Are You A Werewolf?
You wake up early and gossip sweeps across the village. Werewolves have killed some local sheep in the middle of the night and now they have changed back to their villager forms in the day time. This is the premise for every first round of “Are You a Werewolf?”
At the start of Gencon 2014 I had never played this social game before. By the end of Gencon I had played over half a day’s worth of this game. I don’t regret this time except I actually wish I would have played even more than that.
The premise is quite simple. Take 15 people (it doesn’t have to be 15 it can be as low eight people but the more the better). One person who is not one of the 15, the Moderator, shuffles the cards and deals one to each player although there is a card for the Moderator if you were playing at home and you wanted to have a different Moderator every time. Everyone looks at their card which has their role on it. Two people will be werewolves, one will be a Seer and the other 12 will be villagers. All the players go to sleep, by putting their heads down and clapping one hand on their leg to make some noise, and the Moderator tells the Werewolves to wake up and identify each other. They go back to sleep and then the Moderator wakes up everybody and tells you about the poor slain sheep I mentioned earlier. Then you start the game in Day and Night phases, starting with a Day phase:
- Day Phase: Everyone is a villager in the day time so although the Werewolves know who each other are everyone will talk and then vote and the Moderator will tally votes until one person has over half the votes (so in the first round eight people have to vote for one person). As soon as one person has enough Villager votes they are “lynched” and they die. Their card is flipped up and their role is revealed. 12 out of 15 times it’s a Villager, probably more because the Werewolves can influence the vote as well to avoid being killed on the first day. As soon as the Villagers kill someone, everyone goes to “sleep” (heads down, eyes closed with one hand patting their leg) and we go to the Night Phase with one less person.
- Night Phase: The Moderator will now tell the Werewolves to wake up and they will point at the Villager (or Seer) they want to kill in the middle of the night. They then “sleep”. The Moderator then tells the Seer to wake up. The Seer points at a person, any person, and the Moderator will give them a hand signal to let them know if yes, they are a Werewolf, or no, they are not a Werewolf. The Seer then goes to sleep and then the whole village wakes up and the Moderator tells everyone who the Werewolves killed in the middle of the night. We then start the Day Phase with one less person again. If this is the end of the Night Phase and you started with 15 people you will be down to 13 now.
- Keep doing Day and Night Phases: Keep doing phases until both Werewolves are dead OR there are a number of Villagers equal to the number of remaining Werewolves.
That’s it, that’s the rules. It is such a simple concept but it is an absolute blast to play and the best part is you can play with complete and utter strangers and you will have a blast. This game is extremely fast to learn and can be played with people of all ages. As well as the regular “Are You a Werewolf?” game there is also an “Ultimate Werewolf” game with even more roles for the Villagers, such as: Two Masons-They just know who the other Mason is (oh yeah, and anyone that says Mason after the start of the game is killed), The Hunter-Who gets to kill someone if they get killed (whether it’s the day or night phase that he dies in) and the Witch-She gets a potion that she can use in one round to save someone, kill someone or both.
My last night at Gencon I played Ultimate Werewolf (until 4am mind you) and I loved it even more than the regular game. It’s so fun when you get to have a special role and that’s what the Ultimate Werewolf game allows more of (there is still a chance that you will still just be a Vanilla Villager but it is much smaller now).
The original Are You a Werewolf? ($6.00) can be picked up at www.looneylabs.com and Ultimate Werewolf ($14.99), Ultimate Werewolf Deluxe Edition ($24.99) and One Night Ultimate Werewolf ($24.99-shorter version of Ultimate Werewolf that doesn’t require a Moderator) can all be purchased from www.beziergames.com . When you want to add even more depth to the game you can also buy the Artifacts Expansion ($14.99) from them as well, which won’t change your role but gives you a special power during the game. The Artifacts Expansion can be used with either the original game or the Ultimate Werewolf games. I don’t care which one you get as I’m not affiliated with any of them but as fun as this game in all its forms you’d be missing out not to pick up a copy.
If you want to help out TheRpgAcademy you can purchase these games from Amazon.com and a small % of the purchase will come back to the site.
Twitter: @LaffinJoker
