So while on my retreat for my professional fraternity this past weekend, we decided to play a thoroughly epic game. The name of this game is: epic mafia. I’m sure all of you have heard of the group game called mafia, where you have your basic roles of townsperson/villager, cop/sheriff, doctor/healer, mafia, and god/the narrator. In this game, the mafia try to kill everyone else while everyone else tries to figure out who may be mafia and lynch them off. This is done through a series of days/nights, where different roles wake up at different times and point out to the narrator who they want to kill, or investigate, or save – depending on who your role is. During the “day” times, the entire group discusses with one another and tries to figure out which ones in the group look a bit shady and could be mafia.

 

The game is always a hoot, especially in groups of close buddies. Be careful, you may lose a few friends over this game! People become quite a bit accusatory, and one can get lynched for being too quiet or too talkative, depending.

 

The one problem with this game is the fact that being a townsperson/villager really, truly sucks. For the majority of the exciting bits of the game – the night – you must keep your eyes closed, and then all you can do is accuse and be accused during the day. Sure, a vocal townsperson can be very influential in winning the game for the good side, but most of time, those with no real role tend to get bored pretty fast while everyone else feels as though they have a real stake. So, when I learned “epic” mafia, I was supremely excited. Armed with several new roles to take on, I became very much obsessed with this game.

 

Two new roles I love – and there are so many that there are probably even cooler ones out there I don’t know about – are the hooker and the fool. The hooker makes things interesting by “sleeping” with people during her turn so that those people are unable to use their powers for that round. The hooker is on mafia’s side – but who knows, she may end up screwing them over! The fool keeps the rest of the town from lynching people out of pure boredom or with no real reason. The fool’s goal is to be lynched by everyone else. He wins the entire game by his self simply if the town decides to vote him off (though the win does not count if he is simply killed by another role). In this way, the town will be a little more careful in killing someone who may be mafia.

 

So next time you’re with a group of friends and you guys want to try something new, check out this game. Here’s the wiki for it! Start small, and add a new role or two each time you play. Trust me, you’ll get absorbed in this new world pretty fast.

 

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