) that will (danger: hyperbole alert
) completely blow everyone's mind!
It's based on a board game called Betrayal in House on the Hill (which I encourage people to purchase if they enjoy playing board games with groups of 4-6 people).
The mafia game will involve two phases: the exploration phase and The Haunt phase. The game begins with no affiliations distributed. Each night, each player explores a different room in the creepy mansion. In each room, the player will either 1) find an item, 2) experience an event or 3) reveal an omen. Each item, event and omen imparts an ability (or a restriction) onto the player that uncovers it.
At the end of the night, I roll a die to determine whether the game goes into The Haunt phase. The probability of reaching The Haunt phase increases linearly with the number of omens revealed.
If The Haunt does not begin at the end of the night, the next day begins with all players again having no assigned affiliation. The players can choose to kill one of their own or to proceed to the next night.
On the night The Haunt begins, each player who uncovered an omen that night has a chance to become a traitor (i.e., an anti-town role). The game then proceeds similarly to a regular mafia game, except that all players can continue to explore rooms at night until there are no rooms left to search. I might add a rule that discourages rampant exploration (e.g., if a player accumulates three restrictions, then that player dies immediately) but I have a bit of time to figure that out.
Whattayathink?