Octopus Overlords

What's the best way to improve performance? One good way is to reward success and penalize sucfailure. With that in mind....

Shoot the Moon!

This variant adds a layer of prediction and reward to vanilla Werewolf.

Roles:
Good: Seer (floating), Guardian (may protect non-consecutive self or other)
Evil: Werewolves

Rules:

At nightfall, each non-wolf player submits a guess-- a complete mapping of every player to every role. The player with the greatest number of correct assignments becomes the Seer for that night. (In the event of a tie for most matches, all who tie become Seers for that night.) The new Seer does not learn which of his guesses are correct and does not learn how many are correct. Homing in on the truth earns the right to scan.

At nightfall, the wolf team submits both a kill target and a separate guess about the identity of that night's Seer. If the wolves guess correctly and that Seer is not protected by the Guardian, that Seer becomes that night's kill. Homing in on the truth negates a scan.

Exploit prevention:

To prevent a "chain of custody" on scans, these simple rules allow (but do not guarantee) the possibility of multiple simultaneous Seers. Meanwhile, no Seer knows how many of his guesses were correct, so this number cannot be used to test claimants to Seerhood. This information gap leaves room for wolves to hide.

Optional roles:

Optometrist: Exactly once, by day, can discern whether player P has ever been a Seer.

Kibitzer: Players killed by night remain in the game as Kibitzers who may continue to share their views about how best to map players to roles. (In effect, the prior scans-- if any-- of a player killed at night become both public and trusted).

Thoughts?

I think there might have to be no Seer on the Night before the Last Day. So if there are only 3 players left, it's totally possible both Villagers were Seers. I can't see the Wolves winning in that situation. So make the Village lose their ability at that point.

Also, the Village can have multiple Seers - the Wolves should have a way to get multiple kills. Let them name as many Seers as they want - if their whole list is correct, then they all die. So if there were three Seers and the Wolves play it safe and only submit one name and they are correct than that one dies. If they submit 2, both must be correct but then both would die. If 1 is incorrect, none die. Bigger risk, bigger reward.

I would play just to see what happens.

Stess' suggestion may fix this. I was thinking having all the village guess the same line up therefore we would get all seers. Then have two villagers scan the same person at night. This would clear or implicate half of the village. If there is a dispute between the two villagers that scanned the same villager then we know at least one of them is lying. Coordinate the scans on day 2 and figure it out from there.

bb2112 wrote:I was thinking having all the village guess the same line up therefore we would get all seers.

Yeah, the "tied Seers" mechanism is too easily exploited.

How about: the person with the most correct guesses (in a total mapping of players to roles) becomes the Seer, and in the event of a tie, that night's Seer is selected randomly from among those who tied. If the Seer's list is at least 50% (or 60% or 70%-- whatever seems meet) correct, then a second Seer is appointed for that night, selected randomly from among all other Good players.

I like stessier's idea for the wolves to have multiple kills. Under this revision, his idea would transform into the following rule:

a: if there is 1 Seer and the wolves guess that Seer's identity, then that Seer dies.
b: if there is 1 Seer but the wolves mistakenly guess at two Seers' identities, then no Seer dies.
c: if there are 2 Seers and the wolves guess at only 1 Seer's identity and are right, then that Seer dies.
d: if there are 2 Seers and the wolves guess at both Seers' identities and are right, then both Seers die.
e: if there are 2 Seers and the wolves guess at both Seers' identities but miss 1 or more, then no Seer dies.

On any given night, the wolves also submit a night kill. But any Seer deaths replace that night kill, leaving the initial target alive (unless that target is a Seer and the wolves guess such).

Further thoughts?