No Pun Included:
Blood on the Clocktower and the History of Mafia and WerewolfIt's one of those moments in my life I remember vividly. A dark, wet night in early January 2001. A sparsely furnished meeting room in the basement of some college. Someone saying to me, "it's time to learn the game".
We gather in a circle and the rules are explained: I am not the only new player. What sounded like a tedious circle game of the sort I'd outgrown at Cubs, wasn't. It was something else. Something different. Hidden roles. Lying. Murder. Death.
We played several rounds that night. Several more in the weeks that followed. Then at every night away, or any time there were sufficient people and a deck of cards to hand, we'd play it, introducing more and more people to the game and its lore. We would discuss tactics, revisit old games, or laugh at our long repertoire of mafia-related injokes. My old hiking pal Sam was obviously always the mafia, and if he wasn't we'd kill him off in the first round just to make sure. You can't argue with the probabilities, after all (sorry Sam).
I had never played a game like "Mafia" before. The closest thing I've come to those feelings since was the first time we teared up a card in
Pandemic: Legacy. It opened up a world of new possibilities for what games could be.
I'll admit I'm quite bored of the original game now. Its flaws are more evident now than in the those heady days, and with so many newer games that take the mechanics and improve them, I'd rather play them. With a group no larger than 12 you can just about have a good time, especially if there are new initiates, but even then I think I'd stick to the One Night variants. More than 12 and the gruop elements become less controllable and the elimination part gets pretty tedious quickly. For a bigger group, you're much better off with
2 Rooms and a Boom, being able to squeeze in at least three full games in the time it takes Mafia whittle down from 20 suspects to three.
NPI's hour long look at the origins and psychology of the game is fascinating, ending with a look at the latest big box variant designed to correct some of the genre's issues. Whilst there's probably too much reading of lengthy captions on screen, and a bit of handwaving over the mysterious nature of the game's creator, this is the deep dive that really provides the background and detail I've been after that explains so much about why this game is so dam addictive.
It's good to revisit the classics from time to time, and this video gave me the chance to look back on my years of
Mafia with fondness, it being the granddaddy of much that has followed.
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