Speaker 1: Night falls, werewolves, open your eyes and say hello to
Speaker 1: the pack. You're hungry, aren't you? In silent formation, you
Speaker 1: prowl between the farm houses. You smell some warm human blood.
Speaker 1: The pack gathers in the churchyard to confer which of
Speaker 1: the sleeping villagers smells the most delicious to you tonight? Oh? Really? Him?
Speaker 1: All right? Stagger back to your homes, wash the blood
Speaker 1: from your muzzles, and go to sleep. Daybreaks, everyone wakes up.
Speaker 1: There's a sound coming from the town square. The constable's
Speaker 1: bell is ringing. Something terrible has happened. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And during that introduction
Speaker 1: you were either going omg, omg, omg, or you were like,
Speaker 1: what the heck is going on? That's right, uh, for
Speaker 1: those of you who don't know what the heck is
Speaker 1: going on, we were referring to the game of Werewolf,
Speaker 1: sometimes known as Mafia. Right, I came to know this
Speaker 1: game as Mafia. Did you did you do Mafia first?
Speaker 1: Or Werewolf? Werewolf first? And that's one of the reasons.
Speaker 1: I'm a werewolf purist on the game, and I've looked
Speaker 1: down upon those who play it with a Mafia theme.
Speaker 1: Now we will explain the rules to the game if
Speaker 1: you don't know what they are in just a minute.
Speaker 1: But so I came to know this game first as Mafia,
Speaker 1: and I played it when I was in high school.
Speaker 1: I played it with a bunch of friends of mine
Speaker 1: down in their basement, and we would play for hours
Speaker 1: at a time. It could just go on and on
Speaker 1: and on, and we'd introduce all these ridiculous variations, because,
Speaker 1: as you'll learn, once you know the basic rule of
Speaker 1: this game, it can take on any kind of textural
Speaker 1: overlay you want. It can be about werewolves, it can
Speaker 1: be about Mafia, or as we did when I was
Speaker 1: in high school, it can be about elves and orcs.
Speaker 1: And so every time a character dies, I guess they
Speaker 1: wouldn't die that the moderator would say, depart to Valan
Speaker 1: or oh that's that's good. Yeah. So basically, it's a
Speaker 1: social deception or a social deduction party game, depending on
Speaker 1: how you look at it, in which an informed minority,
Speaker 1: in this case, where wolves attempt to overcome an uninformed majority,
Speaker 1: such as medieval villagers you know, or vice versa, depending
Speaker 1: on which team you're you're playing on. Uh. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it is a deceptively easy game to learn. I found
Speaker 1: that just about anybody can get into it, even if
Speaker 1: you're not a gaming person, because you'll frequently I'll frequently
Speaker 1: find myself at a at a a gathering and not
Speaker 1: everybody will be a board game geek. There'll be some
Speaker 1: board game geeks there, but hard to bring everybody together
Speaker 1: on what to play. This is one of those games
Speaker 1: that brings people together. Well. Right, if you're at a
Speaker 1: party and you say, hey, let's break out the D twenties,
Speaker 1: it's time to play Dungeons and Dragons, a lot of
Speaker 1: people are not not just going to be weirded out
Speaker 1: by the geekiness of it, but they're also going to be, like,
Speaker 1: all these rules, I gotta learn how to play. It's
Speaker 1: really for some people they just don't want to be
Speaker 1: bothered with all of the minutia of how to play
Speaker 1: the game and what the hit points are and everything.
Speaker 1: Were Wolf is like a version of D and D
Speaker 1: that takes away almost every single rule and strips it
Speaker 1: down to just pure role playing and basically the only
Speaker 1: dynamics in the game are accusation and lying and killing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and you don't need to you don't need a board.
Speaker 1: You don't need to buy a copy of the game,
Speaker 1: though there are some nice print versions of the game available.
