My wolf-brother, why did you betray me? We had the upper hand in the vote tally. Could have been victorious in this game where everybody knew each other.
WTKS!!! (Game Thread)
- Thread starter Bigdbigd03
- Start date
My wolf-brother, why did you betray me? We had the upper hand in the vote tally. Could have been victorious in this game where everybody knew each other.
Ooh drama
Sent from an iPod 65, illegally talked about because of partnership. iPod 65 teleports through years like Back to the Past (Sequel to Back to the Future except in 2096).
Sent from an iPod 65, illegally talked about because of partnership. iPod 65 teleports through years like Back to the Past (Sequel to Back to the Future except in 2096).
I am sorry, but I am gonna express myself short, this was a terrible game gm wise, I "left" because I didnt gain anything but confusion. You first spoiled who my first target was, then you spoiled saying there were "multiple" wolves left...
Okiedoke, my feedback:
From what I can gather, the wolves started with 4 out of 12 players. With at least 2 neutral players, this had every opportunity to steamroll massively out of the town's control. Realistically, this was a game that the wolves were almost certain to win, regardless of how effective the wolverine was.
I still have no idea about what 'taking out the body' does, but if my assumption that it was supposed to make a zombie every night is correct, then the game was completely unwinnable for the town due to the wolf team recruiting 2 players a night. I didn't see any evidence of it in play though, which probably made it at least slightly winnable.
I don't understand why you had the same conversation for people who were dead and people who were jailed, nor why you made a new conversation when people were released. If you were that bothered about exchange between the living and the dead, then you would have banned ghosting and made separate conversations.
Jailing itself, whilst an interesting alternative to the usual smite system, doesn't have the same regulatory force. In this game, we saw evidence that it was being used as a strategy, rather than a punishment, and the leniency really meant that nobody was too bothered about not voting. Once they get jailed, 4 days is a long span of inactivity to lose track of the thread. I also don't recall seeing anywhere that people had their roles revealed upon jailing. That was something that could be exploited in a different way.
In terms of the number of roles - as far as I could tell there were some roles that were on the sheet just to add more roles. The gangster wannabe was basically a villager with a harder win condition - namely he had to survive to a village win - and I fail to see the difference between the normal wolf and the gangster. If there was, then I think the sheet needed a bit more detail to flesh it out.
I think, if you want a TL;DR, that for your first game you should really try to simplify it down - maybe even pure vanilla werewolf with 2-3 wolves, a cop or two and the rest villagers. There is nothing wrong with a simple game, and when you're still getting to grips with what you need to do as a GM, the less you have on your plate, the better. My first game was ridiculously complicated in hindsight and, while it was entertaining to watch, I can't necessarily say that it was as fun for the people playing it.
One thing that really helps is having your own GM sheet to keep track of votes, powers etc. so you aren't scrambling and forgetting things at the end of the day. I've put a link to a very basic template I've used before. It doesn't go to the lengths of some people by recording every action from every day across the whole game, but it has the basics: a way to track who has cast a vote, and who for, a way to tally everybody's votes, and a way to track who is targeting who with powers. You just change the highlighting of a dead player's row to black when they die, and clear all the vote and action boxes at the start of each day. Feel free to take the idea and turn it into something that works for you - I'm just sharing what works for me.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m4rQ8JUCYy-33LBcqtAoCjJAV5PCjS-lv7iKWGizOXw/edit?usp=sharing
From what I can gather, the wolves started with 4 out of 12 players. With at least 2 neutral players, this had every opportunity to steamroll massively out of the town's control. Realistically, this was a game that the wolves were almost certain to win, regardless of how effective the wolverine was.
I still have no idea about what 'taking out the body' does, but if my assumption that it was supposed to make a zombie every night is correct, then the game was completely unwinnable for the town due to the wolf team recruiting 2 players a night. I didn't see any evidence of it in play though, which probably made it at least slightly winnable.
I don't understand why you had the same conversation for people who were dead and people who were jailed, nor why you made a new conversation when people were released. If you were that bothered about exchange between the living and the dead, then you would have banned ghosting and made separate conversations.
