Free lesson · Level 1 of 10 · Beginner
What each card can actually do
Only two players at this table are asked a question at night, and each of them learns exactly one thing. The other two against the town wake as well, but only to shoot alongside their leader — nobody tells them anything. Six ordinary town players do nothing whatever: they talk during the day, they vote at the end of it, and that is their entire game.
The seventh member of the town is the sheriff. From the second night, the sheriff checks one player and learns which side that player is on. And of the three against the town, one leads; that player is called the don. From the second night, the don checks one person to learn something much narrower — whether this is the sheriff. Usually the answer is no.
So take one night. The sheriff checks seat five and hears "town", while the leader checks seat five and hears "not the sheriff". Both of them learned something real, but neither learned who anybody else is. Beginners expect a third source of truth and spend the evening waiting for it. There is none, because the sheriff gets one word about a side, the leader gets a yes or a no about one seat, and nobody at any point is handed a list.
Count the sheriff and the leader in your head before your first game at a new table. Then treat everything else you hear tonight as reasoning rather than fact, since it was worked out by somebody sitting in the dark exactly like you.
In the school: one idea per lesson, its questions, and a table or a puzzle to try it on.
Open this lesson in the school — free
Source: The rules of Mafia (Russian, 1 February 2026), §4.2.2 and §4.5.6–§4.5.8 — the don looks for the sheriff, the sheriff checks a team, one check each per night · our rules page