Camp game "Mafia" for 50+ people

^{To understand the article is to know the rules of the game "Mafia". An example of the rules can be found here .}

Hello again. I continue the theme of games in reality . Today we will talk about the modification of the standard Mafia game, but which you can play when you have a company of more than 50 people.

It all started with the fact that I came to prepare a children's camp to a place where another camp took place right at that moment. The camp counselors started complaining that the children did not want to play any games other than the Mafia. And even though the children were satisfied, playing constantly in the same game, she managed to get fed up with the counselor. And since volunteers work in our camps, you always want to, besides the children, the counselors themselves also enjoy what is happening.
')
Then I suggested to the counselor to somehow modify the Mafia game in order to add life to it. “But how can we change the game Mafia?” Asked the counselors. I thought ...

An early attempt to change the game Mafia

Some time ago I spent a modified Mafia on a team of 14 people. Then, in order to consolidate information about a single criminal organization of the 19th century ^EN , I made quite a small change to the game: I hung a homemade calendar on the wall and, before starting the game, announced that the Mafia would not be able to kill on one particular day of the week, like some members that criminal organization.

I must say that the game was so-so - I crossed out on the calendar every turn for one day. Considering that every night the mafia killed one civilian, and every day civilians killed one suspect, it took less than a week for the whole game. So the day when it was impossible to kill , came only once per game. Fishechka didn't shoot, but the guys enjoyed playing Mafia. As usual.

Mafia for 100 people

^{Yes, this is not a typo, the game was really originally planned for 100+ people. But I managed to do it only on 52, so I’m writing in the title about what I can definitely talk about.}

Coming up with changes

The first thing I wanted to get rid of was the departure from the game. I believe that the dislike of games for departure, this is not my personal whim, but it is an objective and important part of inventing any game that every game creator should understand. After all, the main goal of any game is to entertain people. And when a person flies out of the game, we deny the opportunity to enjoy the person who wanted to get it. He turns out to be on a par with a man who initially did not want to play at all, and stupidly sat in the corner and watched others play.

Departure from the game

In the Mafia game, this is especially noticeable - on the very first day, 1-2 people drop out, who then have to wait until the game ends and begins again to play.


But how can death be replaced? Especially when it is the main mechanics of the game.
I thought about deportation. This is just right for the setting that a group of people is a geographical location - a city. Then you just need to figure out how to occupy the deported people at this location so that the game continues for them.

I was going to play the game on pre-camp (a few days before the camp when training is under way) for the counselors; and found that the counselors with the rest of the staff will be about 100 people _{(I was wrong, but more on that below)}
So why not play the game for everyone at once? I will divide people into groups in which they will play in the ordinary mafia, with the usual number of people, but instead of killing people, they will deport people to another group. A great way to get rid of the mafia in its location, and at the same time complicate the game to another group, if the game has a competitive element.

Competitive element

If no one in the Mafia dies, then some other condition of victory is needed. But in order to still need to try to drive out the mafia from the location, and the erroneous deportation of civilians worsened the situation for other civilians. Let them compete, which location will collect more money. Each player will bring 100 conventional units of money every day to the treasury of the location. A mafia, then, will steal them.

What do mafias do

We agreed that the mafia steals honestly earned money from civilians. But this should happen somehow in a special way, so that the mafia would benefit from being in one location or another, otherwise the mafia will be absolutely not interested in playing. To do this, we do that the amount of stolen money depends on the number of mafias in the location, and on the number of civilians.

Riddles

I would not want to get a game with full information , because there are always players who like the hidden elements of the game, in which you need to understand. Therefore, I decided that civilians would not know exactly how many mafias are in their locations. But they will know that this can be calculated by some formula.
Due to this in the game may appear tacit roles. Such as a person who monitors the growth of money, and trying to calculate the number of mafias on this figure _{(and it happened)}

Setting

So, we have the basic mechanics of the game. Need a setting - coloring, in which everything will happen. The theme of the camp was “America of the 20th Century,” and I thought that the British colonies would be a good fit for our mechanics. America, Jamaica, Nigeria, South Africa, India, Australia. It was generally not necessary to adhere to the camp theme, because the game is for the counselors, so the discrepancy of the time gap is not critical. And so, each location is one of the colonies of Britain. Leading (me and partner) - Britain itself. Also, in each colony there will be a viceroy of Britain - a local leader who will lead the game in a particular colony - to keep track of who and where the mafia deports at night, and who are civilians during the day. Also, these people will be able to leading to report important information for the calculation of money - the number of civilians and the mafia for a particular day.

