How to host a WW game - a primer

[st.cronin]

Somebody in Gram's game asked for this. I've hosted two games, and played in plenty of others, so here's my advice. Everybody else feel free to contribute.

The right ratio of wolves to villagers is roughly 1 to 6. So, a 14 player game should have two wolves. This is with no seers, or brutal wolves, etc. I start with this ratio, and with each role I incorporate I adjust the ratio. So if I decide to add a seer, I add a wolf. If there will be masons, I perhaps give the wolves an extra kill one night. Etc.

Make sure you understand how the night actions will work. If a bodyguard guards a wolf, what happens? Have all this planned out in advance.

This also goes with day actions - make sure you have a plan for breaking ties. The village doesn't have to know the plan, but at least have one!

Double check your pms before sending them out - make sure they are to the right person, and include the right information.

[path12]

What a good idea. I keep meaning to find some of the game balance stuff from BGG and bringing it over here but keep forgetting.

[st.cronin]

Hopefully everybody who has hosted a game will have something to add.

[Alan T]

The only comment I will add in regards to large games (20+ people),

The more information you choose to have out in the game (more roles, more night movement, etc), the tougher it is for the bad guys to win if all things are equal.

My suggestion is for those wanting to do complex games with the majority of people out and about at nights, or alot of information incoming at nights to take that into consideration and add in things to balance it such as an additional conversion possibility, or some way to negate the information for the bad guys, or a way for them to create doubt about what the good guys are actually seeing.

[DaddyTorgo]

that was me! i wanna host eventually

[path12]

Cribbed straight from BoardGameGeek -- a rundown and commentary of some of the roles found in WW (author Alexfrog):

Masons: Two of the villagers are Masons (members of the secret society). Since they are together at night, they know each other are not werewolves. This adds to the game in several ways. It increases the number of people who have information, and thus makes the initial lynchings less random. It also makes two groups of people who will 'defend' each other: the werewolves and the masons.

Using these roles is a strong advantage for the village. I believe that with VERY experienced players (in which case, the game tends to strongly favor the villagers), that the masons could be too strong.


Cobbler: His job sucks so bad, he wants to die. The cobbler is on the werewolves team, but is not a werewolf! He doesnt know who the werewolves are, they dont know who he is. The game does not end in a situation where #(werewolves+ cobbler) >= #villagers. The cobbler looks like a villager to the seer. The cobbler is very interesting in that he actually doesnt mind being lynched in many cases, to protect a werewolf from dying. He can also create situations late in the game where he can form a voting block with the remaining werewolf and then block any lunchings from occurring. You can even have cases where the werewolf is trying to convince the cobbler that he is in fact a wolf, or that someone might fake being a cobbler to rat out who the wolf is, so they can then say they arent really a cobbler and lynch them!

Obviously, the cobbler is a strong addition to the werewolf team. I think its a great role for situations where having one more werewolf would be too strong, but without it the werewolves are screwed. For example: 5 player, as 1 werewolf, 1 cobbler, 9 player as 2 werewolves, 1 cobbler.

Angel: Each night, the angel chooses someone to protect. That player cannot be killed by werewolves. Possible rules to make the angel less strong are that they cant protect themself, and/or that they cant protect the same person two days in a row. The angel is especially good for situations where there an even number of non-moderator players (Odd numbers of non-moderator players are preferable, as there cant be a tie in voting if everyone votes, and if it goes all the way to the end, it will come down to 3 people of which 1 is a werewolf, which is the preferable endgame).
The angel can fix these endgames by causing it to end with an odd number of players.

The angel is obviously a strong boost to the villager team.


The werewolf hunter: The werewolf hunter is a villager, but if the game comes down to 2 people left, one werewolf and the werewolf hunter, then the werewolf hunter kills the werewolf! This role is particularly good to use in games with an even number of non-moderator players. Then, if the game comes down to a 3 villager (1 is the hunter), 1 werewolf endgame, and the villagers dont lynch the werewolf, then the werewolf must correctly pick which of the two remaining players to kill, because if they leave the werewolf hunter alive, they lose! This can create very interesting endgame situations, where the werewolf hunter is strongly faking being something else, to fool the werewolf, but in doing so runs the risk of being very suspicious to the villagers!

The werewolf hunter is a moderate boost to the villager team.


The Hunter. Sadly, the werewolf hunter and the hunter have names that are too similar. (We tend to not use both at once). Anyone think of better names??
When the hunter dies, they take a parting shot, killing one other player of their choice. If the game ends with one werewolf, and the hunter, and thus the werewolf kills the hunter, then the hunter retailiatres to kill the werewolf and everyone is dead, so its a draw...
The hunter is also a good addition to a game with an even number of players, as having an extra person die at some point will fix the situation back to an odd number. Obviously, you only need one of these solutions, two will fix and then break it again.

