Howling at the moon

Well, last night I got killed out of my first proper Werewolf game. I had "played" once before, but got killed out at the end of Night 1 so never really got a chance to join in the fun.

What is werewolf I hear you ask? Well, it is a mind game of suspicion and intrigue played on a forum thread. You get the "village" together with the majority players being normal villagers, two or three werewolves, and sometimes a few other special characters on both good and evil sides.

The werewolves know who each other are, and are allowed to communicate outside of the forum. Everyone else is blind, and are only permitted to communicate via posts on the game thread (its an honour system). Each "day", the villagers gang together and vote for who they suspect is evil and pick someone to "lynch". If you are lynched, you are dead. Then, assuming that at least one wolf is left, the wolves pick someone to kill during the "night" and then the next day begins. And so on until either all the wolves are dead, or the number of evil characters equals the number of good characters (at which point, the wolves have nothing left to fear and rise up to slaughter the remaining villagers).

The person controlling the game keeps a tally of votes, and during the day there is much discussion, accusations, vote analysis and general bullshitting to decide who gets lynched. The wolves participate in this process themselves (pretending to be good), so the idea is that you find the wolves based on what they say and who they vote for.

In the game we just played, I was killed during the night by the one remaining wolf (the other wolf was lynched in a fluke on the first day). The first victim of the wolves was also raised as zombie, and became evil. He knew who the wolf was, and the wolf knows who he was, but they cannot communicate. So one of the goodies went over to the darkside, and has been working to put suspicion on everyone else.

I had a great time playing, and almost made it to the end. I didn't have a fantastic track record, helping to lynch several innocents that I thought were evil, but at the end of the day I had fun and that's what counts. Hopefully we will continue on with a new game once this one is over (should end tonight, with the wolf looking to be in a good position).