Werewolf, a psychological mindgame. =================================== $LastChangedDate$ Contents: I. THE GAME II. GAME VARIANTS III. THE BOT IV. PARTICIPATING IN THE DEVELOPMENT I. THE GAME Werewolf is a mind-bending roleplaying game, usually played around a table with cards. It is meant to be played by approximately 10 players and a moderator, although it can be played with 5 to any number of players, with some adjustements. The players are the inhabitants of a small, quiet village. One day, darkness befalls their quiet lives. Sheep are found killed and horribly mutilated, house doors are scratched, and every night inhuman howls echo through the nearby woods. There are two werewolves among their number, and they must find and kill these abominations before they overcome the village. The game starts with the players being dealt a card each. Two cards represent werewolves, all the others are regular villagers. Players should note which they are and not reveal their identity. Then, the first round begins. The moderator says "Night falls," and all players close their eyes. He then announces "Werewolves, awaken." The wolves open their eyes and identify each other. They must decide (silently) on which other player they want to kill that night. Once they are in agreement, they close their eyes, and the moderator announces "The night ends." All players open their eyes, and the moderator announces which player died during the night. The deceased reveals his identity by showing his card. All remaining players (including the werewolves) must now launch accusations at each other, debate and choose whom they will be lynching that day. The decision is carried out by a majority vote, and the lynched player also reveals his identity. Once the lynching is carried out, night falls and the cycle repeats. The objective of werewolves is reduce the number of villagers whilst avoiding detection. If the werewolves equal or outnumber regular villagers, they attack immediately and win the game. The objective for villagers, of course, is to eliminate the two werewolves before getting turned into dog meat. The whole fun of the game relies on the fact that villagers know nothing of the other players until it is too late, one way or the other. The gameplay therefore entirely relies on the ability to roleplay (and, of course, to lie convincingly) during the daytime debates. Also, any actions that take place during the night must be taken out in absolute silence (or lots of noise, depending on group preference), so as to not give away any information. II. GAME VARIANTS The above is the ruleset for the basic game of Werewolf. Over the years since its creation, many people have extended this ruleset, mainly by adding other "special" characters. Here are a few variants that exist: * SEER: One player card is marked as the seer. The Seer is a regular villager during the day. During each night, before the werewolves awaken, the moderator awakes the Seer, who may then designate one other player. The moderator will sign a reply indicating if that player is a werewolf or not. The Seer may reveal himself at any time during the day, at the cost of obviously becoming the werewolves' main target. * WITCH: The Witch has the ability, during each night, to prepare and use a single artefact before the werewolves kill. The Witch may prepare a wolfsbane essence and cast it on any player (including herself). If the wolves decide to kill that player, then the wolfsbane essence repels them and nobody dies that night. Or, the Witch may prepare and use a poison dart to kill one other player. Saves are not specific (the moderator should simply say "Nobody dies," rather than "Brian was saved"), and neither are Witch-kills. * CUPID: Cupid is a villager who has a role during the first night. Before any killing takes place, the moderator awakens Cupid and makes him choose two players (he can choose himself to be one). The moderator silently touches those two player, who awaken and recognize each other. From then on, they are lovers: if one days for any reason, the other immediately dies of broken heart. They must keep their love secret. If the union is of villager/wolf nature, then the lovers must win the game by being the sole survivors ("Ours is a forbidden love.") * LONE WOLF: Play with three werewolves. Two are regular, the third is the Lone Wolf. He does exactly the same actions as the other werewolves, but his objective is to have the other two wolves killed, in addition to overrunning the village. He does not reveal himself to the other werewolves, and must avoid death at the hands of the villagers in the same way. * THING: In this variant, players during the day vote to test, not kill, one of their number. If the testee is a werewolf, then she dies and the players get another testing. However, werewolves don't kill during the night either... They convert their victim into a werewolf, who then turns against her former allies! Can you track the changing alliances and mutating playerscape? There is a staggering number of variants floating around "the Internets", a lot of which can be found on the Princeton Graduate Mafia's homepage: http://www.princeton.edu/~mafia/rules.htm Their rules and variants are for Werewolf's ancestor, called Mafia. However, the concepts generally transpose well from one to the other. III. THE BOT The Wolfbot is an IRC bot that plays the role of the moderator in an IRC channel, allowing players to play Werewolf over the net. All night actions are performed by private messaging the concerned users, whereas all daytime actions happen on the IRC channel in which the Wolfbot is operating. Players communicate their decisions through simple commands such as 'kill ' or 'lynch '. Wolfbot keeps a track of the game and announces deaths and the eventual victory. Wolfbot currently moderates a game of "Werewolves and the Seer", the variant of the original rules which includes the Seer as extra character. As such, a game of Wolfbot Werewolf is best enjoyed at around ten players. Wolfbot is currently configured through a simple configuration file, which lists the IRC server to connect to, the channel to join, the nick to use and an optional password to "log in" as that user with NickServ, a nickname registration service that some networks have running. The Freenode for instance requires Wolfbot to log into NickServ to be allowed to private message the players. Once Wolfbot has joined a channel, any player can start a new game of Werewolf by telling the bot to do so. This is done by starting the line with "bot_nick: " followed by the actual command. So, to start a game with a bot called 'wolfbot', you would enter "wolfbot: start game." When a game starts, Wolfbot asks people to join the game by telling him "join". Once a sufficient number of players are joined, the game originator tells wolfbot "start" to begin the first round. Once the game is started, Wolfbot will communicate with players in private to tell them what role they have, and to instruct them to perform their night duties. If you want to drop in and meet fellow Werewolfers for a game, feel free to visit the "official" channel, which is #wolf on irc.freenode.net . IV. PARTICIPATING IN THE DEVELOPMENT IF you wish to participate in making Wolfbot a better Werewolf moderator, do drop in on the "official" channel and discuss it. Wolfbot is always happy to welcome new developers!