Classroom game: Werewolf

Last week, I was involved in an activity for the Ngee Ann Polytechnic Board Games Club (NPBGC). The idea was to host a game for a number of Asian Nursing students from non-English speaking countries like China, Vietnam and Myanmar. The students were divided into four groups of about 18 students each, and we had around 25 minutes with each class. Also, the game should promote communication in English (or whatever version of English we happen to speak in Singapore). Given these constraints, we pretty much immediately settled on running Werewolf.

It's clearly a family game.
(Image from http://boardgamegeek.com/image/1534745/ultimate-werewolf-ultimate-edition)

In Werewolf, the players take the roles of villagers. One morning, the villagers wake up and discover that the mayor has been murdered in the night. There are werewolves in the village! At the start of the game, every player is dealt a card that is kept secret from the other players. If your card says "villager", your aim is to kill all the werewolves before everybody gets eaten. If your card says "werewolf", your objective is to kill enough villagers until there are only as many villagers as werewolves, whereupon you rise up for an all-you-can-eat villager buffet with doggy bags. There is also a special villager called a "seer" who acts as a sort of spirit guide for the village (if she survives, that is). Finally, there is a referee controlling the action (i.e., me).

The game plays in alternating "Night" and "Day" turns. At night, all the players close their eyes. The referee then instructs, "werewolves open your eyes," so the werewolves know who their allies are on the first night. On any night other than the first, the werewolves would silently decide on one villager to kill (by pointing to her), and then they close their eyes again. The next instruction is "seer open your eyes and point to someone you wish to know about." When the seer selects a player, the referee silently indicates to the seer whether the player is a villager or a werewolf using a previously explained hand signal. Finally, the seer closes her eyes, and then day begins, whereupon the werewolves' victim is notified of her grisly fate.

During the day, the villagers get to select one among their number for lynching (isn't this game wholesome?). If a player is accused of being a werewolf and someone else seconds the accusation, then the accused gets about a minute to defend herself; here is where the ability to make a convincing argument (in English) could save your life. At the end of the defence, all the villagers vote simultaneously with either a thumbs up or a thumbs down to decide whether the accused gets to live; a majority "nay" vote and the villager is summarily executed by the mob, and then she reveals her role. If she's a werewolf, there're celebrations and congratulations all round; if she's a villager, then an innocent person has been killed by an unthinking mob, and the werewolves are that much closer to winning.

On the whole, the game was a success. At the start, I needed to prompt them a bit, but these Nursing students are a pretty canny lot and they picked up the strategies for the different roles very quickly. Early in the game, the defence put up by the accused is pretty weak (e.g., "I'm a kind person", "I'm a vegetarian", or, my personal favourite, "I am a villager"), and they're invariably toast. As the game progressed, the arguments became more elaborate and convincing. In one game, a particular student was accused twice and spared twice. Once, she saved herself by telling her accuser, "if I am a villager and you kill me, you should be killed next," which certainly gave everyone pause.

She was a werewolf. (Awesome!)

Werewolf is a combination of deduction and role-playing. If the aim is to help foster communication skills, it's  an excellent game if the referee is active in prompting for responses, e.g., "why do you think she's a werewolf?", "is that all you want to say in your defence? Remember, your life is on the line!" It's also just a fun game that is suitable for a classroom of around 20 people, just to bring people out of their shell.

Oh, and all you need to play Werewolf is a few slips of paper with the words "werewolf", "villager" and "seer" on them. The standard Werewolf is a public domain game, while Ultimate Werewolf pictured above provides cards for up to 68 (!!!) players along with several fun new roles.

Some other lessons learnt:

• Try not to be the only male in a class full of females. Twice, the sole male was the first on lynched. Coincidence?
• I should have put my cards in card sleeves for protection. Students tend to clutch the cards when they're excited, and I ended up with a bunch of crumpled cards. Not that I mind all that much - it's nice to see the students so emotionally invested in the game.
• Talking non-stop for two hours is hell for the throat, especially if you're trying to keep order in the midst of flying accusations. Fun, though.