Real-life Mafia: Anyone play?

[GeneralHankerchief]

Believe it or not, there is a version that people play that's not on the internet. Shocking, I know. I remember Sigurd entertaining us all with a story about his initial foray into the experience a few years ago and was wondering if anyone else had any funny moments.

In any case, I recently received the following email from my RA about a "Game Night" event:

[...]I can also teach the floor how to play Mafia. Mafia is a game in which people are secretly assigned the roles of either mafia member, doctor, police officer, or townsperson. Each round, the mafia members choose one innocent player to eliminate from the game, and the townspeople subsequently eliminate one player who they suspect is a mafia member. The doctor chooses one player to save and the police officer can guess one player who they think is a mafia member (the narrator will tell the police officer whether or not they are correct). The police officer can never explicitly tell the other players that he/she knows the identity of a mafia member, but he/she can strongly encourage the other players to eliminate a mafia member. Players are eliminated until either all of the mafia members have been identified by the townspeople or until the mafia outnumber the townspeople.

Mafia is a very fun game, and it provides its participants with an opportunity to channel their aggression and desire to commit homicide. Just kidding. I hope to see you all at the event on Thursday!

How cute. I'll let you guys know how it goes.

[A Very Super Market]

I would like to, but I don't know of enough psychopaths to play a decent game.

Of course, playing on the .org all the time has it's drawbacks. I doubt I could communicate any message without a blackboard to print my speech on.

[Beskar]

Yes, I played it last news year.

No lurkers either.

[atheotes]

i have played it a few times.... but the group was always in the 10-15 people range. It was fun.

[Sprig]

How do you tell people the results of there actions and such? pieces of paper or what? I have wondered how to turn it into a drinking game but thought it would be pretty easy to figure out who was mafia.

[Chaotix]

Yeah, I've actually hosted a few smallish mafia games during free periods for my school. For a time it was wildly popular. I imagine with a lot of people the game gets to be absolutely hilarious.

[TinCow]

I played it once, but it was nowhere near as good as the forum version. The limitations put on the game by doing it live make it far less interesting, IMO.

[atheotes]

How do you tell people the results of there actions and such? pieces of paper or what? I have wondered how to turn it into a drinking game but thought it would be pretty easy to figure out who was mafia.

we distribute playing card to determine roles (including the host/moderator) and during night we just have people close their eyes, with the moderator calling out roles that can open their eyes and point out actions.

I played it once, but it was nowhere near as good as the forum version. The limitations put on the game by doing it live make it far less interesting, IMO.

true that RL mafia is limited on the roles/actions/settings... but it is fun nevertheless. it is kind of a different game and it is fun.

[Beskar]

How do you tell people the results of there actions and such? pieces of paper or what? I have wondered how to turn it into a drinking game but thought it would be pretty easy to figure out who was mafia.

Easy, you just have your phases and they will obviously see if it worked or not.

[pevergreen]

Every morning tea/lunch for a year or two at school. Thats how myself, beefy, TB, KF, Sarathos et al got into this.

Deck of cards, Ace = Mafia, King = Doctor, Queen = Prostitute (Roleblock) and Jack = Doctor

Usually have 7-9 people playing, 2 mafia. Good fun.

[Beefy187]

Every morning tea/lunch for a year or two at school. Thats how myself, beefy, TB, KF, Sarathos et al got into this.

Deck of cards, Ace = Mafia, King = Doctor, Queen = Prostitute (Roleblock) and Jack = Doctor

Usually have 7-9 people playing, 2 mafia. Good fun.

Fun yes... Requires skill? Absolutely not.

We managed to lynch each other for ridiculous reasons. KF can take the credit for that.

Queen Doctor, King Role block or Pankaek, Jack was the detective iirc

[pevergreen]

Nononono. Queen was the female = prostitute.

[Joooray]

I played it a few times with changing groups of people. Had a lot of fun especially since I soon took the role of narrator and tried to be as entertaining with my kill and lynch "write-ups" as possible. So I can really appreciate the creativity the host here put into there games.

In Germany we even have a regular game you can buy that works like the mafia games, the setting is altered so that the bad guys are werewolves and not mafia. Apart from that it is pretty much the same. My mum is really into this game for some time now, so we play whenever we are enough people to fill the roles. That's why I recently had the pleasure to play "mafia" with my grandparents and some other family members I would have never imagined to play it with. That was definitely fun, but at the same time quite bizarre.

[pevergreen]

I believe the original game was Werewolf. Has been around longer IIRC.

[Captain Blackadder]

I have played it once with some uni buddies

[Sprig]

Believe it or not, there is a version that people play that's not on the internet. Shocking, I know. I remember Sigurd entertaining us all with a story about his initial foray into the experience a few years ago and was wondering if anyone else had any funny moments.

In any case, I recently received the following email from my RA about a "Game Night" event:



How cute. I'll let you guys know how it goes.

So how did it go ?

[GeneralHankerchief]

It went okay. Keep in mind that even though this is my floor, I never hang out on it so I was kind of a relatively unknown quantity. The first game I was a townie, and took an active role in discussing things and accusing people. After two rounds of this the mafia decided that I was too much of a threat and killed me. Since there's no talking after death in RL, my game was over.

The second game, I spoke less, but soon came under fire for this precise reason. I spent around 3 rounds in a row narrowly avoiding the lynch (the skill I'm most proud of on the .Org ) but since I was focusing most of my energy on defending myself instead of sniffing out the mafia, I couldn't really contribute anything to the discussion. I was eventually killed near the end.

All in all a pretty good experience. Wish I was mafia though. My cover isn't blown, but the floor knows I'm a fairly decent player. We'll see if they do another one.