Mafia game design "Best Practices"

[askaninjask]

As someone who has hosted a lot of games, I've had a lot of games ruined by simple design choices I could and should have changed beforehand. I thought it might be useful to discuss some discovered "rules of thumb" which can help you figure out when something you're planning on doing is a terrible idea. My hope is that by sharing this wisdom in a public place I can save new hosts the trouble of having to figure these out on their own.

Standard village v mafia games:

• Always give the village a slight advantage in numbers. If every faction plays perfectly, the village should win.
  
  It is hard for the village to play perfectly - much harder than it is for the mafia to do the same. If the mafia has allowed the village to lynch correctly every day, then the mafia deserves to lose. Make sure that the numbers in the game reflect this.
  
  
• Silence and Persuasion roles are really, really powerful on the mafia, and fairly weak on the village.
  
  If you're looking for a "filler" role to give a mafia player, don't add in a persuasion or a silence just to make everyone feel like they're contributing. If you give the mafia a persuasion, you have to balance the game around the fact that they're essentially a whole man better than they seem until that persuader dies.
  
  If, however, you're looking for a "filler" role to give to a villager, silences and persuasions are powerful, not-broken ways to do this. The longer the village has control of the lynch, the more interesting the game is.
  
  
• Watchers are really, really powerful on the village, and fairly weak on the mafia.
  
  A correctly deployed watcher can catch multiple mafiamen each night. Especially if the mafia *does not know* that the village has a watcher, this can be game-breaking.
  
  
• If there is any chance that info given from the host could be false (eg there is a mole role in the game, there is a paranoid inspector), there must be a rule/line in the PM saying so.
  
  Nothing is less fun than watching the game you designed become destroyed while the village leader is duped by the information YOU gave them. If an inspector knows that it's possible that their results could be lying to them, then there is an interesting dynamic wherein the inspector knows they can't trust everyone they've cleaned. This is good! But they have to know that their results are not infallible.
  
  
• Don't give the mafia an every night safeguard.
  
  Safeguards make bodyguards irrelevant, and if you give one to the mafia, they will kill the village leader every night. That's not fair to these village leaders - the people who are caring most about your game.

Multifaction games (this includes viva and FFA):

• Always give each faction a bodyguard. This is doubly important if the game does not have aliases.
  
  You want factions to speak to each other, and there's no better way to make sure they don't than by giving them no protection from enemy threats.
  
  
• BREAK. SYMMETRY.
  
  This one is a bit more subtle than the others, and it can be stated like this: There has to be something (other than the usernames involved) that makes one team substantially different from another. If this isn't the case, then the game quickly devolves into a popularity contest / randtargeting contest. See every Viva style game ever.
  
  Symmetry can turn an interesting concept into a dull, boring sludge. See Challenge 4 of Everyone Who Signs Up Will Be In This Game.
  
  
• If everyone needs everyone else dead, then the game will end in either a kingmaker or a runaway victory.
  
  Multifaction games are known for having terrible endings, but I've found that in games like Metroid Prime 2, and vonFiedler's Card Game Mafia in which each player only needs a certain subset of players dead to win, the winners of the game more accurately reflect how well everyone played. This is more satisfying as a player by a ton.
  
  This can also apply to village v mafia v wolf games, but hopefully the village has enough of a numbers advantage to start that the game is interesting anyway. Besides, the wolf always wins the kingmaker in these games, and wolf wins are cool.

Experimental concepts in any game:

• Try to keep the rules at least somewhat simple.
  
  I hosted probably one of the most complicated games ever in So Many Cards. At the end of the day, though, very little of the fluff I put into the game mattered at all - it was the more basic structure of the game (2 mafia v 1 village) that produced most of the interest and strategy of the game.
  
  
• Don't give villagers custom win conditions.
  
  This is one of those ideas that sounds great in principle but sucks in practice. The motivation for doing something like this is that you want villagers to be doing more than just "following the leader", so you give them an extra objective to complete.
  
