(You can guess why this came to mind right now.)
I prefer Werewolf myself. It’s just plain more FUN to think of yourself (or other players) turning into a werewolf when your eyes are closed and ripping apart another player. Mafia guys shooting each other is such a yawn in comparison. OTOH, combine the Mafia AND werewolves… That’s DOUBLE cool!
What about you?
The big problem I had with Mafia was that they’re hard to refer to. Mobster, mafioso, it just doesn’t ring right, it doesn’t pop out your mouth very satisfyingly. But wolf sounds good.
I did however write up a cult version. You don’t know which of your friends was a member and might kidnap you at night and sacrifice you to their god. Tied up and gagged on a pentagram while a grinning maniac approaches you with a very sharp knife. Freightening.
This has potential to become the next “Pirates vs. Ninjas” theme…
Mafiosi are way cooler than werewolves. Lycanthropes just have a terrible curse that adds a whole new meaning to “bad hair day”, and they growl a lot and probably have fleas - also they look silly when the night’s over and they morph back into some raggedy-ass human being who’s trying to remember where he stashed a change of clothes. Mobsters on the other hand get to wear pinstripes and black shirts and white ties and talk out of the corner of their mouths about things being nothing personal, just business, heavily peppered with bits and pieces of Italian, and ask people why they don’t give them any respect and if their insurance is up to date. Also their haircuts are better.
…From the point of view of a terrified townie, that is.
Werewolf actually makes sense, though. It’s conceivable that after a lynching, you could examine the corpse and discover whether the lynching victim was a werewolf or a citizen. But a Mafioso? What aspect of a Mafioso’s corpse differentiates it from a townsperson’s corpse?
Werewolves fit the game mechanics better than Mafia. It makes far more sense for werewolves to target and kill a single townie each night than for mafioso to do so. Werewolves need to eat. Mafioso are parasites on society - they threaten, bully, harass, hijack trucks, collect protection money, traffic in narcotics, etc. - but killing off the townies for the hell of it just eliminates their source of supply. That’s true for werewolves as well, but they don’t have a choice - they have to eat something.
I personally like themed games. Star Wars, Discworld, the 1980’s, Teen Idols, Revenge of the Toys, etc. There’s a million themes, and it makes it fun. You can work in lots of flavor and jokes into the game, and it keeps things feeling fresh.
I ran one based on the Clue movie a couple months ago, and I’m playing in one based on Heinlein’s Puppet Masters. Another current one is loosely based on the movie Identity, where all 19 players are personalities inside one man’s head, vying for dominance.
Endless possibilities.
I enjoyed them both, but I liked the Werewolf theme better.I dunno…werewolf just seemed more realistic…if that makes any sense.I would like to see a themed game of Winston Smiths vs. MadTheSwines.
Animal Farm! That would be an interesting theme. “You’re a pig and you know it. I can smell the bacon from here.”
As a fan of the game irl, and a hopeless voyeur of the current sdmb online versions (go town!), I cast my vote for Werewolves. The Mafia doesn’t hide. Everyone in town should know who they are, and know not to mess with them, lest they wake up with a horse’s head in their bed. Mafia’s a fine theme for a game, just not this one. Cultists would be fine, Witches might be more historically accurate (for the lynch mob, not for the witches killing people, lest I get flamed by real wiccans), dopplegangers or other pod-people like things might work, but werewolves are pretty good.
Werewolves are even more appropriate for the live version, since they only get some silent eye contact and a head nod for who to kill. None of this mafia-like strategizing on a separate board. Just “you wanna eat him?” “ok!”