Or as Einstein put it "Gott wuerfelt nicht".
I have seen a lot of dice rolling by the GM during the last couple of games I played, and I think the games were worse for it.
Dice rolling is a long established part of the big game so I think this belongs in a thread about dice rolling, rather than in a thread on a particular game.
The essence of the game is that players have to act on incomplete information, but this should be because they can't trust one another not to lie and backstab, not because the GM is rolling dice. Werewolf isn't backgammon where the skill lies in calculating the probabilities and how you manoever with the roll of the dice. It is about whether you can lie, con and backstab the other players, or catch them out in their attempts to lie con and backstab you. Every time the GM rolls the dice during the game, it reduces the opportunities players have to lie and cheat one another. The GM should be creating opportunities for players to get things wrong by misjudging whether other players are telling the truth or lying. He should not be taking them away by deciding who lives and who dies on the roll of a die.
It is the difference between chaos and randomness. In chaos, if a player knows exactly what the situation is, the outcome is completely predictable, but if they are a little bit wrong, the outcome ends up completely different. Randomness is when the player cant know the outcome, even if they read the other players perfectly, because the outcome depends on the die roll the GM makes.
From the outside, for a non-player, or the GM, or a player that got themselves killed early, there is little to see of the difference. Both random and chaotic games look unpredictable and good. For the player that has survived into the last couple of days the difference is very plain. A random game is insipid, it lacks bite, win or lose there is a vague feeling of disappointment about it. In a word it is BAD. A chaotic game is very different. Is that a wolf pretending to be a dodgy villager so that he doesn't get lynched, or a villager acting dodgy so he doesn't get hunted? There is a whole game full of information and you have to do your best to read it and decide which it is. You misread something crucial and you lose, or you let slip something that looks like a giveaway but is a fake and the opposition buys it and you win. Either way it is exciting, the game has a bite to it. In a word it is EVIL. Werewolf games ought to be EVIL, but of late they have been BAD and worse than BAD.
When the GM is rolling dice but the players don't know it, it is even worse. As a player you are then making decisions based on what you think the other players were thinking, but actually what happened was nothing to do with the players, it was the dice the GM was rolling. This is truly terrible for the game. The GM should never, ever under any circumstances whatsoever, decide something during the game by a die roll without informing the players in advance that is what is happening.
An example.
A GM decides that there should be some unpredictability about which pack hunts when. This is good. It might even be EVIL if it was set up right. The GM decides to do it by rolling a die every night. This is BAD. The GM doesn't tell the players that this is what is happening. This is worse than BAD.
The EVIL way to set it up would be to have the packs play a game of evens and odds. Each pack sends a number to the GM with its hunt order. If the sum of the two numbers is even, then the even pack gets the hunt. If it is odd, then the odd pack gets the hunt. The packs can try and outguess each other on whether to put an even or an odd number on their hunt order. They can try and do a deal so they each of them hunts on alternate nights. They can try and do a deal and then renege on it and to get an extra hunt at the expense of the other pack. The GM announces that this is how hunts are being organised to everyone. The villagers can look at what an outed wolf being bandwagoned puts in the thread and draw conclusions about what sort of deals the wolfs might be trying to make or break with one another. All this adds to the EVIL possibilities of the game and can't happen if the BAD GM rolls dice instead.
I have seen a lot of dice rolling by the GM during the last couple of games I played, and I think the games were worse for it.
Dice rolling is a long established part of the big game so I think this belongs in a thread about dice rolling, rather than in a thread on a particular game.
The essence of the game is that players have to act on incomplete information, but this should be because they can't trust one another not to lie and backstab, not because the GM is rolling dice. Werewolf isn't backgammon where the skill lies in calculating the probabilities and how you manoever with the roll of the dice. It is about whether you can lie, con and backstab the other players, or catch them out in their attempts to lie con and backstab you. Every time the GM rolls the dice during the game, it reduces the opportunities players have to lie and cheat one another. The GM should be creating opportunities for players to get things wrong by misjudging whether other players are telling the truth or lying. He should not be taking them away by deciding who lives and who dies on the roll of a die.
It is the difference between chaos and randomness. In chaos, if a player knows exactly what the situation is, the outcome is completely predictable, but if they are a little bit wrong, the outcome ends up completely different. Randomness is when the player cant know the outcome, even if they read the other players perfectly, because the outcome depends on the die roll the GM makes.
From the outside, for a non-player, or the GM, or a player that got themselves killed early, there is little to see of the difference. Both random and chaotic games look unpredictable and good. For the player that has survived into the last couple of days the difference is very plain. A random game is insipid, it lacks bite, win or lose there is a vague feeling of disappointment about it. In a word it is BAD. A chaotic game is very different. Is that a wolf pretending to be a dodgy villager so that he doesn't get lynched, or a villager acting dodgy so he doesn't get hunted? There is a whole game full of information and you have to do your best to read it and decide which it is. You misread something crucial and you lose, or you let slip something that looks like a giveaway but is a fake and the opposition buys it and you win. Either way it is exciting, the game has a bite to it. In a word it is EVIL. Werewolf games ought to be EVIL, but of late they have been BAD and worse than BAD.
When the GM is rolling dice but the players don't know it, it is even worse. As a player you are then making decisions based on what you think the other players were thinking, but actually what happened was nothing to do with the players, it was the dice the GM was rolling. This is truly terrible for the game. The GM should never, ever under any circumstances whatsoever, decide something during the game by a die roll without informing the players in advance that is what is happening.
An example.
A GM decides that there should be some unpredictability about which pack hunts when. This is good. It might even be EVIL if it was set up right. The GM decides to do it by rolling a die every night. This is BAD. The GM doesn't tell the players that this is what is happening. This is worse than BAD.
The EVIL way to set it up would be to have the packs play a game of evens and odds. Each pack sends a number to the GM with its hunt order. If the sum of the two numbers is even, then the even pack gets the hunt. If it is odd, then the odd pack gets the hunt. The packs can try and outguess each other on whether to put an even or an odd number on their hunt order. They can try and do a deal so they each of them hunts on alternate nights. They can try and do a deal and then renege on it and to get an extra hunt at the expense of the other pack. The GM announces that this is how hunts are being organised to everyone. The villagers can look at what an outed wolf being bandwagoned puts in the thread and draw conclusions about what sort of deals the wolfs might be trying to make or break with one another. All this adds to the EVIL possibilities of the game and can't happen if the BAD GM rolls dice instead.
