Camp game "Mafia" for 50+ people


    To understand the article, you should know the rules of the Mafia game. An example of the rules can be found here .

    Hello again. I continue the theme of games in reality . Today we’ll talk about modifying the standard Mafia game, but which can be played 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 in the place where our other camp was right at that moment. The counselors of that camp began to complain to me that the children did not want to play any games except the Mafia. And although the children were happy playing constantly in the same game, she managed to get fed up with counselors. And since volunteers work in our camps, you always want the counselors themselves to enjoy what is happening besides the children.

    Then I suggested that the counselors somehow modify the Mafia game to add life to it. “But how can we change the Mafia game?” The counselors asked me. 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 one criminal organization of the 19th century EN , I made a rather small change to the game: I hung up a home-made calendar and announced before the start of the game that the Mafia could not kill on one specific day of the week, like some members that criminal organization.

    I must say right away that the game went so-so - I crossed out on the calendar every move one day. Given that every night the mafia killed one civilian, and every day civilians killed one suspect, then the whole game took less than a week. So the day when it was impossible to kill, attacked only once per game. Chip did not shoot, but the guys enjoyed playing the Mafia. As usual.

    Mafia per 100 people


    Yes, this is not a typo, the game was really originally planned for 100+ people. But I managed to carry it out only at 52, so I write in the headline about what I can definitely talk about.

    Making changes


    The first thing I wanted to get rid of was a crash from the game. I believe that dislike for relegation games is not my personal whim, but 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, then we make it impossible to enjoy the person who wanted to receive it. He is 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.

    Game crash


    In the Mafia game, this is especially noticeable - on the first day, 1-2 people drop out, who then have to wait until the game is over and the game starts again in order to finally play.

    Partial Solution Example: Pasteur-Wad (18+)
    For a long time, when I was still playing in the local (Riga) KVN, we periodically gathered as a team at night and played “Mafia” and “Contact”. Then I partially came up with a solution to the complete departure from the Mafia game . Though not for long.
    Initially, there was such a role - “Fawn” (rapist). This character chose at night (separately from the mafia) whom to “rape”, and this person could not participate in discussions and vote the next day. The role is rather amusing, but the whole point of his move was lost if the mafia decided that night to kill the same man whom he was puffing. The man was silent, because he was killed. Then I changed it to a similar character - "Pasteur Pyzh". This is the same Fawn, but who, before being raped, absolves himself of sins. If a mafia kills a person that very night, as Pasteur-Pyzh worked on him, then a personfrom heaven can say his last sentence, and on the day of his death he can still vote ... But after that he becomes an ordinary player who has left the game.

    Our team was generally famous for black humor, so do not blame me for jokes with rape and priests ...


    A member of our KVN team is Penya. Thinking of his youth in the forest.


    But what can replace death? Especially when it is the main mechanics of the game.
    I thought about deportation. It just comes to 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 in this location, so that the game continues for them.

    I was going to play the game at the pre-camp (a few days before the camp, when preparations are in progress) for counselors; and I thought that there would be about 100 people with counselors with the rest of the staff (I made a mistake, but more on that below)
    So why not host a game for everyone at once? I will divide people into groups in which they will play the usual 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 at your location, and at the same time complicate the game to another group if there is a competitive element in the game.

    Competitive element


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

    What to do mafia


    It was agreed that the mafia is stealing honestly earned money from civilians. But this should happen somehow in a special way, so that the mafia would be profitable to be in one or another location, otherwise the mafia would be absolutely not interested to play. To do this, we do that the amount of money stolen depends on the number of mafia in the location, and on the number of civilians.

    Riddles


    I would not want a game with complete information , because there are always players who like the hidden elements of the game that need to be understood. Therefore, I decided that civilians will not know exactly how many mafias are in their location. But they will know that this can be calculated by some formula.
    Due to this, unspoken roles may appear in the game. Such as a person who monitors the growth of money, and trying on this figure to calculate the number of mafia (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 “20th Century America,” and I thought that the British colonies would be good for our mechanics . America, Jamaica, Nigeria, South Africa, India, Australia. It was not necessary to adhere to the themes of the camp, because the game is for counselors, so the mismatch of the time interval is not critical. And so, each location is one of the colonies of Britain. Leading (me and partner) - Britain itself. Also, in each colony will be the viceroy of Britain- to the local leader who will lead the game in a particular colony - to monitor who and where the mafia deportes to at night, and whom - civilians in the afternoon. Also, these people will be able to provide facilitators with important information for counting money - the number of civilians and the mafia for a particular day.

