Engineer Pikachu
Good morning, you bastards!
From reading previous mafia games, it seems that the only way you can prevent the village leader system from being optimal is to make sure that each player has an individual goal that is partly shared by other people but not identical. Mekkah's TCG game was an excellent example of this; by giving each player a different win condition, each player was obligated to play for themselves. While "playing for themselves" may have turned into alliances, each player was still concentrating on their own condition.
I honestly don't see how you can make a simple 1v1 or 1v2 game without a village leader popping up.
I honestly don't see how you can make a simple 1v1 or 1v2 game without a village leader popping up.