The hunter is a moderate boost to the villager team.


The priest: The priest can, during the night, look at the role of one player who is DEAD, one time per game. Obviously, you use this when playing that dead players roles are not revealed. I believe that playing this way (not revealing the roles of dead players) is a VASTLY superior way to play. (After all, the moderator knows when the game has reached an end condition). Not revealing dead players roles adds a lot of twists, and can give the werewolves ways to throw doubt on things that have happened. "No, he isnt really the seer, he is a werewolf getting us to lynch innocents".
The priest can do interesting things like confirm a werewolf death (and thus implicate those defending that person), or confirm that a dead person was a seer and was telling the truth in who he implicated (and was killed in retaliation by the other werewolf).

The priest is a small boost to the village team.


The Tinker: The tinker is avillager who looks like a werewolf to the seer! I find this a necessary wrinkle, to combat the power of many of the other special roles that help the village. Now, if the seer finds a werewolf, they might not really have the werewolf! It also gives the werewolves a possible alibi if the seer fingers them. "No, I swear I am the tinker".

An important note is that this role works MUCH MUCH better if the tinker doesnt even know they are the tinker! One of the villager cards at random is selected by the moderator to be the tinker, without the knowledge of the tinker player themself. For example, if the 2,3,4,5 of clubs were the villager cards, the moderator randomly picks one of these before handing them out, to be the tinker.

Without this twist, we have found that the Tinker merely states at the beginning "I am the Tinker", followed by: "Does any one else want to claim to be the tinker? If so, one of the two of us is a werewolf, and we lynch both of us". It works very well, a werewolf cant claim it or they and the real tinker just get immediately lynched. And now the seer never checks that person, and everyone knows they are a villager. When played that the tinker doesnt know they are the tinker, when the seer calls them out as a werewolf, it causes them to then supect the SEER as a werewolf, and leads to very interesting possibilites.

Note that the tinker doesnt have to be a basic villager, any villager role other than the seer could be made to be possibly the tinker. For example, with 3 villagers and 2 masons, you could make it that any of the 5 could be tinkers, or you could make it that just the three basic villagers could be the tinker.

The tinker is a moderate boost to the werewolf team, with the variant that the tinker doesnt know they are the tinker.



The Medium: The medium can hold a seance ("say-onse"), to speak with the dead. One time per game, players can agree to hold a seance on a certain dead player. Players then vote to have the seance. If the medium is alive and votes for the seance, it occurs. The dead player is allowed to speak with the group for a few minutes. It can be very beneficial if, say, the seer was raised, of for a variety of other reasons. If playing with the medium, dead players may NOT open their eyes during the night (at least until after the sceonce has occurred). Players who did look in the night, or were making too many comments as a dead person (possibly hinting they should be raised, or are the seer for instance) may not be raised from the dead.

Note that it works best if the medium does not know they are the medium! This is accomplished in the same way as the tinker. Again, you could possibly have a mason-medium, or a priest-medium, or whatever. Just state the rules you are using before play.

The seance should not be used as a way to 'prove' that a player is the medium. i.e, you shouldnt go: "Ok, we're going to have a seance, we'll vote for it one person at a time, and if it fails try again, until the one person who is the medium votes for it. Then we have proven that player is a villager." This breaks the role and makes it too powerful a benefit to the villagers. Rather, only one seance vote should be allowed. It should be called when there is a general majority agreement to use it, on a certain player. The medium not knowing who they are (and thus, no one really knowing if its even possible to hold the seance in the first place), should keep this possibility from happening.


Another good variant: Unknown roles. In this variant, players do not know the exact composition of roles in the game. You set the number of werewolves and the seer. Then you mix a number of special roles with some basic villagers, and draw SOME of them to be used, not showing which are discarded. You then mix them all and hand them out.
For example, in a 9 player (plus a moderator) game, you have 2 werewolves and a seer. Then there are 6 other roles. You put the following roles into a pile: Cobbler, Angel, 2 Masons, Priest, Werewolf Hunter, and 3 Basic villager cards. One of the cards is chosen randomly by the moderator to be a Tinker, and one a Medium. Of those 9 cards, 6 are chosen randomly and mixed with 2 werewolves and the Seer into a new pile and dealt out.

