Play Werewolf (Party Game)
Are you a Werewolf? Werewolf is a group role-playing game of analyzing and being analyzed, deceiving and being deceived, controlling and being controlled, and thinking creatively. Things take place in a small village, where Werewolves hunt for Villagers. Villagers and the supernatural (Seers, Witches, Cupids, Hunters, etc.) who hide will fight together to defend their home.
Contents
Steps
Setting Up the Game
- Get at least six players. A moderator is unnecessary since players can just follow the system guide for the day and night circles.
- Assign roles to each player. At the beginning of the game, each person will be randomly assigned a role. Every player keeps a secret of his own character without letting any others know about it.
- Learn about the day and night circles. The game alternates between night and day phases. The villagers win if they kill both Werewolves. The Werewolves win if they kill enough villagers so that their population size is even with each other.
Beginning the Night Cycle
- Tell everyone to close their eyes. Nighttime means that it is time for killing, healing, and investigating. Acting tells information.
- Know who the other Werewolves are and decide on their target. Usually, they kill a Villager, but they may decide to kill a Werewolf to make the Witch use up her antidote. At night, Werewolves may also decide which of them will pretend to be the Seer and Sheriff.
- Know what a Seer is. They don't know which people are Werewolves, but they can check one player’s identity every day. The longer the Seer lives, the more information they can glean, so Villagers want him to confirm their identity and protect them, but Werewolves also want to reveal the Seer to they can kill him off. Usually, the Seer has a high chance of becoming the Sheriff, so a skilled Seer should try his best to defeat Werewolves pretending to be Villagers during the discussion phase of the Sheriff Contest. The Seer also needs to evaluate what players are saying to identify possible targets using logic and clear-thinking.
- Seers often don’t last the night so should try their hardest to identify the Werewolves quickly.
- Know what a Witch is. A Witch's role is to heal a Villager with her antidote and kill a Werewolf with her poison, all while remaining hidden and surviving. She shouldn’t let the Villagers suspect her, or the Werewolves realize her identity. She cannot use her powers if she dies.
- Know what a hunter is. A hunter is the player that Werewolves don’t dare kill. Since there aren’t many Werewolves, they can’t swap a life-for-a-life to kill the Hunter. Werewolves will do their best to convince the Hunter that an innocent Villager is lying so he will shoot them. As a Hunter, if you don’t know who is a Werewolf, it’s best not to start shooting at random players.
- Understand the value of normal Villagers. The rest of the players are normal Villagers. Are they any use? Of course! Werewolves despise Normal Villagers the most because they can use their intelligence to confuse and trip them up. Although Werewolves know who are Villagers, they don’t know their exact identities. Sometimes a good strategy for Normal Villagers is to offer themselves up for sacrifice by pretending to be the Seer.
Playing the Day Cycle
- Have everyone open their eyes. Let the performance begin! You’ll need real acting chops, clear logic and supreme self-confidence if you want to succeed. This game is a battle of logic and eloquence. Knowing everything that’s going on is not important; what’s important is how you can make other players believe you. If you’ve gathered a lot of info, don’t start blurting it all out since you’ll just become a target for the Werewolves.
- Try to identify Werewolves. There are two key ways to identify Werewolves:
- Werewolves will obviously pretend to be Villagers. When pretending to be a Villager, they won’t be immediately identified, but when pretending to have a special skill (eg Seer or Witch), whoever really has that skill will know straightaway. Making the majority of people believe them is the real test of logic and eloquence for Werewolves when up against players with special skills.
- Voting: The Werewolves’ objective is to eliminate all the Villagers. So, in order to survive they’re obviously not going to give up the chance to vote. Sometimes when a Werewolf frames a Villager, the other Werewolf will also vote for that Villager so that he’s voted out of the game. Werewolves may also try to frame different Villagers during one day but then vote for the same player. When Werewolves say one thing but vote another way it’s easy for them to reveal their identity because they know who’s on their team and the Villagers don’t.
- Nominate people who you think are Werewolves. Each round, at least two players should be nominated to be killed. Anyone can nominate another player, and the nominations should go to players that somebody thinks is a werewolf.
- Have the nominees defend themselves. Once the nominations have been made, each player gets 30 seconds to convince the rest of the room that they're not a Werewolf. The nominees should get to speak uninterrupted, since it may well be the last chance they have to save themselves!
- Vote on one of the players to kill. Once the nominees have defended themselves to the other players, vote on which of the players to kill. Each player can vote only once. The nominee that receives the most votes gets killed. This person should not reveal what their role was.
- Start the next night cycle. The game proceeds with another round of night and day cycles until all Werewolves are dead, or until Villagers are outnumbered.
Tips
- Different roles have access to different kinds of information, meaning you need to consider the situation from multiple angles. Most of your time should be spent studying others to determine if they are friend or foe. Select the most persuasive methods to convince whoever you're talking to in order to achieve victory.
