can frame a player (to appear suspicious to the Sheriff). Handicapped roles [ edit ] a b For example, Bezier Games' Ultimate Werewolf Sorcerer [ permanent dead link] has the ability to detect the Seer role. (The sorcerer is granted different powers in other rule-sets, like Princeton University's, in which the Wizard has the ability to detect the Seer.) Whatever name this role is known by, the Detective-detector is typically aligned with the Mafia (for example, see: "9 Player Werewolf Evil team". 2005. ) Bi X., Tanaka T. (2016) Human-Side Strategies in the Werewolf Game Against the Stealth Werewolf Strategy. In: Plaat A., Kosters W., van den Herik J. (eds) Computers and Games. CG 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 10068. Springer, Cham a b "Are You A Werewolf? Rules of Play". Looney Labs . Retrieved 2010-06-15. Night-Noise: When everyone closes their eyes at night, it is best for people to also start humming, tapping the table, patting a knee, or making some noise. This will cover up any sounds made accidentally by the werewolves, the seer, or the moderator De Verraders/The Traitors - A Dutch Reality Game Show with multiple international editions, in which the game format resembles Mafia.Andrew Plotkin recommends having exactly two mafiosi, [3] whereas the original Davidoff rules suggest a third of the players (rounding to the nearest whole number) be mafiosi. Davidoff's original game does not include roles with special abilities. [1] In his rules for "Werewolf", Plotkin recommends that the first phase be night and that there be an odd number of players (including the moderator). These specifications avoid tie votes for eliminations and ensure that the game will end dramatically on an elimination rather than anticlimactically with murder as a foregone conclusion. [3] Night [ edit ] Werewolves discussing whom to kill during the night That a single mafioso wins against a single surviving innocent in the day phase is a standard live-play rule, being a sub-case of the rule that a numerical equality is a Mafia victory Mafia is a complicated game to model, so most analyses of optimal play have assumed both (a) that there are only townsfolk and Mafiosi and (b) that the townsfolk never have a probability of identifying the Mafia that is better than chance. Early treatment of the game concentrated on simulation, [19] while more recent studies have tried to derive closed-form equilibrium solutions for perfect play. Please note that parcels weighing over 2kg may be sent via courier due to Royal Mail weight restrictions.

In 2008, Erlin Yao derived specific analytical bounds for the mafia's win probability when there are no detectives. [21] In 1987, the USSR was starting to change. Mikhail Gorbachev was introducing the perestroika reforms which would ultimately lead to the end of the Cold War. The first treaty between the USSR and the US limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons was signed. Billy Joel played Leningrad and over-excited fans danced so hard they broke 200 seats. And at Moscow State University a young psychology student, Dimitry Davidoff, was trying to cram two years of college into one while teaching high-school students interested in his subject. It was a timetable that demanded total efficiency, so Davidoff needed to find a way to make the research that he was doing for his term papers palatable to a young audience. The result wasn't (yet) Werewolf; it was a game called Mafia.Although often defined as a party game, Mafia doesn’t always fit this description, particularly when play becomes very tense. It is hard to provide an accurate description of Mafia, as it has different settings with different rules of play depending on the community. Players can play Mafia games at parties in a casual and relaxed environment, organizing the games by themselves, or in the Mafia Clubs where the strict rules apply, and these range from semi-casual games to professional tournaments. There are also existing internet Mafia games available via webcam, or as texts in forum games. Many variations of this game exist, with different roles and abilities, settings and balance. The game is always changing and developing with the help of the various communities. However, the standard pattern for most of the game rules is that the Mafia Game has several rounds of play and every round progresses in a certain way. The other common attribute is that the objective for both the Mafia and the Citizens is to eliminate the opponent’s group (each other).

Multiple, independent groups of mafia or werewolves [57] act and win independently, giving faster game-play and the potential for cross-fire between the factions. The Dentist may select any other player at night, and prevent them speaking during the following day. [33] The Silencer is a mafioso with the identical power, except that they may not silence the same player on successive days. The silenced individual wakes in the morning and is immediately instructed not to talk until the end of the day. They can still raise their hand to vote in live games (although, if they were silenced by a prostitute, they are not allowed to vote). [49] Post-mortem roles [ edit ] Common Mafia Roles" . Retrieved 2010-06-14. – The Silencer is typically aligned with them and knows their identities, but (in some variants) in unknown to them, not participating in mafia killings. Jon Bennett " Mafia Advanced Rules" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-08-10. Additional rules created by Jon Bennett, accepted in local Mafia circles. The Mafia is a complex, incomplete information game. The essence of Mafia gameplay is an interaction between people, where the players have different types of information, styles of communication, and features of functionality. In connection with the knowledge and information distribution within the game settings and the game’s psychological complexity, Mafia became a subject for many scholars to research and teach.The creator of Mafia is intensely private -- he agreed to meet Wired only within World of Warcraft. He grew up in an austere Russian town but now lives in Boston with his family and dog. (He describes himself as "self-played" rather than "self-employed" but has never made serious money from Mafia.) Davidoff invented the game as a teaching tool in 1987 while a psychology undergraduate in Moscow; it has since spread across the world. Hasbro considered commercialising it when Davidoff arrived in the US, but thought it "unprotectable". Mafia is now used to treat gambling addicts in China and troubled US teens in Christian summer camps. Davidoff is blasé about such evolutions of his brainchild: "I'm against taking it seriously all the time." Derivation is by recursion on decreasing numbers of players in the following round, see: Yao, E. (2008). "A Theoretical Study of Mafia Games". p.7. arXiv: 0804.0071 [ math.PR]. Playing mafia-like games online opens the possibility of long lasting games, such as the ones on forums. In such games, one day in real life usually corresponds to one day within the game, so players log in each morning to see who was killed during the night phase.