Game 16 of RAFO's very own fantasy-themed Mafia Scum Game is opening registration to begin play later this week. If you like bloody betrayals, murder, mystery, and nail-biting suspense, come on over to the RPG board (reg thread linked below) and sign up.

Details
This is the sixteenth in a series of games called “Darkfriend” that began almost two years ago over on wotmania. Games usually consist of over a dozen people and play goes on for typically around a month or a bit more. To fit with the differing nature of readandfindout.com, we've widened the theme of the games beyond Wheel of Time to include games with SciFi or Fantasy flavors. In terms of recidivism, everyone who has finished a game has gone on to play several more, it's insanely addictive for a text-only game.

The basic rules and strategy are simple, the rest can be learned as you go. Essentially, there are the good guys and the bad guys, and at the beginning, only the bad guys know who they are and sometimes there is more than one faction of them, seeking to kill each other and the good guys. The good guys have roles, such as 'cop' or 'doc' to help find bad guys and protect from 'Night Kills'. Each game is broken down into day and night cycles, usually 3-6 per game. During the day, people discuss clues and evidence (this usually last about a week) then vote to 'lynch' someone, removing them from the game. After this, a brief night cycle (24-48 hours) begins, in which the bad guys select someone to try to kill via private discussions on the Noteboard and the various 'roles' in the game use their 'role power', e.g. protecting someone from a night kill, or investigating someone to see if they are one of the bad guys. Victory is achieved when the other faction or factions are wiped out, or when such an outcome becomes inevitable. The bad guys lie, kill, etc in an attempt to hide themselves (they are few in number compared to the good guys, the townies) and avoid being lynched.

The good guys, the town, do not know in most cases who is friend or foe, so it's basically a murder mystery. Player's seek to reveal as little about themselves while avoiding suspicion which may draw a lynch or night kill and dragging out as much info as possible from others. If you're a veteran of readandfindout and wotmania, you will recognize a lot of the players as regulars of the CMB, SciFi/Fantasy MB, and WoTMB.

Player commitment
Actually fairly small, as said, the game usually goes on for a little over a month, most players posting 50-100 times during that, with the general preference being to post roughly daily. Loosely speaking a player is expected to post at least a few times during a week or let people know they are RBIRL (Real Busy in Real Life) if they expect to be gone for a while, but most players average about two posts a day over the course of the game, greater frequency is always appreciated, and most messages are between one sentence a few paragraphs long, depending on what someone is doing of course, so it's not a huge time commitment.

There's the 60 second synopsis, come on over to the RPG Board and check it out, registration will be open for a couple days, probably Wednesday night or Thursday, after which the game will commence. I will be glad to answer any questions in this thread, or in the registration thread.