Mafia: Extreme Outdoor Edition

Most of you know the card game called "Mafia" in which you pit civilians against the Mafia. The game is elevated by the use of the doctor (Also known as Angel for others) and the Sheriff (Also known as Police or Spy or Detective)

Well, this is a conversation that happened at Youthgroup one night after a particularly good game of Mafia:

"I wonder if you could do an outdoor version"
"Sounds possible"

And thus I was given the opportunity to create...

Mafia: Extreme Outdoor Edition

Introduction: 
Built upon the premise of the original card game Mafia, this new version adds in more features that allow it to be used outside and is generally more physically active but just as fun.

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Needed Gear:
One mini-game for every five players (This is to reduce the length of queues as the game is quite fast-paced)
Leaders to manage the mini-games and organise individual points.
PREFERABLY: A minimum of twenty players. It is still possible with less than twenty but it does not work nearly as effectively.
Tables/Chairs, etc.
PREFERABLY: Prior knowledge as to how the cardgame works as it will make it easier to move into this version.
Small slips of Paper to write on.

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Objective: Mafia must kill the Civilians before the Civilians kill the Mafia.

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Players:
One mafia in every five players (Four mafia in a group of twenty - six mafia in a group of thirty)
A Doctor
A Sheriff

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Method of Play:

The game is organised into a Day/Night cycle of five or ten minutes (Add time for an increased number of players). When ten minutes is up, everyone regroups at the main points desk for notices, accusations and deaths.

During the day, players will quickly move around the different minigames as they please, racking up as many points as they can. The more difficult the challenge, the more points they get. Players can either move in groups or individually, both choices have merits and consequences.

The individual points cost is divided into cheap, normal, expensive and UBER. The Mafia have an extra "Uber" as the final one is basically a instant victory although the price is very hard to get. Costs are reset for each Cycle.

• Killing, saving and identifying

 When the Mafia want to kill someone, the targets name must be written on a piece of paper and handed into the points desk, along with the points cost. A confirmation paper will be given back.

First kill: 500pts

Second Kill: 1500pts

Third Kill: 3000pts

Fourth Kill:  6000pts 

All Civilians die: 16000pts

The mafia do not have to kill in every cycle, but it is advised that they talk to each other about who should be killed. If two first kill requests are handed in, the second is nullified without redemption.

Unlike the cardgame, the doctor is now able to save groups of people rather than individuals for daynight cycles. By paying a fee, a group of people that the doctor has been with is saved from being killed for the rest of the cycle. However, the doctor cannot save themself at all. The doctor must write on a piece of paper who they want to save and hand it into the points desk along with the cost. A confirmation paper will be given back.

Small group save (3): 500pts

Medium Group save (5): 1500pts

Large Group Save (10): 3000pts

Emergency standby (11 - 200): 9000pts

Be warned though, a protected player can still be killed through an accusation.

The Sheriff is able to detect who the mafia is by handing in the required points along with requested names. The points manager will hand a list of names as well as their status back to the Sheriff.

Single detection (1): 500pts

Triple detection (3): 1500pts

Super Detection (6): 3000pts

Spy Network (11 - 200): 9000pts

The Civilians work slightly differently, in that they must all work together (Despite not knowing who each other is) to take down the Mafia. They must all gather points to create an accusation. However the Mafia is also able to contribute to an accusation, making it harder to work out who is civilian or Mafia. Unlike other payments, these payments are made during the end of a cycle when everyone regroups.

First accusation: 3000pts

Second accusation: 7000pts

Third Accusation: 12000pts

Force Card Reveal: 20000pts

The "Force Card Reveal" payment, despite being the most expensive in the game, forces an accused player to reveal their card. This is actually quite risky as it allows the mafia to also learn who the player is, thus making it easier for them to find the doctor and the sheriff.

The mafia can contribute to paying for an accusation, but they themselves cannot accuse someone. Any number of civilians can contribute any amount of payment they want to an accusation.

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Accusations

When a player is accused of being the Mafia, someone else must support the accusation (If the accusation does not go through, then the points are NOT returned). The accused is given a chance to defend themselves after which, everyone votes whether or not to kill the player. If the player is killed then they reveal their card. Otherwise it stays hidden.

Ending the Game

The game ends when either all Mafia are killed or there are not enough civilians left to be able to defeat the mafia (More mafia than civilians)

In the end, there are two victors, the remaining team and the surviving player with the most remaining points.

