Mafia Glossary


 * Balance: Part of the Game creator's job is to balance the setup to make it as equally winnable for both teams as possible. This includes setting the number of mafioso (usually 1/4 of the total players), making sure that there are no overpowered roles on either side, adding roles to counterbalance other roles (e.g. doctor to block kills, roleblocker or Godfather to counter detects) or giving the mafia fake claims.
 * Barn (/barn): To agree with someone without contributing independent thought; short for barnacle, it is meant to be a metaphor for riding along with someone else’s opinion. Also known as piggybacking.
 * Buddying: When a player sides with and plays 'buddies' with another player, usually to gain their trust.
 * Claim: To give out the information in your role PM in a post during a game. (This must be paraphrased in your own words because copying and pasting, or “quoting”, is against the rules.) This is called a claim because it cannot be called a certainty until the player is dead (or the game is over). Types include:
 * False Claim: A claim where a player lies about his role information because to tell the truth would cause some sort of game disadvantage. Mafia must typically false claim to keep from getting lynched, but sometimes Town false claim, too. This is generally to keep from exposing power roles.
 * Full Claim: The type of claim usually required when you are within a few votes of being lynched. Includes all pertinent information from your role PM and usually any actions you've taken.
 * Mass Claim: Everyone playing claims their role in the game thread to put all the information out there and make it potentially harder for scum to hide.
 * Name Claim: A claim where someone gives their themed character name, but not their role ability.
 * Soft Claim: A claim where someone has given partial information as to their role, such as affiliation, gender, or other themed categorization decided by the players.
 * Counter-Claim: An action taken by a player who sees part of their own unique claim used as another player’s defense. Usually used to catch scum in lies. (As in many cases in this game, sometimes the reverse is true as well where a scum false counter-claims when a town player is forced to claim. See False Claim above.)
 * Confirmed: used to describe a player that has been proven or verified as a town member, usually through a night action or investigation.
 * Distancing: a scum tactic where two scum argue or post against each other, either by fighting over a third party or about their own loyalties. This makes it harder to tell who the scum are if one player of the pair is lynched. Sometimes results in a Bus (See under Lynch).
 * EBWOP or EBWODP: Edit By Way Of (Double) Post. Because actual editing of posts in mafia games is forbidden, the only way to "edit" a post which contains an error is to make a subsequent post containing the correction.
 * Fishing: Mafia technique of using statements to elicit information from someone(s) in the game that they would normally keep to themselves. Typically used to determine town power roles.
 * Flavor: the fictional design elements added to a game of Mafia that give it style and uniqueness. Frequently loosely based off of popular cultural fictional properties, this gives the players something to discuss and characters to portray e.g. character roles.
 * Flavor Gaming: Attempting to use the implementation of flavor in the game as a means to deduce facts about the game and thereby change the game state. This strategy falls under heavy criticism as it is unreliable since there is no way to know if the Moderator or Setup Creator threw twists into the game that are counter-intuitive to the original flavor.
 * Flip: when a player dies in the game, a short term to indicate the result that is revealed, e.g. “When you flip scum…” or, “When I flip town…”.
 * Flooding: also known as post-flooding, can infrequently be a scum play but is more frequently an overly enthusiastic new player’s misunderstanding of how to maintain a healthy game where everyone can keep up, even if they don’t follow the game every day. Akin to spam in any forum thread on the internet.
 * FoS: Finger of Suspicion. Used to indicate that you find someone suspicious but are not going to vote them, for whatever reason (often because you are voting for someone even more suspicious).
 * Gambit: an active line of play, frequently involving deception or risk, where a player takes a specific series of actions to illicit change in the game to benefit their team. Examples include a false counter-claim, bussing, false claiming an investigative role and a known result, Daykill attempts to illicit responses, etc.
 * GM/Mod: Game Moderator. The host of the game who handles all the roles, votes, actions, and narrations for fairness with impartiality.
 * Hammer: to cast the last vote that lynches a player. Frequently seen as a scum tell when actually is a null tell. The motivation behind the last vote must be determined to be certain if the hammering player is town or not.
