Groups splinter off according to arcane variations -- someone wants to play with the Slut and the Invalid, someone else with the Vigilante and the Veterinarian, someone else with all four. Rules agreed, the splinter groups reform, spectators gather, and the games begin. Play Mafia Online And it may be hours before they stop. Although in principle a round of Werewolf can take as little as 30 minutes, epic rounds last for hours - and one round is rarely enough. The next morning, appropriately, you can spot the werewolves by the red rings round their eyes.

Wales, Fitzpatrick, Gibson and their moderator were the last players standing after an all-night Werewolf session that had lured in almost a third of 2008's Foo Camp. Three players remaining meant only one thing: two villagers, one werewolf. It meant the players who knew they were villagers faced a simple challenge: which of the others was the enemy? And yet the argument had raged for hours. "I was sure of only three things," Wales remembers. "One, I was not a werewolf. Two, one of these bastards was an amazing liar. And three, the other guy was a total moron. I just couldn't figure out which was which."

Werewolf is quick and easy to set up, and the basic rules take no more than a minute to explain. It has infected every outpost of the tech community. More than any smart party, it's the most exclusive and productive way to spend an evening at a conference or expo. It's your best bet of finding the most interesting people and of emerging the next morning with a couple of intriguing job offers. Rather than spend a fortune on funky business cards or hours memorising people's blog posts, the most effective way to connect in the tech industry may instead be to kill and eat them.

You might expect to find Werewolf's roots in a 70s tabletop role-playing game or an old, obscure multi-user dungeon. What you find instead is a tale of literary privilege, Soviet idealism and secret nuclear disasters. It draws on parlour games such as Murder in the Dark and Wink Murder -- games that, though entertaining enough, no longer captivate a modern audience. To turn dinner-party murder into a geek staple would take the work of two men-- one Russian, one American -- who decades later have yet to meet.

Visit Mafia City official site to know more about this game.