Strategies

• There is one mafia in every group of five civilians (Four civilians, one mafia). The civilians can afford to lose three civilians to kill a Mafia (Though, strategy is neccecary for clear victories)
• It is not implied anywhere in the rules that a player cannot reveal their card to another player. However keeping your card secret allows you to have some leverage over other players.
• If a players card is revealed (Such as the Force Card Reveal payment), then it is highly advised that the doctor protect them  in the next round and possibly the second.
• The Mafia don't have to stick together - Spreading out with other groups to figure out who is who generally gives them an upper hand. Sometimes skipping a turn to kill a player gives them the points to kill two.
• For the sake of the survival, the civilians are very dependant on keeping the pressure on mafia. If the mafia arent forced to kill people, they can easily hide in the shadows and rack up enough points to kill everyone in one turn.
• The Mafia should strategically work out who is the biggest threat to them. Eliminating the Doctor is more effective than killing the sheriff.

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So, what do you think?

My late review of Skyrim

While pretty much everyone else on the planet who writes reviews has already written one, I felt like writing my own personal review of Bethesda's game: "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim". Just as a warning, this review CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!

Introduction - Before the game...

My first introduction to Skyrim was on a Notch's blog (Founder of Mojang, he made Minecraft, etc) and how Bethesda was suing them for copyright infringements as the name of Notch's next game was called Scrolls. Naturally, I supported Notch, as since Bethesda's game was called "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" and most people were, at the time, nicknaming the game "skyrim". How you can confuse "Scrolls" and "Skyrim" is beyond me.

Although, after seeing the post-production screenshots, I figured that it couldnt be that bad of a game. My brother, Ben, got it for christmas and here's where things really annoyed me.

Installation

Skyrim on PC runs through Steam, just so you know, and as such that means that my brother and I supposedly could only run one copy on his computer, well, being the technical genius that I am, I found a way around that that I probably cant post here for legal reasons. Never the less, it really annoys me when a company is so strict on product distribution that you cant have multiple copies at home on your computers to share with siblings. Oh well, their doing the best that they can.


The game itself

Originally, I was skeptical about playing Skyrim due to a number of forseen problems, but I'll address those later. I'll start with the merits of the game.

Game positives

The detail that Skyrim offers its players is incredibly amazing. The game contains practically no linear path to the story whatsoever and players are free to go off and do whatever the heck they want whenever they want (Excluding a few certain things). The free playability comes after you finish the tutorial, which includes escaping from a freaking huge dragon called Alduin who apparently wants to eat the world... Yea... He must be really hungry.

Lower end PC's may have a few difficulties running the game engine, however there is a considerable amount of customization available so that you can optimize it. I was quite impressed with the chat system. While you are free to choose a player name, the characters will never refer you to this name and most, instead will give you the name of "Dragonborn", a title apparently meaning that you have the body of a Human/Argonian/Elf/Orc/whatever but the soul of a dragon. Sounds pretty cool to me!
The game also has a very well created chat system for interacting with NPC's. Typically your given a list of questions and responses to what a NPC talks about, however saying certain messages can often change how another character thinks about you. Your conversations with others actually get to the point where you can change the outcome of war.

Skyrim also features over two hundred different locations to discover which are revealed on your map. This means that players will pretty much always have a new place to discover and kill enemies inside it.

Game Negatives

While admittedly, the game does give players a large amount of places to discover, a major issue eventually arose with me was that it eventually became too easy to win battles. The game does level enemies in new locations to your average level, but the problem that I always ran into was that they were not tough enough after a while and that it eventually got to the point where killing dragons involved about four-five slashes from my sword and bang, easy kill. The end result is a character who could probably destroy the world better than the main antagonist, Alduin.

Bugs Bugs Bugs. Skyrim is FULL of them. While any and all games across the expanse of Earth do contain bugs, Skyrim might as well take the award for the game with the most bugs that has been sold worldwide. Most bugs are hard to avoid and some of them even go as far as making it impossible to continue the main campaign, which by the way is really annoying. Often fixing the bug requires the player to reload from the most recent savegame, but in some cases it requires the player to acess the game console, a feature only available on PC, leaving Xbox and PS3 players stuck in problematic spot. If your curious as to just how many bugs there are in the game, take a look at The Elder Scrolls Wikia. Roughly every page related to Skyrim has a special section on bugs related to a character, a quest or even just items.

Overall Result

Skyrim is a good game and gives the player hours upon hours of playing ability. If you get bored of fighting, switch to smithing or enchanting or alchemy or... you get the picture. The big downside is that eventually it gets way too easy and bugs can often prevent the finishing of quests or even the game. My final result is 7/10. I'd be happy to give it an 8 or 9 if they'd fix so many of the bugs.

Exam Results

NCEA Exam Results are out.
Your probably curious as to what my marks are.

I'm not curious at all... and have chosen to ignore them and instead pursue a path of maintaining the knowledge of not knowing. That is all.

Oh, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!