 * IGMEOY: I’ve Got My Eye On You. Another weaker variation of FoS generally regarded as more warning than accusation.
 * IIRC: If I Recall Correctly.
 * IMO: In My Opinion. Also IMHO, with H standing for Humble.
 * /in: Used in sign up threads to indicate interest in joining the game.
 * ITT: In This Thread.
 * LoS: List of Suspicion. A list of a player's alignment reads on all the other players still alive.
 * Lurking: the practice of posting at a minimum so as to contribute sparingly and thereby raise little confirmable suspicion. Sometimes a tactic used by scum to reduce discussion and get to night phase, but then again sometimes used by town power roles to avoid attention.
 * Lynch: the point in a game when the votes on a single player equal a majority of the players left alive and that player is killed. Related terms include:
 * Safe Lynch: A safe lynch is a term coined for lynching either a claimed neutral role, or a claimed town who has added none or negatively effected the town through WIFOM, distraction, ect. It is called a safe lynch because a lynch on this person will not harm the town, regardless of alignment. Also No Accountability Lynch.
 * Policy Lynch: Like a safe lynch, a policy lynch does not typically care if the target is scum or not, but to lynch a distraction, or a player who commits a pretty clear cut scum tell. The most common example of policy lynch is the Lynch all Liars clause. However, typically distraction players may also be considered for a policy lynch, however, not everyone agrees policy lynches are best for a game.
 * Mislynch: a lynch on a town-aligned player.
 * No Lynch/Abstain: a voting choice outside of the normal decision to name a player for lynching. If majority agrees to the No Lynch option, the game will proceed to the next phase (Night) without a player dying by lynch. No Lynch is better than a mislynch in some situations, and is a typical discussion topic of Day 1.
 * Lylo: Lynch or Lose. This is a stage in the game where the town must lynch mafia or they will lose the game.
 * MisLylo: Mislynch and Lose. This is a stage in the game where if the town mislynches, they will lose the game. Sometimes it is better not to lynch at all than to risk mislynching.
 * Bus: an action word (often “bussing”) used to describe when a mafia member actively votes or participates in the lynching of one of their teammates in order to gain credibility in the eyes of the town and win the overall game.
 * L-1: Lynch minus one, meaning one vote away from a the number of votes required to lynch a player. Any other L-# you see indicates the number away from a lynch.
 * LAL: Lynch All Liars. A philosophical viewpoint that basically states, “If you lie, we will lynch you,” based on the idea that town players shouldn’t lie.
 * Bandwagoning: See Wagon. A succession of votes on a single player, usually with little new reasoning or piggybacking in order to push for a lynch.
 * Quicklynch: A lynch that ends quickly with a number of votes all added in succession, usually right before the deadline. This is typically done by Mafia to mislynch and cause Endgame.
 * Meta: short for metagaming, and used to describe understanding a player’s behavior based on the readable pattern of actions a player uses when they are either town or scum based on the observations of other players. Through research of previous games, can frequently be used on experienced players as a map to their intentions in a current game. (Also can mean having an understanding of the player in question from outside the game, and thereby gaining insight into their playstyle.)
 * Mod-kill: a punishment handed out when a player breaks certain hard-and-fast rules in the game, such as quoting role PM material word-for-word or discussing an ongoing game outside of the game itself. Also sometimes a consequence of inactivity.
 * Narration: the story at the beginning of each phase that uses flavor to reveal who was killed. Can sometimes give clues as to who performed the kill, but the GM may choose to reveal as little as possible to remain neutral.
 * Night-kill: the mafia’s action, taken during the night phase of the game, of sending the Mod a name of a town player they wish to be dead. Usually one mafia player will indicate that they will be the “nightkiller” or assassin. This term is usually meant to define one specific, mafia-sponsored and controlled kill that happens during the night phase, i.e. “the nightkill” as opposed to other deaths that occur during night such as a “vig-shot” (See Vig) or SK kill (See SK).
 * Null: Undecided or unclear as to a player's alignment.
