Ever heard of Mafia? It's a popular parlor game where there's two sides, Mafia and Civilian, and they try to find out who the "mafia" is and lynch them without lynching too many of their own kind. It's based on tricky psychological work and Machiavellian scheming.
Werewolf is Mafia, but on steroids. A full game is 32 players, with 8 "wolves" (mafia) and 24 "villagers" (civilians). Plus, it's on a forum, and lasts several weeks. So there's the added element of communications, networking, and very complicated social logic.
We're trying to start a round on
Friday, March 9th with as many people as we can get. Everyone and anyone is welcome.
If you're confused about the rules, here's
an excellent read about it.
There are two main groups, the Villagers and the Werewolves. Each of the players is given assigned a role within one of these groups—in our case, there were 24 villagers and 8 wolves. The goal of the Villagers is to find and lynch the Werewolves; the goal of the Werewolves is to systematically annihilate the Villagers. Importantly, only a few players start out knowing what anybody else’s role is.
Every turn in this game consists of two cycles, Day and Night (these are abstract titles, and in fact many “days” would be 72 hours long to give all of the players enough time to weigh in). During the Day, players discuss the situation in the forum thread and debate amongst themselves which players might be Werewolves. They then cast a vote as to which player should be “lynched” at the end of that Day cycle. A player is lynched every Day, and one must cast a lynch vote every couple of Days or else they will be automatically ejected from the game (this means you can’t just abstain and keep a low profile). Whichever player receives the most lynch votes is cast out of the game, and his or her role is revealed for posterity. The goal of Villagers during the Day is typically to find and weed out the Werewolves, taking them out one by one until none remain.
Once the Day is complete, and a player has been removed from the game, Night begins. During the Night, the Werewolves all send private messages to the person running the game identifying the player they would like to assassinate. Whichever player receives the most votes is removed from the game as if they had been lynched, and their role is revealed as the next Day cycle begins. However, if the person the Werewolf votes to assassinate turns out to be another Wolf, there is no kill; instead, the Wolves merely become aware of each other, and may conspire together in the future.
Special Villager Roles
Masons: These three villagers know each others identities. Thus, they can safely defend one another from lynch votes and trust one another in tumultuous situations.
Baners: These two villagers have the ability to shield people from harm. At Night, when the Wolves are mailing in their assassination votes, Baners can pick one player to protect from Wolf attacks. Basically, if they decide that buggybumpers87 is in danger of being assassinated for some reason, they can send in a private message saying, “I’m baning buggybumpers87.” Then, if the wolves do vote to assassinate buggybumpers87, they’ll be informed that their attempt was blocked. Now, this only works if a relatively slim majority of wolves vote for buggybumpers87—once the wolves have found one another, and are voting as a bloc, they can often bypass the best attempts of baners. Each of the baners starts out in contact with one of the…
Scriers: Every night, these two villagers can request to learn the role of another player. There is a certain chance (25%) that these scries will yield incorrect information; the chance of failure can be reduced by spending multiple days scrying the same individual.
Special Werewolf Roles
Devil: The Devil is the evil version of the Scrier. He can determine, with 100% accuracy, what role any other player during the Night cycle. As a tradeoff, he may not cast an assassination vote like the other Wolves, not unless he’s the last one standing. The Devil role is unique in that unlike the other roles, it is not cast by the person running the game—it is instead cast by the Beast.
Beast: The main villain. Starts out in contact with the Devil, who he handpicks from the players roster before the rest of the roles are assigned. His vote is worth three other votes when it comes to assassinations, and if the Villagers scry him, his role is always erroneously reported as “Villager”. Most importantly, because of his commanding votes, he’s in charge of the wolves. He decides who to assassinate and who to spare, who’s protected and who’s exposed, who’s a safe kill and who’s too risky to touch. He can even direct Day actions, requesting that the wolves he’s in contact with rally around certain targets or disseminate certain sentiments.
I'm hoping to see a few of you sign up if you're interested, we've already played 2 rounds and it went great! However, if you do join you'll need to conduct yourself seriously and play the game actively - not every few days or whenever you feel like it.
If and when you do register on the forums post in the following threads: Round 4 - Sign Up List, Introduce Yourself, and POLL: FINAL THEME SELECTION. Make your voice heard!!!
Thanks!
