Gangland

Mafia variant

by Dave McAwesome

This is a bizarre variant on the standard Mafia/Werewolf game. Hell, it might not even count as a Mafia game. It's designed as a very simplistic, fun, quick game. Most certainly, it requires less strategy than typical mafia games.

Every player is mafia. There are multiple mafia families. Each player knows the identity of the other members of his family but no one else. There is one godfather for each family. Each day a player is voted off. Every night, the godfather selects one player to kill.

There is no communication between players whatsoever. Not in hidden forums, not in PMs, not in instant messaging. Nothing. The godfathers have sole discretion on who to kill. The other members of the family may leave hints or outright requests in the game thread. That is all. Coordination in the voting is all done in the game thread.

If the godfather is killed, the game leader picks another player from that family to be the next godfather. If there are no more members of the family left, the family has disintegrated. Last family standing wins.

The game leader should probably pick themed or colorful names of the mafia families. Jedi, Sith, Hutts might be good for a three family game. England, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary (plus Russia, Turkey, Italy) might be good for a 4- to 7-family World War I style game (minus the Allies, Central Powers affiliations). X-men, Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Morlocks, Hellfire Club. My favorite for a three-way or four-way: re-enacting the Cobra Civil War (G.I. JOe, Destro's Iron Grenadiers and Cobra (which can be broken up into Cobra Loyalists with Serpentor or Cobra Separatists with Fred VII/Cobra Commander)). You get the picture.

If you have a lot of people, either break them into more families or stay with 3 or 4 large families. If you have large families, you could add a doctor to each family. Twice per game, they may protect one person (PMed to game leader). They may not protect themselves.