UnClassic WW -- Revenge of the Villagers

[Saposhiente]

UnClassic Werewolf
by Saposhiente

For far too long we have allowed the werewolves to infiltrate and ravage our villages. Now, we take the fight to them. We are an elite team of werewolf hunters, coming from villages that had to be abandoned to the wolves or that managed to fight them back. Now, we've geared up, and have set up camp in a werewolf village to drive them out of this land. Only problem is, they're shapeshifters, and now we don't know who's the hunter and who's the hunted...

In a nutshell: This is a classic style game turned on its head. Wolves outnumber villagers. But because these are not just ordinary villagers, but ready werewolf hunters, these villagers have stronger voting power and take multiple night attacks to kill. They're no longer just nobodies to be eaten up day and night; now, every villager matters, and their protections from nightkills allow them to speak their minds without fear. Each side has simple powerroles that fill similar purposes to Classic roles, but in a different way, to work with the flipped setup. You can learn most of what you need to know in the Role Summary below, or you can read the full rules along with some advice in the rest of the sections. With so many wolves, they can now afford to try wild gambles to catch out the villagers; who knows what exciting plays they will have in store? Find out soon by playing UnClassic Werewolf!

Spoiler: Role Summary

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Team Village: All villagers start with 1 armor. The first time they are nightkilled, they instead lose their armor. When you are lynched, if you still have armor, you can give it to another player before the end of the night. Remember, there is no private communication with dead players.

Powerroles: All villager powerroles have a voting power of 1. The first time that the wolves nightkill a powerrole and are not stopped by a Baner, that powerrole loses their powers even if they are protected by their Armor, and it is publicly announced that a Villager magical item was destroyed, but not which one.

The Swordsman (Vigilante): Each night, you can attack a player, and unless protected by armor or a power they die. Your kill is indistinguishable from wolf nightkills.

The Archer (Careless Baner): Each night, you can protect a target player other than yourself from nightkills.

The Alchemist (Supervoter): Twice per game during the Day, you can increase your voting power for that day by +6.

Strongmen (Villager): Strongmen have a voting power of 3.

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Team Wolf: Wolves learn each other's identities at the beginning of the game. Each night, the wolves vote to kill a target player. Unless they are protected by a Baner, targets with armor lose 1 armor and any powers they had, and otherwise the target dies.

The Alpha (Transferable Alpha): You have a voting power of 3, and are immune to night kills. When you die, the wolves elect a new Alpha the following night.

The Devil (Invincible Baner): You have a voting power of 1. Each night, you can protect a target player other than yourself from nightkills. You are empowered by the wolves; as long as any other Wolves live, you are immune to lynches and nightkills. You cannot become The Alpha.

Wolves (Wolf): You have a voting power of 1. Once per game, during the Day, you may increase your voting power for that day by +1.

Spoiler: Roles in detail

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Nightkill announcements: If a night attack fails, unless it causes a powerrole to lose their powers, nothing is announced; not even the target of the kill learns that they were attacked.

Spoiler: Team Villager: 40-49% of players

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Objective: Kill all wolves.

All villagers start the game with 1 Armor. Armor protects you from one night attack (by the wolves or Vigilante); like Baner protection, it is not announced why the kill failed or who was targeted, but unlike Baner protection, a wolf kill that is stopped by armor still removes a powerrole's powers. When you are lynched, if you still have one or more Armor, you are informed and can give one Armor to any other player (If you had 2 or more Armor, the rest is wasted). It is announced publicly that you gave armor to somebody, but nobody learns to whom (not even the person who receives it). You have until the end of the following Night to decide whom to give your armor to, if anyone. Remember, there is absolutely no private communication with dead players. If a wolf receives Armor, it protects them from one Vigilante kill, or if they still have it when they are lynched, the other wolves learn this and vote on whom to give it to. Like a villager death, it is announced that armor was recovered from them, but not who received it, and a maximum of one Armor can be recovered.

Powerroles: All villager powerroles have a voting power of 1. The first time that the wolves nightkill a powerrole and are not stopped by a Baner, that powerrole loses their powers (and are informed of this) even if they are protected by their Armor, and it is publicly announced that a Villager magical item was destroyed, but not which one.

The Swordsman (Vigilante): Each night, you can kill a target player. Identically to the wolf nightkill, nothing happens to targets protected by a Baner or other power, targets with armor lose 1 armor, and otherwise the target dies. Unlike the wolf nightkill, if you accidentally kill a Villager powerrole, you do not destroy their magical item causing them to lose their powers. Announcements of your nightkill are indistinguishable from the wolf nightkill. If you lose your powers or die during the night, your kill still goes through on that night.

