Werewolf (人狼)

Recently my JHS 3rd graders asked me to play Werewolf, so I put this together and thought others may want to play! Some of the below is copied from WikiHow but I changed some rules a little to what worked best for my students. Ultimately, you can role play it how you want!

~Before Playing~

•Min: 7 players, but bigger groups work better. The ALT acts as the game moderator.

•Print out the cards attached at the bottom (I taped them to playing cards so that they weren't see-though + easier to shuffle).

•I added Drunk and Witch to the deck AFTER playing the game through once, as I didn't want to overload the students with too many card types on our first try. If you need more cards, add more Villagers. If you want to play with the extra cards, move the EXTRA SLIDES into the PPT.

• Show the students the PowerPoint. Confirm they understand the different characters, and the rules of how to play.

• Shuffle the cards and deal them out to the players face down. The students can look at their own cards, but must not show them to other students. For smaller classes (i.e. 16 students or less) use 2 Werewolf cards, larger classes use 3 Werewolf cards. If you have more cards than students, remove extra Villager cards, not special cards.

• Prepare some spooky music! I used a loop of a werewolf mix on YouTube to add some ambiance for the night rounds, and -more importantly- to cover up the sound of the werewolves/doctor/seer/witch moving as to not give away their position.

~How to Play~

The Night Round

1. First is the night round. The ALT announces the beginning of the night round by saying, "Good night, close your eyes." And starting the music. The players must close their eyes and put their heads down on the desk.
   • If any player opens their eyes or cheats, they are out of the game.
   • The ALT should make a note of which students are the special characters when they ‘wake up’ during the night round.

2. The ALT says, "Werewolves, open your eyes." The werewolves wake up and point to who they want to kill. The 2/3 werewolves must agree on 1 person. When the werewolves agree on a victim, the ALT takes note of who is being killed and says, "Werewolves, close your eyes."

3. The ALT says, "Doctor, open your eyes. Who would you like to heal?" The person with the Doctor card then wakes up and chooses 1 person that will survive if the werewolves decide to kill them. The ALT takes note of who they select and the Doctor closes their eyes again.
   • The Doctor can choose to save themselves if they want.
   • The Doctor should not know who the werewolves chose to kill.
   • If someone was chosen to be killed by the werewolves and the Doctor chose to save them, the ALT will say, "The doctor healed you." at the beginning of the day round.

4. After the Doctor has closed their eyes again, the ALT says, "Seer, open your eyes, and choose someone." The Seer then wakes up and points at 1 player that they want to know about. The ALT shows the Seer that player’s card, and the Seer closes their eyes again.

5. If you’re playing a game with the Witch card, the ALT will say, "The Witch wakes up." The Witch will point to a player, and either do a heart gesture to heal, or a heart break gesture to poison. The ALT then says, "The Witch heals someone," or, "The Witch poisons someone." depending on what the Witch has gestured. The Witch then closes their eyes again.

Entering the Day Round

1. Once the special characters have made their choices, the ALT says, "Everybody wake up, it’s daytime." and changes the music. The ALT then tells the person who was killed that they are out of the game. Have fun with it! The ALT can make up a story about how the player was killed. In addition, the player who was killed can perform dramatic death throes if they like.

2. The students then discuss who they think is a werewolf. The players can say whatever they want. They can promise, swear, lie, or tell wild stories about who they are. (I usually let them do this in Japanese as they’re low level, and run the rest of the game in English.) If you're playing with the Drunk, they can only make gestures and noises. The Sheriff then takes a vote, and the player that the majority of votes is killed. That player is now out of the game. To keep the game moving, set a 3 minute time limit for the discussion phase to force the other players to make a decision as to who they want to kill off. If the village can’t reach a majority vote, then it’s up to the Sheriff to decide who to kill.

3. The ALT then announces the identity of the person the werewolves killed, and the person the villagers decided to kill. Feel free to skip this step if you want to keep them in suspense. (Side note: My students who died asked if they could be spectators for the rest of the game, I said yes and they remained in their seats watching and not making comments on what they saw. This was ok, but it got slightly more difficult as the game went on to tell which students were dead and who was still alive. I’d recommend having the dead players bring their chairs to the front and view from there with the ALT.)

4. After the players vote on who they want to kill, that person is out of the game and the next night cycle begins. The players close their eyes. The werewolves choose who they want to kill, the Doctor picks 1 person to save, and the Seer tries to find out if 1 person is a werewolf. The game continues until there is a clear winner.
   • If all werewolves are killed, then the villagers win the game.
   • The werewolves win the game if they kill enough villagers to make the numbers even. So if there are 2 werewolves, then they win if there are 2 villagers remaining.
   • If you run out of time and there’s still werewolves left, the werewolves win.

5. Have fun! If there’s a snag or something that doesn’t quite run how you want, just make it up. You're running this show!

Files:

Small files

Werewolf cards.docx (822 KB)

Medium files (requires an account to download) -

More information

Let’s Play Werewolf!.pptx (1.53 MB)