  However, for villagers, acting as a unit is really their only source of power. Don't give villagers custom win conditions - if they succeed, it's often not by their own design, and if they fail, then they're losing for no reason, or as I like to call it, "pulling a Paperblade".
  
  Giving the mafia custom win conditions, however... has tons of potential.
  
  
• Recruits in non-Viva games suck. Really, they do.
  
  A lot of recent games have been playing with the idea of using recruits as a core mechanic. There is no way to create a balanced game with recruits. There really isn't. Don't use them.

That's all I can think of right now - please post below if you have others / disagree with any of these - they're all debatable, largely.

kthx

 

[Mekkah]

Good post, aska!

Village vs mafia

1. Give something that resembles a role to everyone, even if it's a little. I can think of few things more discouraging than "Dear Mekkah, you are a Vanillager. Good luck!" Give them an item, give them a little bit of information, give them something very flavorful. You can also give someone a posting restriction as a gimmick, but realize that these get old pretty quickly. If you are thinking about forcing someone to post Magikarp jokes or doge style all game long, think again.

2. Allow the village to recover from one or two lucky randkills on important roles. There's a lot of ways you can go about this. One way I enjoy is to give them a generic "backup man" that can use roles that have perished. Another is to make the death of certain villagers trigger some beneficial effect for the village (eg on the Day after a Night where the inspector dies, one of the villagers receives a BPV item in their inventory). Or you could just give them more than enough power roles to last to begin with. Basically, don't put your faith in one or two people surviving.

3. Lynch redirect (or something pseudo-that like von Karma) on a Mafia is absolutely ridiculous and should be used sparingly, if at all. This kind of a mechanic lets the mafia "take over" the voting one night before they otherwise would. It's like an unblockable kill that also protects one of their own guys from a lynch. On a village, it's a lot more balanced because they should be able to lynch whoever they like anyway earlygame, whereas lategame is the area where they need the most help.

4. Don't use roles where the RNG determines something significant. Example: a BPV that works half the time. Would you want to win or lose a game because of what random.org decides to do? Use a "predictable RNG" instead, for example make a BPV that only works on Nights with a prime number (1, 2, 3, 5, 7...) or something cool like that.

 

[UncleSam]

I don't think that recruits in non-Viva games suck as long as people are reasonably well aware that it is possible. If anything it breaks some of the stranglehold the "village leader" might have in a village vs mafia and it creates some intrigue within factions in multifaction

 

[zorbees]

I unbolded your bold and will reply in my own bold. Everything without a reply means I agree.

As someone who has hosted a lot of games, I've had a lot of games ruined by simple design choices I could and should have changed beforehand. I thought it might be useful to discuss some discovered "rules of thumb" which can help you figure out when something you're planning on doing is a terrible idea. My hope is that by sharing this wisdom in a public place I can save new hosts the trouble of having to figure these out on their own.

Standard village v mafia games:

• Always give the village a slight advantage in numbers. If every faction plays perfectly, the village should win.
  
  It is hard for the village to play perfectly - much harder than it is for the mafia to do the same. If the mafia has allowed the village to lynch correctly every day, then the mafia deserves to lose. Make sure that the numbers in the game reflect this.

I generally agree with this point, but some times it is more than just lynches. For example, in your So Many Cards Mafia, we no lynched once, and lynched correctly the rest of the time, until we eventually lost majority. The main culprit of that was that our vigilante was offed before he could get a kill off. Obviously, due to this, we didn't play perfectly. I think though, if you make it so that the village always lynching correctly makes them win, you have to give the mafia a good way to ensure early crossfire does not happen, as that would lead to more wiggle room for the village.

• Silence and Persuasion roles are really, really powerful on the mafia, and fairly weak on the village.
  
  If you're looking for a "filler" role to give a mafia player, don't add in a persuasion or a silence just to make everyone feel like they're contributing. If you give the mafia a persuasion, you have to balance the game around the fact that they're essentially a whole man better than they seem until that persuader dies.
  
