go team

GOOOOOOOOOOOOO TEAM

Bare with me I'm a newbie reading the guide. I've playing Secret Hitler, but this seems quite different and the roles spice up what initially seems an inferior game.

Yes. And the killing spices up things too. In Secret Hitler there are only the President-kills. In Mafia there is a lynch (if we manage to find consensus) and the night-kill(s).

Just waiting on Ele and Sage. If we hear from them we can start on friday.

And the day-vig kills. And let's not forget everyone's favourite: mod-kills.

And RL letter bombs...

Curious, it's Inferior how?

I'm assuming within the game Mafia players can PM each other to discuss night time strategy?

Well it seems more basic until you consider the difference the roles bring to the game. In Secret Hitler we can assess the players by their voting paterns more so than this game, which seems more subjective.

I'd imagine the probability of one side winning depends on what roles Joe dishes out as they seem to give Town more advantages than Mafia from what I've seen.

they have a secret forum that only they have access to. PMs are forbidden in case they mock the moderator.
Often the mafia's communication is limited only to the night phase, so the moderator needs to be able to see their communication.

It's actually the opposite.

There is far more strategy to Mafia than Secret Hitler, at least in my experience of the two.
I was pretty much tied in what I could so or say as a Fascist in the SH game, you can't really break the mould in the same way you can in Mafia.

I find Mafia to be much more complicated as there are a whole host of things you have to keep in mind. In Secret Hitler the Liberals have a common goal, to enact liberal policies, and very little room to fail at that (two Liberals will only ever pass a Fascist policy if they pull three) whereas in Mafia you know you have to kill the Mafia but not who they are so there is no goal you can be working towards with other players.

Depending on the roles. There are those that help mafia and those that hinder town, both giving advantages to Mafia. Last game was won by mafia because they had a good hidden role (recruiter - who had the luck to recruite the Town Doctor), and overall roles were to their advantage...

I'd like to try a vanilla mafia some day. Just vanilla townie and goons. Are such games still played?

Technically, yes. However, typically we've got one or more roles here.

If there is interest in a pure vanilla game, then I'm willing to mod it.

I was considering to make my 'relative majority with enforced voting' game role-less as well. That might make the effect of the non-standard voting procedure clearer, which would be good for a test-game.

But then again with the flavour of the setup I have in mind a neutral lyncher or a vengeful role would work really well. Haven't decided yet.

I'm not sure how much effect roles would actually have on the voting, but such a voting requirement would be a variation on the "as vanilla as possible" game that ZFR wants to try.