    Also, the setting helped me solve a purely mathematical problem : if all the mafia from all colonies will throw off money into one common hostel of the mafia , then this amount will not be so much different, regardless of where there are how many mafias. This happened due to the fact that after a quick pretense 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’s not so difficult for players to calculate using reverse engineering.

    This formula was known only to the mafia. Civilians, on the other hand, needed to get to it by logical and mathematical reasoning.

    To get rid of the problem of an unstoppably large and constant increase in money in the mafia dorm, I decided to make one of the colonies an authentic colonial Australia. It will initially be empty, and the mafia arriving in it will be ordinary civilians. So the colony, sending prisoners to Australia, will greatly reduce the growth of money in the mafia dormitory. 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 on preparation. After all, the game is held once, and for counselors.

    Cards


    Need a way to distribute roles. Playing in a small group, simple pats of players are also suitable while their eyes are closed ... But this is not fair, and you can’t check if someone is cheating. Therefore, it is better to have cards with roles. Of course, you can give out not cards, but just pieces of paper ... But you must admit that holding a card in your hands is more pleasant. And it can also be dragged from the game as a souvenir.

    So I bought a deck of cards, prepared the pieces of paper, and asked my partner, and the girl who will be holding one of the governors of Britain, to help me stick the pieces of paper 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 greatly slow down such a big game. But for coloring, I decided to add meaningless professions to civilians. Agree that it is more pleasant to be at least a little unique “Shopkeeper” than the gray mass of “Peaceful Residents”.

    Glue stick surprisingly held paper on glossy cards. Slightly jerked one to show you:


    Money


    It was decided that each colony would earn its own separate money, and the mafia of all colonies together would steal money in one dorm. But how to display this so that players see the state of the game? I had a projector for the game, so here it goes to the programming issue.

    Microsoft Excel

    Of course, the first thing that comes to mind: Do everything in Microsoft Excel. He already knows how to do various calculations, and you can make sure that their result is displayed beautifully on the screen. But since the calculations take place once a day , intermediate results of the calculations must be stored (to show the amount 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 using Unity3D to display the game state on the projector. And although Unity will have to write more mathematics manually, Unity has one killer feature, because of which I will always use Unity3D for such projects: Support for two monitors, with different information displayed on each monitor. This means that while the players will see only the total money of each colony, and the total number of players of each colony, on my laptop I can see information that they should not know - the number of mafia in the colony, and the amount of money stolen. And also, control buttons that would only worsen the appearance of the game screen.

    So it looks in the editor:

    On the left is the laptop screen. To the right is the projector.


    Separate laptop screen

    How to display different information on two monitors using Unity3D
    I will not go into completely technical aspects that can be googled even without me. The main point is that two cameras are created that look at the same scene. But they are attached to different monitors in the camera settings:


    Next, in the Culling Mask, select which layers you want this camera to display:


    And put the objects of interest on the desired layers.

    Do not forget to activate both monitors when you turn on the program with this script:
    	void Start()
    	{
    		if (Display.displays.Length > 1)
    			Display.displays[1].Activate();
    		if (Display.displays.Length > 2)
    			Display.displays[2].Activate();
    	}
    



    Australia Rules


    As I wrote above, in Australia there is a leaf with more detailed rules. At the beginning of the game, the players are explained the minimum, and their attention is drawn to the fact that Australia is empty at the beginning of the game.
    Australia Rules Sheet


    Carrying out


    In general, the game went well. In addition to the fact that, as I wrote above, I counted on 100 people, and there were a little more than 50 of them. This means that in almost every colony there were initially only 10 people (not counting the empty Australia) of which there were two mafia. For a more interesting game, it would be necessary to have at least three mafia in the colony, but for 10 people, this would violate all the math.

    Counselors played with pleasure, and even the inhabitants of India, whose colony due to a programming bug turned out to be in perpetual minus, were not at a loss. Everyone thought that this was not a bug, but an authentic feature, as with Australia. Since the game did not have any special conditions for stopping and winning, we played before the time of lunch. On the last move, Australia broke into first place, if you do not take into account the all-consuming mafia. And after the game, counselors eagerly discussed how they managed to fool anyone, or reveal, by calculating the formula for charging money.

    Total


    Any game can be modified and get the feeling of a completely different game. And although she did not fulfill my main task — I never heard that the counselors in the camp began to modify the boring games — I am still pleased with the result.

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