[Rsgames-beta] New game ready for testing, Werewolf!

[Jayson Smith]

Hi,

It's that time again! Time to test a new game! This one is unlike 
anything RSGames has done before, and I had a lot of fun coding it. 
Draft instructions are at the end of this Email.

Known issue:

This game has alternate night and day phases, so it uses two different 
background music tracks. Unfortunately, once you're in a game, the 
background music volume cannot be adjusted. I don't understand how the 
background music system works for unusual cases like this, but hope to 
have this fixed soon.

Please let me know your thoughts, comments, bug reports, etc. If you 
find a bug, please provide a transcript or the relevant portion thereof.

Thanks, and have fun!

Jayson

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

Werewolf is a social game. The game takes place in a small village, and 
the players are the villagers. Unfortunately for this village, there are 
a few werewolves among the innocent townsfolk, and their goal is to wipe 
out as much of the village as they can without being discovered. One of 
the innocent villagers is a seer. This person has the second sight, and 
can detect the taint of lycanthropy. There may also be a protector 
(called a doctor, healer, baner, or wolfsbane carrier in some versions), 
an innocent villager who protects one person from werewolf attack each 
night.

The game has alternating night and day phases, starting with night. At 
night, the werewolves pick someone to tear limb from limb (all 
werewolves must agree on the same person), the seer picks someone to 
learn about, and the protector picks someone to protect from werewolf 
attack for that night. Once night is over, everyone wakes up, the 
werewolves' victim (if not protected) is found dead, and day begins.

Day is very simple. The village wants justice for last night's murder, 
and votes to lynch (eliminate) one of their own. Once a majority has 
voted for one person, he or she is dead and out of the game, and the 
remaining villagers find out if they lynched a werewolf or not.

The game then goes back to night. The werewolves or werewolf pick 
someone to kill, the seer (if still alive) learns about someone else, 
the protector (if still alive) protects someone, everyone wakes up, 
someone (if not protected) is found dead, and the village gets ready for 
another lynching. This continues until the game ends, which can happen 
in one of two ways.

The villagers win if they kill all the werewolves. The werewolves win if 
enough villagers have been killed (by werewolf actions and village 
lynches) that the numbers of villagers and werewolves are equal. At that 
point, the werewolves rise up and openly slaughter the remaining 
villagers. For scoreboard purposes, each player wins if his team 
(werewolves or villagers) wins, even if he's not alive at the end.

The proper strategy depends on each player's role in the game. The 
werewolves want to stay hidden but kill as many innocent villagers as 
they can. During the day, they will almost certainly use misdirection 
and barefaced lies to throw suspicion on other villagers.

The seer wants to stay alive as long as possible so he can learn as much 
as possible, but without revealing himself to be the seer because if he 
does, the werewolves will almost certainly try to kill him that night. 
At the same time, he wants to throw suspicion on any werewolves he 
discovers.

The seer, of course, can reveal himself to be the seer at any time, 
especially if he thinks he's about to be lynched, in order to share his 
knowledge. Of course a werewolf could also claim to be the seer and 
reveal anything he wants.

The protector, like the seer, wants to stay alive as long as possible 
without revealing himself to be the protector. If he's ever in a 
situation where he thinks he knows who the seer is, he will probably 
protect that person at night, which of course leaves the protector wide 
open to werewolf attack.

The protector should ideally never reveal himself to be the protector, 
except possibly in a last-ditch effort to avoid being lynched. If it 
comes to that, and he thinks he knows who the seer is, he should then 
alternate randomly between protecting himself and that person at night. 
Of course a werewolf could also claim to be the protector for similar 
reasons.

The other villagers are just trying to figure out who the werewolves 
are. The only information they have, however, is what others say and who 
dies.

There are no restrictions on speech during the day. Any living player 
can say anything he wants—truth, misdirection, nonsense, or barefaced 
lie. Dead players, on the other hand, may not speak at all, not even to 
correct a matter of record. If someone is about to be lynched and wants 
to say something like revealing the seer's visions, they have to say it 
before the vote goes through. Likewise, as soon as someone is found 
murdered at daybreak, they are dead and out of the game, and may not 
speak. Also, nobody may talk at night.

More information about this game can be found at the following website: 
http://www.eblong.com/zarf/werewolf.html

Note that Zarf's page assumes a face-to-face game, where the moderator 
is one of the players. In this version, the moderator functions are 
performed by the game itself. Since that page counts the moderator as a 
player, its suggestions about odd versus even numbers of players, when 
to add a third werewolf, etc. are off by one in relation to this version.

When a game is created, the game master decides if there will be a 
protector, and if the roles of dead villagers are revealed. If reveal is 
turned on, every time someone dies, their exact role (werewolf, seer, 
protector, villager) is revealed to the rest of the players. If not, 
only their status (werewolf or not a werewolf) is revealed. The 
werewolves, seer, and protector are all revealed at the end of the game.

Bots can participate in Werewolf, although the game is much more fun if 
most or all of the players are humans. Bots have a strategy to play the 
game, but they never say anything during the day, so they can't throw 
suspicion on others nor defend themselves if accused.

When the game begins, the number of werewolves is calculated based on 
the number of players. If there are fewer than six players, one werewolf 
is used. If between six and fifteen players, two werewolves, and if 
sixteen or more players, three werewolves. Once that is decided, each 
player is randomly assigned a role and told what it is, then the first 
night starts.

Once the game is underway, each role (werewolves, seer, protector) is 
prompted to open their eyes and pick someone to kill, identify, or 
protect. If you hold one of these special roles, when it's your turn, 
press Enter to open a menu from which you can choose a player. Enter is 
also used for voting during the day.

If villager roles are not being revealed when they die, the game will 
ask the seer and protector (if enabled) to open their eyes, pick 
someone, and close their eyes, even if these players are already dead. 
This is because in this situation, nobody knows these people are dead, 
so the game keeps up the pretense, delaying for a random amount of time 
in order to fake these roles.

Bots, if present, will use the following strategy in order to keep the 
game moving.

A bot werewolf, if he's the only werewolf, will choose someone at random 
to kill. If there are other werewolves but none have chosen yet, he will 
choose a random villager. Since the werewolves know who each other are, 
he will never pick another werewolf. If he's not the first to choose, he 
will choose a random player from those other werewolves have chosen that 
night. This insures that even if all the werewolves are bots, they will 
come to an agreement on a single player to kill.

A bot seer will choose someone he hasn't learned about yet. What he 
learns is stored so he can use that information during the day.

A bot protector will protect a random player.

During the day, a seer bot will always vote for a werewolf he's 
identified, and failing that, never vote for someone he knows to be 
innocent. All other bots will vote for a random person who has received 
at least one vote already, and if nobody has voted yet, they will vote 
for someone at random. This usually results in many bots ganging up on 
one or two players until a majority is reached, which is another reason 
it's better to have more humans than bots. Note that bots look at the 
status of the game and take action periodically, so even in a game with 
no living human players, if the first flood of daytime votes doesn't 
result in a majority, the bots will eventually reach an agreement.

The keyboard commands are very simple. Enter opens a menu where you can 
choose a player for the appropriate task given your role, or vote for 
someone during the day. T will tell you the current state of the game, 
which equates to whose turn it is. During the day, V will list players, 
who they've voted for, and how many votes they have. Players who haven't 
yet voted and have no votes aren't listed. R will tell you your role, in 
case you missed it when the game was starting.