Splash @MIT (day 1)
I went to something called Splash at MIT today. Splash is a big event of MIT students teaching classes about many diverse subjects, from chocolate to quantum physics. One of the classes I took today was about the game Mafia. We were just playing many games of Mafia.
There are hundreds of variations of Mafia, here’s how I played it today at MIT:
The person running the game is the narrator.
1. Everyone gets assigned a role, for example: townsperson, mafia, doctor, detective
2. Next everyone closes their eyes.
3. The narrator tells the mafia players to wake up. Without making any noise, the mafia players decide who to kill by pointing at people until they all agree – that person has been killed by the mafia.
4. The Mafia go back to sleep and the narrator wakes up the doctor. The doctor picks someone they wish to save. If the doctor chooses the same person the mafia chose to kill, the person survives.
5. The doctor goes back to sleep and the narrator tells the detective to wake up. The detective chooses one person to investigate. If this person is a mafia, the narrator will give the detective a thumbs up, if the person is not a mafia, the narrator will give the detective a thumbs down.
6. Then everyone wakes up and the narrator announces who has died and whether or not they were saved by the doctor, but does not tell the role of the person who died.
7. Everyone who isn’t dead now talks about who they think should or shouldn’t be accused of the killing. The detective can say that they are the detective and whether or not someone is guilty according to their investigation, but someone else, maybe mafia, can also claim to be the detective and lie.
8. Now everyone votes on who they think is guilty, and the person who gets the most votes is killed.
Now, repeat steps 2-8, until only one side remains, either mafia or townspeople. The side that remains wins the game.
I was never a mafia, even though we played through 5 complete games. It was cool.
After Mafia, I did a class on money. We learned about hyperinflation, security features on bills and other funny things about money from many places. The instructor handed out money in envelopes. I got this ngultrum from Bhutan. Each bill came with a slip of paper about it. I think it’s cool, but it’s only worth about 18 cents.
