Sorry, it‘s a long time since I startet the last one, but now we‘re back and I invite you all to the next installment of the
AGS Werewolf Game.
If you are not familiar with this game, the rest of this post should give you all information you will need to understand it and decide if you want to play.
If you are already familiar with the game, please read this post carefully nonetheless, because there might be small changes to the rules from the last rounds.
Also, there are a couple things I don‘t want to decide without the input of my players, so there are a few questions at the end for you.
What is the AGS Werewolf Game:The AGS Werewolf Game is an unregularly played game here in the forums where we play a Werewolf/Mafia game. I assign roles to all players and the goal of the game is it to figure out who the bad guys are – simply put.
Available Roles:These roles are assigned randomly once I know the players. I use generic names in this description here but might switch to more setting specific ones once the setting is decided (see below). The number of people playing one of these roles depends on the number of players.
Good Side:
Normal Population:Ability: None
Description: The most geniric role in this game with no special abilities and no special job except finding the bad guys. This is the role most people will play.
Goal: Uncover who belongs to the Evil Side. Members of the general Population have the right to vote every day for the person to
lynch and hopefully for them to eleminate players of the Evil Side that way. Members of the Population can win the game even if they themselves get killed, so as a member you might consider sacrifices for the greater good (for example, a more important Good Side Role).
Psychic:Ability: Scan another player‘s role once every Night Phase
Description: The Psychic is the main asset of the Good Side, as he or she is the one to have the best chance to uncover members of the Evil Side. The Psychic can scan players once every Night Phase by sending a PM to the Game Master (GM, that would be me) and recieving the role (and nothing else) as an answer.
Goal: The Psychic‘s goal is to eleminate all players of the Evil Side by scanning them and then convincing the other players to lynch them. The physic is allowed to vote for lynchings him-/herself too, of course. The Physic should seek to keep his/her role secret, as he/she is a likely target for murders by the Evil Side. The rest of the Good Side should also try to protect the Psychic as much as possible. The Psychis wins with the Good Side even if he/she is dead when all Evil players are eliminated.
Doctor:Ability: Protect one player every Night Phase, including him-/herself, but not the same player twice in a row.
Description: The Doctor sends the GM the name of one player each Night Phase to protect. A protected player cannot be killed by the Evil Side in this Night Phase. If a player is protected, nobody recieves any further information than that nobody was killed in the next Day Phase (the Evil Side will know who was protected as will the Doctor, but the GM will not officially reveal this information – that point wasn‘t entirely clear last time, so if you have more questions, please ask.)
Goal: The Doctor seeks to protect his own side, including him-/herself but especially the Psychic as the main player to figure out the alignment of other players. The Doctor is the main line of defence (except for subterfuge) for the Good Side.
Evil Side:The players of the Evil Side know who the other members of their team are (while the Good Side has no such information about their own team). They will recieve this information by PM alongside their own roles once they are chosen. It is recommended, and expected, that the Evil Side players communicate with each other outside this forum thread.
Murderer:Ability: Participate in one kill during each Night Phase; knows all other players of the Evil Side
Description: The Murderer decides on one person to kill each Night Phase, along with the other murderers and their Leader.
Goal: The Murderer‘s goal is it to reduce the Good Side so that no majarity lynch vote against the Evil Side is possible any longer, at which point the Evil Side would be able to pick the Good Side of one by one and the Evil Side has won. The Murdrer should try to appear non-threatening and as innocent as possible, with the goal that Good Side players get lynched.
Leader:Ability: Participate in one kill during each Night Phase (and communicate this to the GM)
Description: The Leader of the murderers does not have any more abilities than the other murderers. The role exists to streamline communications to the GM. Should the Leader be lynched, another player from the group of murderers takes up the role (randomly chosen by GM).
Goal: The Leader‘s goal is the same as the other murderers‘ goal. There is no advantage or disadvantage to the Evil Side should the Leader get killed.
The exact role setup depends on the number of players and will be decided once players are registered.
Gameplay Structure and Rules:The game can end in two ways:
The Good Side wins when all Evil players are dead.