 * OMGUS: Oh My God You Suck. While occasionally used on its own as an insult, it's usually used as an inferred reasoning for purely retaliatory actions. For instance, an OMGUS vote on someone is one made purely on the basis that they are voting for you.
 * Outed: describes a power role or other in-game advantage that was secret information and has been revealed in the game posts, i.e. "I outed myself as the Cop because..."
 * PBPA: Post By Post Analysis. This occurs when Player 1 quotes or links to all relevant previous substantive posts made by Player 2, and then breaks down why Player 2 is scum according to Player 1’s concerns and observations.
 * Phase: indicates a portion of the game such as Day or Night, or Twilight.
 * PM: Private Message. Roles, actions, and action results are all usually handled through PMs and from the Game Moderator.
 * PoE: Process of Elimination.
 * Post Restriction: additional requirement sent in a PM where a players posts must conform to some preset quirk, such as only posting at some preset frequency, misspelling words, making flavor references, speaking as their character, or not posting at all.
 * Power Role: any role in the game that has some sort of ability to affect the game beyond casting a vote (e.g. Doctor, Cop, Godfather, Vigilante, etc.). See the Roles section for more information and examples.
 * Pressing/Pressuring: Going after another player (sometimes with a vote) in an attempt to get them to post more or give more information/answers.
 * Prod: a PM sent to an inactive player in an attempt to see if they are interested in continuing to play in the game, and to tell them that they are lagging behind.
 * Read: A player's assessment of another player's alignment (town, mafia, indie). Can use "null", "slight", "lean", "weak", or "strong" to indicate certainty.
 * RVS: Random Vote Section. The very beginning of the game where people make votes and jokes to start discussion since they have nothing much else to go on. In games with experienced players this sometimes simply doesn’t happen. When it ends is arbitrary.
 * Replace: Taking over the role of a player that either drops out of the game deliberately or abandons the game for reasons unknown.
 * Scum: Mafia and other anti-town. Basically any player that doesn’t have town interests at heart. Neutrals with independent win conditions such as Serial Killers and Cultist are also scum.
 * Scummy: having or pertaining to scum, not to be confused with “annoying” or “spammy”.
 * Scum Slip: something said by a player that indicates they are scum by giving away conclusive information. Can be anything from a wording in a post that changes, to a behavioral tell, to a bald-faced lie.
 * Setup: the individual game written out as a whole, including Role PM’s and any extra structure. This is sometimes submitted to a Reviewer who then checks the game for balance to make it as equally winnable for both teams as possible aka balanced. The Setup Creator is the author of the game and usually the Moderator of the game as well.
 * Sheeping: voting the same way as another player without contributing an argument to back up your choice. Sometimes a scum tell, sometimes a lazy town tell usually depending on whose vote is being sheeped.
 * SHROOP: Steven Howard's Rule of Odd Posts. A mistake in one's post usually the result from changing the wording during revision before posting (e.g. "Scarecrow is was a wolf").
 * SK: Serial Killer.
 * Tunneling: hunting only one player as scum while paying no attention to any other player’s mafia behaviors in the thread.
 * tl;dr: Too Long; Didn’t Read. Used to indicate a post or several posts in an argument were not worth the time to attempt to understand based on some reason.
 * Twilight: the phase of the game between when a player has reached the number of votes to indicate they are lynched and when the Moderator posts the scene that takes the game into the night phase.
 * V/LA: Vacation/Limited Access, used when post frequency will become erratic because of plans outside the game.
 * Wagon: short for bandwagon, is used to indicate the list of votes that accumulate after a player’s name as they are voted closer and closer to a lynch. The speed of the formation of a wagon can sometimes indicate its scumminess, i.e. a fast wagon more likely has a scum team on it voting together, a slower wagon usually indicates mafia members’ unwillingness to vote for one of their own.
 * WIFOM: Wine in Front of Me. Named for the scene in the Princess Bride, WIFOM is the circular reasoning that results from trying to determine the choices of an opponent who acted with full knowledge that their behavior would be subject to scrutiny.
 * WIM: Want It More. The desire to play the game to win (or to not lose).