Speaker 1: But basically, all you need or just some index cards
Speaker 1: or scraps of paper and a willingness to either draw
Speaker 1: a werewolf and some villagers on them or just throw
Speaker 1: some ws and v's and hand out the scraps. Robert,
Speaker 1: you have made me this morning an amazing collection of
Speaker 1: Werewolf game player cards on I believe how stuff works
Speaker 1: branded envelopes. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, because you can
Speaker 1: really use anything and you can just throw them together
Speaker 1: at the drop of a hat. So it works well.
Speaker 1: If you're with people at a cabin or something, or
Speaker 1: even in a hotel room, you can grab that that
Speaker 1: Howard Johnson notepad and the Howard Johnson pen and pages
Speaker 1: of the Gideon Bible. Yeah, if you want to go
Speaker 1: sacrilegious on it. Um and you might have to tweak
Speaker 1: the the fluff there a little bit for it. But
Speaker 1: but but yeah, this is this game is just a
Speaker 1: wonderful balance of to put it in those gaming terms
Speaker 1: simplistic mechanics, but the deep mechanics once you start playing
Speaker 1: with it, and and and then entertaining fluff. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they will eventually prove scientifically and technologically relevant, which is
Speaker 1: the interesting thing and what justifies this foray into the
Speaker 1: land of the Werewolves today. But I think for those
Speaker 1: people out there who have never played the game and
Speaker 1: are silk on what what's going on, we should describe
Speaker 1: the rules, right, And hey, I just wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know we played a few rounds of were a
Speaker 1: Wolf with our co workers here in the opposite how
Speaker 1: Steph works, and so we may play a few clips
Speaker 1: for you from those games. And I wanted to give
Speaker 1: a shout out to our co workers Alex, Lauren tar
Speaker 1: Ramsey and Sarah for being really great sports and for
Speaker 1: killing us again and again. Yeah, they really got into it.
Speaker 1: We had to, We had to remove a fair amount
Speaker 1: of cursing, but it was worth it. So at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the game, you gathered together a bunch of
Speaker 1: players and every player is randomly assigned a card telling
Speaker 1: them their role. So for most players, you're going to
Speaker 1: be a villager for a select minority in a group
Speaker 1: of say eight, your select minority might be like two,
Speaker 1: and those players are going to be werewolves. Then the
Speaker 1: game proceeds into two phases that repeat back and forth,
Speaker 1: night and day, day and night. Now a game master
Speaker 1: runs the game and informs everyone when to close their eyes,
Speaker 1: when to open their eyes. So you would say something like,
Speaker 1: al right, villagers, nightfalls and your sleepy medieval town. Everyone
Speaker 1: closes their eyes except for the werewolves. Werewolves, open your
Speaker 1: eyes and indicate who shall die tonight. So the werewolves
Speaker 1: silently confer. They usually with some kind of eye contact
Speaker 1: or pointing game, and they figure out who they want
Speaker 1: to devour or I don't know, just disembowel and leave
Speaker 1: in the middle of the town. Yeah. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the delightful thing about about being the game masters. You
Speaker 1: get to throw in details about how they're torn apart.
Speaker 1: All right, the sun comes up, but not for you,
Speaker 1: horse trainer. He was eating right down to the boots
Speaker 1: and I didn't even get a chance. It's a little
Speaker 1: less pressure now that I'm dead trying to lead the body.
Speaker 1: I need some supplies. Robert, what's your favorite terror parts story? Oh, generally,
Speaker 1: I just have like a portion of the individuals left
Speaker 1: behind because I like the idea that the werewolves are
Speaker 1: becoming so confident that they don't even have to eat everything,
Speaker 1: and they would just they're just as happy to spread
Speaker 1: terror throughout the town as anything else. I'm still so
Speaker 1: full from that policeman last night. All right, So night
Speaker 1: eventually comes to an end. That phase ends how the
Speaker 1: villagers wake up, they find out who has been eaten
Speaker 1: or torn apart in the night, and then they have
Speaker 1: to dish out their own medieval mob justice. Right, So
Speaker 1: the dead villager who has been chosen by the werewolves
Speaker 1: is removed from the game, and I would say, for
Speaker 1: total purity, I think that villager should not only be
Speaker 1: removed from play and can't make any comments, but should
Speaker 1: be banished from the room where everyone is playing, or
Speaker 1: at least into the corner there's got to be some steaks.