  If, however, you're looking for a "filler" role to give to a villager, silences and persuasions are powerful, not-broken ways to do this. The longer the village has control of the lynch, the more interesting the game is.
  
  
• Watchers are really, really powerful on the village, and fairly weak on the mafia.
  
  A correctly deployed watcher can catch multiple mafiamen each night. Especially if the mafia *does not know* that the village has a watcher, this can be game-breaking.

I disagree that they are fairly weak on the mafia. One simple use is finding the bodyguard by targeting the village leader, who very often is protected. Even without that, they have potential to find interesting things. Like if they watch one of their teammates, and then that teammates is inspected. They are definitely stronger on the village though.

• If there is any chance that info given from the host could be false (eg there is a mole role in the game, there is a paranoid inspector), there must be a rule/line in the PM saying so.
  
  Nothing is less fun than watching the game you designed become destroyed while the village leader is duped by the information YOU gave them. If an inspector knows that it's possible that their results could be lying to them, then there is an interesting dynamic wherein the inspector knows they can't trust everyone they've cleaned. This is good! But they have to know that their results are not infallible.
  
  
• Don't give the mafia an every night safeguard.
  
  Safeguards make bodyguards irrelevant, and if you give one to the mafia, they will kill the village leader every night. That's not fair to these village leaders - the people who are caring most about your game.

One easy solution is to make the mafia safeguard block everything except kills and bodyguards. This makes it so the mafia will use the safeguard for its more intended purpose, protecting a teammate from a variety of different actions. The possible downside to this, is that the mafia can use both their safeguard and bodyguard on the same guy to protect them from all harm.

Multifaction games (this includes viva and FFA):

• Always give each faction a bodyguard. This is doubly important if the game does not have aliases.
  
  You want factions to speak to each other, and there's no better way to make sure they don't than by giving them no protection from enemy threats.
  
  
• BREAK. SYMMETRY.
  
  This one is a bit more subtle than the others, and it can be stated like this: There has to be something (other than the usernames involved) that makes one team substantially different from another. If this isn't the case, then the game quickly devolves into a popularity contest / randtargeting contest. See every Viva style game ever.
  
  Symmetry can turn an interesting concept into a dull, boring sludge. See Challenge 4 of Everyone Who Signs Up Will Be In This Game.
  
  
• If everyone needs everyone else dead, then the game will end in either a kingmaker or a runaway victory.
  
  Multifaction games are known for having terrible endings, but I've found that in games like Metroid Prime 2, and vonFiedler's Card Game Mafia in which each player only needs a certain subset of players dead to win, the winners of the game more accurately reflect how well everyone played. This is more satisfying as a player by a ton.
  
  This can also apply to village v mafia v wolf games, but hopefully the village has enough of a numbers advantage to start that the game is interesting anyway. Besides, the wolf always wins the kingmaker in these games, and wolf wins are cool.

I generally agree with this point, however, (despite not being a "everyone kill everyone" game) I think Metroid Prime 2 handled this well. Due to the team abilities, as well as most of the individual roles, getting stronger when teammates died, every team at the end was equipped to do well. I also think that making info harder to come by can eliminate the kingmaker. If you don't know for certain how to achieve victory, or that you are doomed to failure, you will try whatever move you think is best for yourself. This can be a double-edged sword though, as often times, the early-game is a bit of a crapshoot when nobody has any real info.

Experimental concepts in any game:

• Try to keep the rules at least somewhat simple.
  
  I hosted probably one of the most complicated games ever in So Many Cards. At the end of the day, though, very little of the fluff I put into the game mattered at all - it was the more basic structure of the game (2 mafia v 1 village) that produced most of the interest and strategy of the game.

