Werewolf: Extra Materials

To be fair to Wired magazine, they did a good piece about Werewolf in the most recent UK wired. I never expected so many pages dedicated to the game which some call the modern social crack. There’s also a huge sum of the variations of werewolf on the Wired site too.

Here’s a couple of the ones not even I’ve heard about…

The Fool: The player who gets this card immediately reveals himself to all the other players as “the village fool/idiot”. He does not speak again for the rest of the game and can’t focus enough to join any debates or lead any suspicions. He watches mutely, helplessly. At the beginning of each new day, while he is alive, he may reassign his vote to another villager by pointing – that newly entrusted voter might be an innocent villager or a werewolf in disguise. If the Fool or the Moderator should forget to reassign his vote, his vote remains with the prior assignee. (So if a prior assignee is a werewolf, it is to the werewolf’s advantage NOT to remind the Fool or Moderator to reassign the vote.)  In his confusion, the Fool wears a ring of garlic around his neck, thinking it will repel the werewolves – when in fact, garlic is used to repel vampires. (If the vampire character is in play, of course, this garlic will protect him.) As a variation, in an attempt to control an unruly villager that speaks out too much or speaks when dead, the Moderator may instantly assign that unruly villager to be the village fool, either immediately during that game or in the next game if that player is already dead.

Not so sure about this one, but we’ve had newbies act the fool before, shouting out or making it too damm obvious what player they are.

The Coroner: Often, there is confusion in the village as to a cause of death or what just happened the night before. With certain character combinations the actual happenings just can’t be deduced – with certainty. As long as the Coroner is alive, the Moderator explains the causes of death and the nighttime happenings. The Coroner, however, does not actually play an active part in the game. Once the Coroner is out of the game, the remaining villagers must deduce everything themselves without any help from the Moderator.

This might be useful for some games instead of relying on the moderator, whos actually not meant to say anything in this issue

The Grave-Robbing Thief (created by Viki Kind, Ed You and our “Uber” Werewolf players): In this variation the Thief is still offered two other villager cards on the first night. If both cards are werewolf cards, he must chose one and become a werewolf. Otherwise, he may refuse both identities and wait till another night in the game to steal the identity of a newly dead villager on the first night following that villager’s death. In this variation the Moderator will ask every night if the Grave-Robbing Thief wants to steal someone else’s identity, fully reactivating that stolen identity and character. Example: if the dead Witch’s identity were stolen and reactivated, both of the Witch’s potions would be renewed as well. A dead werewolf identity may also be stolen and reactivated. The Moderator will have to again announce any activities of the newly stolen and reactivated identity and character.

I had a idea like this a while ago but never really played it out, oh well. I think its good but makes the game quite complex for newbies. You’d only want to play this with pros.

Theres lots more characters but to be fair a lot of them cause the moderator a lot of headache, make the game too complex or too random to get a balanced result to either side.  I tried doing the probability maths a while back and got very confused, but I bet if you could do the maths behind it, you will find a lot the extra characters screw up the game for the werewolves or villagers. The standard pack of villagers, seer, healer and werewolves  seems to be about right.

Manchester’s Werewolf chapter is back this Wednesday

Manchester Werewolf poster

(amazing what you can do with inkscape in a 30mins)

February 3, 2010 7 – 11pm : Manchester Werewolf Chapter at Pure Space, 11-13 New Wakefield Street, Manchester

We’re looking to play once a month, there’s no need to register or understand the rules just turn up and play along.

Be part of the game, beginners to pros its all good fun. Werewolf is a game that takes place in a small village which is haunted by werewolves. Each player is secretly assigned a role – Werewolf, Villager, or Seer (a special Villager). There is also a Moderator player who controls the flow of the game. The game alternates between night and day phases. At night, the Werewolves secretly choose a Villager to kill. Also, the Seer (if still alive) asks whether another player is a Werewolf or not. During the day, the Villager who was killed is revealed and is out of the game. The remaining Villagers then vote on the player they suspect is a Werewolf. That player reveals his/her role and is out of the game. Werewolves win when there are an equal number of Villagers and Werewolves. Villagers win when they have killed all Werewolves. Werewolf is a social game that requires no equipment to play, and can accommodate almost any large group of players.

For more information about the game

E4: Every Extend Extra Extreme

Every Extend Extra Extreme is one of the games I’ve been totally been going crazy for recently. I tried the demo on Xbox Live Arcade and was instantly hooked. Explaining how it works is quite tricky… Wikipedia to the rescue

the player controls a ship which they can detonate at any time. This causes any enemies within a certain radius to explode, which in turn cause other enemies to explode in a chain reaction. As the game continues more and more enemies populate the screen allowing longer and higher scoring explosions. The player may halt the chain at any time to pick up power-ups (such as to increase enemy speed, add time, add temporary shield) or to start a new chain reaction.

The explosions add a percussive beat to the background music.

The player’s ship is destroyed when coming into contact with or being shot by an enemy while the player’s shields are down. This resets the level to its initial slow pace and bonus multiplier, therefore hindering the player’s scoring.

The one thing it doesn’t say is depending how your timing is with the beat, you get a small to large explosion radius. So bang on and you get something which can start a massive chain reaction while off beat and you only take out a few enemies.

Its pretty and glorious on a HDTV running at 60fps and fans of REZ HD will appreciate the finishing touches which Q! entertainment bring to their games. This is certainly my new Geometry Wars

Manchester Werewolf starts again: Wednesday 3rd February

Werewolf Manchester (March)

Its that time to look for those shifty feet and false smiles, because Manchester’s Werewolf chapter is back in town (Facebook group).

