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So we are at Midnight Cooking Madness Extreme, and I am here with David Ronan from Wired and one of the things that I've learned at Stream was a game called Werewolf. And so I'm going to have David explain a little bit about it.
Werewolf was a game of cunning and deep psychology that is really popular at geek events, and you'll find, especially when you've got Israeli geeks over there, people play it for hours was in the middle of the night.
It's a game which is designed to see how you trust or mistrust your fellow players. So as a group if you're may a dozen maybe 13, 14 sitting in a circle. And there's a moderator who gives everybody a piece of paper which says whether they're a villager or a werewolf. Now there are usually two werewolves and their job is to try and kill all the villagers.
And the villagers must try and avoid the werewolves. And there are two extra roles. One of them has the ability to heal themselves and stop the werewolf killing them, or to heal somebody else, they are called the healer, and the other one is called a sia and they have the ability to know who is a werewolf and the game works in two stages.
There's the night stage, where everybody's eyes are closed and then there's the day stage, where everybody's eyes are open and the sly, cunning game starts. So at night the moderator makes sure everybody is tapping their knees to make a noise to distract them and they've shut their eyes and the moderators says, "Werewolves, wake up!" And the werewolves, usually two of them, lift their heads and open their eyes so they can see who each other are.
"Werewolves, choose a villager." And between them they agree on a villager and they point to that person. "Werewolves, go to sleep!" So the werewolves shut their eyes. "Healer, wake up!" The healer lifts their heads, and they can choose who to heal, themselves or somebody else. "Healer go to sleep." And then the moderator says: "Sia , wake up!" And the Sia can choose to ask the moderator, "Is this person the werewolf?" And the moderator nods or shakes his head.
And then it's morning and everybody wakes up, the village wakes up. Except one person is dead, killed by the werewolf. They have to move away. Then the daytime is spent debating which one person in the group is being nominated by the villagers to kill because they're a werewolf. Except the villagers generally don't know who the werewolf is so they have to ask various questions.
And it's how somebody answers the question that often determines whether the village is suspicious of that person. And if you are a really bad actor and really bad liar, often the villagers can flush you out. But they may not. And it's a game of skill as well because the werewolves team up together to try and cast the attention elsewhere.
So when, finally, the villagers have been nominated and seconded a potential werewolf. The group votes on them and the majority vote means they are excluded, they are dead. And then it's night time again. And the fascinating element of this is however smart you are. You could be tricked quiet easily and the game can go on all night.
And there is a famous game which Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia was playing, I think with Jeff Bezos of Amazon, at one of the O'Reilly conferences where they almost came to blows.
Wow.
So play Werewolf, but be careful.
Thank you very much.
Did I kind of get it right? I think I
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