Thus, you could potentially have any of a variety of roles, cobbler, angel, masons (even a mason without a partner mason, so he doesnt know anything, except that there ARENT a pair of masons), priest, werewolf hunter, tinker, medium, or whatever else, in the game, but there are only SOME of those. A werewolf could come out and claim to be the priest, and maybe there is no priest to refute his claim! This leads to an enormous amount of cool possibilities, and I recommend it for advanced groups.

There is another role which can be combined with this variant: the Thief. The thief is one of the cards dealt into the pile to be chosen from randomly. If the thief is in the game, then during the first night, the thief gets to trade his thief card for one fo the cards that was discarded from the pile! Thus, IF there is a thief, then that player knows what all roles are in the game, and what are not. (Except they still dont know about the tinker or medium).


A few comments on a couple other roles, which I think DONT work:

The little girl: The little girl can peek during the time when the werewolves are killing someone, and thus if she is not caught (and then killed), knows who they are.

I think this breaks the game, it adds aspects to the game which are not psychology and deduction, and is far too strong when it works. It also forces rules like "no player can cover their face with their hands in the night" and things like that. We've tried it and almost everyone agrees its broken.


Cupid: Cupid picks two lovers. The lovers know who each other is, but not what their roles are. If one lover dies, the other immediately dies. In the rare case that the two are the only ones left at the end, and one is werewolf and the other villager, then the lovers win and no one else.

I tend to think it works ok in large games, where you really want more people to die fast cause the game drags so long, but it isnt good for most cases. It can also lead to some broken endgame situations.



Anyway, there are countless other role possibilities, but these are ones I have found to work very well. Some strengthen the villagers, and some the werewolves, so you can make the game more balanced for your group's skill level. (As players get better and better, the villagers tend to win more and more, particularly becasue random lynchings cease, and everyone is participating strongly in rooting out the werewolves, and people spend a long time before deciding on a lynching, so their results are more accurate).

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

that was me! i wanna host eventually

You should just sign up. It's really not that hard. I didn't really have any idea what I was doing when I ran my first one, but it seemed like most everybody enjoyed it.

[path12]

Some general GM advice (author Jaredh):

As for advice:

- the vote tallies will KILL you if you don't keep them up to date every 30 minutes during the last 2 hours before lynch, and it is the last thing you want to get messed up

- if you are doing a time-stamped based tie-break, track the order of the votes VERY carefully, and keep them updated very regularly. This will really get you confused if you aren't carefull.

- post your story in one color, and your moderator text that is non-story in another

- don't be afraid to amend a horribly broken rule if the game is going to break because of it.

- Consider all your options...remember, there are tons of roles you can impliment. Some work together, some don't.

- Consider all your options #2...don't be afraid to have un-published things going on. It really livens up the game when an un-published rule/power/player appears on the scene. You have to play this carefully, but if done right, can really turn a game on its head, while everyone loves it.

- Run a basic game first...you'll learn the intricacies of MODing and have fun. We always need a basic game around to drag in new blood. Take a look at some of the minor basic game variants that have been run (like the Cubicle of Doom I did...that rules-set is really balanced and played quite well).

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

You should just sign up. It's really not that hard. I didn't really have any idea what I was doing when I ran my first one, but it seemed like most everybody enjoyed it.

Try hosting one of the small games first if you aren't sure of your abilities. They are far easier. Even with the bigger games, you don't have to make them overly complex for them to be fun.

[path12]

One more piece of advice -- if you have questions regarding balance, run your idea past some of the people who have run games in the past. That is one of the most valuable resources we have. We might even have a thread that focuses upon future game balancing......

[Barkeep49]

I'd rather not post stuff cribbed from another place. They've done AMAZING work at BGG, don't get me wrong, but even with attribution, I'd rather have something we as a community created, though obviously we could credit the stuff path posted as an inspiration. I think it's great cronin started this off and it would be great to create a single comprehensive post with information that we could sticky, just as we do with the "How to play" thread.

[path12]

Originally Posted by Barkeep49

I'd rather not post stuff cribbed from another place. They've done AMAZING work at BGG, don't get me wrong, but even with attribution, I'd rather have something we as a community created, though obviously we could credit the stuff path posted as an inspiration. I think it's great cronin started this off and it would be great to create a single comprehensive post with information that we could sticky, just as we do with the "How to play" thread.

Oops, I feel like I faux pas'd. I didn't mean anything by it except to put some ideas out there that I've found interesting in my WW education that maybe might help some others. I don't want to suggest that we should take these things as anything other than some points to consider and agree that we should put together a guide that reflects our community and style.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by path12

Oops, I feel like I faux pas'd. I didn't mean anything by it except to put some ideas out there that I've found interesting in my WW education that maybe might help some others. I don't want to suggest that we should take these things as anything other than some points to consider and agree that we should put together a guide that reflects our community and style.

