Tol-in-Gaurhoth (Isle of Werewolves)

[The Barrow-Wight]

After Sauron captured Tol Sirion and occupied Finrod’s fortress of Minas Tirith, the surrounding region became infested with horrifying creatures in the shape of wolves. These cunning beasts could take the form of man or elf by day, but at night they would change into ravenous monsters, thirsty for blood and death. Together, groups of Sauron’s werewolves would infiltrate a small village and kill off its population one by one.

Welcome to Barrow-downs Werewolf.

Werewolf is a game of accusation, deduction, lying, reverse psychology and bandwagoning. Moreover, it's a lot of fun. It is actively played on several sites on the Internet, and I thought it would make a fun addition to the Downs.

The rules are pretty simple: The players represent a village, and each member of the village has a role, which is kept secret. Most players are ordinary villagers, but two or more are werewolves, and one is a seer. The goal of the villagers is to eliminate all of the werewolves. Likewise, the goal of the werewolves is to eliminate the villagers, which they can do if the number of non-werewolves is equal or less than the number of werewolves.

Gameplay
The game consists of two different phases: Night and Day. The game begins with a Night phase.

Night
In a Night phase, the moderator will ask the werewolves to choose a villager to eliminate and also ask the seer to choose one player to dream about. The werewolves should decide amongst themselves using the board's PM (private message) function who their victim will be and inform the moderator of their choice. Each werewolf should PM the moderator either the group choice of the victim OR which wolf to whom they've proxied their choice. The seer should decide who his victim will be and inform the moderator of his choice.

The werewolves' victim is dead, but the rest of the village won't find out until daytime who the victim is and what their secret role was.

The seer's victim has his role revealed to the seer only.

Day
During the daytime the villagers all wake up and find that one of their own has been killed by the werewolves. At this point at least one player is a werewolf and so someone is gonna get lynched.

During this phase all players, including werewolves who have assumed villager form, must publically discuss their suspicions. Eventually it will reach a point where villagers start to cast votes for who they feel is a werewolf and must be lynched. At least half of the villagers must agree on a player for a lynching to occur. Players can change their vote as much as they wish but once a pseudo-majority is reached, that player is gone and his secret role is revealed. Also, be nice to your moderator and make your vote stand out by bolding it.

If no majority is reached as a result of more than two players accumulating votes, then a runoff is held and the two highest vote-getters are on the block. Anyone who didn't vote for them originally must now choose between the two of them to determine which person will be lynched. If there still isn't a majority by then, a tiebreaker is used. One of the players at risk places a dagger in one of two boxes, and the other player chooses one of those boxes to open. If the box with the dagger is opened, that player is killed.

When the lynching is done all the villagers go back to their homes to sleep and the next night begins.

Winning
In case it's not clear: The villagers win if they kill all of the werewolves. The werewolves win if they kill enough villagers so that their numbers are equal. At this point the werewolves can openly rise up and slaughter the rest of the villagers.

Discrepencies

• Absent voters: In most games once a majority is reached the game continues on from that point. However, it could happen that a player does not vote when prompted for one. A warning will be applied for the first infraction and a phantom vote will be applied for each subsequent infraction. A phantom vote is just an extra vote cast against the absent player(essentially he is voting for himself) in order to make it easier for the crowd to lynch that player.
  
• Compromising privacy: You can say you're a villager/seer/werewolf, etc. all you want, but under no circumstances should you post anything that would give your claim absolute credibility. You are not allowed to post any PMs or other private conversation between yourself and the game moderator. Infractions of this rule are grounds for immediately disqualification from that game and all future games.
  
• Outside interference: Once you are killed in a werewolf game you should no longer post in the thread or communicate with players that are still alive in the game. You're dead. Dead people tell no tales.
  
• Private messages: A major cause of contention is the ability for people to PM each other and thereby keep other players in the dark about this private communication. Since there is no way to enforce, let alone verify an occurance, PMing other players shall not be expressely disallowed. However, it should be a common understanding that the game is more fun for everyone when all communication is available for everyone to see, and thus villagers are discouraged from PMing each other. Besides, would you believe that someone was the seer just because they said so? Werewolves are encouraged to PM each other and agree on who they will kill during any time of the game as this will speed up Night phases.

Our First Game
Barrow-Downs Werewolf will operate in a day/night cycle, with Day lasting from midnight until 6:00 PM, and Night lasting from 6:00 PM until midnight (all times are Eastern Standard Time). Votes cast at 6:01 or after are invalid and will be ignored.

Everyone can post a vote for lynching at any time, and can switch their vote to someone else at any time. I would ask that everyone BOLD their votes so that I can find them easily while scanning the thread. Remember, when a player has a majority of votes, he will be lynched.

