Circus Maximus: The Mafia Revival
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Art by Swiffix.
Introduction
Keen eyes on the social forums may have noticed an interesting pattern in the recent months out of the Circus Maximus forum. For days, the most recent post seems to keep up with the speed that some metagame threads or tournament signups go, but then all of the sudden the subforum goes silent for a day, only to spring back to activity out of the blue.
What you have been witnessing is the natural flow of a mafia game. Forty-eight hours of a day cycle filled with active discussion and a vote to remove someone from the game, followed by twenty-four hours of a night cycle containing silence and bated breath waiting to see who the mafia would kill. A majority of the players waiting to see what the small group of players with an alternative win condition would do.
Each game is different, however. Sometimes, some players have actions to take at night, and sometimes, during the day is when powerful actions can be taken. Sometimes the mafia is joined by other players with unique win conditions. Sometimes the threads are less active than others, especially as players thin out on being removed.
Circus Maximus has seen a sudden revival of mafia games, with only one game in all of 2022 compared to six so far in 2023. This is a summary of those games, a written record summarizing hundreds of pages of deception, collaboration, and manipulation, all in a social game taking place nearly-exclusively in a single forum thread.
Cool Weapon Mafia
[Complexity: High]
The first game of 2023, Cool Weapon Mafia was a game where each player had some extraordinary ability to play during the course of the game, and host Duskfall98 added a twist by attaching those powers to weapons that each player started the game with, allowing them to obtain new ones, trade, or give them up if they desired. Sixteen players entered, with the mafia comprising apricity, Aura Guardian, Laurel, and shadowpea.
As with a return to mafia as a game on Smogon for many players, distinct styles of play began to come into play. Psypsypsypsypsythe held most of the conversation, with many pages being dominated by his rapid-fire posting style. This brought great focus on him, and he was the first to be voted out of the game, despite being town, the good-aligned faction, rather than mafia, the evil-aligned faction.
Information and misinformation bounced around in the thread, in addition to weapons. Players experimented with the sheathing mechanic, where a host informed the thread that a player had desired to give their weapon up, and the first to post a specific bolded line in the thread would obtain that weapon. A show of faith, sharing of information, and consolidating power to trusted players, this feature would play prominently in the remainder of the game.
Laurel, a member of the mafia who found himself likely to be voted off towards the end of the second day, attempted a last-moment surprise, using a weapon’s power to remove Nuxl from the game. This had the secondary effect of resetting the day’s vote count, where he tried to remove a member of town as the only vote, but enough attentive players quickly piled their votes back onto Laurel, removing a member of the mafia.
Unfortunately, town made no further progress towards victory. The next day, CaffeineBoost entered the thread with irrefutable evidence that Lady Salamence was a member of the mafia, detailing her sharing of ability results not matching up to his targeting of her with a weapon that swapped when a weapon could even be used. Lady Salamence put up a small defense, but their only possible savior would've required shadowpea, a member of the mafia, to reveal they had used an ability-blocking power on CaffeineBoost. The mafia were more than happy to allow one member of town to doom another.
During all this time, apricity had successfully snuck his way into a group of trusted town members, collecting weapons during the consolidation of power to ensure that the planned coup de grâce would go off without any interference. With the mafia team’s built in ability to kill, two weapon-based kills, as well as an excellent mechanical understanding of how certain weapons interacted, it was over before the day even really started. The mafia team killed three players before the day even began, one more in the opening minutes, then lay out all their votes to outnumber town, who now had no passage to victory.
eli loves matrices
[Complexity: Low]
After the chaos of Cool Weapon Mafia, Nuxl pumped the brakes on the power level, granting only three players any night ability. Celever and Schiavetto as members of town could track the night movements of anyone they targeted, but each had to take turns, only being able to use their ability every other night. Aura Guardian and CaffeineBoost as members of the mafia were little more powerful than being able to choose a person to kill at night, but Vizh filled out their ranks with the additional ability to check the role of anyone they targeted.
The early game went very well for town; the reduced power level and lack of intricate mechanics allowed for a focus on conversations and game theory focuses, with level-headed discussions ranging from player habits, mafia game theory, and who was interacting with who. Day one saw the voting out of mafia’s CaffeineBoost with an early consensus forming that was then locked in as people dismissed other possible votes as being less preferable.
The second day involved a significant adjustment at the last minute, with Lady Salamence and Psy being the targets of two different voting blocs. Both tried to negotiate a swing onto someone else, which materialized when HydrogenHydreigon offered both of them the option to vote Vizh with him. When the dust settled, the mafia had lost its role checker.
