Rules for Werewolf

Overview of Basic Game Play

Each player is either a werewolf or a villager, except for one player who is the narrator. The game consists of multiple rounds of night and day. During each night, the werewolves silently pick one player to kill. At dawn, the narrator tells a story of how this player died. During the day, everyone discusses which players among them they think are werewolves. Eventually, a vote is taken and one player is lynched. This marks the end of the day. Nights and days continue until either all the werewolves have been eliminated or until all the villagers have been eliminated.

Before You Begin

Number of players:

A group of 7 or more people usually works well, but generally, this game is best with groups of 10–20. If less than 7 are playing, use the 'multiple lives' variant (see the Variants section). It is not recommended to play this game with a groups smaller than 5.

The narrator

One player, chosen by any method your group finds acceptable, acts as the narrator. The narrator does not participate in the game; instead, he controls the flow of the game, prompting everyone to sleep and awaken, prompting werewolves and other players to secretly act at night, moderating voting sessions, and telling dramatic stories of what happened during the night. The narrator gets the last word in any disputes.

Choosing roles

When the game begins, each player receives a role (except the narrator), which determines what they can and can't do, and what they need to do to win. But first, you must choose which roles to include in the game. You may need to read all the rules to help you decide.

Roles

Many roles give players special abilities which they may perform either at night or during the day. Unless otherwise stated, any role which is not some kind of werewolf is on the side of the villagers.

The ordinary villager role has no special abilities. As boring as they are, it may be crucial to include at least a few of these—if there are many ordinary villagers playing, werewolves can "hide" by claiming to be one of them, since nobody would know if they are lying. This is not the case with groups of seers, guardians, etc. The lack of ordinary villagers may make it too easy for the villagers to win.

Players may not show their onscreen role to others when it is assigned to them. However, during the game, players may say anything they want about their roles. In fact, this is encouraged; it can add strategy to the game, and nobody is really sure if you're telling the truth. House rules determine whether or not players truthfully reveal their roles when they die.

If people in your group haven't played before, you may want to build your deck with only werewolves, ordinary villagers, and seers or guardians.

Be sure to read the additional clarifications when choosing roles.

Game balance

The number of werewolves will roughly determine how difficult it is for the villagers to win.

Suggested number of werewolves (number of players includes narrator):

5–9 players:   1 werewolf
10–13 players: 2 werewolves
14–17 players: 3 werewolves
18–21 players: 4 werewolves

Adding or removing certain roles can fine-tune (or dramatically shift) the balance of power between the werewolves and villagers.

Beginning the Game

The narrator uses the role selection screen to add certain roles, then explains the rules for all roles to everyone. He then hits the "Start game" button and passes around the device so that each player can receive a role chosen randomly.

Night

The narrator tells everyone to close their eyes and lower their heads. When all players are 'asleep', the narrator instructs only the werewolves to awake and agree upon one victim to kill by silently gesturing to indicate their target and showing unanimous agreement. The narrator then instructs the werewolves to go back to sleep.

If there are any other players with roles that may act during the night, those players act in a similar fashion; each role with nighttime action gets a turn during the night to awake and do something while everyone else is asleep. Once the game starts, this app will give you a suggested order for which roles should act at night.

If you choose not to reveal players' roles upon death, the narrator should instruct the waking and sleeping of each role during the night even if all players of a role have died. This helps keep the living players from knowing the roles of those who have died.

Some roles have nighttime actions which require the target of the action to know who he/she is. The best way to do this is for the narrator to secretly tap the player on the shoulder or head. When tapping players, walk around the entire circle to make it hard to guess who was tapped. The actions which require tapping are: scaring, the Cupid choosing lovers, the Cult Leader choosing new members, and the Hypnotist hypnotizing people.

After all roles with nighttime action have had a turn during the night, daytime begins.

Day

At dawn, the narrator instructs all players to awake and announces which players have died during the night. The narrator may also announce what other actions occurred during the night, but not who performed them (i.e. "Werewolves attacked and maimed Joe, but a silhouetted figure fought them off before they could make the kill."). Some actions need not be announced, such as if the guardians chose to protect somebody who was not attacked.

All events during the night effectively happen simultaneously at dawn—this means that two players may kill each other during the night, one player may be killed by two different people simultaneously, or a guardian may be killed and yet successfully protect someone else in the same night.

