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Strategic Family Gatherings v32.32.0

📜 How to Play Mafia

🎯 The Goal

A social-deduction game of trust and betrayal in a Prohibition-era underworld. The Mafia quietly picks off the Town by night; the Town hunts the Mafia by day through argument, suspicion and the ballot. Every game is balanced so either side has a real shot — your reads and your nerve decide it.

👥 Teams

🏛️ Town: The majority. You don't know who's who — pool what you learn and root out the Family before they thin you out.

🔪 Mafia: A small Family who know one another from the start. Eliminate Town by night and lie convincingly by day.

🌙 Night Phase

• The Don chooses who the Family eliminates (from Night 2).

• The Doctor protects someone (never the same person twice running).

• The Detective investigates one player and learns their allegiance.

• Specialists on both sides work in secret — and some slip into the Speakeasy instead of acting (see below).

🥃 The Speakeasy

On open nights, players without a night action gather at the Speakeasy. It's the underworld's rumour mill: visitors have a chance to learn another patron's allegiance, and being inside gives a little protection from a night hit. Great intel — but showing up too often gets you noticed. (Some configs keep it shut on Night 1, or entirely.)

📰 Word on the Street

Each morning the Speakeasy Times may run a headline. The presses track how much each side really knows, and a story tends to surface to help whichever side has fallen behind — so the game never goes dark on information for long. Read between the lines: a headline can quietly confirm a hunch.

☀️ Day Phase

1. Discussion: Trade suspicions, build cases, defend yourself.

2. Accusations: Accuse a suspect. With 5+ players an accusation needs a second to become a valid Nomination.

3. Voting: Vote a nominee out. A tie can be settled by the Mayor.

⚰️ Reading the Bodies

When someone dies, the death notice reveals their true role and side. That's gold for the Town: it confirms who was telling the truth, validates (or burns) everyone who pushed a vote, and lets honest players build trust over the game. Watch who was right — and who wasn't.

🎭 Roles You'll Meet

Town

🎩 Mayor
Breaks ties; the Town's anchor
🔍 Detective
Investigates allegiance
⚕️ Doctor
Shields a player from a kill
🔫 Vigilante
Can kill at night — but mistakes cost
🕵️ Private Eye
Knows the Don early on
⚖️ Attorney
Can shield a nominee from lynch
🎖️ Veteran
An attacker who kills him dies too
🤡 Patsy
A sleeper who "wakes" to a side

Mafia

👑 Don
Family boss; orders the kill
🔭 Lookout
Stakes out Town specialists
⚔️ Soldato
Coerces a Town vote by force
💣 Saboteur
Knocks out a Town role for a night
🚔 Bent Cop
A mole on the Security Council
📜 Consigliere
The Don's adviser & fixer

…and more, depending on table size — Capo, Lawyer, Informant, Professor, Priest, Editor, Schoolmaster, Bodyguard, Constable, Nurse and Scout all appear in the bigger games.

🔄 The Ranks Refill

Kill the Detective and a Townie may step up as the Constable; the Doctor's death can raise a Nurse; lose the Mafia's Lookout and a goon becomes the Scout. And the Family always has a boss — if the Don falls, another member is promoted (and gives up their own specialism to take the chair). Eliminating a key role buys time, not permanent safety.

🏆 Winning

Town wins when every Mafia is gone.

Mafia wins when they equal or outnumber the Town.

💡 Tips for New Players

Track the votes. Who accuses whom, and who quietly never does.

Use the death notices. Each confirmed body tells you who to trust.

Guard your role. Claiming too early paints a target on your back.

Mafia: blend in. Vote, accuse, and grieve like a worried Townie.

Town: logic plus instinct. The math narrows it; the gut closes it.

Mayor variants

Persistent Mayor: When the Mayor is eliminated, a successor takes the role and keeps their original specialism. The Mayor power (tie-break, vote visibility) never permanently leaves the game.

One-shot Mayor: When the Mayor is eliminated, the role is permanently lost. No succession. Tie-breaks fall through to the host's configured tie-break rule (first-nominated by default, or no-lynch).

Don as Night-1 Lookout (Very small games only)

In small games with no Mayor, the Don has no kill on Night 1. Instead the Don picks a target to stake out — using the standard Lookout activity-detection logic — and learns either what the target did, or who visited the target. The Don's normal hit begins on Night 2. In 4 and 5 player games, the Don is the only Mafia, so there's no one to share intel with — the intel goes to the Don directly.

Don succession (Mafia always has a Don)

If the Don dies while other Mafia members are alive, one of them is promoted to Don and gains the nightly kill. The promoted player keeps everything they earned in their previous role (intel, stakeout records, family chat history) but loses the ability to use their specialist action — they're a Don now, not a Lookout/Soldato/etc. The most expendable members are promoted first, working up toward the senior specialists.

Specialist succession (variants)

Detective succession: When the Detective dies, a randomly-selected Townie becomes the Constable, with reduced investigation accuracy.

Doctor succession: When the Doctor dies, a randomly-selected Townie becomes the Nurse, with somewhat reduced ability.

Lookout succession: When the Mafia Lookout dies, a randomly-selected non-Don Mafia becomes the Scout (Mafia equivalent of Constable).

These succession rules are opt-in per game; smaller configs (4p–8p) typically don't enable them.

Create Game

⚙️ Advanced Settings
players
Only applies in 4p/5p games or after a Rule 2b Mayor is eliminated.
SC members cannot accuse each other. Vigilante cannot target current or former SC members.

Join the Family

🎭 Your Nom de Guerre:
Click Roll to generate

🔄 Rejoin Game

Enter the name you used when joining

Family Gathering

ABC123

Players (1/26)

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🏆 Game Over!

👻 Open Floor — All Players