<p>I love these things and have played three so far…although I haven’t played one in over 2 and a half years. </p>
<p>Today we are throwing my best friend a birthday party and plan on playing “Murder Mystery Party Game: Burritos and Bandidos”. I’m excited. Has anyone played any of these games before? Want to suggest a specific one?</p>
<p>play mafia</p>
<p>Eh… I just read novels by Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, G. K. Chesterton, Rex Stout, etc.</p>
<p>I’ve never actually participated in that kind of activity.</p>
<p>Mafia the card game?</p>
<p>I think1778999 was talking about the computer game.</p>
<p>no, i’m pretty sure he’s talking about the one where (ahhh jeez, anyone who’s played this knows how hard it is to explain in person, let’s see if I can do this on-line):</p>
<p>Everyone sits in a circle except for one person, who is “God”. There are many variations, the one I usually play involves a certain number of mafia (i think it’s usually 1/3 of the people) one detective, and the rest are townspeople. The best way to assign these roles is usually to use cards where say if you get a black card, you’re mafia, ace of hearts is detective, anything else is townsperson. Cards are used so that assignments are random and confidential. Once everyone has their positions, it is time to start the game.</p>
<p>To start the game, everyone except god “goes to sleep” by closing their eyes. God then tells the mafia to “wake up and choose someone to kill” the mafia open their eyes and point to someone, when they reach a concensus, God tells them to go back to sleep, and then tells the Detective to “wake up and choose someone to investigate”, the detective opens his eyes and points to one person, and God tells him whether that person is mafia or not (i’ve always done god tells him silently i.e. head shake/nod, but it would be pretty interesting to play where god says yes or no out loud, such that everyone knows whether the detective is guessing right or not.) God then tells the detective to go back to sleep, and then tells everyone to wake up.</p>
<p>With everyone awake, God reveals who has died, it is most fun to make elaborate stories. That person is now out of the game. The rest of the people must choose one person to kill, in an attempt to kill all the mafia members. This is usually done by having a discussion first, then nominations and voting. Once a concensus is reached, God explains how the person was killed, and reveals what position they held (mafia, townsperson, or detective). Everyone goes to sleep, and the process repeats itself untill either all mafia have been executed during the day (townspeople/detective win) or the number of mafia equals the number of non-mafia (mafia win).</p>
<p>You have talk of murder mystery games, and no word about Clue? Shameful. Clue is an all time classic.</p>