Live Action Mafia

A game of sneakiness and paranoia
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 Post subject: Public Game Rules
PostPosted: Wed Feb 01, 2017 2:53 pm 
GOALS

The Mafia goal is that all non-Mafia are dead and at least one Mafia is alive. The Town goal is that all Mafia are dead and at least one non-Mafia is alive. Most players have either the Town or Mafia goal, but some may have other goals. The Mafia know who each other are.

Game will end at the end of day if either the Town or Mafia goal is satisfied, or if everyone is dead. Game may end before then.

If you are given by Gods that certain other players share your goal, they share your goal; there are no double agents. Everyone is 100% loyal to their current goals, even if they expect to change goals.


DEAD PLAYERS

A player who is dead might still be in the game, possibly with different goals. Don't spoil dead players with information unless you know they are out of game. Similarly, if you're killed, don’t talk to players or get spoiled unless GM's give you the go-ahead. Incants cannot be used on the dead.


ABOUT ROLES

Classical and Special Roles:
Each living player has a classical role (desperado, investigator, serial killer, etc.) and a special role. The classical role has no correlation to the player's alignment except that only town-aligned players will begin as innocent children. Note in particular that the serial killer role is not correlated to being mafia-aligned, the gay knight role is not correlated to being town, and that Mafia is not a classical role. The classical roles will be listed publicly; read them carefully, because they’re a bit different from the usual.

Role Changing:
Various effects may change a player's classical role into a different one during the game. This has no effect on their alignment or special role. Unless you know otherwise, your role will only change at end of day, so you don’t need to constantly check your role.

If you have role X on one day, have some other roles, then go back to having role X on a later day, you will pick up X where you left off. For example, if you are a Group Investigator who investigates day 1, then a different role on day 2, then a Group Investigator on day 3, you cannot investigate on day 3; you can do it at most once every two days that you have that power. Similarly, if you had previously used once-per-game powers you will not get to use them again.

Traps:
Traps may be set only by guessing a living player's current classical role. Traps may have a variety of effects that may be good or bad for the trapped person. Players are therefore warned against sharing their classical role information too freely.


INVESTIGATIONS

An investigation in this game acts as a “Monty Hall investigation.” To investigate Z’s death, a player MUST visit Z’s kill site, then message Mods with a set of two living suspects {X,Y} to investigate for Z’s death. If neither X nor Y would show up guilty for making the kill, or if both X and Y would show up guilty, Mods will return a random one of them. If one of X and Y would show up guilty for making the kill, Mods will return the one who is innocent. (Effectively, this process will give the investigator one person who is innocent, and a Bayesian update on the guiltiness of the other, except in the rare case that both players would look guilty.)

An infallible investigation is similar to previous games’ investigations but not affected by investigation-manipulation powers (such as Frame and Manipulate the Press from standard games), so the result is guaranteed to give accurate information about the killer. To infallibly investigate Z’s death, a player MUST visit Z’s kill site, then message Mods with a player Y to investigate for Z’s death; Mods will return innocent or guilty.

You may not reinvestigate the same kill using the same role power unless your role states otherwise.

If you previously visited a kill site and then gained an investigative role, you don't need to visit it again.

Note: Investigation manipulation powers that make a player look innocent (see e.g. investigator, priest, desperado…) take precedence over those that make a player look guilty (e.g. Group Investigator, having actually made the kill), regardless of the order the powers were used.


INCANTS

Any time you use an incant, you must inform GMs when, where, and who you incanted on.

Please do not fake incants. This is a mystery game so anything could be an incant. If you don’t have a role power that allows you to say an incant in this situation, don’t say it and don’t jokingly say something that sounds similar. Don't fake things that are known to be incants on Mods, NPs, or the empty air. Players should always know if they have been incanted on (and Gods will inform them if they don’t) but will not necessarily know who incanted on them.

If the incant acts on another player (as opposed to responding to their incant, or revealing your innocence, etc.) you must tap them and say it audibly to use it (unless it says otherwise, like tasing). Otherwise, just say it audibly.

Here is a partial list of incants that probably exist in game:

BANG!
Target dies, unless they know otherwise, and transfers items to their killer.

KABOOM!
Target dies. No ifs ands or buts. Their items are destroyed.

SMITE!
Target dies iff they do not have the town goal. Smiter dies otherwise. The player who dies transfers items to the player who lives.

SPLASH!
No visible effect.

