What the shit is this

Mafia is a ghost deadchat game based off of the very real life equivalent of the same name. It's a social deduction game where players are randomly given roles in three groups: Town, Mafia, and Solo. The townies must hang all the Mafia, the Mafia must get majority vote over the town to secure the win, and Solos must complete their own objectives that muddle the game.

Phases in the game

Day phase: talk about what happened last night, make calls, etc.

Voting phase: choose someone to put up on trial. The one first voted for, with the most votes wins. So if there is a tie, the first one to call a vote goes up.

Judgement phase: People choose innocent or guilty on someone who is on trial, while they defend themselves. Guilty = lynched.

Night phase: roles do their actions mostly at night, mafia votes on who to kill and solo killing roles kill someone.

Rules of Revealing

Revealing makes a role put on their true clothes, and sends a massive message to the game about their true identity.

If lynched, their role will be revealed.

Some roles (psychologist, hop) can reveal roles.

If killed at night, the role will NOT be revealed.

Town

These are all the good characters, that must remove all of the mafia and stop all solo killing roles to win (essentially securing the town as safe)

Role Description How to Play
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Assistant
"You are a crewmember without any special abilities." Your power comes in how incredibly boring you are. Try to get the mafia to kill you, instead of more important roles. Assistant is the easiest claim for mafia and killing roles, so by getting lynched and publicly revealed you're giving them less power to claim easy roles. If you manage to get revealed by the psychologist, you'll be never targeted because mafia and killing roles are looking to take out detectives and doctors. USE THIS! Call out when people don't talk, call out when people are throwing blame weirdly. Call out weird votes! If you manage to get killed as a revealed assistant, you were such a pain in the ass that they spent a night removing you.
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Detective
"You can investigate a single person each night to learn their team." One of the strongest roles for the station, so don't try and make attention to yourself before getting an evil role lynched. When you start making calls, make sure to tell the protective roles to try and help you. If you ever get into the situation where you got doctors saving you every night and you're revealing people every night, you're easily able to drive the entire game home with your power.
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Psychologist
"You can visit someone ONCE PER GAME to reveal their true role in the morning!" Yes, we all know you can reveal a random person at the start. That doesn't make it a good use of your power, though. A better use is if the town is caught up between two claims, and instead of lynching possibly the wrong person, then letting the other person kill one more before they're lynched, just reveal them! It really solves the whole conundrum real fast when one person's true role is revealed. Just remember, the worst whiff you can have is hitting a useful town role. Hitting assistants is fine, hitting hops doesn't let them use their power but is otherwise fine, just avoid doctors and lawyers. It's the same as a single doctor saying their role day one and getting killed the first night.
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Chaplain
"You can communicate with spirits of the dead each night to discover dead crewmember roles." Probably the weakest of the investigative roles, but don't let that keep you down. You're the prime bullshit detector as not even the mafia know the roles of the dead. If they claim doctor and you discovered one died, you just caught someone out on some bullshit and they're goofed. Otherwise don't feel too bad about getting mafia to target you instead of other roles in the game if there are other investigatory roles... you're not that great.
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Medical Doctor
"You can protect a single person each night from killing." Uh oh, it's the detective's mafia lynching sidekick. Seriously, don't make yourself known. Never say your role unless you're brought up for it, and expect mafia to claim this role a lot. It might not even be worth counterclaiming them since they'll just kill you the next night so they can then kill detective roles. Sure, the mafia got off scott free but you and your pal can mercilessly run down mafia like no tomorrow.
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Lawyer
"You can choose a person during the day to provide extensive legal advice to during the night, preventing night actions." Undervalued role, actually kind of strong despite being overshadowed by medical doctor as a protective role. The medical doctor gets weaker as the game goes on, but you get way, way stronger. You're also stupidly strong against traitors. Mafia sends a random person to kill their target every night, so you have a 1/however many lings there are chance of roleblocking them, but it's always traitor killing so you're guaranteed to roleblock them. In a way, you're also a repeatable semi-psychologist because you can roleblock one of the two suspicious people at the end of the game in a disagreement and see if nobody dies. Early on, it may not be worth using your power if there are no traitors because you'll just roleblock more important town roles but late game just shut those fools down.
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Head of Personnel
"You can reveal yourself once per game, tripling your vote power but exposing your status to all the evils of the game!" See acting like a confirmed assistant, and start following it the moment the town starts to do something really dumb. You'll get killed more often but really don't worry as you're just not as important for them to kill as detective and MD. Honestly, it just isn't that hard to get people lynched when you have evidence unless obsessed are in the game or something of that nature so you're not that great of a role powerwise, but again: confirmed townie mafia have little reason to kill = strong so try for that

Mafia

These are the antagonists, they meet at night and vote on who to kill. They win when they have majority over the town, securing their victory since they can no longer get voted up.

