Game Session Report 1: "Are You a Werewolf?"

"Are You a Werewolf?" is a game where players are divided into two teams: villagers and werewolves. There is one person who stays on the side and is the narrator, who oversees the game and makes sure that the game is played correctly and knows the assigned identities of each player. The game is played in rounds signified as days, where werewolves conspire and eliminate a villager per night while the villagers have to find who among the players are the werewolves and lynch during the day. This is a game of reading others, being accused, and knowing how to deal with being accused. Villagers can easily wrongfully accuse and lynch fellow villagers because the werewolves have to rely on secrecy and cunning in order to persuade the fellow players that they themselves are not werewolves, allowing them to strike for another turn. The villagers are not completely in the dark, as there is one villager who is a see'er, who at each night can confirm with the narrator whether or not a single selected player is a werewolf. The See'er can try to guide the village to deliver rightful prosecution, but is always under risk of being compromised and killed rather quickly in the night by werewolves. Each turn ends when someone is lynched. The game is over when the number of villagers is the same as the number of werewolves.

The game was pretty fun, even when played among people who are relatively strangers. If requires players to tap into what they know or have b learned of human actions and reactions and how to deal with them. In an exciting and sometimes frightening way, the dynamics of the game can feel like what one could expect during a 17th-century witch trial: accusations towards others can be as simple as "he looked at me funny," "she's been rather quiet" or "you are awfully quick to accuse." The first few rounds were heavily directed by James, our instructor that introduced the game to us, but after a few sessions, some of the players among us grew comfortable enough with the rules that the main group split into two different sessions, each with a game master who had played a only few sessions, demonstrating how quickly the game can be learned. Overall, pretty fun and can even be used as an ice-breaker game.