I've played this party game about a dozen times now and every time I like it more and more, for those unfamiliar with the game much easier to link you to the wiki article on it then try to explain it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_%28party_game%29 As you can see there are a huge number of ways the game can be played and I wanted to pick the brains of the people who had played it in different sizes and with different rule sets. When I played last we had 5 players (a bit on the low side) and we were mostly novices. We started with one mafia one angel/doctor and one sheriff with the rest innocents, pretty basic rules on the lynching and whatnot. We found that the mafia constantly lost though :/ it was still fun but seemed uneven (obviously player skill makes a difference here) so we adjusted and tried giving the mafia 2 shots with a doctor and a sheriff, that worked better but the sheriff still seemed too powerful in such a small game so we tried it with two angels the mafia with 2 shots and that ended up being optimal. Anyone who's played want to share their experience on what works and what doesn't?
lol mafia is win last summer at math camp we'd stay up to like 6-7 in the morning every weekend playing hours up hours of role intensive mafia (super fun when you've got like a group of 20+) if you want very detailed game instructions try visiting this site: http://www.princeton.edu/~mafia/oldmafia/rules.htm so ideally you want a bigger group than what you've been playing with (exactly as you said...when you have only one mafia and also have a sheriff...if the sheriff hits the mafia by luck during the first inspection...the game is over)...maybe try with two mafia (only one kill per night though), one sheriff and one doctor but start with a short night (meaning mafia doesn't make a kill the first night)
There was an IRC script I used to have that had a very good version of playing this game. I'll see if I can dig it up and maybe we can play it
that would be awesome, though I dunno how well it works over the internet, you got to look a person in the eyes to make them squirm and give tells. I've never tried it drunk though it will probably be hilarious, Mafia is a great way to talk to someone you fancy as you stare at them trying to "analyse" whether they are telling the truth, I want to try a werewolf one just to experiment a bit but mates are a bit stuck in their ways. It's fun adjusting the game and balancing by inventing weird special powers