I used to run weekly Mafia/Werewolf parties: casual 2h nights with almost always 2-3 new folks.
For me running it (i.e. Being the "god", the narrrator etc.) is much more fun in such a context, as it's more about storytelling.
The main problem is that the game is quite unfun for the first 2-3 days: it's basically impossible to know who's who, so any sneeze, look or being the first one to speak will instantly make you a target of the crowd. There was a guy who just was a chatty guy and always started the conversation and he almost never made it past day 1. Absolutely unfair and unfun.
Whenever he wasn't killed on day 1 it was always due to someone standing up to the obvious unfairness and getting themselves killed, while he would get to live 1 extra night.
That's why we started adding extra unconventional roles and rules, to make up for this. For example, having a necromancer, who could turn a dead into a ghost who could do an action once. These changes would require to be more than 15 people, as you need to adjust the mafia in response.
The format is fun, the basic rules get boring pretty fast, given how newbies tend to play.
On the other hand, competitive mafia seems more about ninja communication and discussion, also I think they can also skip a voting.
+1 for One Night Ultimate Werewolf. Removing the need for a narrator role and keeping the game short enough that the antagonistic behaviors don't have a chance to develop works wonders. Friend and couple fights after Mafia are real. Werewolf is pretty kid-friendly too.
The worst part is there’s actually nothing you can do about it. Decide to clam up and stop making yourself a target? Super suspicious, he’s the werewolf this time for sure!
I've played Mafia several times and enjoy it a lot. However, I have also witnessed friendships completely destroyed in the process. Some people are capable as seeing it as just a game, discard all prior trust or expectations with others during, and then at the end, reset completely back to how it was before, perhaps having learnt something about people in the process.
For those who cannot do this, they will experience true pain, broken trust, and leave with friendships fundamentally changed. If this sounds like you, do not play this game!
Ah yes, that's the deal with Among us! This one passed me too, but I remember the description sounding somewhat similar.
Well, maybe should give the type of game another try. Tastes change and at the age at which my friends played "Werwolf", I was pretty much hating myself and everything around me so maybe I'd enjoy it today :)
The best versions of these games are set up to provide more contextual information than just "Player B Died Last Night". Classic Werewolf or Mafia, all information is public information, outside of people just talking to each other in whispers. Among Us adds a map and location information - you have to have been near the person who died to kill them, so if someone died in one room, you suspect players who were near that room or can't account for their location. Clocktower or One Night generally add information that only one player gets, such as being able to know if they're seated next to a bad player, which is powerful, but easy to lie about and risky to just admit since it makes you a target for the bad people.
There's a similar pay game called "Blood on the Clocktower". You probably wouldn't like it, but those who like Werewolf or Mafia might want to give it a look.
I don't understand how this game gained so much popularity, because it's impossible to get any kind of reliable information in this game. For example, you have an ability that let's you ask the game master (in private) about whether one person is evil or not (their alliance). The game master is going to give you an answer, BUT it's possible that the answer is not the truth, because:
* you are drunk (which you don't know about)
* you were poisoned that night (which you don't know about)
* the target might be protected in some way (which you don't know about)
* some powers literally let the game master decide if they work or not (you will not be told it did not work)
Imagine the first few nights of mafia style games, where nobody knows anything, so everybody is just going on hunches and feelings. That's Blood on the clocktower for almost all the nights.
Clocktower is not meant to be a solvable game. In fact, solvability is a big problem in One Night. The most boring games of Clocktower are those where you can coldly logic everything out because there is No Other Way for things to have happened.
Clocktower is the ultimate iteration of a social deception game. It’s about the lying. It’s about the storytelling; not just by the storyteller but by the players themselves who have to create the alternative narratives and convince their friends of those narratives.
Clocktower is so good because it forces people to work together, and assume unreliable narrators regardless of intent. It gives individuals unique and powerful abilities, giving a lot of agency on the game regardless of whether they are dead or not. And because of all of this, it’s not the few but the many that achieve a success for their team.
I am utterly fascinated by this game and, more than that, thanks to its format, it yields a huge framework for experimentation by scriptwriters and storytellers. I have stopped playing any other kind of social deduction game - none can even hold a candle to Blood on the Clocktower.
I love it, at least with the right group, because while you basically never get reliable information, you do get a large amount of it. Some will be contradictory, some will match, most will need to be expanded on. You piece together narratives matching the evidence, poke holes in these narratives, offer alternative explanations, determine probabilities that multiple people are both speaking the truth. It's not that nobody knows anything, instead everyone knows something and will need to decide when and what to share with others. You might be able to get someone killed with a random accusation, but you're just as likely to reveal yourself to be a liar to someone in the process.
I've tried it a few times, but it's so much more complex that it really requires everyone who's playing to care deeply about reasoning through it. There's so little information that's public to everyone, so if even one player with a role that lets them get private information doesn't understand or communicate that well, the whole game can fall apart.
It was called "Werwolf" and I hated it so much that I stopped participating after one game IIRC (I was very fun at parties).
Reading up on it, it drew from the mentioned "Mafia" idea mentioned here.
Would have never known, interesting submission.