Have you ever wanted to kill your friends, but in a fun way? Then boy do I have a game for you. Some call it Werewolf, but I've always known it as "mafia." It's usually a simple party game, but becomes so much more fun if you stretch it out over the course of a week or two. This is what my friend group has done as a springtime tradition for the past 5 years and going, and we have no signs of stopping.
The rules are simple: there are x number of Mafia members - usually 2 or 3 for a standard group of 10. Every game starts with the mafia killing a person during the "Night" phase. Then the entire group has time to figure out who the murderers are. It started out as an icebreaker for a club meeting. But after a few games, we had too much fun putting our own stories and spins on the game. We wanted more. We started using emails to manage a longer form - more descriptions for "deaths" - and longer times between voting - once at night, once in the morning.
The first rounds are always completely random - "Of course he's the murderer, they would kill Jon first" "Nah, it's always Alex." - and usually ends in an innocent "town's person" dying. But when the mafia have to start talking and hiding their identity - the real fun begins. Is that person acting strange? Who's lying about what? I'll never forget sitting at dinner with my head in hands, listening to two of my closest friends telling me to vote the other one off. We were the last three standing. One of them was mafia. I weighed the options. I thought it out carefully. The moment I gave my vote, the other person smacked the table and said "The mafia won, Bitches!"
Perhaps the best part of these games hasn't been playing it. Though that is fun. The best part is my friend who has written the stories of the games. He wanted the writing practice (though in hindsight, it may have been cathartic), so he ran the game: Collected votes, managed special roles, said whether the voted were mafia or not, and - of course - wrote all the grisly murders as he updated who had been voted off. I've seen my friend group re-imagined as sleepy villagers, steampunk airship-men, Cthulhu worshipers and more. The game is simple in concept, and leaves so much room for style and flair.
