This is an article about Mafia, not the PC game, but the parlor game. There’s a pretty good description near the end, but this article is more about Jonathan Lethem going nuts during the game.
We used to play this is high school, except we called it Assassins and we selected the assassin and the angel based on cards. My friend Tim would turn into a screaming freak as he denounced friend and foe alike. I never was that good (my poker face sucks) but I managed to do some damage at times.
This summer, I tried to play it with kids at camp. Like many things at camp, it worked well after a couple tries and then degenerated into pain and yelling.
First of all, the kids would jingle their keys as they pointed out who to kill (read the article, if you don’t know how to play, or else you’ll think that we were teaching them horrible things). Or they’d just break down laughing. Or they’d talk when they were “dead.” Fundamentally, this is a game about control, and really enough of these kids lacked control to ruin the game for everyone else.
But there’s just something funny about listening to them lie baldfaced that I let them keep playing for hours.