MUG!
The target chooses one of their items and gives it to the mugger, or none if they have none.

I do not die.
Only usable after someone attempts to bang/smite you, if you know you live.

I do not know if I die.
Only usable after someone attempts to bang/smite you, if you don’t know if you live. (If you know for sure that you live, please use “I do not die,” but if you can’t remember what powers/items you have active, feel free to use this instead.) You may not take any game actions or communicate with anyone until 5 minutes after you inform your attempted killer whether or not you live, except to answer "are you alive?" in the affirmative if you are asked. (Note: Anyone is allowed to fake not being able to communicate for 5 minutes, so this should prove nothing.)

I tase you.
(Usable at range) Target cannot bang, kaboom, or smite for the rest of the day.

I’m gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse.
Target gains the mafia goal and loses the town goal if they had it.

I’m an innocent child and I trust you.
Incanter is provably an innocent child.

Disarm.
The incanter is Mafia, and someone just attempted to bang them. That someone may choose to let them live or die, and tells them so immediately.


STANDARD STUFF

Forums:
Forums are available at mafia.mit.edu for general game discussion on Town Square. We encourage you to work together there publicly and include all players on discussion. However, the forums also have a private messaging system; we ask that you cc: Mods on your PMs for our entertainment.

Night Phase:
Day ends at 23:00. Between 23:00 and 23:30 each night, Moderators will be frantically trying to organize things. You may not take any game actions in this time. Day will be extended by at most 30 minutes if kills happen in the last hour of day (but not for elections / impeachments), so the next day will still start no later than 24:00.

Executions and other deaths at the end of day occur at the BEGINNING of the night phase (as quickly as Mods can tally and post votes). Players who think they have likely died should stop talking with other players at 23:00 sharp and act as if they are dead; they can answer "Are you alive?" with "I don't know." (This is to prevent communication during the night phase from acting as a deadman switch.)

Kills:
Some players can kill another player by tapping them on the shoulder and saying "BANG" or “KABOOM”. If this happens to you, you are dead, unless you know otherwise. If you died, all of your items now belong to the person who killed you, or are destroyed if you were killed with “KABOOM”. If you killed someone or were killed, please let the Mods know who, where, and when.

Kills will be announced officially on the forums no sooner than a half-hour after the kill occurs. If the moderators do not post your death within 45 minutes, you may post it. Message the moderators again to say that you are about to do so. Start a new post including your name, time of death, and location of death.

Don’t wake someone up to kill them. Don’t enter their personal room (if their door is open you can count out loud from 3 and then say bang.)

Spotting A Killer:
We have recently gotten in trouble with MIT authorities for freaking people out by running from an attempted kill during an official MIT activity (class, athletic practice, spectating an athletic game or concert, etc.), and they have asked that we not disrupt such. (Before or after the activity is fine.) Therefore, we implement the following rule to strongly discourage non-clean kills in those situations:

If you see someone coming to kill you and you are in a circumstance where it is not reasonable to run away (because it’s unsafe, would freak people out, etc.) you may instead point at the killer and say “Spotted.” (You need to say this before they get in range to touch you.) They then cannot incant on you. They can still try to incant on you later in the day, but only after you’ve finished the activity and had time to post about them to town square.

Please be reasonable about this. If there are non-class activities where you expect that it would freak people out if you ran, please note this in your intro / updates, so people know that you will use “spotted” there. Don’t spam “spotted” at people unless you are sufficiently confident that they are about to try to kill you that you’d run if you could. Don’t use “spotted” if someone walks into your classroom and kills you before the class has started, since that’s a reasonable and non-disruptive time to kill you. We hope that this rule will not come up at all. If this rule gets abused, we will change the rule to make kills invalid if they happen during official MIT activities, but we hope not to have to ban these altogether.

Executions:
Each day, each living player may cast a vote for a living player to execute. You may vote for No Execution on the first night only; after that you must vote for a living player. You may make conditional votes, and Mods will count only your latest submission. If a player does not vote, they will be counted as voting for themselves. At day end, votes are posted publicly (including how many votes each player casts), whoever has the most votes is executed, and all votes are cleared. The tiebreaker between players is whoever placed higher on the previous day. If players had the same number of votes every day of game, none of the tied players will be executed. If an executed player had items they will be randomly given out among game.

Items:
There are a number of items in game. They will either tell you what they do, or not. Message the Mods if you use an item, get an item, or give an item. You may transfer items between consenting living players freely by PMing the recipient and Mods. This does not have to be in person, but the recipient must first be told and agree to receiving the item. You may not destroy items.

