Hello! In the first week of EDL 290T, the class played Ultimate Werewolf. In this game, people are assigned roles. During night phases, players are called upon, one role at a time. The player of each role is able to make a decision that influences the game. As the game progresses, those that are werewolves remove players from the game while those who are not werewolves, try to discover who the werewolves are.

This is a game that I was already familiar with, but only had experience playing in a small group of no more than six people. I really enjoyed playing this game with over 20 people. Having a large group of people made it more challenging. One of the most interesting aspects of our group’s game of Ultimate Werewolf was that, for the most part, none of us knew each other! This was the first class meeting. Ultimate Werewolf is a very social game where people need to attempt to read into other peoples’ minds. This was especially tricky by not knowing the other players. People not knowing other people also made individuals uncomfortable and hesitant to actively participate, which made the game even more challenging.

This game provides people with many leadership opportunities, regardless of their role. During the day phases, the villagers try to hunt down the werewolves while the werewolves attempt to blend in. In our game, from the beginning, a few people were very vocal. These people tried to use their roles and their knowledge of other peoples’ roles to help guide others into making decisions that best helped the group. Even if people playing this game know each other, people may be intimidated to speak up due to a fear of becoming a target. Those who spoke up early on acted as leaders by helping others progress in the game and by making others more comfortable to speak up.

I believe this is a great family game, but more than a family game, I think this would be great for coworkers to play. This game would change the roles that people may have in their job hierarchy and would allow people to see from different perspectives. Within work environments, it is important that people are able to understand other peoples’ opinions and collaborate. Ultimate Werewolf is definitely a game that gets people to think critically and work with others. This is a great game which I would recommend to any group of people!

Hi! This past week in EDL 290T, we played two games: Hanabi and Mental Blocks. I am choosing to write about Hanabi. I really enjoyed Hanabi. Hanabi is a card game. Similar to Uno cards, the cards in Hanabi have a color and a number. And similar to Solitaire, the goal of Hanabi is for the players to work together to play the cards of each color in order of lowest to highest. Unlike any other game I know, Hanabi has a specific twist; players cannot see their own cards. In Hanabi, players hold their cards facing away from themselves. Players have to rely on hints from the other players to know which cards they should play.

Being unable to see your own cards is possibly the greatest challenge in Hanabi. Players do not know what cards they have. By using tokens, players can give other players clues that can describe the color or number of specific cards. Only one hint can be given for token, and after use, a token is no longer usable. Players quickly run out of tokens, making it more difficult to know which cards you may be holding. Tokens may be regained if a player discards a card. What is difficult about that is that you may not know which card you are discarding, and it may be a card that you need to use for the game. Not being able to see your own cards is a great challenge that certainly makes Hanabi stand out among other games.

With Hanabi, I feel that leadership is spread among the group. Players have to collaborate and work together to find the best ways to tell others which cards they should play. Individual leadership can become present in this game. Players are able to help others figure out if they should use hint tokens or discard. When someone plays a card that cannot be played, the players lose one of what could be thought of as their four collective lives. If the group makes four mistakes, the game is over. As the game progresses and more mistakes occur, it is important that players activate leadership responsibilities by better guiding others.

I would recommend this game for a group of friends. I could see this game being played at small get-togethers and parties. I think this could be a fun game where friends have to better communicate with each other. Friends could also add restrictions to this game, such as one player being unable to talk, which would make the game more challenging and more fun. I recommend this game for groups of friends, and I hope to play it with my friends.

This week, we played both Hanabi and Mental Blocks in class. Both were interesting games that required everyone’s cooperation to complete and win. As someone with little to no board game experience, this was my first time playing cooperative games since I was a young child. These two were a great introduction to the topic and were more fun to play than I expected. For the purpose of this post, I will discuss my experiences with Mental Blocks.

Mental Blocks was challenging, although my group excelled at the game and finished every shape well before time was up. The hardest part of Mental Blocks was the restriction. On the first round, we were able to touch all shapes and colors and arrange them to show our team what the card looked like from individual perspectives. After the restriction, we had to get creative and ask someone on our team to touch a certain block for us, or even better, use two blocks that we could touch to pick up the third. In general, the “leader” of each round was the person who had the card that identified the shape of the structure. For our group, Nico got that card two out of three times and became our designated “leader.”

