The Game
The roles, the mechanics and the numbers behind a match.
Overview
A first-person shooter for fifteen players, set in a single district of a Victorian city. A match runs three nights at most and fits inside twenty-five minutes.
Everyone spawns alone and well away from everybody else, so at first you see nobody at all. The buildings have several floors and no doors, and every one of them holds something worth taking. Voice carries about twenty metres, so a conversation only reaches the people standing near you, and any one of them might be the wrong person to hear it.
Between nights a hatch opens in the centre of the district and leads down to an underground room, where the vote happens and the shop follows straight afterwards. Anyone who dies stays on as a spectator with a free camera, and the living can no longer hear them.
- 15
- Players
- 5
- Roles
- 3
- Nights
- 20–25
- Minutes
Roles
- In match
- 3 players
- Health
- 100 HP
- Starts with
- Weak revolver
Out of the dark form they look identical to civilians, but for twenty seconds at a time they can turn into a dark silhouette. They know each other’s names, highlighted in red, and the Mafia have no voice channel of their own. Goal: kill everybody else.
- In match
- 1 player
- Health
- 100 HP
- Starts with
- Knife
Looks like an ordinary civilian and has no dark form. Plays for himself and takes any weapon off bodies or off the map. Goal: be the last one left alive.
- In match
- 1 player
- Health
- 200 HP
- Starts with
- Strong revolver
The town’s leader. Twice the health of anyone else, a unique skin, and the strong revolver with 28 rounds including the magazine.
- In match
- 1 player
- Health
- 150 HP
- Starts with
- Nothing
A unique skin with a medical coat and no starting weapon. Once a night he can revive a body, but he does not know the dead player’s role, so he may well raise a killer.
- In match
- 9 players
- Health
- 100 HP
- Starts with
- Nothing
No starting weapon: they find gear on the map and buy it at the shop. They can pick up any weapon, and they help work out the killers by voting.
The Roster
- Mafia
- 3
- Maniac
- 1
- Sheriff
- 1
- Doctor
- 1
- Civilians
- 9
The Rogues Gallery
Three Mafia and one Maniac walk the same district as these nine, using the same models and the same clothes. Until a Mafioso turns into a dark silhouette, there is no way to tell him from a citizen.
Mechanics
Dark Form
A Mafioso spends twenty seconds as a translucent silhouette and then waits out forty seconds of cooldown. He can shoot and loot in it but cannot speak, and even his allies see the same anonymous shape everybody else does. What usually gives him away is not the form itself but the moment he changes.
Revival
The Doctor can bring back one body a night, but he has to come across it himself: a corpse only highlights within ten metres and stays revivable for forty seconds. The revival itself takes another five, after which the player gets up at 50 HP with an empty inventory.
Proximity Voice
One channel for everybody with a range of roughly twenty metres, and no team chat for anyone at all. Crouching is silent, footsteps at a run carry a long way, and gunshots are heard across the whole district.
Money
Everyone starts on £600, buildings hold anything from £25 to £2000, and a kill pays between £1500 and £3500. The shop opens for twenty seconds after each vote and offers the same list to every faction.
Generators
The district’s lighting runs on two generators. A repair takes twelve seconds of standing still and pays £1000 to civilians, the Sheriff and the Doctor, or £500 to the Mafia and the Maniac. The Mafia can break one instead, which takes three seconds and also pays, as long as nobody sees. Both running means full light, one means half, neither means darkness.
Weather and Dawn
Rain, fog and clear skies take turns on their own through the night. One minute before the night ends the sky clears and all combat stops, so that everybody has time to reach the hatch.
Victory
| Faction | Wins when |
|---|---|
| Mafia | Every civilian, the Sheriff, the Doctor and the Maniac are dead. |
| Maniac | He is the last player left alive. |
| Town | All three Mafia and the Maniac are dead. |