werewolf

Oxford Werewolf

What exactly is Werewolf? It’s a game. It’s another one of those University of Oxford experiences. As far as I can tell, Werewolf is the most purposefully complicated psychological thriller role-playing game ever invented. You may have played variations of it, or similar games like Mafia elsewhere, but I assure you the Oxford version is different. The roles and rules have been developing over at least the past fifty years. There are rumours that this version hatched from a cosmic egg laid by Helliconia author Brian Aldiss. I can neither confirm nor deny that. Anyway, it is complicated, but worth it for the feeling of smug self-satisfaction you get when you do well at a difficult game developed by generations of Oxonian geniuses.

The code here is an attempt to capture that experience online. It is implemented in Meteor-Blaze, inspired by code for One Night Ultimate Werewolf by Katie Jiang.

Oxford Werewolf is a little rough around the edges, but we have found from many games that it works well in both face-to-face play and over Zoom.

• Compared to a human Fate (which anyway is a contradiction in terms), it allows everyone to play and speeds up the night phase.
• It does require everyone to have access to a web browser (eg. on a smartphone), though it is possible for players to share devices using different browser tabs. Private information is only revealed when Show Role is selected.
• To start a game, type in a name for your group of players and press Enter Village. That will take you to a new page where you can set up the game. You can bookmark or share the URL to allow others to join your game straight away.
• You need to agree on the game setup before someone presses Start Game. You also need to agree when you go to sleep - again anyone can press the Sleep button, but it may simplify things to designate one player to do these common actions. They should only act when everyone agrees - or when any limit on the length of the day phase has expired.
• This app relies on the players to detect the end-game conditions - this can be a good role for dead players, who can follow the progress of the game by selecting Show Fate's Secrets.
• Occasionally, if there is a connection problem, a player may be thrown out of the game and taken back to the setup screen. From there, they can select their name and Join Game. If they are shown as a dead “lurker”, then they can select Rejoin to return to the setup screen (being careful not to look at fate’s secrets on the way).

This code is currently running here: https://oxford-werewolf.eu.meteorapp.com/ . Please note it it takes a minute to start up the first time.