February 3, 2010 711pm : Manchester Werewolf Chapter at Pure Space, 11-13 New Wakefield Street, Manchester

Be part of the game, beginners to pros its all good fun. Werewolf is a game that takes place in a small village which is haunted by werewolves. Each player is secretly assigned a role – Werewolf, Villager, or Seer (a special Villager). There is also a Moderator player who controls the flow of the game. The game alternates between night and day phases. At night, the Werewolves secretly choose a Villager to kill. Also, the Seer (if still alive) asks whether another player is a Werewolf or not. During the day, the Villager who was killed is revealed and is out of the game. The remaining Villagers then vote on the player they suspect is a Werewolf. That player reveals his/her role and is out of the game. Werewolves win when there are an equal number of Villagers and Werewolves. Villagers win when they have killed all Werewolves. Werewolf is a social game that requires no equipment to play, and can accommodate almost any large group of players. For more information about the game

The Psychology of Being Scammed

I love reading about social engineering type stuff, and this paper (PDF) by Paul Wilson and Frank Stajano is ideal Christmas after turkey reading. Schneier has the low down as usual.

This is a very interesting paper: “Understanding scam victims: seven principles for systems security,” by Frank Stajano and Paul Wilson. Paul Wilson produces and stars in the British television show The Real Hustle, which does hidden camera demonstrations of con games. Frank Stajano is at the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge.

The paper describes a dozen different con scenarios — entertaining in itself — and then lists and explains six general psychological principles that con artists use:

  1. The distraction principle. While you are distracted by what retains your interest, hustlers can do anything to you and you won't notice.
  2. The social compliance principle. Society trains people not to question authority. Hustlers exploit this “suspension of suspiciousness” to make you do what they want.
  3. The herd principle. Even suspicious marks will let their guard down when everyone next to them appears to share the same risks. Safety in numbers? Not if they're all conspiring against you.
  4. The dishonesty principle. Anything illegal you do will be used against you by the fraudster, making it harder for you to seek help once you realize you've been had.
  5. The deception principle. Things and people are not what they seem. Hustlers know how to manipulate you to make you believe that they are.
  6. The need and greed principle. Your needs and desires make you vulnerable. Once hustlers know what you really want, they can easily manipulate you.

It all makes for very good reading. Two previous posts on the psychology of conning and being conned.

Talking of Schneier, he was talking in London on the 11th December and although I was in town I couldn't make the event. Luckily someones recorded the lot and put it up online.

Bruce Schneier did a benefit gig for Open Rights Group last Friday and here's the video of his 'Future of Privacy' talk and the 45-minute Q&A.

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I may just have the next werewolf

I have playing with playing cards most of the night. Seems while I was sleeping that I came up with a card game which seems to be like werewolf/mafia but very different. I was reading up about game theory to see if it fit in one of the categories and it seems to fit into reciprocal altruism which is nicely exemplified with file sharing.

Another potential example would be the Internet file sharing communities. The ability to download (receive) a given file (an economic good) directly depends on other people who already possess the same file and share it through allowing uploading it to those who want it (a process which is also called seeding). Those who receive the file and later refuse to share it with others (through seeding) are known as leeches. However, there are methods to ban leechers, ie to deny them further participation in the file sharing network.

I don't want to come across like its totally tied down but the game seems pretty fun and could work with groups as big as 40 or as small as 12. Some other people have spoke to in the past have talked about the notion of a 3rd entity like the vampires. Well although we've not tried it out, I do worry it will just be chaos and there not enough to go on to make it worth doing. Plus vampires would be like a 2nd team of werewolves.

So forgetting vampires, my game is like werewolf as in there is a night and day phase but its more like a change of location with certain characters not being able to see or hear. The moderator/god/voice of the game is required to do a lot more in this game in regards to whos who. It may even require two or a piece of paper. The social notion of cheating and saying whatever you like is still there and is a major part of the game but now there's more emphases on altruism. You also don't need special cards for this game, a standard pack of 52 will scale up to 44 players I worked out. The suits, numbers and royality cards are very important for the game. And I did consider upping the numbers using the joker cards but it got very constrictive. Of course the game works well with drink too. The closes game I can find to the core idea of the game is this invented game called anandis.

I tried to do some probability calculations on who would win depending on how many of each character but it was beyond me. No what I really need is a Card game simulator. Maybe once I get a feel for the maths behind the game, I will write up a complete set of rules and release it to the world under a creative commons attribution licence or something.

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Chris moneymaker wins poker world series

Dave, alerted me to the fact that this years poker world series was won by a guy who regularly played poker on the internet. He had hardly played in real life and entered the world series only because he won a internet tournment which had cost him 40 dollars. So yeah from 40 to 2,500,000 dollars aint bad for the american bank accountant.

Some links dave sent me,
gamble.co.uk, google search for chris moneymaker and this months wired's magazine A piece of the action

The greater question I guess is how much is poker reading and how much is reading players? Most poker players upto now subscribe to reading players and cards second. What does Moneymaker's success say about this? Maybe poker is all about rounders after all.

Some interesting links I picked up about stratergy using computer ai.
The New Card Shark and
The University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group and there Java Poker Client for Windows and for Linux/OSX

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24hrs in the matrix

Ok its been less than 24hrs and I have watched the matrix reloaded twice in the cinema and once on my computer. In total 7 hrs of my day has been spent watching this state of the art movie.
But its not good and i've pledged not to watch it for a few days now. Maybe Sunday with a friend or sometime over the weekend with my wife whos not all that bothered about watching it. Yes she needs help…

I'm still loving matrix reloaded but I cant wait a moment longer for revolutions. Its killing me… /images/emoticons/happy.gif

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