Wolves and the Seer must PM their special orders to me by midnight each night. PM's recieved after midnight will unfortunately have their content ignored (so send your orders in early!).



We need players!

Want to play?

Respond here on this thread.

Our game will begin at 6PM (EST) on the first day that we have at least 12 players enrolled. When we have 12+ players, I will be the moderator and will randomly assign these roles:

3 Werewolves
1 Seer
9 (or more) Villagers



There will only be one game of Werewolf running on the Downs, and I will be moderating it. If you want to play, sign up for this game.

[mormegil]

Sounds like fun...I'm in

[The Barrow-Wight]

Games should last about (# of players)/2 days, since we will be killing a villager each NIGHT and hanging a suspected werewolf each DAY, which is 24 hours in real time.



Welcome to the game, mormegil. Everyone else, join quickly so we can already start the mayhem tomorrow.

[The Saucepan Man]

You can count me in.

What's the purpose of the villagers' roles?

Also, given time zone differences, might it be best to have a 24 hour period for each of Night and Day. Otherwise, for us Brits, Night will be something like 11pm to 5am (and later for those further to the east). Although I'm a night owl, this might preclude some people's participation.

[mormegil]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

What's the purpose of the villagers' roles?

I believe it's to be slowly eaten off and lynch each other...

[The Barrow-Wight]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

You can count me in.

Great to have you on board. That's two players already!

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

What's the purpose of the villagers' roles?

Villagers hang (suspected) werewolves. So a villager's roll is to figure out who is a werewolf, or to make suer people don't think they are one!!!

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

Also, given time zone differences, might it be best to have a 24 hour period for each of Night and Day. Otherwise, for us Brits, Night will be something like 11pm to 5am (and later for those further to the east). Although I'm a night owl, this might preclude some people's participation.

Because there are only 4 players that do things at NIGHT (werewolves and the seer), the NIGHT phase doesn't need to be as long as the DAY phase. I'd like to keep the pace the same (24 hours for both DAY and NIGHt), as well as the proportion (6 hours: 18 hours), but I'd be happy to slide it all forward a couple hours.

How about:

4PM - 10 PM EST = NIGHT
10PM - 4 PM EST = DAY

That should be more inclusive of both side of the Atlantic (though it is still discriminatory against those members further away, sorry )

[The Saucepan Man]

The players represent a village, and each member of the village has a role, which is kept secret.

I meant the role referred to here - the secret role (which seemingly the seer can discover by dreaming).

Originally Posted by The Barrow-Wight

How about:

4PM - 10 PM EST = NIGHT
10PM - 4 PM EST = DAY

Actually, the other way works better for me, since it is difficult for me to post much during working hours, and I usually don't log in until about 10.30pm at night. But I'll go with whatever suits the majority.

[The Barrow-Wight]

Current player roster:

1. mormegil
2. The Saucepan Man
3. the phantom
4. Primrose Bolger
5. Anguirel
6. Firefoot
7. Oddwen
8. Feanor of the Peredhil
9. Shelob
10. bilbo_baggins
11. Kuruharan
12. Mithalwen
13. We have enough to start, but will continue to take names until 6PM EST.

Possibles.....
- Eomer of the Rohirrim

[Mithalwen]

I think Eomer pulled out?

Please can we have a game for Brits who aren't nocturnal/insomniacs?

[Anguirel]

Hmmm...would anyone object if Brits held a game with identical rules, but a different story, and with a British moderator? I think it would be good fun.

Of course, Brits could still play in this one and vice versa, if they wanted.

[Mithalwen]

Originally Posted by Anguirel

Hmmm...would anyone object if Brits held a game with identical rules, but a different story, and with a British moderator? I think it would be good fun.

Of course, Brits could still play in this one and vice versa, if they wanted.

Not want merely logistics .... if I could I would but I have a responsibility to be fairly conscious at work and more vitally fit to drive there and back. I function quite well on 6hrs sleep but it does have to be those 6 hours.... unfortunately... of course other Brits have different lifestyles and biorhythms...

[Anguirel]

I'm luckier than you. I get 11:00 to 6:30...but the internet, as I said, slumbers at ten...

[The Barrow-Wight]

I would prefer to see everyone play together in one large game rather than two smaller games, at least for our first attempt at Werewolf. In order to do this, it seems that we would have to adjust our timeframes a bit. The Saucepan Man has suggested 24 hours for each day and night, which would accomodate everyone but possibly drag the game down to a pace that would be detrimental to our enjoyment of it. On the other hand, the 6 hour NIGHT / 18 hour DAY excludes far too many of our members, so we must make some kind of changes if we want to have maximum participation.

