The game itself is divided into two phases: day and night. There will be 3 mafia, 1 detective, 1 doctor, 1 narrator, and 8 civilians. Roles must be assigned to each person in secret.

When one of those two things happens, the game is over.įor the sake of example, let’s say you have a group of 13 people in your living room. Simply put, the objective of the game is for the mafia to “kill off” civilians until they are the majority, or for the civilians to kill off the entire mafia. Seriously, it’s super hard to get that many people in a room! The Objective Although there are many variations, I’m going to teach you to play the way my friends and I play, so then you’ll know and we can play together because we always need more players. It was that afternoon that my life changed forever, in a fun-game kind of way. I hadn’t heard of Mafia until one afternoon this past summer while I was hanging out with friends in Bolinas and it was proposed we play. It had a heyday in the ‘90s (along with everything else cool in the world). The game itself was allegedly created by Dmitry Davidoff of the Moscow State University Psychology Department as a research project, and then eventually spread to college campuses in Europe and the United States.

I assure you the game is not the same as an adult, when personalities and thought processes are, hopefully, more developed. When the game is brought up, at least one person recalls playing it, or something similar, when they were young. You must have a legit group of people to play, I’d say at least ten, and so what better time of year than the holidays to learn a little more about that second cousin you only sort of liked your whole life? A Brief History It’s an old-timey party game that’s been circling the city among my group of friends and - perhaps separated by a degree or two - yours as well. If you’re unfazed by Cards Against Humanity and have grown tired to the core of Apples to Apples, then boy, do I have the game for you.

Old maid card game age range