Moire-tastic. This is exactly why you should never rely on in-browser image resizing. Do it on the server end, or better yet, before uploading in the first place.
I wonder how this compares with The Werewolves of Millerās Hollow, in particular with the Deluxe Edition thereof. Iāve looked at that game, but never got a chance to play it. It, too, has a lot of specialty characters, such as The Seer (similar to whatās here), The Little Girl (who can peek during the Werewolvesā phase, but only through her lashes, and if the Werewolves notice what sheās doing, they can kill her instead of their original target), and The Village Idiot (who can expend his card to survive one accusation of lycanthropy). However, it lasts several turns instead of just one, and thus the problem of players ākilledā early on would still come up.
The great thing about the original game is that you donĀ“t need any equipment to play it though. Even if IĀ“m out on the first turn, watching the intrigue unfold for the rest of the game is always fun.
What ages did you play with?
Are all the āsimple villagersā male?
The werewolf I play has a bunch of extra roles anyhow. And my two friends that usually GM have invented dozens of new roles and rules. Itās usually insane. For example, thereās the Makeup Artist, who swaps two players faces around in the night, so anything that would happen to one happens to the other and vice versa. Thereās also the Barber, who āputs a mirror in front of someoneās faceā, effectively redirecting anything that targets that player to the targeter. These two interact in confusing, nondeterministic, and hilarious ways. Half the fun is watching the GM spend 5 minutes muttering to themself, trying to work out what actually happened. Then thereās the Teenage Werewolf, who is a Werewolf that must say āWerewolfā at least once during the day phase, the Fool, who wins if they die. Sometimes the GM creates dual-role cards. So you might have a Teenage Werewolf Fool. One GM sometimes plays a āPlague Gameā, in which there are no Werewolves, just the GM picking random players. The only way to win is to ask āIs this a Plague Game?ā, which instantly kills you outside of a Plague Game.
I agree. Simplicity, too, is why everybody has heard of this game. Iām not convinced the $19 version is an improvement. Itās a great price, I will say that.
For another improved version of Werewolf/Mafia that is cards-only (no app), check out The Resistance. By instituting a best two-out-of-three mechanic, it keeps all players in the game until the end.
āSemi-reliableā might be my least favorite description of anything werewolf related.
Iām very fond of this version of werewolf. Plays quickly, and is a great filler while waiting for people to arrive or finishing up a night.
Iām a bit worried the short game play timeā10 mins? That doesnāt seem time enough to really flesh out any interesting interaction, backstabbing, deception, amongst the player.
With 2 Werewolfās in play, or one that doesnāt get killed;
could you ārebootā the game with the player holding the same cards they had for āfirst nightā and make it a second night with this game system?
This reminds me a lot of a simple game I designed while working in Antarctica during winterover. It was based on legendary documentary of Antarctic life āThe Thingā. It was played between the 13 people stuck on base during the winter. Rules were simple: one player was randomly assigned as āThe Thingā. Then if he (or other āthingsā) were in a room with a lone normal person for 3 minutes, that person became a āThingā too (he would just tell him). Also during breakfast, lunch and dinner we would discuss and vote on who we thought the āthingsā were and we could āburnā them (meaning they turned back to normal).
The game instilled a healthy dose of paranoia on the baseā¦ An understatement for 13 people stuck in a few buildings at -78C. As soon as someone would walk into your room, youād start to freak out.
We played 4 or 5 rounds, which lasted 3 days on average, and the āthingsā won every game, with once 12 āthingsā walking on the lone survivorā¦
Itās about the short con rather than the long con; the werewolves have to come up with a lie, and change their story or discredit the truth as more and more factual information comes to light.
Think of each game as a separate round of a larger metagame.
There are a huge number of wonderful Werewolf variants out there. I have and play the Millerās Hollow version, and itās great. But you need a large number of people for most Werewolf games and a good bit of time, with player elimination that leaves many watching from the sidelines. If you have a group thatās into it, traditional Werewolf is superior.
What makes this game so great is that it only takes ten minutes, and there is no player elimination. It condenses the experience down to its essence of logic, lying, and bluffing. I was skeptical, but you do get a ārealā werewolf experience in a game you can play in many more circumstances.
Wow, I sound like a paid shill here. But seriously, Iāve played this game ten times as often as Iāve ever gotten to play Werewolfā¦
Resistance: Avalon is rated even more highly, though I prefer the original setting.
It has minor tweaks that change how information is generated in the game. It works so well that they started shipping two role cards with newer packages of resistance: merlin/assassin.
Avalon still has more roles that enable effective balance tweaking.
I played this at Origins a few weeks ago. I thought it was a decent party game. I like that it can be played so quickly and that it is very accessible, but itās really not a werewolf game. The roles in the game make it fairly solvable just by their nature, e.g. I know I switched these two roles between people which means that person is now X role. In Werewolf you have to make deductions based on peoples reactions. I think Werewolf is best played with a group that knows each other well whereas this game fits well in most parties
Paying ten or twenty dollars for one of these things has always struck me as a bit odd, considering I can recall playing the game with a perfectly ordinary playing card deck.
But then, the game itself has never really appealed to me. It just seems like frantic, wild accusations all the way through.
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