Davidoff explains it succinctly as "the uninformed majority versus the informed minority". The basic structure of day phases and night phases, killings and lynchings, is the same but with one main difference. Instead of the killers being given a window of opportunity to co-ordinate their killing -- at night, when their eyes are open and those of the innocent closed -- they need surreptitiously to agree a victim during the opening phase of discussion, when all players are engaged in debate. During the night phase, players then write down the name of a proposed victim.

Many variants are possible. For some mind-blowingly complex alternatives, see Wired.co.uk's extra materials.

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It's a lofty sentiment, although when you walk into a roomful of people playing, it rarely looks as if something lofty is going on. So Werewolf has come full circle. What started life as a psychology experiment has once again become a psychology experiment; an exercise in role-play which has more in common with the Stanford prison experiment than Dungeons & Dragons. What Werewolf has to offer is a perfect marriage of statistics and psychology, of mob rule and democracy, reason and emotion. Is it any wonder it's taking over the world? The creator of Mafia is intensely private -- he agreed to meet Wired only within World of Warcraft. He grew up in an austere Russian town but now lives in Boston with his family and dog. (He describes himself as "self-played" rather than "self-employed" but has never made serious money from Mafia.) Davidoff invented the game as a teaching tool in 1987 while a psychology undergraduate in Moscow; it has since spread across the world. Hasbro considered commercialising it when Davidoff arrived in the US, but thought it "unprotectable". Mafia is now used to treat gambling addicts in China and troubled US teens in Christian summer camps. Davidoff is blasé about such evolutions of his brainchild: "I'm against taking it seriously all the time." Davidoff The Game’s player is a man of the world. Charismatic, he is fully aware that every gesture counts. This gives him a natural distinction, an aura of elegance that can command a man’s respect and ravish a woman’s heart.

In 1987, the USSR was starting to change. Mikhail Gorbachev was introducing the perestroika reforms which would ultimately lead to the end of the Cold War. The first treaty between the USSR and the US limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons was signed. Billy Joel played Leningrad and over-excited fans danced so hard they broke 200 seats. And at Moscow State University a young psychology student, Dimitry Davidoff, was trying to cram two years of college into one while teaching high-school students interested in his subject. It was a timetable that demanded total efficiency, so Davidoff needed to find a way to make the research that he was doing for his term papers palatable to a young audience. The result wasn't (yet) Werewolf; it was a game called Mafia. The Game". Da sam neki baja do jaja wannabe, čisto sumnjam da bih uspela da se otrgnem tim utiscima, morala bih nasesti na reklamu, kupiti bočicu i ime da mi pomognu da se ubacim u film, pa da laganim koracima, diskretno zabacujući ramenima, sa uljem u kosi i prodornim sjajem u očima krenem u nadigravanje sa sudbinom... Pa još naziv - The Game... Asocijacija na usamljenog jahača koji uzima glavnu premiju jer je jači od sudbine. Pada mi na pamet i onaj film sa Majklom Daglasom, a odmah potom muški priručnik za zavođenje koji tu i tamo primetim u kjižarama...This article was taken from the March issue of Wired UK magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online Those without a yacht, country manor or cadre of film-star friends may have found themselves playing the rather less elaborate Wink Murder. This form of ultra-civilised bloodsport dropped out of the spotlight during the middle of the century, but was revived by Stephen Sondheim. His legendary murder parties culminated in his 1973 movie The Last Of Sheila, a dark comedy about a group of characters, James Mason and RaquelWelch among them (and trapped, inevitably, on a luxury yacht), who engage in a parlour game that turns truly murderous.

The more you play, especially with the same people, the better you get at spotting their lies. You may think this is a flaw, but Davidoff is way ahead of you -- it's part of the plan. Good players learn to lie well, but also to get better at spotting others' lies. This option mixes the woody notes of barks, mosses and warm resins with the greener impression of aromatic spices, sweeping bypassers off their feet. When this particular product is first applied, juniper berries and gin come to the fore. Next middle notes of woody notes and iris fill the air. As the fragrance matures, the base of ebony arises to perfect the olfactory journey. Davidoff Fragrances: Price UK So why did Mafia spread so fast? Arguably because it answers one of life's most fundamental questions. At its heart, perhaps inevitably for a game created by a psychology student who came of age under a regime that hushed up a massive nuclear disaster for more than 30 years, is the question of whether knowledge is power. It's this, then, that may explain the particular appeal of Werewolf to the tech crowd. This mix of hard computational skills and a real test of interpersonal aptitude offers the ultimate full-spectrum battlefield. Strength in one field can make up for weaknesses in others, but a masterful player needs both. And that's another paradox: if you impress your peers (and in a conference environment that probably means potential clients and employers) with your aptitude for the game, you're also impressing them with your aptitude for lying, for leading witch-hunts, for distrusting your friends.

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Innocent players write "Innocent"; Mafia members write down the name of a victim. Only when all the Mafiosi agree on a name do they make a successful kill. In the O'Reilly board room that fateful morning, what you'd have seen was three senior tech leaders throwing crisps at each other, all outraged at being accused. It was either a virtuoso display of the hardest kind of lying -- extended, emotional falsehood -- or something more peculiar. Sama tekućina ni izdaleka ne dobacuje do dodeljenog joj imidža -sladunjava, blaga, bledunjava, ne naročito inspirativna. Ima tu neku karakterističnu notu koju sam ja tumačila kao mešavinu citrusa sa još nečim, ne znam kako se postiže, taj štih se ne nalazi u ženskim parfemima, a isto to ima i Cerruti 1881 i još neki mirisi koji me takođe nešto i ne oduševljavaju. So can he tell if people will be good at Werewolf or Mafia? "No one can. Mafia could be a test for a bunch of psychological theories, because there are almost none which could help you win.