The Archer (Careless Baner): Each night, you can protect a target player other than yourself. They are immune to all nightkills on that night.

The Alchemist (Supervoter): Twice per game during the Day, you can increase your voting power for that day by +6. You may use both of your activations on the same day, and you may cancel your use of your power before the Day is over. While your voting power is increased, you ignore the Two Vote Minimum rule.

Strongmen (Villager): Strongmen have a voting power of 3. During the Day, they may choose to reduce their voting power to 1 for that day. If the vote is tied at the end of the day, the candidate targeted by the most Strongmen is lynched.

Spoiler: Team Wolf: 51-60% of players

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Objective: Kill all villagers, or make that inevitable. You also win any kind of stalemate where there are any Wolves still alive at the end of the game.

Wolves learn each other's identities at the beginning of the game. Each night, the wolves vote to kill a target player. Unless they are protected by a Baner, targets with armor lose 1 armor and any powers they had, and otherwise the target dies.

The Alpha (Transferable Alpha): You have a voting power of 3, and are immune to night kills. During the Day, you may choose to reduce your voting power to 1 for that day. When you die, the wolves elect a new Alpha from among them the following night. During the night, you may cede your role as Alpha and become a Wolf; if you do, there will be no Alpha during that Night and the following Day, and the wolves will elect a new Alpha the following night.

The Devil (Invincible Baner): You have a voting power of 1. Each night, you can protect a target player other than yourself. They are immune to all nightkills on that night. As long as any other Wolves live, you are immune to lynches and nightkills; if you are lynched, it is announced that The Devil was lynched, but your identity is not revealed. You cannot become The Alpha.

Wolves (Wolf): You have a voting power of 1. Once per game, during the Day, you may increase your voting power for that day by +1; if you become The Alpha, this power is lost.

Spoiler: Additional rules

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Phase length: 48 hour days / 24 hour nights.

You may vote publicly or privately in green to extend any phase by 24 hours. It takes five votes in favor to extend a phase, plus an additional vote in favor for each vote against extending the phase. Voting rules for phase extensions are subject to change with warning.

Voting: Vote to lynch by placing the target's name in red. At the end of the day, the total amount of voting power (which depends on the voter's role) pointing at each person is secretly tallied, and the person who received the most is lynched.

Autolynch: Players are autolynched after missing three days in a row, or after missing two days in a row when they had already missed at least two other days. If I feel that the game is stagnating I may implement more aggressive autolynching, and keeping a low profile as a strategy is frowned upon. Players will always be given a 1 game day (72 hour) PM warning before being autolynched. Autolynched players may be replaced if replacements are available.

Private communication: PMs are allowed between living players, but the Narrator must be included in all private communication. Players are encouraged to make quicktopics to avoid flooding the narrator's inbox.

Tie votes: If the lynch vote is tied at the end of the day, the candidate targeted by the most Strongmen is lynched. If it's still tied, the candidate targeted by the most Villagers is lynched. If it's still tied, the tie is broken randomly.

Actions in advance: You may submit votes and night actions in advance, including choosing whom to give your armor to, or automatically following another player's votes. When you do so, you may request protection from autolynch on days you vote in advance for, within reason.

Two vote minimum: Players cannot be lynched by a single vote, unless that vote holds a majority of the voting power among living players.

Narrations are not a source of clues: Narrations are based only on public information. Narrations may explain events in entirely false and misleading manners; their interpretation of private information is based only on how I would like to write the story.

Respect: Players should respect each other and speak nicely even when they disagree, though they need not mince words voicing their disagreement. Players who are seen as making the game unfun and continuing to escalate conflicts after being warned may be autolynched if necessary.

Have fun!

Spoiler: Design notes and strategy tips

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Villagers: An important upshot of the Armor system is that the wolves effectively have two different ways they can use their nightkill: They can hunt for powerroles, only breaking the armor of each target before moving on, or they can kill players they need dead. Spending a second kill on a target is necessary if they want to silence the opposition, but unless the first kill was baned the second kill is guaranteed not to find any powerrole, and it sends a clear message to everyone that the wolves needed this person dead, unless the Vigilante had already broken their armor. In short, the wolves really don't want to eliminate players, and any villager that can force the wolves to kill them twice has been a huge asset to the powerroles. Even better, with a careless baner and the ability to transfer Armor on death, active villagers might take three or more kills to take down. Meanwhile, the wolves are incentivised to try to pretend to be highly active villagers, as that will help them to potentially trick dead Villagers into giving them their Armor, and they will not be seen as suspicious simply by surviving for a long time. Hopefully the players who would talk more in Day if only it wasn't risky to their health will really be able to duke it out here.

