Civilian in Mafia: how to play the town
The civilian — called red at a club table — is the commonest card: six of the ten seats. A civilian has no night ability and no secret, so you play by talking in your own minute and by voting. It is also the card you will hold more often than all the others put together.
What a civilian does at night
Nothing. The table sleeps while the three against the town shoot, the don checks one seat and the sheriff checks another. In the morning a civilian knows only their own card, so everything they hear — including a claim that somebody “checked seat four” — is reasoning, not fact, until it is tested.
How a civilian plays
Eight of the ten players sit through every night with nothing to ask, so most games are won and lost from the six seats with nothing to do. Count the table in your head before the first speech, remember which seat you are in, and open every day by asking who was pushing the player who left.
Free lesson: Who is actually sitting there
Seven and three stops being true the moment a club deals an extra card, so ask which cards are in tonight before you count anything.
Free lesson: the arithmetic of the table, seat by seat.
The hand sign
The civilian’s sign is a thumb up. You will rarely need to make it: it names a card rather than sending a message.
Clubs share this sign as a habit; it is not in the rulebook, so ask your host which set your room uses.