Over the last weekend, I was at Philcon. In the past, I have really enjoyed the game room there, but over the past few years, it’s gone down drastically in quality. This year I had the choice of playing Dork Tower, 12 player Apples to Apples, 8 player 10 color Zendo, or the Vampire CCG. Even roleplaying, a normally much bigger staple at the con, was nearly non-existent due to the RPGA tables they had put out into the hall, dividing up the RPG playing population. I only played two games (and presided over one playtest): my own Shark Game, and Are You A Werewolf? As the Werewolf game started to come together, I weighed my options.
I tend to avoid convention Werewolf. People tend to not listen to reason, and they tend to go for mob rule. But a friend I don’t get to see very often was playing, and the two people I was hanging out with were playing, so I figured what the heck, at least I can talk to other people will being lynched. However, as the cards are being dealt, the two friends I had been hanging out with suddenly have other things they need to go attend to. So I’m stuck.
First game, I’m dealt a villager. And the rules are explained: not only are they using a timer, they’re using no first round kill. That makes me happy as the less serious Werewolf players don’t use those rules most of the time. And as the game shakes out, most of the players ARE good players. Maybe I’ll have a fun time after all!
Except…
There’s this one guy who is lynch happy. Specifically, he’s lynch happy for me. I don’t know the guy at all, but as soon as we begin playing, he starts accusing me without anything resembling evidence. He’s able to get the other two “mob rule” players on his side. They vote for me, but then again, those two vote for anyone. This guy keeps pressing. Soon enough, HE is lynched because he’s presenting himself as such a good target. He flips over a villager card. The rest of the game proceeds, I manage to finger one of the Werewolves (who turns out to be one of the mob rule players), then I’m killed in the night. I knew it was coming, I had just hoped the first round made me suspicious enough. Villagers end up not getting the other werewolf and lose.
Round two. Villager again. Same guy starts accusing me immediately. He says “If I’m the Werewolf, I’m going to kill this guy in the night, and then you can kill me. Or we can kill him now and if he’s not a Werewolf you can just kill me the next day.” I say, trying to not get upset, “Did I run over your dog or something? Or can I at least slash your tires so there’s a reason for this?” He ends up giving me something from his pocket, which I rip up into shreds and get everyone laughing. Again, this all totally backfires on him. This time he survives the first day, but is quickly lynched the next day. He’s a villager too. The game proceeds, and is very tough. We get down to 6 people with two werewolves left. I say, “I’m sure that guy is a werewolf, but I’d like to figure out who the other one is.” But too late, two people accuse one person, the two werewolves jump in, village loses. OK, a loss, but they did a good job.
Round three. Werewolf. Oh shit. How am I going to play this off? I identify the other werewolf in the first no-kill night: another good player, who won the first werewolf round, and somebody that I know. Also somebody who knows to make lots of eye contact with me. That part is good at least. But how to deal with the guy accusing me?
First round opens, and guy starts accusing me as usual. I think I managed to act like I did in the other rounds, and kept it together. The guy even accuses me of being responsible for the villagers losing the past two games through my “bad decisions.” Two people come to my defense and say that both times I had correctly pointed out a werewolf, and had done so without any Seer help. We lynch someone else. First night kill. Tough decision. I can kill the guy accusing me, and state that it’s a good player trying to frame me. Or I can go with my normal strategy and kill off a very innocent looking person. Other Werewolf follows my lead, and I decide the “framing gambit” might not work, so I pick the innocent person next to him.
Guy launches into trying to kill me again. Somebody says something pretty smart: “You know, if I were a werewolf in that round, I’d kill that guy off to implicate Dave. The fact that he’s alive implicates one of those two.” I briefly panic. But the crowd is not swayed, and they once again lynch the guy trying to kill me. Whew. Except, you know where this is going, right?
He was the Seer.
That nighttime kill goes pretty quick.
Right away, somebody calls the vote on me. As voters start to be swayed, I say “If I were in your spot, I’d do that too. All I can say in my defense is that he started accusing me before he had a vision.”
To which the main accuser replies, “Yes, but he did get one vision. And he definitely would have picked you.” I’m lynched, I flip over my Werewolf card, and leave the table. I am now officially on complete Tilt. If I had been playing poker, and the guy had still been in, I would have sat back down against all logic and gone out of my way to beat him. I am totally upset.
I decide to hover for a bit to see if my fellow Werewolf is going to win- he’s in a pretty good position to do so after all that. The moderator, one of my friends, brings the guy over and says “You two should shake hands and make up.” The guy says “No hard feelings.” I shake his hand, but am thinking, “no hard feelings? That should be my line. I wasn’t the one that picked on you.” I begin my classic “Lecturing Tilt.”
I ask, “Why me? Even after it backfired and you got killed all those times and didn’t get to play?”
He responds, “Oh, I just needed a gimmick.”
“But that’s not a winning strategy! You lost every single time by getting killed, and every previous time, the village lost.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter.” I also berate him for playing the Seer badly. He shrugs and walks off.
The moderator comes up to me and says “I’m sorry, he’s just kind of like that.” I say, “That was the unluckiest draw I could have gotten. I could have killed him right away, but there was no way I was going to win with a deal like that in a situation like that.” He nodded agreement.
Meanwhile, my fellow werewolf goes on to completely run the village the rest of the game, and easily wins. He comes up to me afterwards and apologizes for voting to lynch me. He says it would have looked too suspicious. I said that I wasn’t mad at him at all, I’m glad he voted for me and went on to win. At least that was something out of the whole thing. I shake his hand and commend him on a game well played. Werewolves 3, Villagers 0.
My friends arrive back in the room. “Shall we play this next one?”
“No thanks, I’m done with werewolf. Let’s go get drunk.” Now that’s the way to deal with tilt.
You talk like this is all new? We ALL always accuse you simply for looking the most like a werewolf! On the odd occassion that you’ve actually shaved, we accuse you anyway for usually looking like one…you should be used to this by now.
Glad the guy got lynched or killed everytime though.
If he had said, “this guy looks like a Werewolf, let’s kill him” that would have been easier to take, since that IS my role in the village. Instead, he just wanted me dead for no reason. (Until the third game, when he wanted me dead for bad decisions, and because he was the Seer)
I hate guys like that.
this sounds a lot like a game I played with college friends. It involved, mafiosos, a doctor, a policeman, and townspeople. But I’m surprised at the mechanic of showing your card upon death, even in the middle of the game. I remember the mystery being all the fun, and not knowing if you were on the right track added to the excitement of the game, maybe I need to understand the differences better. anywhere I can see the rules for werewolves?
I should have linked to the rules in the article:
http://wunderland.com/LooneyLabs/Werewolf/Rules.html
It is essentially the same game as Mafia. However, groups have always played different variations of it. The “show your card upon death” rule means you have more information in the game, so the werewolf hunting is a little more interesting, and it prevents the weird “Seer is dead” issue where the Narrator has to fake him still being alive.