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[Leafsnail]

It wouldn't play out very much like mafia.  Basically for a mafia-like dynamic you have to have an alignment that everyone needs to pretend to be.  Even some weird variants with nonstandard alignments still achieve this (while everyone can only win as mafia in KotM they always need to pretend they are town at the moment, and while there are two factions in Cybrid you always need to pretend to be the dominant one, or at least pretend to be anti-cybrid). If this alignment doesn't exist then you end up with a weird dynamic that isn't quite mafia (see: Systematically Make Others Lose where you just voted losers off one by one, Religious Flame War Mafia in which the majority of players started as survivors and actively wanted to be recruited into cults).

It could still work as a kind of negotiation game.  I'd say though that:
- PMs are probably needed.  It'd be very, very hard to organize any kind of backstabs or alliances if you had to announce everything publicly in-thread.  In fact I can't think of many reasons why you'd want to post in the thread at all really.
- Deception in the actions are needed.  I'd be tempted to just make the actions private until the day ends.

[Leafsnail]

Incidentally the game can't really start if nobody knows anybody else's alignments, unless everyone agrees to do a massclaim.  My suggestion would be to tell a player who their allies and enemies are, but not which of their allies and enemies are which.  That would allow for a level of deception.

[notquitethere]

I had considered at the beginning of each game telling each player the identity of one other player (either according to an established pattern or at random).

[notquitethere]

Regarding deception with the actions: as all the roles I outlined above have the appearance of being the normal actions, publically declaring actions would be viable and intersting: when the last vote has been cast, game stops while mod counts the votes, taking into account which of the roles have been activated. Thus, whomever looks like they're going to be lynched, might turn out to be safe when the vote is tallied by the mod, leading to interesting speculation on who activated their role.

But even with the roles, you still don't think there'd be an incentive not to claim, Leafsnail?

[Leafsnail]

It's not that there's no incentive to not claim, it's that the game doesn't work if no-one claims.  You can't form any alliances if you don't know who anyone is, and you can't scumhunt because everyone is basically the same alignment.

[notquitethere]

I kind of figured it would work with no one claiming. You have to use your protect vote on someone else, so you can form temporary alliances to mutually protect, but these can be undermined when new information comes to light. Maybe false-claiming should be incentivised more, to encourage discussion and hunting.

[Leafsnail]

But how can you hunt when everyone has fundamentally the same alignment?

[notquitethere]

I can see what you're saying. Unlike in mafia though the main activity would be alliance building and then changing those alliances based on the flip. Hmmm... that said, as soon as someone dies, there's two people who will win instantly if their other enemy is killed. Everyone else has an incentive to make sure one of these two are lynched next and everyone has an incentive to claim that they were allies of the deceased. There the hunting would come in.

At the end of the day, you'd only really see what would happen if you run it. Of course, you could start off the game with someone already dead and have it be four player, but I'm not sure that would be as fun. Alternatively, it could be scaled up to seven player- each with two allies and three enemies.

[Toaster]

You just about need a sixth player who has a separate wincon than everyone else.   Problem there then is said person is screwed come massclaim.

[Mephansteras]

You just about need a sixth player who has a separate wincon than everyone else.   Problem there then is said person is screwed come massclaim.

Hmm...maybe. What if they win on a tie situation that normally results in everyone losing? That makes them a minor target for everyone else most of the time and gives them a very interesting position to work for that's at odds with everyone else but still needs to use the same mechanics.

[notquitethere]

Yeah, a sixth player that has no special powers and only wins when there's a draw might be interesting. They're no one's ally or enemy...

[RedWarrior0]

Right, but how does that sixth player's presence make it possible to hunt your targets?

[notquitethere]

Hmm... it strikes me that the game dynamics don't really have to be like mafia with a focus on hunting targets- more it's a game of alliance and betrayal.

[Toaster]

Mafia is, at its core, an uninformed majority versus an informed minority.  Without some semblance of that, it's not really Mafia.  Something like Prince's Guard is the outer edge of the gametype.

[TolyK]

Heh. I've been playing (IRL) a lot of non-standard mafia recently (where the GM also plays, and there is only one vanilla townie...) for as little as 4 players, which has two variants. If anyone's interested I can give more details.
I'm not sure I can classify the second variant of it as "mafia" though, since there are "team" cards which determine with who you win, even if the Mafia cards are on different teams (since people only know what team they are on).
What's that called/close to, then?