Mafia is a great game to play whenever you meet up with friends or find yourself bored at a party! What is this game about? Here is a little backstory. You live in a small town where there are mafia trying to take over! It is up to the townspeople to figure out who a part of the mafia and stop them, while the mafia tries to eliminate all of the townspeople without being discovered. How to Play Suggested # of Players: 5-10 Mafia is a game with day and night phases. The day phase is when the town suspects someone to be a part of the mafia and votes to lynch that player, while the night phase is when the mafia secretly 'kills' and eliminates a civilian. My favorite part of this game is how the players can get really creative with their alibis and the storytelling of a moderator. Also note that there are many different ways to play Mafia. This is just one of the ways to play. 1) Assign a moderator. This person is going to be keeping track of what happens during the night phase. They are neither townsfolk nor mafia, and narrate to move the game along. Moderator Narration for Day and Night phases Night Phase: 1. Tell everyone to go to sleep (Players close their eyes) 2. Wake up each role, asking what they want to do for their role, and have them go back to sleep, starting from Mafia, then Detective, and finally Doctor. Day Phase: 1. Tell everyone to wake up 2. Explain who 'died' last night. You can have the victim reveal their role (or not if your group wants a challenge). This is where you can include a silly story! For example, "Teletubbies trampled the victim last night". 3. Have the remaining players discuss who they want to lynch and take a vote. The player with a majority vote gets lynched and eliminated. Repeat this cycle until either the Town eliminates the mafia, or if there is the same number of mafia as there are townspeople. 2) Assign hidden roles to each player. The most common way to do this part is by using a standard 52 deck of cards and assigning roles to the card values (i.e. K is Detective), then dealing them face down out to each player. Here are the basic roles in Mafia and what they each do.
Now, you may be wondering: how many of each role should there be for my group? Below is my recommendation for groups ranging from 5 to 10 people. This is from my experience playing the game, though you may find better combinations.
Variations There are many different variations for the game, so I want to share one of the variations my friends and I add to spice things up. We love to include a role called the 'Jester' into our games. The person assigned this role tries to get lynched in order to win. This really messes up the town because you never know who could be the Jester. Good luck and have fun! Here is another explanation to Mafia by HigaTV, with a few demonstration games What a game of mafia might look like. Credit to Wikimedia Commons Note: One Night Ultimate Werewolf is very similar to mafia, but with different roles.
You can also play mafia without cards by having the moderator tap players instead to assign roles during the 1st night phase.
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The Author
Hi, I'm Michael and I write about a variety of board/card games that you can easily pick up and play. Archives
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