We called it mafia. I think the board game is called Werewolf? It's called Town of Salem on Steam.
You basically sit in a circle and the narrator assigns roles. 3 Mafia, 2 Police, 1 Guardian Angel or something... The rest are townsfolk.
Secretly, the mafia votes together to decide who to kill at night. In the morning, somebody is dead. The town has to talk to decide who to vote to publicly kill, if anybody, whom they think is the mafia. Mafia wins if the town dies, town wins if mafia dies. The police at night get to investigate somebody secretly to find out if they are mafia or not. The guardian angel picks one person blindly to try to prevent from being murdered.
Did you guys play this? Would it be worth trying to recreate on here?
Sounds like one of the games my 5th-6th grade students play.
I played it a bunch in college. It was a lot of fun if you got a big group together and had a good narrator. I'm not really sure if it would be fun to play here though. It seems like games would go pretty quickly and it would probably be hard to fill games large enough to make it worthwhile.
That said, it still might be cool to try if you're looking for a new project. I'd sign up to test it for sure.
I use this game in class - typically with warewolves, I guess, cause the fantasy violence is the most palatable to my students. I use it as a way of getting them to be intentional about their interpersonal communication.
The fun in the game is knowing who's gonna BS the best - and then getting a feel for the other players are where their at. Were a little disconnected on here (i.e. no cues for lies or truths - maybe a stilted forum for consensus decisions etc)
You could mock one up and we could give it a try - see if it turns into a fun mechanic.