Role Description How to Play
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Changeling
"You're a member of the changeling hive. Use ':j' talk prefix to talk to your fellow lings." Kill investigatory roles, try not to get lynched because you're a mothperson, get lynched because you're a mothperson anyways... Okay but really: pray that you get the invests before they start calling out evil roles, since they're the ones that build info for the town the most. You might think it's worth keeping a traitor alive if they get outed, but it's just not worth it. They can kill members of the changeling hive and you need every member to win the game. Try to get the town to waste time, mostly. Make other people suspicious so the detective wastes turns investigating them instead of you. Counterclaim detective, Discredit detective, do whatever you can to prolong the creation of the detective-doctor-town bond.
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Thoughtfeeder
"You're a changeling variant that feeds on the memories of others. Use ':j' talk prefix to talk to your fellow lings, and visit people at night to learn their role." Detective but better, and fugitive's best friend. You're gonna want to inform your changeling pals every night what you find, and in essence use your power to protect roles that disrupt town and honestly "double kill" every night since if you can find an MD or pre-reveal det they're essentially dead before they know it. If you find an obsessed, it may be worth helping them lynch their target since their target is always town and wastes even more time. Pretty strong role for something NOT ACTUALLY IN SS13.

Solo

These are all characters that count as town for mafia majority as they are not aligned with making mafia win necessarily, but they have their own objectives and win conditions that muddle the game.

Role Description How to Play
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Traitor
"You're a solo traitor. You are immune to night kills, can kill every night and you win by outnumbering everyone else." You against the world. Mafia won't treat you kind either, so just hope you accidently kill one on a night. They'll be tipped off if they try to kill you since you're immune, but actually that makes you an okay detective claim if this happens. Otherwise, hush up and claim doctor when brought up (unless that's because det brought you up, in which case RIP) and hope that's enough for detective to not investigate you the night after. Otherwise act as you would as mafia. Mafia is really not a big threat compared to detective so hunt down that MD!
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Nightmare
"You're a solo monster that cannot be detected by detective roles. You can flicker lights of another room each night. You can instead decide to hunt, killing everyone in a flickering room. Kill everyone to win." If you know arsonist from real mafia games, that's what this is. If changelings find you, you're dead unlike the traitor so that kinda sucks, but otherwise you have a lot of nice advantages. For one, you're not killing townies every night so the roster of people that COULD be the nightmare are large until you hit the switch. The other advantage is that you're detective immune. Detectives will see you as a member of the town, and Thoughtfeeders will see you as an assistant. On your first big wave, the person who survives most likely will be detective... but that's no problem, considering they still can't detect you. The real issue (and this can't show up in normal random games so call it adminbuse), but traitors can both survive your hunt AND kill you. You need to find them first and kill them, if they exist.
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Fugitive
"You're on the run. You can become immune to night kills exactly twice, and you win by surviving to the end of the game with anyone." I don't really have advice for when to become immune but you either know you're dying tonight... or you have no clue. Keep one for the end-game if possible as night immunities in the final segments can be great. Sometimes you're the guy who decides whether town or mafia wins via the day vote, try to get it into that position if possible. If a traitor attacks you and you survive, Just know with your existence, you're going to get your role called a lot simply because you're a passive solo role that traitors would like to be. And that's gonna get you lynched a lot.
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Obsessed
"You're completely lost in your own mind. You win by lynching your obsession before you get killed in this mess. Obsession assigned on the first night!" Lynching day one can be too obvious, try to bandwagon off of other suspicions. One thing to note is that your obsession is always town and so mafia will support you if they find out who you are... Along with traitor, but that's less likely since they have no way to find out. Just assume nightmare's going to blindly kill you, he doesn't about throwing off the town and he's going to kill you AND your lynch target.
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Clown
"If you are lynched you take down one of your voters with you and win. HONK!" The jester, the fool, you all know how this works. There's so many ways you can get yourself lynched but since i've seen it so often: At least try to convincingly look like you're not trying to get lynched. So many games clown loses because he says LYNCH ME repeatedly and town calls it out. THEY KNOW THERE'S A CLOWN IN THE GAME.