Complex games do have their place, but they are hard to get right. Metroid Prime 2 and Card Game Mafia, both mentioned before, were both fairly complex, yet were both great games in my opinion. I think the problem comes when players are unsure how they are supposed to adapt to the changes. An example I often bring up as a complex game gone wrong is Metroid Prime (1) Mafia. Due to the location system, uninformed players could not use their actions to the best of their abilities, which greatly helped the mafia.

At the moment though, the community is very small, so it is best to keep the complexity under control until everyone is capable of handling it.

• Don't give villagers custom win conditions.
  
  This is one of those ideas that sounds great in principle but sucks in practice. The motivation for doing something like this is that you want villagers to be doing more than just "following the leader", so you give them an extra objective to complete.
  
  However, for villagers, acting as a unit is really their only source of power. Don't give villagers custom win conditions - if they succeed, it's often not by their own design, and if they fail, then they lose for no reason, or as I like to call it, "pulling a Paperblade".
  
  Giving the mafia custom win conditions, however... has tons of potential.

I think custom win conditions can be done, but again, is another concept that is best left for the expert hosts to nail down correctly.

• Recruits in non-Viva games suck. Really, they do.
  
  A lot of recent games have been playing with the idea of using recruits as a core mechanic. There is no way to create a balanced game with recruits. There really isn't. Don't use them.

Obviously, Metroid Prime 2 seems to be an exception to this. I think recruits can work well, but you have to be very certain that it won't screw up the balance of the game. Leave this concept to experienced hosts.

That's all I can think of right now - please post below if you have others / disagree with any of these - they're all debatable, largely.

kthx

One thing I'd add is that viva games must be reformed measurably to ensure a balanced game. Even in Yeti's game, where the uniting system and the recruit limit helped ensure that no team would get way out in front, the guys that got the most claims won handily. They had the best roles to choose from, as well as info on a bunch of guys who weren't on their faction. This similarly happened in Amelia's game big bigest mafia, where Gmax (faction man) and Mekkah (freelancer who was recruited n0 by Gmax) gathered most of the claims between the two of them, and got very good roles and a ton of info (including a bunch of aliases) on others. I believe the main problem to be that there is very little differentiating the factions, as well as the metagame aspect of most players claiming right as the game starts. Due to these factors, it is pretty much a crapshoot of who gets the most/best claims. I could probably say even more about the viva format if I really wanted to, but I think it should be clear that viva games are very hard to balance properly. I believe the original Viva was probably an aberration, probably due to the newness of the concept, as well as the less competitive/formulaic state of the metagame.

 

[Blue_Tornado]

In village vs. mafia games especially, the host needs to know how hard or easy it is for non-villagers to blend in. Stuff like whether or not they have access (or need access) to fakeclaims or fake roles, how hard it is to make fake Role PMs and results, what sort of gap in knowledge they have from the regular villager (something that can out them easily), that kind of thing. You could go out of your way to help the players make fakes, or you could just give them the fakes yourself - it depends on whether or not you think your game should test players on their Role PM crafting skills.

Oh, and it should be clear that symmetry in multifaction could mean a lot of things. The only thing that truly needs to be the same is each player's chances of winning - everything else, including numbers, roles and win conditions is up to you to balance. The more variables you tamper with, the harder it'll be to balance, but it can only make things more interesting. I guess not too much, though, so you don't end up with a confusing game.

 

[askaninjask]

zorbees: I thnk MP2's "each faction gets stronger as they get weaker" mechanic would actually only make a kingmaker scenario more probable in a game in which everyone really does need everyone else dead... there's a tradeoff between "teams that have no chance of winning should become more powerful so that they have a chance again" and "teams that have no chance of winning should be eliminated as soon as possible so that they don't become a kingmaker".

 

[Yeti]

I think the best counter for a mafia safeguard is giving the village an omniguard, maybe as a backup role, or like in AQUA where the village had a set of twins who could omniguard if they targeted the same person. I think the Duo Guard role needs to do something after the main Guard dies if his only purpose is augmenting that role while they are both alive. The village omniguard must outprioritize the mafia safeguard, ensuring if there is a very key target for the village to protect, the mafia can't get their free kill. There can also be the stipulation no other village protection role can target the omniguard, leaving him completely open to dying himself, but able to protect another key role.