Jailing itself, whilst an interesting alternative to the usual smite system, doesn't have the same regulatory force. In this game, we saw evidence that it was being used as a strategy, rather than a punishment, and the leniency really meant that nobody was too bothered about not voting. Once they get jailed, 4 days is a long span of inactivity to lose track of the thread. I also don't recall seeing anywhere that people had their roles revealed upon jailing. That was something that could be exploited in a different way.
In terms of the number of roles - as far as I could tell there were some roles that were on the sheet just to add more roles. The gangster wannabe was basically a villager with a harder win condition - namely he had to survive to a village win - and I fail to see the difference between the normal wolf and the gangster. If there was, then I think the sheet needed a bit more detail to flesh it out.
I think, if you want a TL;DR, that for your first game you should really try to simplify it down - maybe even pure vanilla werewolf with 2-3 wolves, a cop or two and the rest villagers. There is nothing wrong with a simple game, and when you're still getting to grips with what you need to do as a GM, the less you have on your plate, the better. My first game was ridiculously complicated in hindsight and, while it was entertaining to watch, I can't necessarily say that it was as fun for the people playing it.
One thing that really helps is having your own GM sheet to keep track of votes, powers etc. so you aren't scrambling and forgetting things at the end of the day. I've put a link to a very basic template I've used before. It doesn't go to the lengths of some people by recording every action from every day across the whole game, but it has the basics: a way to track who has cast a vote, and who for, a way to tally everybody's votes, and a way to track who is targeting who with powers. You just change the highlighting of a dead player's row to black when they die, and clear all the vote and action boxes at the start of each day. Feel free to take the idea and turn it into something that works for you - I'm just sharing what works for me.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m4rQ8JUCYy-33LBcqtAoCjJAV5PCjS-lv7iKWGizOXw/edit?usp=sharing
Well I saw it as necessary. For the record, what he's referring to here is a convo between me and him about this game in which I voiced numerous... concerns.
- firstly, you were WAY too vocal about like everything. Giving the villagers way too much info. As a GM, you should be generally silent in the game thread except to answer questions, dole out smites, and post recaps, as well as maybe a few comments about funny stuff that happens so long as it doesn't reveal anything.
- Secondly, I have an issue with the jailing mechanic. When a villager neglects to vote one day, his role gets proven and they get safe haven for three days. If someone said "nobody vote today so everyone gets jailed" and people went with it, then everyone who actually posted a vote are either a wolf or isn't paying attention. But besides that, anyone who didn't vote would be proven villagers and any villagers left out of this would be left to lynch the wolves. And if all the villagers did get jailed but not the wolves, then the wolves would have no choice but to lynch themselves. But this is going into extremes.
- Thirdly, the wolves have no idea who the other wolves are. And yet they still need to sync their votes to get a kill. This basically means the wolves were doomed from the start. They had no means of talking to the other wolves, no way to sync their votes, and little chance to actually get a wolfkill assuming every wolf posts a kill.
- This last point isn't really an issue, but the neutrals are essentially a second wolf team that can't kill. It would be cleaner to absorb those roles into the wolf team, maybe tack on a survival requirement to those roles.
- Oh, and the game was rather poorly organised. Many of the mechanics were unclear and didn't get much detail in the rolesheet. For example, jailing. No mention on what jailing actually entails in the rolesheet, only how to get jailed. Furthermore, the whole zombie thing was really poorly explained. From what I understand, you vote for who to take the body out privately and whoever wins becomes a zombie? This seems really strange to me as the werewolf population would explode out of control, but this does more harm than good as each zombie puts out a conflicting vote. Also, if the village did end up killing a wolf, it wouldn't matter as they'd just be replaced with a zombie. So there's this weird system of both sides being horrendously screwed over.
So yeah, next time give your game a bit more thought, and look at other games to see the information imparted by other GMs. I think you'll find that they basically only give out information when it's supposed to be public knowledge or during a recap.