The Syndicate

The recent setup of a smaller game style here makes it advantageous for me to dust off something that has been sitting on the back burner for quite a while. I first proposed this in one of the few posts I made on Revolution Mafia. Here's the long and the short of it:

Small town life has many interesting stories to tell and secrets to hide. Little by little, I've been developing characters to populate a small town. I'm still trying to figure out the optimal size but I have a few real towns in mind to base the geography on. The total population will be somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 people. All of them will have names, residences in the town, and at least a basic backstory. Family trees, relationships, rivalries, people moving in, people moving out- all of this stuff will ebb and flow between games and come to surface during games.

Each game will be, in essence, a murder mystery. Up to 13 members of the town will be involved in the game. All of them will be suspects. At the start of the game, the roles will be listed but I will not tell you who the bad guys are or how many there are. There will still be the standard mafia baddie hunting but those playing the game will (hopefully) get a sense of intrigue as they wait to see who the bad guys are and what their motives were for being involved in the opening kill. Even the baddie players will not know their motives at the start of the game- they will just know that they are bad.

As a twist, if the baddies win, the truth may not be revealed. It may, however, come to light in bits and pieces over future installments. While I am on my baby hiatus, I'll keep working on picking a location and populating the town. This small-game serial (I believe I called it a mafia soap opera on RM) could be fun for those of you who like to follow long-range story arcs. Each game will build on the last in that events of one game change the town and the attitudes of the people in it. I will try to provide between-game content to highlight things like new arrivals and other departures. After a few games get things established, I may even let others take the reins and host installments.