Tracker/watcher mafia roles are good safeclaim roles, especially if there's something in the village that implies there are said roles in the game. The village leadership can get info if the mafian doesn't lie, though Tracker favors the mafia more than Watcher since if you're asked to track your scumbuddy you can just lie and use it on someone else.

I think new hosts should be careful when putting experimental/odd roles into their game. If you don't know how to balance the unorthodox way an otherwise-common role presents in your game (IE you have a weird inspector/hooker/etc) you may stifle one faction's chances by giving them an oddly-designed role, whereas the other teams have very standard roles. For example, if you make your hooker unable to act if someone else targets them, but everyone in the village and mafia has a nightly role they feel encouraged to use, an innocent villager randing their harmless role may stop the hooker. This can also lead to BS easy ways to clean people with roles along these lines so you have to watch your village's ability to 100% confirm actions.

The only problem I see with a game designed like MP2 at this time is that it requires a certain number of factions to work, and those factions then need certain numbers of people, which means you NEED enough active, non-idling players to let the game proceed. One of the factions in MP2 did absolutely nothing and had 0 notable contributions to the game until they had like 1 guy left saying 'sorry my team sucked lol'.

I am not entirely sold on how I executed the secondary item WCs in Heartless, I think the orbs were too easy to get and there were too many Keyblades whose action value didn't outweigh destroying/vaulting them. That being said, if someone were able to mesh the Temple WCs from MP2 with something along the lines of the orbs/Keyblades (perhaps you have to place so-and-so orbs in X temple to win, while ensuring there are no this-and-that orbs in Y temple) to compel teams to work with others and stab some of their own would-be allies, that would be interesting.

I don't think this idea has ever been executed but the notion of a role pool for a multifaction game, wherein each faction has a set pool of roles to distribute to their team members each night, meaning if the guy who has your best role gets randkilled N1, or you get hit by two randkills N1, you aren't sunk.

I feel that people will enjoy your game more if they have a strong idea of what to expect. Vampire Mafia slid further and further downhill every time there were no kills, more roles lost to the Vampires, suspicion those roles had actually been recruited, suspicion dead users were recruited, and of course, no day for the village to lynch during. Don't reveal all your secrets/tricks for later in the game, but if you are going to cut out the days entirely, why is your game 'village vs mafia', how is the village supposed to do ANYTHING to win as The Village as an entity, and what is their agency in determining the earlygame.

For any newer hosts looking to start their first game I think you should begin with 2v1. Multifactions require more skill to craft/balance imo because you have to select your WC format, then either give each team an equal assortment of standard power roles OR try and balance the unique roles they have received in context of each other. Imagine trying to make a MP2-style game as your first or second mafia. You have to set up the WC circle, then you have like 8 different teams to assign roles to, THEN ensure the roles allow the teams to have a chance against the teams they need to lose without overly complimenting those they can win with, etc etc. Even games that are 5 factions, and faction X could win with either Y and Z, but Z needs Y and W dead, can be difficult to balance and ensure Y and Z both offer interesting assets to X besides "we have less deaths" while also being appealing to the other teams they can win with, AND then they have the capability to win solo if that's what they choose. Village vs mafia is a much more standard format with a fixed WC that nobody will argue about whether it led to faction kingmakers and snowballing and randkills etc etc. They will just complain your roles were garbage for the losing faction or OP for the winning one because they can't blame your format, or, like AQUA, nobody will think any one role was notably OP or out of balance with the others because they were all sort of quirky takes.

