I love mafia/werewolf/resistance/secret hitler type games, but my kids frequently want to play when there are too few people. Typically mafia is best when there's more than about 6 or 7.
So I thought about a variant aimed specifically at the 3-6 player range. Here's how it works:
- Sit around a table and distribute secret roles with cards.
- The roles are 1 x mafia, 1 x juggler, and the rest are villagers.
- Everyone determines their own role in secret, and then tries to vote off the mafia.
- If the mafia is found, that player loses and the rest of the players win.
- If the person is not a mafia they show their card to the group to prove it, and then everyone places their card face down in front of them on the table so that everyone can reach everyone else's card.
- At night time, everyone closes their eyes (moderated by anyone).
- The mafia wakes up and swaps his card with someone else's. He can knock the table when done, or just be given enough time.
- Then mafia goes back to sleep, and the juggler wakes up. The juggler swaps any two cards.
- Then go back to 3 and continue from there.
My kids are playing this right now and seem to be enjoying it.
It would be nice to have a better theme. Perhaps a cursed item is being passed around and everyone is searching for it?
So my questions are somewhat open-ended:
- What themes make the most sense to make some more intuitive sense of the roles here?
- What improvements or suggestions do people have? What specific issues might come up?
I'm new to this forum, so apologies for any faux pas. Let me know how I can improve this question and what tags might be more appropriate.