The game everyone is dying to play

ARGUE WITH YOUR FRIENDS - CONVINCE THEM TO TRUST YOU - KILL THEM WHEN THEY LEAST EXPECT IT

There are two teams: The civilians, and the mafia. The object of the game is to kill all members of the opposing team.

First, one person is selected as the narrator. The narrator will run the game, but will not actually be playing. Each player is then shown a different card designating him/her as either a civilian or as a member of the mafia.

All players close their eyes, then the narrator tells the mafia to open their eyes. The mafia silently select someone to kill, communicate this to the narrator, and again close their eyes.

The narrator tells everyone to open their eyes, and tells which player has been killed. That player is out of the game. Then all players argue about who they think the members of the mafia are, put two people on trial, and vote to kill one of them. The process then repeats with the mafia killing one person in the "nighttime phase" and everyone voting on someone to kill in the "daytime phase" until the mafia have been killed or until the mafia have a majority.

In this way the uninformed majority (the civilians) are balanced with the informed minority (the mafia).

While these are the bare bones, there are also special roles in the game. For example, the doctor is a civilian who can protect other civilians from the mafia, the spy is a member of the mafia who can see the abilities of other players, and the male and female lovers could be either civilians, mafia members, or both, but they kill themselves when the other one dies.

Altogether, there are 22 different optional roles that can be added or removed in Mafia: Death and Deception.