Bay 12 Games Forum

Deathmatch Minority Mafia

Minority mafia is inspired both in name and concept off of both the “Minority Rule” and “Downsizing game” rounds from the manga Liar Game.

Deathmatch Minority Mafia is played much like mafia, with quite a few variations though. Like normal mafia, there is a mafia, a town, each player has 1 vote, the mafia get 1 nightkill to use (or decide to not use) each night, and the alignment of any player is revealed when they die.

The differences though, are quite significant. Instead of the players voting for who they want to kill, they vote for whom they want to live instead.

There are some other variations with voting that must be stressed though, that I feel will intensify the game by quite a bit:

1.   The first and most important rule: You need 2 votes to survive at the end of each day. Any person without two votes is killed at the end of the day.
2.   You must vote every day.
3.   You cannot vote for yourself
4.   You get to vote, and then you cannot change your vote.
5.   Once every player has voted, the day ends right then and there.
6.   You may vote secretly. This is accomplished by Private Messaging the host. The only secret aspect though, is for whom you have voted for. Every other player will be notified that you’ve voted secretly.
7.   Due to the existence of secret votes, players will not be receiving vote counts, only receiving a tally of how many votes each person has received at the end of each day.
8.   In the case of a day with only a single Mafioso and townie remaining, both parties lose, as it’s impossible for either party to achieve the 2 vote minimum required to survive.

And that, right there, is the gist of Deathmatch Minority Mafia.

However, after giving it some thought, with only these rules, this would easily lead to a gamebreaking strategy: where on the first day every player votes for one person they believe to be town (which is statistically likely) and allow all others to be killed, resulting in an easy town victory most of the time. While this strategy is certainly risky, I feel the need to prevent this, so I’d like to introduce the concept of both ROUNDS and POINTS that need to be taken into consideration.

Basically, a Round is 1 game of Deathmatch Minority Mafia, where an entire GAME is comprised of 5 Rounds. Entering each round, each player is carrying a Point. When you die in Deathmatch Minority Mafia, you lose your point, and it’s added to the “pot”, to use Texas Hold’em terminology. In the case of the town winning, the value of the Pot is divided between all SURVIVING town members, increasing their point score for the Game. In the case of a mafia victory, the pot’s point score is divided between all mafia members BOTH LIVING AND DEAD.  Also, ontop of the winnings from the pot, each player will receive the 1 point they entered the match with.

At the end of each round, the points in the Pot are divided as explained, and are added to the appropriate player’s Point Scores. Players can also receive a fraction of a point, rounding down at the one-tenths place. These will be kept track of by the host.

After a round, a new round begins, where each eliminated player is brought back in and given a new alignment, and another iteration of Deathmatch Minority Mafia begins. After all 5 rounds have completed, the player with the most points is the winner. In the case of a tie, all tying players are winners. However, if more than 50% of the players are tying for first place, then those players lose, and the winner is instead the player with the fewest points. All players tying in last place win in this scenario. If 100% of the players are tying for first place, then all players lose.

In the case of a Round where all players die, that round is a disqualified and is repeated with new alignments. The points in the pot however, will carry over to the “Repeat Round”. This means that any repeat round will have a large sum in the pot at its very start. There can be as many repeat rounds as necessary, with the pot growing with each successive one, until a winner is determined.
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Now, a vital difference between Vanilla Mafia and Deathmatch is that player’s total points can be used as bargaining chips. What I mean by this is, it’s possible to offer your points to other players to persuade them to vote for you, or for other reasons. You can do this in the open topic, or through Private Message. You cannot “give” your points away though, the other player must accept the point transfer, and point transfers won’t be acknowledged by the host until the end of that round. When point transfers are acknowledged, the giving player, the receiving player, and the amount of points are specified. Each transaction is treated this way.

Players may ask for a player’s point totals, but the list will only be the one that was updated at the end of the previous round. Asking for point totals during Round 1 is a moot point for this reason, as the score will always be 0’s for each player.

Also, as noted in voting rule #6, players can vote secretly. This is done by Private Message to the host of the game. The players in the open topic will be notified that you’ve chosen to vote secretly with the message, performed by the host, “*Player Name* has chosen to vote secretly*. This is due to the fact that since a day ends the moment all players have voted, it’s only fair that player’s know who’s left to vote.

Finally, one last difference between this and normal games of mafia is that once a player is eliminated from a round, they are still allowed to converse with other players in the open topic, private message other players, and offer or receive points from other players. Also, I think it goes without saying that I should be CC’d with every private post to another player.

Finally, the game is meant to be played with no less than 8 players, with an additional mafia being added everyone 8 additional players. Deathmatch Minority games are intended to proceed very quickly, with each round lasting no longer than 2-3 (game) days, and all the players are expected to be very active due to the quick pace of the game.

This game is much different from Vanilla Mafia, in that it’s expecting its players to achieve two difficult, almost contradictory goals at the same time. On the one hand, the player needs to accrue as many points as possible in order to secure ultimate victory for themselves, on the other hand, they can’t be thinking only of themselves, because they need to help other players stay alive as well. In my opinion, there is quite a lot of room for deception, teamwork, backstabbing, planning, and persuasive deal-making. The rules might appear to be awkward, but I believe that this can turn out to be a very cutthroat game that requires a keen mind and a silver tongue to win.