Does Werewolf have its Texas hold’em?
If you aren’t borderline obsessed with Werewolf, just stop reading. This post is for us. The howlers.
(I host a monthly Werewolf game at our office, for startup founders and friends. I‘ve played until the sun rose, and I’m not the only one. A couple of friends considered bringing the game to television…)
A few of us have been thinking about putting together a league. To do that, we need balanced, fair rules — where both sides have an equal chance of winning, and the game’s consistently fun to play.
We’re collecting outcomes of games of Werewolf, in the hope of finding a balanced rule set — to start a league.
The way most of us play Werewolf — great as you know it to be — it might be a broken game! Do the villagers seem to always win? (Jane McGonigal gave the villagers an almost-unbreakable recipe.)
Like poker, many games seem to start out “dealer’s choice” (or, mayor’s choice, here)… and in Werewolf the mayor decides questions like…
- Ratio of werewolves to villagers
- Special roles — seer and healer, especially
- Reveal — do killed players tell whether they are a werewolf or villager?
- Game start — night or day? If night, do the werewolves kill? Does the seer see?
- Healer limits — can the healer heal him/herself
Let alone all the many crazy special-role variants… the Tanner, the Lovers, etc. These are the Jack the Shifter of Werewolf — novelty-fun for a hot second, and then just a hot mess. There’s One Night Ultimate Werewolf, which is to Werewolf what Pai gow is to poker. Fun, but it’s a different game that happens to have a similar name.
In poker, the community still plays many games — but one game, Texas Hold ’em, reigns. It’s poker at its purest.
We need to find that magic variant for Werewolf. There’s only one way I know to answer this: data. So, our little group of players is going to start crowdsourcing data about the results of Werewolf games under different rule variations. Help us by submitting the results of your games?
If this works, we’ll be able to create “official” rules — and then, start keeping score. One day, imagine the Werewolf World Championships.
So, to submit your games to help us:
- Your game must have no special roles other than the healer and the seer (and you aren’t required to have those) — no Jack the Shifters.
- You may not limit the healer’s ability to heal him or herself (or any other player).
- Werewolves must be free to choose whether or not to kill each night (i.e., no “requirement to kill”).
- If you start play with nighttime, then the Seer should be able to see, and (if the Werewolves are making a kill) the Healer should be able to heal.
- Record the data consistently, in the format of this handy Google Form for logging our shared playtesting. If you want to submit a batch of games, just email me and I’ll send you the template. (I’m easy to find on the internet.)
P.S. As ron carmel pointed out to me, an app that moderates the game for you would collect this data automatically. If you want to build that, hit me up…
Howl.
Thank you to Peter Rojas for being a corner coach for my love of this game, and Jane McGonigal for reminding me that it’s time to get serious about this league thing. Kevin, Jeff, Ryan, Nadia, nadya, and all you others, this one’s for you. Us.
