Mafias in Fiction - Mafia, Phantom of Inferno, Reborn!, Baccano!, Mafia II, Gungrave, Black Lagoon, Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 33. Chapters: Mafia, Phantom of Inferno, Reborn , Baccano , Mafia II, Gungrave, Black Lagoon, Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, Gungrave: Overdose, Empire Bay, Chromosome 6. Excerpt: Mafia (Russian: , also known as Werewolf, Assassin or Witch Hunt) is a party game created in the USSR by Dimitry Davidoff in 1986, modeling a battle between an informed minority and an uninformed majority. Players are secretly assigned roles: either "mafia," who know each other; or "townspeople," who know only the number of mafia amongst them. In the game's "night" phase the mafia covertly 'murder' a townsperson. During the day phase, all of the surviving players debate the identities of the mafia and vote to eliminate a suspect. Play continues until all of the mafia have been eliminated, or until the mafia outnumber the townspeople. A typical game starts with seven townspeople and two mafiosi. Dimma Davidoff (Russian: , Dmitriy Davydov) is generally acknowledged as the game's creator. He dates the first game to spring 1986 at the Psychology Department of Moscow State University, spreading to classrooms, dorms, and summer camps of Moscow University. Wired attributes the creation to Davidoff but dates the first game to 1987, with 1986 being the year in which "Davidoff was starting the work which would produce Mafia." He developed the game to combine psychology research with his duties teaching high school students. The game became popular in other Soviet colleges and schools and in the 1990s it began to be played in Europe (Sweden, Germany, Romania, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, England, Norway) and then the United States. By the mid nineties a version of the game became a Latvian television series (with a parliamentary setting, and played by Latvian celebrities). Andrew Plotkin gave the rules a Werewolf theme in 1997 ("Mafia aren't that bi...