Thoughts on every mafia game we’ve ever played as fast as possible:
The Mafia Game: Never played, never read
Earthbound Mafia: First game I played. I was absolutely THRILLED to be apart of it. The best thing I’d ever seen at the time.
EarthBound Mafia Round 2: Kail was as damn good host. Whod’a’thunk! My first time playing as mafia and it was absolutely unhinged. We had an off-site forum board that was not monitored at all.
Earthbound Mafia Round 3: Never played, heard it was absolutely insane. I don’t think it was ever really finished.
Fourside/Fiveburg: Never heard anything about this one. Surprised J_Spade even found it
The Two Kingdoms/The Invasion: Never played, never heard of it before J_Spade found it.
Mother 3 Mafia: Never heard of it. If I had I’d had chosen something else when I revived the game.
Mother 3 Mafia: My first time hosting. Changed my life forever. I’ll never know how it ran to completion without falling completely apart.
Happy Happy Village: CQ was an absolute BEAST. Reading again I can tell just how young the meta is. It’s cute actually.
The New Plague: Hosted with Ostricho. Our cool indie was REALLY cool. Lasted way longer than it should have.
Castle of Madness: Set a new standard for what a game could be. Insane in execution in all the right ways. To this day all my original characters in mafia games have the same letter in their fist and last name. Like Bethany Blue and Johnny Juliano. I was eliminated Day 1 by Kail who changed our meta forever.
A Relentless Killer: I didn’t play this but I payed close attention. I remember poor Icy hanging on as last scum. Poor dude.
PokeMafia: The most unhinged game we’d played up to that point. Probably needed more balancing. The writeups were SO dark and gruesome too. Still fun tho!
Castle of Madness – Bus: I was the cool indie. To this day it was my favorite role I’ve ever played. It was a very small game but it felt very intimate that way.
Mother 3 Mafia: New Pork Battle Royale: The biggest game I’ve ever hosted and the biggest game we’ve played since the revival. It had some of my favorite moments but was also the most frustrating to pull off. There were several moments that the game threatened to completely implode with several Major Incidents including instances of actual cheating. One of my favorites overall.
Intermission: Had me completely fooled the entire time. I didn’t play this one but I followed it and BOY was I shocked to find out what the twist was.
Super Smash Bros Mafia: Funny enough? I barely remember this game. I remember PLAYING it. I remember turning on J_Spade very suddenly. And finally feeling like I was coming into my own as a player. But other than that I don’t even remember who I played as.
Twelve Little Victims: Could have been better. I really thought putting 12 people who had never played mafia before in a game would work. It did not. Honestly the way the game was structured mass claiming would have completely broke it for the mafia who ended up winning. Probably my favorite story I’ve ever written.
Ace Mafia: Criminal Intent: Oh boy. This was the first one I’d played in a while and this was the one where I absolutely curb stomped the town by being WAY too aggressive and basically just pressed the town into submission. Made a lot of people afraid to play with me. Not proud of that at all. Been trying to back off that meta ever since.
Catastropic Mafia: Despite the hosts being close friends of mine I didn’t follow this one at ALL. However, to this day I use Grendel’s method of horizontal vote counting that takes up less room. Don’t always include “not voting” but I do like to.
Paper Mafi: The Thousand-Year Don: Brutal. Absolutely brutal. Grendel and I were on the same scum team and I had just come off my absolute curb-stomp that was Ace Mafia so I was absolutely rearing to go kick some townie butt. That’s not the way it turned out. At all. I was so frustrated in that we’d get to a point where we were a LITTLE safe only for something to happen to throw us off yet again.
The Forgotten Disciples: I really liked this story at the time even though I don’t remember anything about it now. I dind’t play this but I really do think we need more mini-mafia games.
Cabin Fever: One HELL of a notorious game that was plagued by hosts dropping out, other hosts who didn’t know how to run a game. It suffered delays, balancing issues, and a myriad of other issues. Worse yet, it was the first game that was run entirely without a Mafia Council member as a host. An omen of things to come.
Eternity Void: I heard great things about this. Everyone who talks about this game hails it as some of the best we’ve done. Wish I’d played or at least read it.
Gravity Falls Mafia: This was one game that I had not planned on hosting but came to the rescue so that it didn’t fail. It was very very difficult to host and nearly turned me off hosting for a very long time.
Shovel Knight Mafia: A lot of fun in concept. I agreed to host this game if I didn’t have to write the story. Which worked out better for me. Our first mafia victory in a long time all because we thought we’d try out partial flips which was a good idea on paper but was poorly executed here.
Majora’s Masquerade: I almost played this one. Had to drop out. Holy cow Lumi played one hell of a game back then. Really cool concept and really cool execution.
Arbiter’s Takeover: One of my favorite games of all time. Gamma had me thoroughly bamboozled all the way through. And the meta story was just SO fun.
Mafia: A return for me writing the story. The first game I’d hosted solo since M3, and our first game that wasn’t role madness. The opposite really. The writing took me way too long and I made a rule for myself that writeups MUST stick to one MS Word page. Trans-masc people told me that they felt seen by my character Johnny and honestly that was quite possibly the biggest compliment I’ve ever received for anything I’ve ever done.
The Fall of Yggdrasil: Dragon Quest XI Mafia: I didn’t follow this one at ALL. Honestly I haven’t heard anything about it outside the game. I should probably read this one a little more.
Saltwater Treehouse: Another notorious game that almost didn’t make it to completion. another game that was not hosted by council members. I was the cool indie and in cool indie fashion I was eliminated Day 1. This game was one of the closest we’ve ever gotten to a game not making it through to completion. It needed a lot more oversight from changes to the roster to how things were handled behind the scenes.
Holy Grail Mafia: My favorite game of all time. Seriously, I didn’t think we’d ever top NPBR in terms of a game that offered so much and had such a wide scope. HG delivered a game that was so different in terms of both gameplay and story that it honestly inspires me. Never had as much fun playing a mafia game as I did here. I’m still so proud of my fellow mafia.
Dissention & Deceit: A much much better go at a newbie friendly game. Honestly I think Iggy really stuck the landing with this one. A little more polish to shine, more understanding from our veteran players that this is a newbie game and advanced competitive maneuvers like the Day 1 gambit should be avoided and I think we’d have a perfect newbie game.
Holy Grail Mafia 1.5: Another one that was a whole lot of fun to play. Not quite as fun as the og HG but still extremely fun in its own right.
Hotel Vitriol: This game was hell on me. I’m so proud of my players who stuck through it and for Kpio who carried the majority of the hosting. The original host left the project in the middle of signups and we had to make a choice as to whether or not we cancel it or go through. I stepped up despite not really having the time to host and finished the game. But it was not very well received, especially after such amazing games like HG, D&D and HG1.5. I think a lot of people were turned off of starmen’s meta after this which makes me very sad.
Intermission 2: A return to great games with Kail at the helm running one of my favorite games ever. I still cannot believe Rhys figured out the gimmick of the game so quickly.
Why don’t we run more mafia games?