Players who have died may no longer participate in the game in any way, and thus are permitted to keep their eyes open at night (unless the witch doctor is playing).

After announcements are made, all players who are still alive deliberate over whom amongst themselves they suspect to be a werewolf. Lies may be told, blames may be cast, and debates may be heated. Scared players may not utter a word. During the day, two players may be nominated and seconded to be voted on for that day's lynching. Lynching is usually the only way the villagers can eliminate all the werewolves.

Lynching

Both players nominated for lynching may give an argument to defend his/her case. A vote by simple majority is then held for which of the two players shall die. Any living player may vote (unless that player is scared), and each player may vote only once. The lynched player is dead and out of the game. If neither nominee has a majority vote, no lynching will take place.

The Sheriff

At any point during the day, those who are still alive may elect one player to be sheriff, whose vote during lynching is worth two votes. This player is elected by a simple majority vote. The sheriff remains in office for the remainder of the day.

Ending the Game

After the lynching, the day has ended, and nighttime begins again. Day and night repeat until there are no more villagers (victory for werewolves) or until there are no more werewolves (victory for villagers).

There are other 'win' conditions, such as if the cupid or hypnotist are in play; see those roles for more information.

The game should always end in the morning, after all deaths (or no deaths) and other actions are announced and take effect.

Variations

Candles

Give a candle to each player and turn out the lights to make things spooky. Blow out your candle when you die to make it easy to tell who is still alive.

More love

Have the cupid make multiple separate pairs of lovers, or a love triangle. If anyone in the love triangle dies, they all die.

Multiple werewolf tribes

Two separate groups of werewolves act independently, each wanting to eliminate the other tribe and the villagers. The two groups must wake independently at night. The game ends when there are no werewolves, or there is only one tribe left.

Multiple lives

Each player has two or more lives. Players keep track of their own lives with glass stones, fingers, or whatever else you can reliably use to count. The narrator should announce when a player has been injured but not yet completely killed. A player is out of the game only when they have lost all their lives. When a player is revived, he/she regains all lives. In addition, the Vigilante gets a number of bullets equal to the number of lives each player has, and can shoot more than once per night if he has enough ammo.

Strategies

Lying about your role

If you are a werewolf, you should (obviously) lie about your role if asked. Saying you're an ordinary villager is the safest option, but not always the most strategic. If, for example, you say that you're a guardian, the real guardian(s) may reveal themselves so they can try to get you lynched. Both you and the guardians will come under suspicion and you may be lynched, but now the werewolves have the advantage of knowing who the guardians are.

Being honest about your role

If you are the little girl or seer, and you have found the identity of a werewolf, it is quite beneficial to the whole village to say who you are and cast blame on the werewolves. You may come under suspicion, but the werewolves will too. In the same way, it's usually beneficial to reveal when you know somebody is lying about their role.

Werewolf suicide

If, for example, the little girl has identified herself and correctly blamed two or more people for being werewolves, it may be advantageous for the werewolves to kill one of their own, thus "proving" that the little girl is either a fake or dishonest and protecting the rest of the werewolves from suspicion. In a 'multiple lives' game, it can be very advantageous for werewolves to attack each other, as it provides a potentially strong argument that the attacked player is innocent.

Pretending to be scared

Any player can pretend to be scared at any time. Doing this may shift suspicion away from that player, since it is not otherwise advantageous, or even possible, for the howler werewolf to scare other werewolves.

Sounds at night

At night, you may hear other players unconsciously shifting in their seats. Blames should not necessarily be cast based upon who made noise during the werewolf phase at night.

Guarding yourself

The wisest move for the guardians is usually to only guard those who they know are not werewolves—this often means guarding themselves. Also, keeping the guardians safe round after round means more opportunities to block attacks.

Credits and Legal Stuff

The art in this game is licensed for use via Creative Commons licenses. See the rules and clarifications for each role to view art credits, links, and license details.

Rules created/compiled by Ransom Christofferson, with inspiration from many sources. Web app designed and programmed by Ransom Christofferson.

This version of Werewolf is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Original Mafia/Werewolf game by Dimitry Davidoff.

Rules version 2.1

Basic roles

Additional roles

On the werewolves' team

On the villagers' team

Alternate win conditions