Swordsman: You are the most important Town powerrole, filling the role of the Seer from Classic, except when you hit wolves, they're killed so you don't have to spend a day lynching them, and when you hit villagers, they lose an armor but survive. So it's very important early on that you use your power every day, though you need to be more careful than a typical Seer--targeting infamous players could get punished by a Devil bane or by removing the armor on a key villager. Unlike the standard seer however, you become less powerful as the game goes on, because there will be three wolves every night who are immune to kills, and as the player numbers dwindle this will be a larger and larger portion of the wolves. The question for you to answer is at what point does the odds unfavorable enough that it's no longer worth using your power.

Wolves: The wolves get to really have fun with their role here because they truly are expendable. Lynching wolves 50% of the time simply isn't good enough for the villagers, so wolves can even go so far as to sacrifice themselves just to trick the village into lynching one villager. If a powerrole comes out, you might expect to see multiple counterclaims. Really, it's your playground. Go nuts. All I ask is that you don't try mass inactivity as your strategy for exploiting strength in numbers--that is the most boring possible strategy, and if you do it the game will be boring. For once in your wolf career you get the opportunity to go crazy and not be too sad if you crash and burn, so live a little! A big factor in who will win is whether the new Daytime dynamics will help the Villagers, because wolves are forced to hop around and avoid having too many wolves on the same wagon, or they'd be caught with their weak voting power, or whether wolves can use their majority in numbers to their advantage, and manipulate and misdirect the village.

And finally, I give you The Sapo Guarantee: My games run like clockwork. In my history of narrating I have never been late to update, and short of a power outage or medical emergency I guarantee I'll keep the game running smoothly through to the end.

Game starts soon.
Player list:

1. Elenna
2. Duck999
3. Sprig
4. Ramsus
5. Fleeing Coward
6. Thematthew
7. BasketOfPuppies
8. GAAD
9. Flaming Eagle
10. Robert Blackletter
11. Logic
12. Deathslayer7
13. Luizeu
14. Pelican
15. reaverb
16. Yumori Zatsuken
17. Syldar
18. Mustiado
19. AvatarVecna
20. Maleceptor
21. Rain Dragon
22. JohnTheSavage
23. Caelestion
24. Cuthalion

Autolynch replacements:

• TFT (replaced Maleceptor Night 1)
• Xihirli (replaced Sprig Night 2)
• Lex-Kat (replaced Mustadio Day 3)
• Internet Flea (replaced JohnTheSavage Day 4)
• C'nor
• Sign up to be a replacement! First to sign up is first to get in.

[Elenna]

I'm in!

[Duck999]

I'm in or I'm not 999 ducks.

[Sprig]

Looks amusing. in

[Ramsus]

I'm in, but I'm not 999 ducks.

[Fleeing Coward]

So if we successfully lynch a Duck before the game starts Duck is not in?

[Thematthew]

So if we successfully lynch a Duck before the game starts Duck is not in?

This is a logical fallacy, as he can still be in and not 999 ducks. The only time it is wrong is if he is not in and is 999 ducks.

[BasketOfPuppies]

We're in. C'mon guys!

We're *huff* coming.

Whats the deal Spot? The walk from the school wasn't THAT far.

Shut. Up. Mentally. Strong. Not. Physically.

Besides, Bongo even had to carry the basket, and you don't hear him complaining, do you?

Yay, I helped!

[GAAD]

Huh. This might be interesting. Count this WWNewb in.

[Cyber Punk]

Count me in, then count me in again!

[Robert Blackletter]

In please, thank you

[Logic]

A few questions, with more wolves than villagers, how do you make up for the fact that the wolves mostly control the vote? The bonus voting power doesn't look to be enough to counter it. Are the wolves in "cells" rather all in contact with one another? How is the win determined when normally wolves win when they initially outnumber the villagers? When a villager loses their armor at night, is the rest of town notified that they were the one targeted, or is the loss of armor not revealed to the village at daybreak?

Count me in, but without the above questions answered, I am a tad skeptical of how this will be run.

[Deathslayer7]

My question is this: Is it smart to give the wolves an unkillable power role? No less a seer that is unkillable? You are already adding armor to Villagers, but I think an unkillable seer is waaaaay better.

