Werewolves!

Werewolves! is a party game sometimes called “Mafia”. There are many variations. Werewolves! is a computer network based xgame based adaption of the game.

The players are randomly assigned roles of either villagers or werewolves. 3 additional roles are dealt to the table. At night, some of the villagers with special roles and all the werewolves wake up at different times and perform certain actions. After all the night phases are done, the players may discuss what happend during the night, though they may not actually show each other their cards. A player may say the role she received, but she may also claim that she were dealt a role that she did not receive.

After the discussion, each of the players casts a vote to eliminate a player. If there is a player or players who received more than 1 vote, the players with the most votes are eliminated and the actual roles the players now possess are revealed. If a werewolf was killed, the village team wins, even if an innocent villager was eliminated, too. The villagers may also win if no one is eliminated and all the werewolves are in the middle of the table.

Some roles have specialized winning conditions (e.g. the tanner).

In this adaption, players interact with each other via terminal or web clients. The game shows players only partial information and allows them to take actions based on the roles they were dealt during the night phase.

Deployment Considerations

A basic deployment scenario for this game is on a home network, and players can connect to the service via their smart phones, tablets, laptops, etc. The game is lightweight enough that it can be run on a laptop computer that has its network adapter in “hotspot” mode, and clients can connect directly to it via wifi.

The game does feature a simple in-game chat so that it can be played over a wider area where players are not in each other’s physical presence, but the networking concepts involved in more complex setups are not covered in these instructions. The game could also be hosted on a cloud platform that players connect to, but again, such advanced deployments are not covered here.