Another somewhat further category of games, that can be more social interaction based, is roleplaying games; some creative one-shot roleplaying games can have a lot of the same elements of games like Werewolf, with intrigue, cooperation, and backstabbing. I recall one that a friend ran in which all but one of the players were minions of the.
I am familiar with Mafia and I can describe it to you all, who wanna get a better grasp what I am talking about.
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Basic rules of Mafia.
Players - 5 up to 25.
Time - 30-45 minutes
One player is the Gamemaster. All other players sit in a ring. They close their eyes. The GM selects 1-5 Mafia (depending on the number of players), 1 Sheriff, 1 Doctor and the rest of all players are just citizens. No one knows what the others are since everyone closed their eyes during the selection. (No cheating!!)
Everyone continues to 'sleep.'
The GM asks the Mafia to wake up. They look at each other and then chooses 1 player they want to kill by pointing. Then they fall asleep again.
The GM asks the Sheriff to wake up. The sheriff points at a person. If that person is a Mafia, the GM nods. The sheriff can later use this information. He/she fall asleep again.
The GM asks the Doctor to wake up. The Doctor may point at any player. If that player was the target of the Mafia, he/she is saved. If you are 25 people playing, the Doctor needs to be really lucky with this...
Finally the GM asks everyone to wake up.
The GM reveals which player was murdered by the Mafia. (Unless the Doctor pointed at the correct person..) The person is now a spectator.
Now, players shall decide 1 person they want to hang. Preferably a Mafia.. Players shall argue, ask questions to each other, and within the ring try to find out who is lying.. Everyone can claim they are innocent..The Sheriff is the only player who can know for sure who the Mafia is, if the sheriff pointed at the correct player during the nigt.. But of course, everyone can claim they are innocent, and everyone can claim they are the Sherif.
When 1 player is decided to be hanged, that player is out of the game.
Then there is a new night were everyone falls asleep...
The city wins when all Mafia is hanged. The Mafia wins when they have killed all citizens.
- Last edited Sat Mar 19, 2011 12:01 am (Total Number of Edits: 3)
- [+] Dice rolls
I almost always end up liking bluffing, deception, and social deduction games like Avalon or Coup. But this game... I don't understand why it's so popular. My brother bought it and I had heard about it before and it sounded fun. We shuffled the tiles, dealt them out and began. But I soon realized that game after game after game was the same thing over and over again. There wasn't any bluffing unless you were the werewolf. And if you weren't the werewolf then you just told the truth about your character and most of the time people believed you. Not to mention that being the werewolf was INSANELY hard and you just have to get one lucky guess about a tile that wasn't used to throw every one off your tracks. I really wanted to like this game but I couldn't. If you like it, then great. That is totally fine. My brother and the rest of my family sure did. I simply could not get into it. What are your reasons for liking/not-liking it?