Lady Salamence wouldn’t get much longer than a single night cycle to take a deep breath, as Schiavetto opened the day three with an apologetic message to her, but confirmed that she was in fact irrefutably mafia. Lady Salamence didn’t even bother to defend herself too much, justifying the roll-over as the town was in an excellent position with two scum out. The entire cycle didn’t even play out, as a majority of votes on her ended the cycle early.
Schiavetto’s gamble failed to pay off, with their plan derailing. They had desired that everyone would claim to be one of the trackers, each clearing one person from suspicion by claiming to have seen them do nothing the previous night, where they would’ve seen a kill occur. Following the subsequent mafia targeting, they could ensure certain users were part of town.
realiti had other ideas, however. Stunned at the decision to make up a mafia accusation out of nothing and then not even allow the cycle to play out entirely, realiti forced the town's hand by demanding they vote him out, essentially walking away from the game. Day four concluded early with the town obliging to realiti’s request.
Eventually, the game went down to three players remaining in Aura Guardian, HydrogenHydreigon, and Laurel, where if town voted incorrectly the game would end in the mafia's favor. The three had a calm conversation for the first part of the cycle, with former players eagerly trying to discern likely voting results from each new post from a graveyard Discord server. Eventually, AG and HH pointed fingers at each other, leaving Laurel with the final option.
The remainder of the cycle was the Laurel show, as he painstakingly read through every post in the close to 100 page thread, searching for any indicator of which of the two was mafia. When he completed his task, he explained his concern with one major point in the game. LS and Psy had both been town and killed at night, and HH had been the spark that pulled votes off of either and onto Vizh, who then turned out to be mafia. Laurel laid his vote down against AG, and the game was won for town.
Smalltown
[Complexity: High]
The power level shot back up with CaffeineBoost’s game, with every player having a strong role and full knowledge of who could do what and all players being able to pick their roles in a queue system designed to allow players to risk their position to greedily grab an earlier slot in the queue. The only secret was who was mafia, with only Aura Guardian, Duskfall98, and realiti knowing it was in fact them.
However, the fact that Dusk's role allowed him to swap every single role onto whoever he would like one time got a lot of attention. Some players expressed frustration that all the picking was in the end for next to nothing, others pleaded with players to remove Dusk before he could even use it with a majority to end the cycle early, and a group even trying to democratize the restructure of roles.
Until Dusk’s reassignment of powers late on day 2, voting took a bit of a backseat as people focused on role balance and dangerous mafia combinations. Bizarrely, HydrogenHydreigon was voted out on the first day in no small part due to his own vote he placed on himself, followed by missing the ending of the day cycle and failing to move their vote.
After a secretly strategic failed restructure by Dusk, realiti came forward and informed the game that they had used their one-time power to place a delayed kill on Ehmcee. This caused a stir, with Ehmcee now doomed yet still actively participating to his credit. Dusk and realiti began to bicker in the thread, but all recognized the ability now to remove a dangerous role by giving it to Ehmcee, or onto whoever they collectively decided to vote.
Once the roles were shuffled, realiti then used his new one-time power to force a lock on who could be voted to just him and Dusk. Despite this limitation, the remaining players found an out—they could instead choose to vote for nobody. The math worked out that perfect play would allow them to win, and rather than risk a town’s elimination in the limited vote (without knowing that their two options were both mafia), they chose to not vote.
Perfect play did not happen, unfortunately, and all three members of the mafia successfully finished off the game. Dusk would later comment that he desired to set realiti up as a strong town-aligned player by having the two bicker and eventually get himself voted out. Instead, both sides of the fight were led by scum, and town were eventually picked off one by one as there was never a strong swing against either player.
Werewolf
[Complexity: Medium]
With Aura Guardian sick of always ending up on the mafia team, he instead ran the next game, choosing a power level somewhere between Smalltown/Weapon and matrices. This time, a third team was introduced, the solo-team of Laurel as werewolf, who could investigate as well as kill. firekitten, Lady Salamence, and skippergamez made up the mafia team, with the former as an investigator, LS a vote suppressor, and skip the backup for either. Two members of town were unknowing backups for a double-voting mayor, a tracker, and a jailkeeper that protected people but blocked them from acting at night.
New to the site but not mafia, firekitten immediately gunned for Duskfall98, the player who had recruited them and was knowledgeable on their playstyle. With accidental help by Nuxl, the two ensured Dusk’s elimination by the end of the first day. Celever, another player who knew firekitten, was taken out at night. Laurel chose to eliminate Nuxl, and as it turned out Dusk and Nuxl were the town’s backups.
firekitten found himself on the outs in day three, but not before sowing some level of chaos by claiming (at different times) two of the three power roles, and in part caused all three town ability holders to be revealed to the mafia. HydrogenHydreigon, facing a sudden vote shift onto them, gave up that they were the tracker, implicating JALMONT as either the werewolf or the jailkeeper. The voting results allowed the mafia to deduce that the mayor was either Psy or Whydon, with the mayor breaking a three-vote three-way tie.
