Variants of Mafia Rules
Jail
A suggestion from Denton Troyer, from Ohio, for those who like complicated games:
Basically the jail is an alternative to being dead. When a player is voted on for a trial, they either go free, get killed by a unanimous vote (described later), or go to jail if there's a non-unanimous majority.
We tried using a blind/silent vote where mafia votes don't count for the unanimous total. This worked, but gave the player on trial a hard time defending themselves. So we modified the vote to include the mafia's vote, only a unanimous kill was equal to the number of players minus the number of total mafia. In this way, everyone's vote counts and you still can't determine just by who didn't vote, who is in the mafia. Sorry that sounds so complicated.
The jail is a seperate area of the game. It is highly suggested that you have the jail in a seperate room where prisoners can't hear what is going on in the other game. Prisoners are to have no clue what is going on in the free world, and the free world can't see into the prison. This creates an atmosphere shrouded in mystery because when someone dies in either place, the other place won't know about it.
Yes I said someone can die in jail. Due to riots and such in the jail, players in the jail have an opportunity to kill each other. This happens when there are at least 3 prisoners. Two of them can gang up and kill the other one. The free world is totally unaware of what has happened and therefore are not told the identity of the slain prisoner.
The free world game continues as normal going through night and day cycles, and lynchings or arrests.
Once in jail, a special character's ability is useless. They are not allowed to exercise their abilities in any way. The only catch to this is when the informant(angel) is sent to jail. Upon entering the jail, the angel is told the identity of everyone in the jail.
Each night when the mafia awaken, they can either kill someone, or they can cause a jailbreak in which ALL prisoners are set free.
Another way to get out of jail is to await parol. We played that 3 rounds(days) after being jailed, a prisoner is up for parol and gets a retrial. A retrial also occurs if the jail is full. A retrial is just like any other trial and the vote results are the same. The only difference is if the jail is full. If it's full, the prisoner can only be set free or killed.
In the free world, whenever a retrial is taking place, players vote on that first, then they perform their normally scheduled accusations and trial in which the prisoner (if set free) can vote.
As for the number of prisoners allowed, it should be equal to the number of the mafia. If all the mafia are in jail at the same time, the game is over with the citizens winning. Mafia do get retrials, but in the rare case that they are all in jail at the same time, we thought we'd give the citizens a break.
The timing of the jail and the free world should be the same. This means only one player can die in jail per round.
We play that you never need all the mafia to agree on a single person to kill them, so one mafia being in jail won't render the mafia useless. Note a mafia in jail doesn't get to kill anyone at night or communicate in any way with his fellow mafia.
We had thought of letting prisoners communicate to the free world via the magistrate, but the logistics would probably get too complicated.
I suggest only using this variation with a large group and lowering the time it takes for parol. When we used this, there were never 3 people in the jail and it basically turned out to be a fate worse than death, because when you're dead you at least get to see what's happening in the game.
If used properly, the jail would most likely aid the mafia more. Imagine if the angel and a mafia were stuck in jail together awaiting a third prisoner to help kill the other one. Or what if the archangel died in jail and a fellow prisoner anounces himself to be that upon retrial. There are endless possibilities for mafia to lie their way to victory. Source:
http://www.princeton.edu/~mafia/vgp2k.htm