Again, I think a compromise might solve our problem.

A DAY/NIGHT cycle of 24 hours is too fast, 48 hours is too slow, so how about a rotating 36 hour cycle?

NIGHT 1_____6 PM to 6 AM (12 hours)
DAY 1_______6 AM to 6 AM (24 hours)
NIGHT 2_____6 AM to 6 PM (12 hours)
DAY 2_______6 PM to 6 PM (24 hours)

This will allow us to kill 4 players every 3 days (instead of 4). With the moderator clearly posting when the next deadline is, this would give everyone the best chance of having time to play. And, really, only the werewolves and seer would be affected by the shorter timespan.

Tell me what you think, and sign up soon! We're only two players short of a game!

[Mithalwen]

I think I could probably cope with that....

[Anguirel]

Splendid. I'd like to sign up. Again.

[The Barrow-Wight]

Enrollment for the first game of Barrow-Downs Werewolf is now closed.

Players for this game are:

• mormegil
• The Saucepan Man
• the phantom
• Primrose Bolger
• Anguirel
• Firefoot
• Oddwen
• Feanor of the Peredhil
• Shelob
• bilbo_baggins
• Kuruharan
• Mithalwen

All players should look for a PM shortly to show your roles.

All werewolves have until 6AM tomorrow morning to decide which one villager will be killed.

The seer has until 6AM tomorrow morning to name a player to dream about.

Good luck!

[Hookbill the Goomba]

I realise that I'll have to await the beginning of the next game, but this looks like a lot of fun! Full of suspense and the unknown! Just what we corpses need on our lowly days on the Barrows!

When is the next game beginning? During that time, I'll probably look at the other games in order to get to grips with it. Looking forwards to it!


P.s. Tol-in-Gaurhoth would probably make for a good Film, don't you think?

[Morsul the Dark]

Can I join in one of these games?

[Legolas in spandex]

I was told I was invited to a werewolf game again under active topic. Is this it? Please direct me. I'll gladly play.

[alonariel]

Sign me up! (Hopefully I'm not too late. I passed out last night when I got home from work and just now checked my email...)

[satansaloser2005]

Dang it! I saw the spam poster's username and was really hoping it wasn't a spammer. Imagine all the good meta-logic you could use on them in a game!

"But baddie is part of their name, for pity's sake. Vote for them!"

When's the next game up? *bounces*

[Kuruharan]

Well, at this point, there is no virtue in holding off the inevitable.

I'm not convinced...but, hey, there's always next game for people who are hung mistakenly.

++ FIREFOOT

[The Barrow-Wight]

With the damning vote cast, the villagers immediately tried to bind Firefoot, but she suddenly ducked beneath their grasping hands and ran screaming toward the forest. “I’m innocent! I’m innocent!” she cried, stumbling in her panic over a fallen log. The frightened group pounced on her sprawled figure and dragged her toward the scaffold. Her eyes bulged in terror as the bag came down over her head.

“This isn’t fair,” she said quietly, slumping to the floor.

The hangman knelt down to pull her to her feet, but Firefoot struck out with sudden tremendous force that sent him flying. The sack ripped from her head to reveal a horrible sight. Her face writhed in agonizing contortions, and her mouth opened wide, extending like the dark mouth of bottomless cave. A fearsome howl erupted from her small body, and she cast a hungry glare on her accusers. Great globs of bloody spittle flew as she screamed curses.

“I knew it!” shouted a villagers, and everyone joined in one massive leap to capture the beast before it broke its bonds. Someone shoved a long knife into her trembling body, and another slammed a great stone against her head. Yet still she fought on.

At last, the mass of people held her fast as she kicked and screamed, but Firefoot could not escape her intended victims. She had waited too long to shapeshift, and they had caught her before she had come to her full werewolf power. The noose went around her neck, and she was pushed through the trap. Together, the mob beat Firefoot with clubs and tools until her shattered body moved no more.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Living

• mormegil
• the phantom
• Primrose Bolger
• Oddwen
• Feanor of the Peredhil
• bilbo_baggins
• Kuruharan
• Mithalwen

Dead

• Shelob (Villager) - mangled by werewolves during Night 1
• Anguirel (Werewolf) - hanged on Day 1
• The Saucepan Man (Villager) – shredded and simmered by werewolves during Night 2
• Firefoot (Werewolf) - Hanged by Day 2

Score
Werewolves: 1
Villagers: 7


Wow! The villagers are doing well, though at least one more will be dead by morning. It is now NIGHT. The one remaining werewolf is going to kill a villager, and the seer is still dreaming.

DAY starts at 6AM.

