Mafia , also known as Werewolf , is a Russian social deduction game created by Dimitry Davidoff in At the start of the game, each player is secretly assigned a role affiliated with one of these teams. The game has two alternating phases: first, a night-phase, during which those with night-killing-powers may covertly kill other players, and second, a day-phase, in which all surviving players debate and vote to eliminate a suspect.
The game continues until a faction achieves its win-condition ; for the village, this usually means eliminating the evil minority, while for the minority, this usually means reaching numerical parity with the village and eliminating any rival evil groups. He dates the first game of Mafia to spring at the Psychology Department of Moscow State University , from where it spread to the classrooms, dorms, and summer camps of Moscow University.
In the s it began to be played in other parts of Europe in some countries under the name City of Palermo and then the United States. By the mid s a version of the game became a Latvian television series with a parliamentary setting, and played by Latvian celebrities. Andrew Plotkin gave the rules a werewolf theme in , [ 6 ] arguing that the mafia had less cultural resonance, and that the werewolf concept fit the idea of a hidden enemy who looked normal during the daytime.
Developing role-playing games 'Mafia' and 'Murderer' for a course on Visual psychodiagnostics, to teach reading body language and nonverbal signals. In August , a user under the alias "mithrandir" of The Gray Labyrinth, a website devoted to puzzles and puzzle solving , ran a game of Mafia adapted for play on a forum board. From there, Mafia has spread to numerous online communities. The club organizes games, rates players , and awards prizes including a Sicily trip for their tournament-series champion.
In June a Rockingham school inquiry was launched after parents complained of the traumatic effects classroom Mafia was having on their fifth-grade children. Davidoff responded to the reports, saying that as a parent who had studied child psychology for 25 years, he felt that the game could "teach kids to distinguish right from wrong", and that the positive message of being honest could overcome the negative effects of an "evil narrator" moderating the game as if it were a scary story.