Also one more thing that hasn't been brought up but has been in several Smogon games. THE LYNCHPIN. Some games include a mafia lynchpin who splits the mafias into two teams upon death, most just have the village lynchpin who splits the village into 'The Village' and 'The Previously-Village-Now-Mafia' upon death. The lynchpin bears a tremendous burden in not sinking the mafia's chances of winning if they tell the actual-villies about them, staying hidden and not doing anything stupid, and the game has to be balanced around ability to protect the lynchpin, or lack thereof, and ability to kill the lynchpin. I would say avoid putting a lynchpin into your game if you are new, you will probably find it difficult to assign the village-mafia proper roles (or struggle with what roles to gift them once they break off from the village) as well as calculate the numbers. The village will probably need stronger power roles to emerge if the lynchpin dies to make up for the numbers they lose when the mafia breaks off, considering you will need 1 or 2 mafias already who have chandces of winning.

I will have Heartless Postgame soon so you can see my thoughts that went into a true Viva recruiter and argue your cases on how well/poorly you felt the mechanics were organized. I may or may not make AQUA's sequel soon as well. Depends on if you're all hyphy for a 2v1.

 

[vonFiedler]

I may post more later but just don't fucking have safeguard block non-harmful effects. You know it's a probably and somewhere in your head you know have to know the easiest way to break this retarded tradition, but I'm going to say it out loud anyway. Safeguard should be for blocking things like hooks, redirects, persuasion, and nothing else.

 

[UncleSam]

I'm sorry but I disagree von, if you layer the role you are describing with a Bodyguard then you effectively render someone immune to harm for a night; there should be a trade-off to making someone immune to hooks/persuasions/etc, and I think that the Safeguard role as it stands is the most effective variant as a standard role. That being said, the beneficial safeguard role (as I call it) is a good role and one I utilized for MP2 in a limited capacity. It certainly has it's place, but it is significantly more powerful and has less counterplay than a standard safeguard role. It is sort of like the difference between a BG who can self protect and one who cannot; there is much less counterplay to the former, though at least that can be hooked or safeguarded off. The standard role is weaker and offers options for dealing with it.

 

[zorbees]

I don't think this idea has ever been executed but the notion of a role pool for a multifaction game, wherein each faction has a set pool of roles to distribute to their team members each night, meaning if the guy who has your best role gets randkilled N1, or you get hit by two randkills N1, you aren't sunk.

Solid post in all, I just wanted to address this one point. I think MP2 did this to the furthest extent, with the kills, steals, and team-specific ability being able to be used by any faction member. In my spy format idea, the original faction members have a pool of actions to pull from. I think this is another one of those things where you don't want to overdo it. For example, if everybody on a team has the same capabilities, the only reason to target one of them over another is because of the name of the player and how good they are. Additionally, it would probably tale the fun out of the game to open your role PM and be like "you can do x, y, and z, but so can the rest of your team"

 

[Ampharos]

#1 game design rule: Don't sub UncleSam into a beginner game and put him on the team with the Dickens

 

[vonFiedler]

I'm sorry but I disagree von, if you layer the role you are describing with a Bodyguard then you effectively render someone immune to harm for a night; there should be a trade-off to making someone immune to hooks/persuasions/etc,

Yeah, the trade-off is you don't have another ability. This seems like a very artificial problem that people bring up just because of tradition. Not to mention that using the BG and SG on the same person is hardly the only valid strategy for such a combo, I see people use my "beneficial sg" on the BG all the time. The counterplay is to kill the BG and or SG. That's just the basics in a "follow the cop" type environment that we have.

I've always been certain that whoever came up with SG in the grand scheme of internet of mafia, that they knew it shouldn't stop kills but didn't have the guts to define exactly what it should stop (which is not a simple answer). But then it just stuck around like that, and now you have silly stuff like a "safeguard" ensuring kills, which is neither guarding nor safe. If you want mafia to invalidate BGs (for some reason), there are priority uppers.

If you REALLY insist on it not stacking with BG, you could always have the BG cancel the SG, and not vice-versa (like how my silences cancel my persuasions).

