Beginner's FAQ


First off, I'd like to welcome you to Paranoia Paradise. I hope you will enjoy your stay. This FAQ is specifically for helping newcomers to find their way around Paranoia Paradise. This is not a Mafia Tutorial.

Q: So, what is this place?

A: This is Paranoia Paradise, WotC's home for the paranoid and deceitful. In here we play Mafia, a game about deception and logic. If you want to know more about Mafia, you can read the Basics of Mafia FAQ or you can use this Flash Tutorial, which is very good at explaining the basics. In here, we use a lot of acronyms and abbreviations which can be found in the list of Common Abbreviations and Terms.

Q: What kind of Mafia games are there?

A: Paranoia Paradise currently offers three kinds of normal scheduled games: Beginners, Intermediates and Experts.

    * Beginners are small games with no difficult roles, ideal to start off with. They are 12-player games. Usually 3 players will be Mafia, and the town may have up to 6 roles besides vanillas (town players without additional abilities). The Beginner Role Database lists the roles that are allowed to feature in Beginner games and can be found in the next post.
    * Intermediates are one level up. These are 16-player games. The difficulty level is slightly higher here. The designer has a lot of freedom to design. The only strict rule here is that your role cannot have lies in it. There are also several banned roles. To find out which roles are banned and to get an idea of what kind of roles are possible, I suggest you read the Role Bank.
    * Lastly, we have Player's Choice. As the name suggests, these are the most complex games we have. The designer has complete freedom (besides a small list of banned roles, which are listed in the Role Bank. This also means that lies are allowed). These games can be up to 22 players.

Games start on the following schedule:

1st of month - Player's Chocie
8th of month - Beginner
15th of month - Intermediate
22nd of month - Beginner

Besides our three scheduled games, Paranoia Paradise also regularly holds promotional games, hosted in other parts of the forums. These are generally Intermediate-level and will be announced in Paranoia Paradise as well. Depending forum activity and on the demand for games, the schedule might be temporarily over-ruled and more games will start.

Q: Where do I sign up?

A: In the forum, there are several game sign-up threads, advertising their level and theme. You can sign up in any of these threads. There is almost always a sign-up thread for the next Beginner, which starts whenever there are 12 players signed up. Intermediates and Experts are scheduled more strictly. If there are no sign-up threads for those kind of games, you can find out when the next one is scheduled in the Mafia Lists & Notice board.

Q: Are there any limits to signing up?

A: You are allowed to sign up for whatever kind of game you want. Though we advise new players to start in beginners, for some people it is best to jump into the deep end. To play Mafia is not that difficult. To play it well is where the real difficulty lies. There are currently no limitations to he number of games you can sign-up to.

We ask you to bear in mind that mafia can be a time consuming game so signing up to too many games may decrease the amount you can contribute to each game which could decrease your enjoyment. All things in moderation!

Beginners in general get priority entry to beginner games. Ideally each Beginner game should have 3 experienced players in it. If more experienced players sign-up then beginners will take priority over them in case there are more than 12 people signed-up. I.e. the first 3 that sign up will form the "experienced contingent" with more experienced players joining the game if enough beginners do not sign-up.

Q: Can I host a Mafia game?

A: Of course. However, the demand for hosting Mafia games is very large, so there is a list for hosting games. You can sign up in the Mafia Lists & Notice Board. As a completely new mod, we want you to gather experience first. Therefore, as new mod, you can only sign up for a Beginner game and a trusted experienced mod will be assigned to be your back-up mod. When you have hosted a Beginner game, you can sign up for the Intermediate list, and when you have hosted an Intermediate, you can sign up for the Expert list. If you have hosted Mafia games off-site and you wish them to count towards your experience, that is possible, but you must provide a link.

Q: That sounds like a long time to wait. Do I really have to wait that long?

A: Well, not necessarily. Over the course of the year, Paranoia Paradise holds several games on other parts of the forum as promotional games. These games (usually Intermediate level) are usually hosted by an inexperienced mod with a very experienced mod to help with the design. These gamess are usually distributed as first come, first served but it should be possible to cater to people who want to host a game. At the very least, we host a game every time a new Magic set comes out.

Also, not every person who has signed up to host a game will host theirs when their turn comes. At such times we search the host list for the players who have finished game designs ready or are close to completing one and they will host their games early if they desire.

Q: But what if I screw up?

A: Policy asks people to have a backup mod. A backup mod is there to help you with designing and can take over the game if you need him to. Modding is a difficult task and people are known to disappear now and then, so we ask everybody to have a backup mod.

For any further information about hosting or designing a Mafia game, I refer you to the Hosting FAQ or the Mafia Design FAQ.

Q: What else is there to do?

A: Paranoia Paradise has several other threads. If you want to introduce yourself, you can go to the Introduction Thread or the Notice Board. Tell us something about yourself. If you want to discuss any subject, Papa's Pasta Paradise, or PaPaPaPa, is always open. There are also several other threads, either for Mafia discussion or for other things, in the forum. Don't forget that the CoC still applies. The Pasta Paradise is off-topic, but it isn't spam.

Q: What is the Season?

A: Wait, how did you know about the Season?

Q: Well, it is kind of everywhere...

A: That wasn't even a question! Anyway, the Season is something rather special. Over the course of a year, points are awarded when games end for specific things, mostly relating to activity and skill. At the end of the year, the person with the most points wins the Season and gets an award (as of the writing of this FAQ, no award has been determined, but that's something we'll hopefully update soon).

Q: Are there any important dates I should know about?

A: There are several imporant dates throughout the year.

    * UnCon: This is not a specific date but a time during the year, somewhere in October, when the entire site holds many special events. During this time, Paranoia Paradise hosts several Promotionals.
    * The Mafia Birthday: The very first Mafia game, hosted by wrathofmegs, started on the 2nd of November. To commemorate this fact, we celebrate the 2nd of November as our birthday. This day is not that special, except that it marks the end of one Season and the beginning of the next.
    * Stabsgiving: The 27th of November. This is the day on which the most legendary move in the history of Mafia occurred (depending on time zones, but still, it works). While Zindaras, the Mafia Don, was sleeping, PariahKing, his Mafia underling turned Cultist (a different alignment, see Role Bank), claimed Cop and brutally stabbed him in the back. Zindaras was lynched within a few hours, leaving him incapable of a retort. PariahKing then went on to dominate the game and easily won. To commemorate this, the 27th of November is Stabsgiving. On this day, the Season results are announced and the Mafia Awards (or Megs, named after the first ever host of a Mafia game) are handed out (we have all kinds of Awards). We commemorate this day as an inspiration to all Mafia players to stab other people in the back and generally do really evil stuff to each other.


For more information about Special Events, you can read the Special Events FAQ