The setting also helped me solve a purely mathematical problem : if all the mafias from all the colonies throw money in one common mafia hostel , then this amount will not be so different, no matter where there are many mafias. This was due to the fact that after quickly scoring and one phone call to a person who is better than me with math, we came to this formula:

$$

$$Stolen = Colony \ _Income * \ left (\ frac {Mafia \ _Quantity} {Innocents \ _Quantity} \ right)$$

^{The formula works, and it is not so difficult for players to calculate it using reverse engineering.}

This formula was known only to the mafia. Peaceful residents had to reach it by logical and mathematical reasoning.

In order to get rid of the problem of the unstoppable large and constant increase of money in the mafia hostel, I decided to make authentic colonial Australia one of the colonies. It will initially be empty, and arriving in it the mafia will be ordinary civilians. So the colonies, sending prisoners to Australia, will greatly reduce the growth of money in the mafia hostel. More detailed rules of Australia will lie in Australia itself, and only people who have visited it will know about them.

Training

I did not want to spend too much time preparing. After all, the game is played once, and for counselors.

Cards

Need a way to assign roles. Playing in a small group, they are also suitable for simple slapping of players, while their eyes are closed ... But this is not fair, and it is impossible to check if someone cheats. That's why it's better to have role cards. Of course, you can hand out not cards, but simply pieces of paper ... But you must agree that it is more pleasant to hold a card in your hands. And it can also be dragged off the game as a souvenir.

So I bought a deck of cards, prepared papers, and asked my partner, and the girl, who would be carrying out one of the deputies of Britain, to help me stick the papers on the cards. It turned out quite well:

^{According to the laws of the genre - all the useful information on the map.}

There were only two roles - the mafia and the civilian. More roles would have greatly inhibited such a big game. But for painting, I decided to add non-meaningful occupations to civilians. You will agree that it is more pleasant to be at least a little unique "Shopkeeper" than the gray mass of "Peaceful Inhabitants".

Glue stick surprisingly well kept the paper on glossy maps. Slightly razderbanil one to show you:

Money

It was decided that each colony would earn its own money, and the mafias of all colonies would steal money into one hostel. But how does this map so that players can see the state of the game? I had a projector at my disposal for the game, so here it goes to the question of programming.

Microsoft Excel

Of course, the first thing that comes to mind: To do everything in Microsoft Excel. He is already able to do various calculations, and you can make them so that the result is beautifully displayed on the screen. But since calculations occur once a day , intermediate results of calculations must be stored (to show the sum for all days), and the input information is constantly changing (the number of peaceful and mafia), you still have to use VBA .
Of course this is an option that will even work. But there is a better option.

Unity3d

I already had experience in using Unity3D to display the game status on a projector. And even with Unity you will have to write more math manually, Unity has one killer feature, because of which I will always use Unity3D for similar projects: Dual monitor support, with different information displayed on each monitor. This means that as long as players see only the total amount of money of each colony, and the total number of players of each colony, I can see information on my laptop that they should not know - the number of mafias in the colony, and the amount of stolen money. And also, the control buttons, which would only worsen the appearance of the game screen.

So it looks like in the editor:

<sup>On the left is the laptop screen. On the right is the projector.


Separately laptop screen</sup>

Australian Rules

As I wrote above, in Australia there is a leaflet, with more detailed rules. The players at the beginning of the game explain the minimum, and their attention is drawn to the fact that Australia is empty at the beginning of the game.

Holding

Overall, the game went well. Apart from the fact that, as I wrote above, I counted on 100 people, and there were just over 50 of them. And this means that in almost every colony there were initially only 10 people (not counting empty Australia), of which there were two mafias. For a more interesting game, you would have to have at least three mafias in the colony, but for 10 people, this would violate all the math.

Counselors played with pleasure, and even the people of India, whose colony because of a bug in programming turned out to be in perpetual minus, were not taken aback. Everyone thought that this was not a bug, but an authentic feature, as with Australia. Since the game had no special conditions for stopping and winning, they played before the time of lunch. On the last move, Australia took the first place, if not to take into account the all-consuming mafia. And after the game, the counselors eagerly discussed how they managed to fool anyone, or uncover, after having calculated the money calculation formula.

Total

Any game can be modified and achieve the feeling of a completely different game. And even though she didn’t fulfill my main task - I didn’t hear that the camp counselors began to modify the bored games - I am still pleased with the result.