This game was a great introduction to cooperative games, and the fact that it required thought and cooperation made it that much better. I will have to refer this game to my boyfriend, Camron, as he enjoys mental games and would have really enjoyed playing this game in class.

-Alexandra Bartkoske

In week one of EDL 290, we played Ultimate Werewolf. I’ve played Ultimate Werewolf before, as well as many games like it. It’s a Mafia-style Hidden Role Game, where players try to remove all hidden bad guys (in this case werewolves) from their ranks. Each night, the werewolves pick off village team players, with the ultimate goal of outnumbering them. This format puts a pretty high amount of pressure on the players. If the good team does nothing, they will lose, and if they do the wrong thing, they will lose faster. This makes the village team desperate for any information it can get about what the right players to vote away are. So naturally, one of the common strategies of werewolves is to use this desperation against them so that they vote themselves away instead of finding anyone from the other team. People that like bluffing, acting, and high stakes situations tend to like this game- My brother falls into this category. People who don’t mind these things and like strategy and deduction may also like it- This is sometimes me, when playing with people I know well.

The most challenging part of the game for me personally is the pressure, and the reliance on social skills and bluffing. While I love the strategy (I know many of the strategies that can be used by different roles or permutations of them across different versions of the game), I find myself in trouble when I don’t have the time or information to execute one effectively. This becomes more difficult as my role becomes less useful. In fact, I find normal Villager the most difficult role in the game. You have no information of your own to collect, and no role claim to save you if you get called out. You also don’t have the safety of a few other teammates who know who you are and will try to vouch for you. Mechanics-wise, you are truly alone and in the dark. You could sit with the knowledge that your hands are tied and do nothing. But… It’s boring to do nothing, and you came here to play a game. Plus, in a group that doesn’t know you well, you’ll generally be called on this anyways (I hate the people who call on ‘the quiet person’ as someone to be suspicious of! Mostly because I am always that person, even when I’m a village aligned role!). So, you want to try and offer the group something, even if it’s just guesses based on what you think could be tells or strategies in action. It’s a delicate balance, and one that’s easy to mess up. It’s hard not to go overboard and call for votes you don’t know will pan out, especially when you feel there is no other information on the board and the game is being lost. When I called for votes that ended up removing normal villagers from the game, I had no defense for why I had done that other than ‘I thought they seemed suspicious’. Ironically, that made me seem suspicious, just as their random votes had made them appear to be in my eyes. I had fallen into the exact same trap as they had and all I could do was watch the rest of the group vote me out the next day.

As well as being extremely involved and strategic, Ultimate Werewolf is a game that has excellent lessons about leadership within it. First, the voting process highlights the difference between leader and individual. One person’s skill or knowledge means nothing if they cannot convince anyone else to vote with them. But the crowd is often fickle, especially in a group of strangers desperately looking for each other’s tells. Added on to this is the nature of game itself, which discourages them from sharing what they know openly and honestly, lest they be targeted by evil roles or even good roles who have chosen not to trust them for whatever reason. Speaking to offer knowledge, leadership, or even a hunch immediately singles you out from the crowd, and that takes bravery. But bravery can only get you so far, if your goal is to win the game. It also takes a certain amount of intelligence to know just when to reveal your thoughts to the other players. Sometimes the Seer is better off speaking as soon as they have a hint, and sometimes they are better off trying to find more than one wolf before they reveal their role. And sometimes a villager is best of not trying to take charge of a vote when they know they have little to contribute other than blind guesses. Overall, I think if you can learn when and how to step up in a game like Werewolf, you can learn when and how to step up in a myriad of other situations. There’s likely to be a lot less pressure to speak up, after all, knowing that there probably aren’t werewolves or paranoid villagers hanging on your every word.

-Sam Hartzell

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe may be an interesting play, but it’s also one of many secret roles in the game Ultimate Werewolf. In this game, each player is assigned a hidden role from a select list of cards. These roles may very based on player count and interest in certain aspects of the game (ex. a role called Cupid, who makes two players fall in love and die together, may be added into the game, but is not required for gameplay).