Day three went down to the wire between Laurel and realiti, with Psy insisting that realiti was not a member of town. As the mayor not-so-secretly, their double vote did not do enough to flip the vote, with Laurel being voted off and revealing as werewolf. Having killed HH the night before, it was a simple process to now kill JALMONT for the mafia, eliminating two of town’s abilities.
realiti was voted off the next day, revealing as town to the shock of Psy. With the mayor all-but-confirmed to the mafia, and the numbers being close enough for the lock down of voting, the mafia killed Psy and finally for the first time used their vote suppression on Whydon. But with the mayor’s extra vote out of the equation and another town vote locked away, there was no way for town to win.
Assist Trophy
[Complexity: High]
Run by Celever, Assist Trophy Mafia sought to return to an old form of game, a theme game. Each role was hand-crafted and balanced with respect to its source, Super Smash Bros assist trophies. Each player had at least three abilities and one gimmick, many of which interacted with each other or abilities of other users. Ehmcee, Haruno, and Laurel took up the mafia mantle, themed as former Assist Trophies-turned fighters.
The game started off uniquely, with Whydon using the closed structure of the game to claim that Lady Salamence was a confirmed member of the mafia, a quickly-growing in-joke in the community. Given that the structure was closed, nobody knew the details of everyone’s role, as opposed to a game like Smalltown. However, this attempt to generate discussion and play into the joke ended poorly, as Whydon retracted the claim too late for votes to reasonably shift, voting Lady Salamence off at the end of day one.
From there, the mafia began to take control of the state of conversation, though a large focus came onto Thunder~BALLZ, who stated publicly on day one that they wished to be targeted. While it took another night before people targeted him, with each target TBZ received, they unlocked new abilities. Several players obliged, and TBZ gladly shared their growing skillset.
With an inactive Spiderz one of the first to be substituted out, JALMONT spent the following night cycle catching up, leaving a tracking target on Haruno. He discovered at the end of the night that Haruno had carried out the mafia’s night kill, and rallied the town to vote Haruno out. JALMONT also benefited from a single-kill immunity, initially given to Ehmcee by Fame, but Whydon had redirected anything targeting Ehmcee to Spiderz, which then was inherited by JALMONT. Given that he was later targeted by the mafia to be killed at night, this was particularly notable.
With Haruno gone, the next target of town was unfortunately another member of town, who found themselves voted out early as a majority was shockingly reached, against expectations. The answer to what happened the previous day came the next day, with Laurel placing a vote on his mafia ally Ehmcee, only for everyone to discover that Laurel had a second vote somehow. With only Laurel voting Ehmcee, yet the vote count reading two, Laurel was questioned for seemingly having an ability that he had never claimed to have—the answer to how the vote had hit majority without a majority of players voting him.
With Laurel even voting himself on the way out, that left just Ehmcee to hold the mafia banner, though admittedly with the added benefit of having received suspicion from now-confirmed mafia Laurel, painting him as town. This was intended and choreographed, with the only two members of mafia wishing to distance each other should either be uncovered.
Unfortunately, activity amongst a number of players began drying up, with three players ignoring a final warning for activity or removal. With so many inactive players who were removed for inactivity, as well as a vote against one final member of town, the game was left with one member of mafia and one member of town, and the game concluded with a mafia victory.
Final Thoughts
This isn’t all that Circus Maximus has done or will do. Another game, JOAT 10 (Jack-of-all-trades) reverted to lower power levels and a low complexity, with only a single ability on a single person, Celever. Aura Guardian (again) and pulsar512b as mafia successfully pulled off a perfect game in between this article being written and released, eliminating Celever in the first night and slowly picking off town one by one for the remainder of the game.
The Circus Maximus community has wide reach and respect across the internet. Under the hood, SmORGon is a notable name in the online reality game sphere of the internet, while the music recommendation Walrus games are usually cross-community events that Smogon is included in. In terms of mafia, Smogon has been invited to the high-skill inter-forum mafia championships from the start, a rather exclusive honor.
Between Circus Maximus's official Discord, SmORGon's Discord, and signing up for whatever next game, mafia or not, signups go live for, it’s never been easier to be social on Smogon in a social game focused community. It’s been a long road from the IRC days, checking someone’s AFK timer to see if they were active in a secret mafia coordination channel!
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