[Firefoot]

Well, doesn't this make me sad. I've been gone for a few hours (out of necessity) only to come back to find out I've been convicted. *Sigh* It was nice knowing you all... well, most of you all... *coughcoughmormegilcoughcough*

[Firefoot]

I think the BW's idea of timing for the next game is a good one. It would keep the game moving without leaving 24 whole hours for the werewolves to make their decision (the whole time really isn't needed).

That's all. Carry on.

[mormegil]

Just count Firefoot's post as my opinion if I may add it too.

[The Barrow-Wight]

I won't be around on a regular basis for one to two weeks starting this Friday (3 June), so I can't moderate or play in the next Werewolf game. Are there any volunteers? Please PM if you would like to run the next game, and include any ideas you might have to change it up a bit. Changes are not necessary, but they can be fun.

One change I would like to insist on is this:

The moderator is a Villager, and he/she is the one killed the first NIGHT. This is how other sites are playing the game, because it removes gives all players at least one DAY cycle to play. I always disliked that one person was automatically ejected.

[Holbytlass]

ooh, good idea! And seems fair. The moderator can be the village reprobate, that way no one will feel bad about the initial killing!

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

Really good idea. That had been the only problem with the game, as far as I saw it.

I would volunteer to moderate, only sometimes (and Saucy can vouch for this) I become a little mixed up as regards the rules of the game.

But that shouldn't be a problem this time, so if no-one else has his/her heart set on it, I'll offer.

(As long as I don't have to be the village reprobate, Holby)

What I would consider changing is the 24 hour NIGHT. It always seemed a bit much for my liking. I think I preferred the 12 hour NIGHT in the first game. Thoughts?

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

I'd like another shot at the game. And I agree that the 12 hour NIGHT cycle might be a bit better of an idea...

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

Ok, I've had a think about the times and have come to this conclusion: while the 12 hour NIGHT is far preferable for the players, it can be nightmarish for the moderator. So apologies to Saucy for implying anything; I must now admit that I too would have to use a 24 hour NIGHT. Sorry, Fordim.

I am not convinced I would want to use the Werewolf Hunter in the game. I would also prefer to bring back the option of negating any cast votes- i.e. once a vote is cast, you will be allowed to change it, as in the first game.

And remember I'm just speculating, the powers that be might suspect (with good reason) that I am not trustworthy of moderating. But if no-one else wants to do it then I'd certainly like to.

[Nonnacedak]

Hey everyone this is actually my first post but yea Ill be down playing the next game. So count me in!

[Durelin]

Might be a little early, but I'd like to play in WWVIII, if I may...need to keep my record going...

[Gurthang]

Well, I'll be playing, too, but I don't think we can really sign up until whoever is moderating the game comes and tells us when it will start. Still, I've had fun reading WWVII!

[Meneltarmacil]

I will be out of town from Wednesday until Saturday, so if the game starts before then, I may not be able to play.

[arcticstorm]

Since WW VII is finished now I would like a place in the next game.

[Formendacil]

Just a reminder note, regarding my absence:

I (Formendacil), will be gone, definitely, from tomorrow morning Friday 30th, from around 11:00 am (my time, which I believe works out to 1:00 pm, Holby time) until Sunday, sometime in the afternoon. I will thus be absent for the latter part of DAY 1, thru NIGHT 1, and into DAY 2, possibly until very later in that day.

So I will be around for all my votes, but I may otherwise be conspicously absent.

And if you don't believe me, check out my other web-home: www.classic-castle.com . You will note that the Formendacil there, who is a compulsive, daily, poster, will also be gone for that time.

[Holbytlass]

A scenario has been questioned that I need to make sure my answer is correct:

If the ranger happened to choose the hunter to protect, and the wolves choose the hunter to kill, then (I assume) that means the hunters' choice does not die either because the hunter did not die. Correct?

[Márcolië Lamen]

Another related question I just thought of and was wondering.

If the ranger protects who the hunter choose and the hunter is killed the ranger can protect against the hunter killing too, right?

Just thought of that possiblilty so felt like asking

[Lalaith]

Here's another question: the Ranger as we know can't protect the same person more than one night in a row. What about the Hunter, can they want to kill the same person every night?
(I asked my fellow wolves this, last game, and Boro said that he couldn't. But I'm asking again because I seem to remember Feanor, in WW IV, implying that she - quite rightly as it transpired - was gunning for littlemanpoet every night.)

Actually, I must pay a little tribute here to lmp. In the post-mortem of WWIV, he said that because wolf wasn't a role that came naturally to him, his strategy was that during the day he pretended to himself that he wasn't a wolf, and suspected/assessed people just as he would do if he were an innocent. I felt that this applied to me too, so I followed his method. Thank you lmp!