Goths & Mafia
After hearing so much from Nessuna about Lilith, a local girl studying design in Russia who’s about to continue her education in the U.K., I finally got the chance to meet her last night. Not only that, but along with Nahro Zagros, the Yorkshire Kurd, I got to play my first game of Mafia.
Mafia (also known under the variant Werewolf or Village) is a party game modelling a battle between an informed minority and an uninformed majority. Mafia is usually played in groups with at least five players. During a basic game, players are divided into two teams: ‘Mafia members’, who know each other; and ‘honest people’, who know only the number of Mafia amongst them.
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Mafia was created by Dimma Davidoff at the Psychological Department of Moscow State University, in spring of 1986, and the first players were playing in classrooms, dorms and summer camps of Moscow University. The game then became popular in other Soviet colleges and schools and in 1990s it started crossing borders, first in Europe (Hungary, Poland, England, Norway) then the United States; now it is played virtually everywhere.
Mafia is incredibly popular in Armenia and I have to admit that I enjoyed playing it with Nessuna, Lilith, Nahro, Thomas and a young guy called Mayer. Now this guy was quite quiet, but has a band called Sworn — a really underground and very dark local rock band. I also got to hear some some of Lilith’s own gothic and improvised music so all in all a refreshing evening.
Ran into Ed from MDP as well, back from Batumi where the band took part in Caucasus Jam 2006. Some bad news, though. Nahro has now postponed our trip to the Yezidi grazing their animals up in the mountains until Sunday. Really quite frustrating. Was so looking forward to that today, and now I’m worried about things happening too close to Monday.
Anyway, Lilith has a blog, We Love the Dark, containing her art and design at http://darklh.blogspot.com, while Thomas’ blog is at http://www.followtheway.info/journal/. Sworn have some MP3s for download here, but I’m told that readers outside of Armenia should go here and here.
To tell the truth I have a principle: not to play mafia. Although its interesting to watch the players, helps you to distinguish who is who in real life.
Comment by Zarchka — September 1, 2006 @ 2:17 pm
You might be right if someone becomes too addicted to such a game, and I wonder if that’s why in France the game is called Werewolves to take it further away from a reality that might play on people’s psyche?
Actually, I made a joke at the beginning when the rules were being explained to me. It’s just like Armenian society, but there are too many “honest” people. Anyways, even so, as a one off it was fun and I daresay I’ll play it again.
Or maybe not, who knows? It is an interesting question though. Deception or role playing? Maybe it depends on the person and how you are in real life anyway.
Comment by Onnik — September 1, 2006 @ 4:35 pm