 

[Blue_Tornado]

Actually, the middle paragraph is a good point, since we already have a role specifically for the purpose of bypassing BGs. (it's not called priority up, though)

Anyway, I've never really liked SGs. Having a SG on a mafia team in Village vs. Mafia is weird in the first place to use on your teammates because you have to make sure the "action failed" result doesn't reveal that the target was SG'd, because that gives them away.

 

[Layell]

Maybe one of of the best practices is letting players know what people will receive when they use their actions on someone?

Another best practice ought to be ensuring the mafia can always gain information, a mafia that ends up throwing their kills around randomly really kills the idea of an informed minority.

 

[moi]

This is just a small thing, but I feel as if letting flavour determine who used what action is kinda silly. It removes another layer of intricacy and lying that can go into the game, for the sake of story telling.

 

[askaninjask]

Another best practice ought to be ensuring the mafia can always gain information, a mafia that ends up throwing their kills around randomly really kills the idea of an informed minority.

YES - Any team with a kill needs to have some way of knowing who they're killing.

 

[billymills]

The mafia should be infiltrating the village to figure out who they're killing, not sitting back waiting for inspections.

 

[UncleSam]

Villages lately have been too difficult to mole properly though; imagine if the mafia had not been able to inspect in MM2

 

[Lrr]

I think the proper response to that is to make villages easier to mole, not to power creep mafias in response.

 

[askaninjask]

The mafia should be infiltrating the village to figure out who they're killing, not sitting back waiting for inspections.

In 1v1, sure, but in a 2v1 game, usually only one team can mole effectively (although there are some exceptions) and you certainly don't want an uninformed mafia team to end the game for the one that's moling by randomly killing them.

 

[billymills]

That's on the mafia to communicate to each other.

 

[askaninjask]

But with no info roles, how do they know who to talk to? And honestly there are a lot of games where a mafia is both unable to mole and doesn't contact the other team. When they do this it should negatively affect themselves (as it does), but it shouldn't negatively affect the mafia that's doing better... giving the mafias inspections is a way to protect the better team from getting killed in this not uncommon scenario.

Anyway, giving the mafia information roles gives them so many more false roles to claim which makes it more possible for them to mole in the first place. The mafias in a village v mafia game should definitely have inspections...

EDIT: Anyway mafias should have to mole in order to win due to the numbers of the game... Giving them inspections allows them to bide their time in case the first and second village leaders turn out to be villagers.

 

[Ampharos]

In a way, I agree with both aska and billy - while moling should be an integral, necessary, and fun part of mafia, in games of our size it becomes impractical for mafias to rely solely on moling, especially with the village role power creep we've seen lately. An inspector is a vital part of a mafia in our games, but in my opinion it should probably be the only info-role they get. Whatever you do, don't make a faction that contains three inspectors.

 

[vonFiedler]

It's funny cause back when I made my first game, giving one of my mafias an inspector was like a dumb thing. Course moles were also super rampant back then.

 

[Exarius]

Solid post in all, I just wanted to address this one point. I think MP2 did this to the furthest extent, with the kills, steals, and team-specific ability being able to be used by any faction member. In my spy format idea, the original faction members have a pool of actions to pull from. I think this is another one of those things where you don't want to overdo it. For example, if everybody on a team has the same capabilities, the only reason to target one of them over another is because of the name of the player and how good they are. Additionally, it would probably tale the fun out of the game to open your role PM and be like "you can do x, y, and z, but so can the rest of your team"

Actually, this very concept was used in Metal Gear Solid Tactical Game. The smallest faction (Innocents) had a pool of 4 abilities that they could pick and choose from, and the 3 players could use any of them. However, a power could only be used once per night. The faction was actually quite strong (due to stellar play, but still), and they really played together; planning, communication and so forth was all done together, with none left out of the loop. I don't think it would work on a "big" mafia team (5 players), but a small team, and for flavour purposes, it's actually a pretty cool trick, since the team isn't fully hosed should 1 player die.