The Evil Side wins when it is no longer possible to get a majority lynch vote against them.
(There was a situation last time where it was logically impossible for the Evil Side to win, even though the win conditon for the Good Side was not met yet (the details are complicated). In accordance with the general opinion in the discussion afterwards, such a situation will be ignored by the GM and the game will run its course. Players are, of course, allowed to speed the game up by, for example, reveal their own roles and basically giving up or even outright forfitting, but this decision is completely up to the individual players. The GM will not answer questions concerning the possibility of different outcomes of the game, as I know slightly more than everybody else and the risk to reveal information a player should not have is high.)
Important Rules:NEVER EDIT ANY OF YOUR POSTS FOR ANY REASON! IF YOU POST AND NOTICE ANYTHING IN YOUR POST THAT YOU WISH TO CHANGE IN ANY WAY THEN YOU MUST REPOST THE CORRECTION RATHER THAN EVER EDIT AN EXISTING POST.
NEVER SHOW A SCREENSHOT OF ANY PM YOUR HAVE RECEIVED FROM THE GAME HOST OR COPY/PASTE FROM ONE OR RETYPE TEXT FROM ONE OR IN ANY OTHER WAY ABUSE THIS RULE TO PROVIDE PROOF OF YOUR ROLE, OR FOR WHATEVER OTHER REASON.
EVIL PLAYERS SHOULD ALWAYS CONSULT WITH TEAM MEMBERS FIRST AND OBTAIN PERMISSION FROM THE MEMBER IN QUESTION BEFORE PUBLICLY OUTING THEM AS AN EVIL PLAYER AND/OR STARTING A VOTING TREND AGAINST THEM.
This rule exists to avoid resentment from growing within the ranks of the players in this game. It may become advantageous or even necessary at some point for the Evil players to sacrifice one or more of their own on purpose as part of their win strategy. This is known as "Throwing under the bus" in WW game terminology and is a perfectly legal move in the game. But please ask the member to be sacrificed beforehand if you plan to do this and make sure they are okay with it. The only exception would be when the player in question has gone inactive from the game and is unreachable by all other lines of communication. In this case they only have themself to blame.
Casual speculation about same-team members as being the guilty party is perfectly fine in most cases as long as the motive was for the good of the team and not intended to harm theteam's or that particular player's chances in the game. This is, in fact, usually a vital strategy in winning for the Evil team players so they do not appear solidated in the eyes of the Good players. Planning such strategies out with your team members via outside communication is strongly advised, of course. Use common sense here and all should be fine.
Jumping on a bandwagon vote already established by another non-team player against a same-team member is legal without prior consultation as there may not be time to do so, but please try to consult beforehand if at all possible, or at least apologize afterwards.
PLAYERS MAY COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER VIA OUTSIDE MEANS: PM, PRIVATE GROUP FORUMS, PRIVATE IRC CHAT, FACEBOOK, TELEPHONE, CARRIER PIGEON, MENTAL TELEPATHY, OR ANY OTHER MEANS AVAILABLE. BUT PLEASE NEVER BREAK THE RULE MENTIONED ABOVE CORNCERNING DIRECT USE OF GAME HOST PMS.
PLAYERS MAY LIE TO, TRICK, DECEIVE, OR OTHERWISE BULLSHIT, OTHER PLAYERS AS PART OF THEIR STRATEGY FOR OBTAINING THEIR WIN CONDITIONS AS LONG AS DOING SO DOES NOT BREAK ANY OF THE ABOVE RULES.
ONCE A PLAYER IS KILLED; HE OR SHE IS OUT OF THE GAME AND NO LONGER ALLOWED TO POST IN THIS THREAD OR COMMUNICATE WITH OTHER PLAYERS THROUGH OTHER MEANS. This is a change from the earlier rounds where we did allow „Ghosts.“
The game is played in two alternating phases:Day Phase:During the Day Phase every player is awake and able and allowed to post for discussion and lynching in this thread.
