Other metaphors for the game of mafia

[Silver2195]

I've seen theme games where the assumptions about the players' goals make sense, especially when the "town" is the "bad guys." E.g., a Stardust Crusaders game I saw on Something Awful where the "town" is Dio's minions and the "scum" are Jotaro's allies. It makes sense that Enya and N'Doul are willing to die if they can take Dio's enemies down with them, that Kakyoin and Polnareff are willing to die to take down Dio, that Steely Dan is willing to kill Enya first and ask questions later, and so forth. It even makes sense that the "townies" don't know each others' identities if they're cut off from communication with Dio.

But in general, yeah, the premise of Mafia makes no sense. The corporate metaphor proposed in this thread works better, although the part about the spies deleting the contracts is rather silly.