FANG - A history - Part 1

So, Mafia maybe the game I’ve played the most. Many a boy scout campout or last day of school featured

But also its not a great game, right next to Monopoly as far as “games that are designed to kind of suck to teach a good lesson”.

But I think I found a way to make it fun - and its a lot closer to the Mafia than you think. Shockingly, the Mafia (or Russian mob, or any crime syndicate) doesn’t just go around whacking random people. They are a business. The main goal is to make money, and killing off customers and causing a panic are not really helpful in that regard. The killing is usually reserved for other crime groups or goody two shoes who stand in the way of you and your hard earned reward.

So a more realistic version would have 2 mobs trying to kill each other, while also keeping as many regular civilians alive as possible.

This makes the game way more interesting, as the mob leaders have to try and keep themselves hidden, you also have more special roles so no one feels like they are totally alone. A mob leader may even give up a crony to prevent the citizens from killing one of their own. It adds some diplomacy and strategy elements.

This was the start of FANG.

The Fear Amongst Neighbors Game (FANG) has been a pet project of mine since 2020 (I hopefully don’t need to talk to much about how a city devolving into 2 different groups of monsters was pretty on brand for that year). It comes out every Halloween with a few changes.

One of the biggest differences though is the locations mechanic. I’m a fan of Diplomacy (the board game and the concept) and the part of that game is the simultaneous movement of fleets and armies. Having players pick a location keeps everyone engaged - and lets the game progress even after the cat is out of the bag on who the bad guys are, as now they have to play a game of prediction, misdirection, and espionage.

This is part of an overall design to optimize the game for Discord. Chat platforms have long been host to games of social deduction (sometimes even intentionally), but not a lot of those games are built to be played on those platforms. Several small changes (such as the ghost rule that we’ve used in the past) in FANG come down to “it feels easier to do that on discord”.

That’s it for now. Next week I’ll write up about some of the variations that we tried through the years, stay tuned!