Alot of what you posted, or other things from those boards are some of the many things I used to try to get a balance for my ideas. I can understand where Barkeep is coming from with his request though. Maybe we can find happy compromise somewhere

[hoopsguy]

One thought I haven't heard mentioned yet - it isn't your job as a moderator to keep the game close. It is to set up a game that has an interesting story and, by your estimation, give a 50/50 shot for either team to win.

The players are going to make the game great or something less than great. The moderator can help encourage the players to do so with his plot and storytelling, but it is the player interaction that makes the best games.

Finally, I think this has been alluded to earlier - in the larger games with more roles, it seems like the tendency is for the moderator to inadvertantly tilt the balance towards the good guys. This could be small sample set, but I feel like the larger games have ended up being very challenging for the wolves because it is hard to anticipate all the different interactions with 20+ players. When in doubt, I would tilt it towards the bad guys a little bit more. This has been much less of an issue (in my opinion) in the games of 15 or less players.

[Abe Sargent]

I agree with hoops's analysis of larger games, FYI. Even in a game with a higher percentage of bad guys (one in five instead of one in six) and two teams of bad guys allowing for tw bad guy actions per night, I still felt, at the end of my game, that the bad guys could have been amped in power a bit.

[path12]

Originally Posted by Anxiety

I agree with hoops's analysis of larger games, FYI. Even in a game with a higher percentage of bad guys (one in five instead of one in six) and two teams of bad guys allowing for tw bad guy actions per night, I still felt, at the end of my game, that the bad guys could have been amped in power a bit.

I agree for the most part, but I think I actually had it more in the bad guys favor in the Animal Farm game. No role reveals and the villager conversion made a big difference, but then again you were lynched day one as the seer, so maybe it was just bad luck.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by path12

I agree for the most part, but I think I actually had it more in the bad guys favor in the Animal Farm game. No role reveals and the villager conversion made a big difference, but then again you were lynched day one as the seer, so maybe it was just bad luck.

Maybe the wolves in that one were just exceptional.

[Barkeep49]

Originally Posted by path12

Oops, I feel like I faux pas'd. I didn't mean anything by it except to put some ideas out there that I've found interesting in my WW education that maybe might help some others. I don't want to suggest that we should take these things as anything other than some points to consider and agree that we should put together a guide that reflects our community and style.

Originally Posted by Alan T

Alot of what you posted, or other things from those boards are some of the many things I used to try to get a balance for my ideas. I can understand where Barkeep is coming from with his request though. Maybe we can find happy compromise somewhere

I didn't mean to suggest a faux pas. I thought it was a great idea to post that, just as someone posted the wiki article on WW when we were writing the new player guide. I just was suggesting, as Alan states, that we take what's there and explain it ourselves and in our own style. Kind of like what you would do with a research paper for school.

[st.cronin]

Here are some roles that have been in fofc ww games. Often these roles are given different names to fit with the flavor of the game, or have their abilities altered in some way, usually for balance purposes.

Seer - villager, can determine allegiance of one player per night. Huge advantage for the villagers.
Bodyguard - villager, can protect one player per night. Significant advantage for the villagers.
Lovers - can be either villager or wolf, when one dies the other dies too. No advantage.
Cupid - picks the lovers at the beginning of the game
Duke - villager, can change the result of one vote. Slight advantage for the villagers. Swaggs is the best Duke of all time, imo. I believe he has twice duked the vote to a wolf, which is amazing. So if Swaggs is the Duke, it's a huge advantage for the village.
Brutal wolf - when lynched, kills a villager. Slight advantage for the wolves.
Cunning wolf - when scanned by the seer, comes up as a villager. Moderate advantage for the wolves.
Cursed - when attacked by the wolves, he doesn't die, but instead becomes a wolf. Moderate advantage for the wolves.
Blessed - can survive one attack from a wolf. Slight advantage for the villagers.
Witness - once per game, can witness the wolves kill. Big advantage for the villagers.
???? - forget what he was called, but a player who counts as a villager, but wins when the wolves win. If he knows who the wolves are, this can be a big advantage for the wolves.

Others I have missed?

[path12]

I think the ??? role is usually called a sorcerer. It was called the propagandist in the Animal Farm game. I think it could be really unbalancing for that character to know the wolves.

[Alan T]

It is a sorcerer role, usually this role is placed into games where your current number of wolves is too one sided to the good guys, but adding another wolf would be one sided to the bad guys.

He's somewhat like 1/2 of a wolf as a compromise. He knows who they are, but they don't know who he is.