Welcome to Particle Physics Mafia – a chaotic social deduction game where the standard model meets good old-fashioned betrayal. Matter and antimatter are at war, and only clever deduction (or particle annihilation) will lead to victory.
Inspired by the classic Mafia/Werewolf party games, each player assumes the identity of a subatomic particle, complete with unique abilities. Your job? Either uncover the lurking antimatter or bring all of matter to decay.
This is a role-based social deduction game for large groups, best with 10–30 players.
Each player is secretly assigned a particle role, drawn from either the Matter team (Town) or the Antimatter team (Mafia). Most of Matter is positively charge, most of Anti-Matter is negatively charged, but not all. The game alternates between Unobserved Phases (night) and Observed Phases (day), where players use abilities and vote to eliminate others.
- Electron (x2) – Detective: Learns the electric charge of a chosen particle.
- Photon (x1) – Watcher: Sees all particles that interacted with a chosen one during the unobserved phase.
- Up Quark (x5) – Mason: Knows the identities of other quark-aligned particles.
- Charm Quark (x5) – Mason: Same as above.
- Down Quark (x5) – Outsider: Knows the quark group but has a negative charge.
- Electron Neutrino (x1) – Little Girl: Can peek into the antimatter group during unobserved phases (risky).
- W Boson (x1) – Doctor: Protects one particle from being put into the collider.
- Higgs Boson (x1) – Jailer: Blocks a particle's actions and protects them.
- Muon (x2) – Insane: May force any one player into the collider (lynch) once per game.
- Tau (x1) – Vigilante: Can put someone in the collider each night. If they target a matter particle, they decay (die).
- Gluon (x5) – Amor: Helps bind the quarks together — thematic/flavorful, can be used to pair players as bonded (lovers-style optional rule).
- Anti-Up Quark (x4) – Standard Mafia Member
- Anti-Top Quark (x1) – Mafia Boss: Breaks ties and has final vote authority.
- Anti-Down Quark (x2) – Godfather: Antimatter that reads as positive when investigated.
- Players debate and vote on whom to send to the Collider (lynch).
- Majority vote causes a particle to decay (removed from the game).
- Their role is revealed.
- Players with powers use them secretly.
- Antimatter team chooses a target to annihilate.
- The GM narrates what happened.
- Matter wins when all Antimatter particles are eliminated.
- Antimatter wins when they equal or outnumber Matter.
- Optional: If Gluon-bonded quarks are alive at the end, they win together.
- Gluon Bonding: Secretly creates hadrons. Can select a trio of Up, Down Charm Quarks. If one dies, the others die too.
- Muon Mayhem: Each Muon can force a lynch once per game.
- Charge Confusion: Anti-Down particles appear positive when scanned by the Electron.
cards/– PNG images of each particle card, suitable for digital play or preview.MLMD_mafia_cards.tex– LaTeX source files for generating the PDFs. Modify card text, abilities, or add your own roles.MLMD_mafia_cards.pdf– Print-ready PDFs with cards sized to standard Magic: The Gathering dimensions (63mm x 88mm).MLMD_mafia_presentation.pdf– PDF slides to explain the rules and roles. Also has a handy card chart.image_generation_prompt.md- LLM prompt to generate more cards in a similar style.
All roles and their particle-flavored abilities were created by the team. We used LLMs to help:
- Generate card artwork based on role descriptions
- Write this README
The creativity and flavor are human-made, the visuals are AI-assisted. ✨
This game was created for the MLMD CASUS Get-Together by:
Bartosz Brzoza and Karan Shah
Machine Learning for Materials Discovery Group
Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS)
Görlitz, Germany
MIT License – remix, reprint, and collide freely.
Ideas for new particles, roles, or mechanics are welcome! Feel free to submit pull requests or open issues.