I remember back at Kasteel Well in the Netherlands, twelve years ago now, learning how to play the mafia-variety game of Werewolves with a dozen or more other study abroad students. After the first game, it became an obsession of our class. In my memory, we were playing all the time, but it was probably once a week or so. It felt like nearly all of us played our last night before returning home. The game is a fixture of my experience studying abroad.
Werewolves is like Mafia or Among Us, but if you’ve played neither before it’s basically a game of persuasion and deception where you’re all randomly assigned roles in a fictional community . . . and some of you become werewolves. Each night the werewolves choose a victim to kill and then the next day the villagers need to try to figure out who the werewolves are and can kill someone each day who they believe to be a werewolf. There are other roles too — a Seer who can learn the identity of any person they choose each night, a Witch with potions of healing and poison, the Little Girl with the Long Eyelashes who can peek . . . but better not get caught or the werewolves will probably visit her next . . . and more.
It’s a hard game to organize since you need 7-8 people to make the game effective, and a group of 10-15 would probably be best. But I managed a light version of it at work today. I had to adapt how I remembered playing for a virtual world (lots of private messages to communicate during the night) and use minimal roles since we only had 7 players. Still, it was fun for an hour. I played creepy music and tried to keep my description of murder short and PG since I was at work.
All my favorite games seem to be storytelling games — Werewolves, Betrayal at House on the Hill, and obviously D&D.
You can google how to play but there’s a lot of different variations and house rules. Here are the ones I put together for my virtual work game if you’re interested.
With Love,
Natalie