MAFIA (Russian: Ма́фия, also known as Werewolf, Assassin or Witch Hunt) is an intellectual and psychological party game modeling a battle between an informed minority and an uninformed majority. Players are secretly assigned roles: either “mafia”, who know each other; or “citizens”, who know only the number of mafia amongst them. In the game’s “night” phase the mafia covertly ‘murder’ a citizen. During the day phase, all of the surviving players debate the identities of the mafia and vote to eliminate a suspect. Play continues until all of the mafia have been eliminated, or until the mafia outnumber the citizens.
Game Mafia was created by Dimitry Davidoff in 1986 while he was a student in Moscow, Russia. Begun as a classroom exercise in the psychology department, the game has since spread all over the world. The first game appearence is documented in 1989, in the summer camp of Pennsylvania (USA). Davidoff’s original Web site where he had posted the original rules no longer exists. That’s why since then the main rule is that there are no common rules for this game.
English Mafia Club uses 2 different interpretations of the game rules:
- with destructive characters (Maniac and Doctor) for open events to have better conditions for communicating with each other during the game;
- without destructive characters (sometimes called as “classic rules”) for closed events to make the Mafia game within club members more professional, short, effective and logical.
Our rules are constantly changing, because we implement all best practices of the game we see around the world. If you have a suggestion or good idea how to improve our game rules – please, don’t hesitate to contact us.
