Werewolf Game – Online Moderator Tool

Werewolf (also known as Mafia) is a social deduction game for a group with one moderator. Most players are secretly good; a few are secretly wolves who hunt the others at night. This tool is the moderator's assistant: it deals the roles, walks the table through the night, and keeps score of deaths, badges and votes. The conversation, bluffing and voting all happen face to face.

Setup

• Pick a board (role composition). Classic Chinese-community boards: 9 players (3 wolves, Seer, Witch, Hunter, 3 villagers), 10 players (3 wolves, Seer, Witch, Hunter, Guard, 4 villagers) and the standard 12-player board (4 wolves, Seer, Witch, Hunter, Idiot, 4 villagers, always with a sheriff).
• One player is the moderator (called the god) and does not play. Everyone else takes a seat number; seat order is the speaking order.
• Deal one secret role to each player. In this tool each player privately opens the card on the device, memorizes it, and passes the device on.
• Agree before starting whether you play edge kill (wolves win when all gods OR all villagers are dead – the modern standard) or city kill (wolves must eliminate every good player).

The night

The moderator guides the wake order. This tool uses: Guard, then Wolves, then Witch, then Seer, then a silent check on the Hunter. Some tables swap the Witch and Seer order – pick one and keep it all game.

• Wolves open their eyes, recognize each other and choose a victim by hand signs. They may choose an empty knife (no kill).
• Guard protects one player from the attack. Protecting the same player two nights in a row is usually forbidden.
• Witch is shown the victim and may spend the antidote to save them, then may spend the poison on someone. She holds one of each, and can use at most one potion per night.
• Seer checks one player and is told good or wolf by hand signs.
• If the Hunter was poisoned, he loses his gun; any other death lets him shoot.

The day

Dawn reveals the night deaths (or a peaceful night). Players who die on the first night give a last word; later night deaths usually do not. On day one of 12-player boards, candidates run for sheriff; non-candidates elect them. The sheriff fixes the speaking order, votes are counted at 1.5 for the sheriff's ballot, and the badge is passed to another player (or destroyed) when the sheriff dies.

After clockwise speeches, everyone votes. The player with the most votes is exiled and gives a last word. A tie sends the tied players to a PK: they speak again and the table revotes; a second tie usually means no one is exiled.

Special roles

• Hunter: on any death except poison, reveals and shoots one player.
• Idiot: if exiled by vote, reveals and stays in play without a vote; night kills and poison end him normally.
• Wolf King: a wolf who, when exiled (board-dependent), may reveal and take one player down.

Winning

• Good wins when every wolf is dead.
• Wolves win under edge kill when all gods are dead or all villagers are dead; under city kill only when every good player is dead.

For the moderator:

• Read each night step aloud exactly as shown and keep the same order every night. A consistent rhythm prevents accidental leaks.
• Confirm the witch's potions, the hunter's gun and the guard's protection limits before game one. Most table arguments come from undeclared house rules.
• Use the death buttons immediately when the table reacts – the log is your memory for last words, badge moves and PK rounds.
• On a tie, make the tied players speak in turn and revote; declare the no-exile rule in advance.

For good players:

• Claim roles early and precisely. A seer who checks and reports every night builds a chain of verified good players (gold water); a fake claim that contradicts the real one is a jump duel the table must resolve by logic.
• Track the kill math. Under edge kill, ask each dawn: are the gods or the villagers closer to extinction? That tells you which deaths matter most.
• Protect information asymmetry: the witch's save, the hunter's gun and the guard's read are hidden assets – spending them early can be worth more than voting first.

For wolves:

• Agree on a story before dawn. Wolves win by controlling the narrative, not by killing fastest; an empty knife that frames a quiet night is often stronger than a risky kill.
• Decide the jump plan in advance: who claims seer, who backs whom, and when the Wolf King self-destructs if your board has one.

Werewolf traces back to Mafia, created by Dmitry Davidoff at Moscow State University in 1986 as a psychology-department experiment. Andrew Plotkin adapted it into Werewolf in 1997, and the 2001 French card game The Werewolves of Miller's Hollow carried it into living rooms worldwide. Chinese communities later built the competitive system this tool implements: fixed boards (9, 10 and 12 players), sheriff elections, edge-kill versus city-kill rules, and a rich vocabulary of tactics.

This page follows the classic offline philosophy of the format: the game lives in the conversation at your table, and software can only help with the hidden information. Like a deck of role cards, it deals identities, guides the moderator through the night, and keeps an honest log. It deliberately has no online rooms and no AI players – werewolf is a people game.

Everything runs locally in your browser on a single device. Pass it around during the deal, keep it in the moderator's hands during the game. No accounts, no network play, and no scary artwork – just a cleaner version of passing one phone around the table.