Alternatively, they may have a vote, but be mandated to always vote against eliminations, as is the Village Ethicist [ permanent dead link] Some roles can fool investigations to determine their alignments: the Miller is an Innocent who appears guilty (usually because they are an outsider); the Godfather, on the other hand, appears innocent despite being the Mafia leader. [Note 15] The Alpha Wolf or Master Werewolf have the same role as the Godfather in Werewolf settings. Double-agent roles [ edit ]

People are very complex creatures. As humans, we do not think or express our thoughts in the same way, we do not experience the same emotions, and we play differently. Mafia has many similarities with real-life games. We create different coalitions where information between the groups is partial. Some examples could include workers and managers, students and teachers, various stakeholders. Each could belong to different coalitions; each could have their personal share of interest and amount of the information. The features of how different stakeholders accumulate information, relate to each other, belong to the various coalitions, make decisions and take actions in real-life games are similar to the Mafia games. De Verraders/The Traitors - A Dutch Reality Game Show with multiple international editions, in which the game format resembles Mafia.

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So why did Mafia spread so fast? Arguably because it answers one of life's most fundamental questions. At its heart, perhaps inevitably for a game created by a psychology student who came of age under a regime that hushed up a massive nuclear disaster for more than 30 years, is the question of whether knowledge is power. Multiple, independent groups of mafia or werewolves [57] act and win independently, giving faster game-play and the potential for cross-fire between the factions.

Mafia has a definite academic meaning for psychology, social science, and learning. Dmitry Davidoff initially developed the Mafia as part of his psychology research. In 1998, the Kaliningrad Higher School of the Internal Affairs Ministry published the methodical textbook called “Nonverbal Communications” (Petrov, 1998). The school developed lectures around “Mafia” and “Murder” games as part of the course on Visual Psychodiagnostics. Peter Markulis created Mafia-inspired prototypes to teach organizational behavior and, in particular, for the students’ understanding of how the grouping of people — where the insiders’ decisions and access to information privileges — affects those of the outside members of an organization (Markulis, 2016). In some online versions of the game, a particular player (the Godfather or a designated mafioso) must send in the kill. Possessors of these roles know one another and what their roles are. On the innocent's side, a Mason usually has no special abilities, but knows the identity of all other Masons and that all Masons are also innocent. [40] Every member of the detectives or the police knows all the rest, because they collaborate at night to investigate someone (sharing the powers of the Detective role between them). [41] Sibling pairs typically consist of one Mafia and one Innocent; in most versions, if one is killed, the other also dies. [42] Cupid in Werewolf chooses a pair of Lovers on the first night. [43] In this variant, the Lovers can also win the game (regardless of whether they are Mafia, Innocents, or both) by being the last two standing. Like Siblings, however, if one of the pair dies, the other dies as well. Election roles [ edit ] The physiological stress of sustained lying degrades the initial ability of mafioso to deceive the innocents, much more than a model of perfect play would predict, especially if the innocents can get the town emotionally involved in the game's outcome:Werewolf is a subject of artificial intelligence research due to its unique features such as persuasion and deception. [67] The game requires several AI technologies such as multi-agent coordination, intentional reading, and understanding of the theory of mind. [68] The Hunter appears in Werewolves of Miller's Hollow, for example. The Woodcutter is a (less common) equivalent name for the role. Wired recommends including the hunter in even the most basic games: "Original Werewolf characters". Wired UK. January 2010 . Retrieved 2010-06-13. The naming of various roles, factions, and other elements of play is theme-dependent and has limitless variation. Common alternative themes restyle the mafia as werewolves, cultists, assassins, or witches, with other roles being renamed appropriately. The Priest alone knows whether the dead were innocent in the World Boardgaming Championships game described by Bruno Wolff in "Werewolf rules" . Retrieved 2007-11-19.

Online games have several advantages. There is no need to gather many people in the same room, so organizing and playing a game of Mafia is faster and more convenient. Removing the human moderator and the need for players to close their eyes removes the possibility of accidental revelation of information. Online play also allows role mechanics which would be too cumbersome to use in a physical version of the game.

Another variant requires the night-time vote to be secret and unanimous, but allows multiple players to be added to the execution queue to ensure unanimity.