[Luizeu]

I guess a way to counter wolves power would be a town ressurector (reanimator?).
Well, I'm in!

[Pelican]

In because this is too interesting to pass up.

[Saposhiente]

My question is this: Is it smart to give the wolves an unkillable power role? No less a seer that is unkillable? You are already adding armor to Villagers, but I think an unkillable seer is waaaaay better.

It's an unkillable Baner--Devil is just flavor (They escape lynches by magic). Once the Swordsman dies their power becomes useless, and unless they are extremely tricky with Town (hats off to any wolves that can manage a double Devil lynch), they'll only waste one lynch. Making them unkillable balances the game so that the Swordsman doesn't come to dominate the game if he stays alive for too long.

- - - Updated - - -

A few questions, with more wolves than villagers, how do you make up for the fact that the wolves mostly control the vote? The bonus voting power doesn't look to be enough to counter it. Are the wolves in "cells" rather all in contact with one another? How is the win determined when normally wolves win when they initially outnumber the villagers? When a villager loses their armor at night, is the rest of town notified that they were the one targeted, or is the loss of armor not revealed to the village at daybreak?

Count me in, but without the above questions answered, I am a tad skeptical of how this will be run.

It would take a 3/4ths majority of wolves to have control of the vote, minus a few wolves due to extra votes--instead the wolves just have a slim majority. They are closer to controlling the lynch at the start than in a typical game, but this is balanced by the fact that random lynching is much more likely to hit wolves. Before the game I will run computer simulations of possible wolfcounts given then number of players to determine what is balanced. Wolves win when it is inevitable that they will kill all villagers; this might happen if they take control of the lynch, or if they neutralise both the Swordsman and Archer and have more Wolves alive than the sum of Villagers alive and the amount of Armor they have, so that they have nightkill inevitability. As detailed in Roles in Depth, when a nightkill fails, unless it causes a powerrole to lose their powers, nothing is announced; it is unclear whether there even was a nightkill, much less the target.

[reaverb]

I'll play, thanks for the PM.

I think the deadline for villagers moving their armour if lynched should be the Night after their death. Dead Villagers aren't going to gain any information between Night start and Night end, so this wouldn't affect the gamestate at all, just give villagers more time to get their actions in.

[Yumori Zatsuken]

I'll join in.
Hopefully I don't say that i'm the Villager just like in Reverse and get killed.

[Syldar]

I shall join! Quick questions though:
Do strongmen have armor?
Does anyone who loses armor become a plain villager?

[Saposhiente]

I'll play, thanks for the PM.

I think the deadline for villagers moving their armour if lynched should be the Night after their death. Dead Villagers aren't going to gain any information between Night start and Night end, so this wouldn't affect the gamestate at all, just give villagers more time to get their actions in.

Yeah, I had actually originally written it that way in Dream WW, but changed it because it didn't make sense for dead players to take actions here. But I'll write that in, under the idea that they're just submitting their action retroactively.

I'll join in.
Hopefully I don't say that i'm the Villager just like in Reverse and get killed.

Don't worry; the Villagers have control of the lynch here, so everyone is pretending to be a Villager.

I shall join! Quick questions though:
Do strongmen have armor?
Does anyone who loses armor become a plain villager?

Strongmen are villagers and therefore have armor.
Strongmen are not powerroles, and therefore do not lose their extra voting power when they lose armor. The idea is that the three powerroles each have magical items enabling their powers, which are destroyed by wolf attacks along with armor.

[Mustiado]

I'll play, if there's room.

[AvatarVecna]

Certainly an interesting concept, although I'm concerned with how well it'll be executed. If you'll have me, I guess I'm interested.

[Saposhiente]

I'll play, if there's room.

Of course there's room you silly goose

[Luizeu]

Does it have a date to start?

[Saposhiente]

Does it have a date to start?

TBA. It'll be in 1-2 weeks, depending on the pace of recruitment.

[Maleceptor]

If you're still recruiting for this game, I'm in. Sounds really interesting.

[Rain Dragon]

I'd also like to play. I must watch this, in any case. I'm curious how such a setup will work out.

[Saposhiente]

Game will start on Thursday, Oct 1

Sign ups are still open! Come quick; the last 2 people to sign up will be autolynch replacements.
If we reach 30 signups, we will have 3 autolynch replacements.

[JohnTheSavage]

Yeah, I'm game for this. In.

[Caelestion]

I haven't posted here in nearly eight years, but this set-up sounds really interesting. Damn you, Mafia!!