This thread is closed for all non-players and players who are killed are no longer allowed to post here either.
Lynch-votes need to be
bolded. None bolded votes will be ignored.
Votes are not final until the Day Phase ends and can be changed until the last second. They can also be completely taken back (in that case, please bold
none in your posts to make this absolutely clear.)
It is never, under any circumstances allowed to edit posts, not even for typos or to add something before someone else posts. (Yes, double posts are allowed.)
The Day Phase will be about 48 hours and end in a time frame of three hours.
During these three hours, the host may close the phase at any point but if the host runs late for any reason, players are not allowed to post after the end of the three hour time frame. (Basically, the night phase begins at the end of this time frame (even if the host is running late) or earlier.)
Day Phases may end suddenly at any point during the provided three hour time frame so get those votes in while you can. Remember that they can always be changed later if you are in time!
Once the Day Phase has ended the Lynching takes place if a majority vote on a single player has been reached.
If a majority vote has not been reached then no player is lynched and the Day Phase ends.
Tied votes for the player to be lynched result in a stalemate and no player is lynched and the Day Phase ends.
It is not a requirement that the a player is lynched every Day Phase.
A lynched player's role is revealed after their death.
A lynched player may no longer post in this thread. Every player is allowed to keep a „journal“ that the other players „find“ when they are killed. Every player is allowed to send a PM to the GM every Phase (Day and Night) with information he or she wants revealed in case of his/her death. The information does not have to be accurate or true. The GM will not censor this in any way or form but it is the information a killed player is allowed to give. I will only look at the last PM from any killed player that has „Journal“ in the title. Please keep such PM‘s short and remember that I need them before the player is killed because the reveal of the journal happens at the same time as the reveal of the death.
Night Phase:During Night Phase most of the Players are asleep and nobody may post in the game thread.
It is now time for all players with Night Phase abilities to PM their choices to the GM:
The Psychic should PM the name of the player they are scanning this night.
The Doctor should PM the name of the player they are protecting this night, if any.
The Leader of the murderers should PM the name of the player the murderers will attack and kill this night. Only the Leader may do so, not the other murderer players.
Night Phase will last about 24 hours.
It is legal to PM the game host with your night action before the Night Phase starts if, for any reason, you cannot maybe be active during the next Night Phase.
Do not send more than one PM with your activities to the host. The first one sent is the action that will take place. (Except for the Journal-PM‘s where the last one sent is the one used.)
At the end of the Night Phase the game host will send out PMs to players who did private night actions such as scanning with the results. These PM‘s go out at about the same time as the wrap-up post for the Phase goes out.
Then the game host will open the next Day Phase, starting with a report on any casualties which may have occured during the night.
Any players killed during the Night Phase must immediately follow the same rules as lynched players (see above): They may no longer post in this thread and their last words should already be out.
If, at any point, the Evil Side equal or outnumbers the other players they win the game as there is no way for the other players to gain a majority vote against them for lynching choices.
Now, I think that‘s all as far as rules go. If there‘s something I missed, just ask.
There are some things you, as players, can decided:
Are there any roles not mentioned above you would like to see? Tell me with an exact description and I‘ll see if I can implement them. Just remember that this depends very much on the number of players. The more players, the more fancy roles we can use.
Would you like a role-playing game, a purely tactical game or a mixture (which is what we had last time)?What setting would you like to play? I can‘t write every setting but I like a challange, so just let me know. If you want a purely tactical game with no setting at all, that is also possible, but, in my opinion, a bit boring. If no suggestions for settings come up, I have a spaceship in mind, for now.
Last time I used a special rule in the end of the game: The ability to lock lynch votes, which would allow players to lock their votes, which takes the ability away to change votes (other postings are still allowed) but might thereby shorten Day Phases, because they could end earlier once all players have locked their votes. You can decided to have this special rule the whole game or just during the end when there are less players or not at all.
Opinions?So, I think that‘s everything. A less technical, more atmospheric intro will be available once we have our players and have decided on a setting.
You can now sign up to the next installment of the AGS Werewolf Game!