The story of Werewolf is that all players live in what is seemingly a quiet and peaceful village. One morning, all villagers awaken and go to the town square at the same time (as villagers typically do), and discover a body that has been mauled to pieces by werewolves. Immediately, everyone in the village begins pointing fingers and trying to figure out who among them is a werewolf.

Werewolf is a game that consists of 2 teams: The Werewolves and The Village. In order to win, the Werewolves must control a majority of the town (done by killing village members and remaining unsuspicious) and the village must lynch every werewolf, ensuring the safety of the village. Although roles may vary from game to game, every game must have at least 2 werewolves, a seer, and a variety of villagers. Other roles may be added in to make the game more challenging for either team, or for just pure fun. Take Virginia Woolfe, for example: Viriginia herself functions as a normal villager, and doesn’t necessarily directly affect gameplay. However, Virginia is special in that she chooses somebody that is afraid of her; so afraid of her that if Virginia dies (either via werewolf or a town lynch), that person becomes so mortified by the fact that Virginia’s ghoul is now chasing them around and also dies. Although you may think this is a good tactic to use to kill a werewolf by killing Virginia, Virginia must pick her target before the game has started, and has no idea what that person’s role may be. If Virginia dies, there is a possibilty that the Seer may also die.

The most challenging part of this came is, funnily enough, also the most boring part of the game: being a regular Villager. Unlike the rest of the roles, regular Villagers have no special abilities. Unfortunately for villagers, claiming Villager as a Werewolf is the safest bet, and villagers claims are often hung by town. Villagers have two options in this game: they can claim a unique villager role and hope that nobody counterclaims them (which they will) or fight their hardest to convince the town they are who they say they are (which never works). As a villager, you have to be willing to accept that you will die, either via town lynch or werewolf, and you also have to hope that your friends will be up to play another round of Werewolf so you can get a fun role.

Leadership is a key quality for both teams in a game of Werewolf. You have to be able to speak up for yourself and for your known team members or you will get hung. Masons are a good demonstration of this skill. Masons also function as regular villagers, but they know who the other Mason is. When the game begins, if anyone mentions the word Mason or hints at the Masons, they die. In our game, we ended up lynching a Mason because he could not claim his role without dying. His other Mason, who was silenced at the time, should have defended him, but could not.

I think that my friend Alec would like to play this game because he enjoys hidden role games in which he can create chaos. I could see him liking any of the roles this game has to offer (yes, even villager) and really just giving it his all. Overall, I think that this is a great game to start any class with because it gives people a chance to know each other and feel a little more comfortable before diving into the material.

The first game that we played in our EDL 290 Class was called Ultimate Werewolf. A game similar to “Mafia” which involves making deductions using social clues, given by the other players, in an effort to win the game. As this was my first time playing such a game, it was confusing at first, but also interesting in watching how social dynamic took root quickly in the game. In my opinion, in terms of winning the game, this was the hardest aspect. As this was the first game that we played this semester, we were not familiar with the other players. As such, we were unaware of the personalities, behaviors, or “tells.” In a game of social deductions, this handicap contributed to mob mentality atmosphere very early in the game. As we had no idea who the enemy was, and no idea who each other were, the players’ paranoia was quickly heightened, and the decisions that were being made among the group become less and less rational as the game continued. It was this paranoia, and the uncertainty of who one can trust, that led to individuals choosing one of two actions. Either to take initiative and place distrust on another individual, or rather, contribute minimally and follow the mob. In our game, I took the latter approach and chose to bury my “enemy” status within the crowd. In doing so, it allowed me to survive till the end. Though at the cost, of being unable to support my team against the other players.

Ultimate Werewolf conveys many aspects of leadership. For example, as stated before, there were two roles a player could have taken: either to take initiative or follow the mob. Leadership is not about a title, but about one’s impact on a community. In this regard, either roles can have a significant impact on the community as proven by the second and third follower from the “Leadership from a Dancing Guy” video. Another aspect of leadership that can be found by playing Ultimate Werewolf comes from the notion of individuals speaking in order to persuade the minds of other players. In order to successfully place distrust on another player, or displace the distrust on you, one must be able to speak to other hearts and convey their reasoning so that others follow behind.

This is a game that I would take back to my residence hall and use as a corridor event for my residents.