Quote Originally Posted by TinCow View Post
1) What's the ideal mafioso to town ratio?
2) How do multiple mafia families and/or independent roles impact game balance?
3) What roles are overpowered/underpowered and overused/underused?
4) Does the entertainment benefit of giving all players something to do outweight the balancing difficulties that result?
5) What's the best way to minimize lack of participation/WoGs?
I'll give it a shot.

1) Found few topics on Mafiascums. But they were starting to discuss the meaning of balance it self so I gave up.
When I started playing here, I often heard that ideal ratio between mafia and town was 1:6 or 1:7. That seems to be the case with 12 player games (2 mafias, 1 Pro town, 1 kill each) where both mafia and town has a fair chance of winning. However in large games mafia seem to have larger ratio like 1:9, 1:10 or bigger and still pull off a good game. I guess it depends on number of pro towns and inactives.

2) A lot. Very rarely does each mafia families attempts to work together. They normally blow each other up early on, which favours the town. Though, if the town are to follow someone just because they contributed in lynching a mafia, they will suffer the consequences.

3) Role blockers can go either way. But in the games where each mafias can kill, Role Blockers can be both medic and a detective at the same time. So in that sense, they are quite overpowered. Jokers are overpowered too.

4) I enjoy the classical games every now and then. Simple games like Mafia series and God Father should be fun even for the towns.

5) I try not to give the important roles to player I don't know that well. Getting roles and getting wogged just ruins the game. As for preventing inactives, I guess smaller number of players and a interesting storyline/write up should provoke activity.