You cannot prove that you do not have an item. You can prove that you DO have an item by saying, “I show you X” where X is the name of your item, but you can’t prove its description.

No Shenanigans:
Anonymous communication, deadman switches, cryptography, simultaneity, and provable randomness are NOT allowed. Neither is electronic evidence or looking at other people’s screens. Please see the latest standard rules (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aII ... B92Y/edit#) for examples of standardly disallowed shenanigans, which are also disallowed here.

Questions To Answer Honestly:
If someone asks you if you are alive, you must honestly answer whether you are Alive, Dead But In Game, or Dead And Out Of Game. If someone asks you who you are, you do NOT need to answer or be honest.

Evictions:
No one will be allowed to play without posting an introduction. Players who take no actions for 2 game days in a row will be poked, and if they do not take action by a third game day they will be evicted that night. Evictions will be labeled as such.

Elected Positions:
Living players may make petitions to elect a living player to an office, or to impeach a them from that office. Any living player can sign each petition once. Election petitions for a role cannot exist while anyone is elected to that role. Impeachment petitions for a role cannot exist unless that player is elected to that role. This means that if another player is elected when your petition was aaaalmost ready, you have to throw it out and run from scratch after they die or are impeached. If a petition has the signatures of more than 50% of the living players and at least 5 signatures, then the living player who has the petition can use it by PMing the Mods the names of the signees. The elected roles are Mayor and Police Officer, and a petition must list the name of the role. If a player dies in office, they vacate that office.

The Mayor’s vote counts for 3. They have an investigation each day. Once per day they may Count A Role by choosing a classical role and finding out how many living players have that role.

The Police Officer can choose up to 2 classical roles each day to put on their watchlist; if anyone with one of those roles dies, the Police Officer is told so (but not which role they were) and may infallibly investigate their death once. Innocent Child may not be one of those roles. The watchlist defaults to empty. They may submit it to Mods in advance of the day, or at any time during the day, but not retroactively; it will become active 5 minutes after they submit it. Additionally, any time the Police Officer would kill with BANG, they may instead freely choose to make that kill with KABOOM.

Mafia Restrictions & No-Kill Days:
Each night, if the Mafia have not killed anyone in the past two days, a Mafia will die. (That means if there are 3 no-kill days in a row, mafia die on both the second and third night.) There is no cumulative limit on no-kill days. Also, Mafia-aligned players may not attempt to kill the same person more than once in a day.


POINTS OF INTEREST

Certain effects in game will ask you to go to real places in the world, e.g. to look for buried treasure or search for mysterious clues. These places are distinct - one might have what you’re looking for while another is empty. They are:

ECC: The courtyard at East Campus
RHG: The gas station next to Random Hall
ETP: The park across from Epsilon Theta
KAL: The lawn in front of Kresge Auditorium
HBI: The intersection on the MIT side of the Harvard Bridge (mass ave and mem drive)
LB7: Lobby 7

To take an action at one of these places, go there and PM Mods with the 3-character acronym and the effect you are using. (Going pretty close, e.g. being on the saferide as it goes by Random or ET, is good enough.)


CREDITS

Lots of people contributed to developing classical game rules, which we got ideas from or sometimes shamelessly copied. These rules also copied some of Alex’s Mystery Mafia game rules text and ideas, and lots of other sources. Thank you to all of the LAM community!


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 Post subject: Re: Public Game Rules
PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 9:25 pm 
IMPORTANT UPDATES:

You may now show people items without giving them away, but you can show the name only.

When you transfer items, use the item form under Game Actions thread, instead of PMing us.

Also, in general if you want quick responses to actions, you can tell us via gchat:
jmbredenberg @gmail.com
antimonyarsenide @gmail.com

Also, derp, you can't disarm kabooms.


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 Post subject: Re: Public Game Rules
PostPosted: Thu Feb 16, 2017 11:51 pm 
UPDATE:

You can only use an item effect once per day. (That is, if you have two identical copies of an item you can't use both in the same day.)


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 Post subject: Re: Public Game Rules
PostPosted: Sun Feb 19, 2017 11:09 pm 
RULES CLARIFICATION:

If you are dead, don't talk to players unless you know otherwise. If someone messages you electronically before your death is posted, don't reply. You may tell players you're dead if you are asked in person only. Sorry for the confusion!


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