Speaker 1: Well I but then you have somebody who gets eliminated
Speaker 1: right away, and well what I usually say is, look,
Speaker 1: you're a ghost now, and you can't talk. You can observe,
Speaker 1: but you can't talk. And it's always amusing when the
Speaker 1: biggest chatter box in the room is reduced to a ghost.
Speaker 1: You're you're the grandpa and the cloud in the family circus.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so, like like you said, day comes around
Speaker 1: and the villagers have to essentially form a mob to
Speaker 1: find the killer and take care of them. And now,
Speaker 1: since these are werewolves, they're very powerful at night. You
Speaker 1: can't stop them at night when the full moon is out.
Speaker 1: But during the daytime, they're just regular humans and you
Speaker 1: can take them to the gallows if you are pretty
Speaker 1: convinced that they're guilty. But how convinced are you? That's right?
Speaker 1: So it comes down to a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of blind accusations, a lot of you know, self interested accusations.
Speaker 1: And the cool part two is that you have werewolves
Speaker 1: in there trying to uphold their cover as a human,
Speaker 1: and they're going to make a case to probably for
Speaker 1: a non wolf because because they know who the other
Speaker 1: werewolf or well werewolves are, ye, why would they accuse
Speaker 1: one of their own. So if you're Alice the werewolf,
Speaker 1: you don't want to accuse Jeff the werewolf. You want
Speaker 1: to accuse Rodney the villager of being a werewolf, right,
Speaker 1: or jump on someone else's suspicion, uh, and then start
Speaker 1: encouraging that anything to cast the suspicion away from you,
Speaker 1: and at the end of all of this, there'll be
Speaker 1: some sort of a vote. The villagers will decide who's
Speaker 1: going to be executed for the crime of lokanthropy and
Speaker 1: then only then and I think rules may vary on this,
Speaker 1: but the way we play it is that at this
Speaker 1: point they can perform an autopsy and they find out
Speaker 1: if that was indeed a werewolf. Okay, So in some
Speaker 1: versions of the game, you don't find out. You don't
Speaker 1: know whether you just executed an innocent villager or a
Speaker 1: werewolf until the end of the game, when it's finally
Speaker 1: revealed who was who. Ah. That sounds rewarding as well,
Speaker 1: because on one hand, with the with the autopsy, it
Speaker 1: gives the person a chance to see like, I told
Speaker 1: you so, I told you I wasn't werewolf, right, But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, I do you're a ghost and
Speaker 1: you can't comment right? Well that I like to think
Speaker 1: that's their last thing they get to shout before they
Speaker 1: drift into the nether realm. Nice. Okay, So you've got
Speaker 1: this day night cycle where somebody, some player dies and
Speaker 1: gets removed from the game every day and every night,
Speaker 1: and the cycle continues until the end of the game.
Speaker 1: So what brings about the end of the game. Well,
Speaker 1: you can tell which team wins if suddenly the werewolves
Speaker 1: out number the humans, right, or in some versions, I
Speaker 1: think if they equal the number of humans. Well, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you've got the same number of werewolves
Speaker 1: and villagers. Yeah, and the villagers don't stay much of
Speaker 1: a chance. Yeah, and then it's just werewolves slaughtering humans
Speaker 1: in broad daylight. Welcome to Werewolf City. Yes. Now, of
Speaker 1: course the regular villagers win once they eliminate all of
Speaker 1: the werewolves in their midst and the moderator can announce
Speaker 1: to them You've gotten the last one. Your village is
Speaker 1: safe for now until the next game starts, which is
Speaker 1: probably in about five minutes. Now, that's the basic game
Speaker 1: of Werewolf form. Fia Mafia is exactly the same, except
Speaker 1: instead of werewolves, their mafia members, the same rules, everything is.
Speaker 1: It's just different texture, yeah, different fluff, which I have
Speaker 1: to reiterate that I think werewolves are tremendously more fun
Speaker 1: because I don't really like I don't like playing my
Speaker 1: my cool parlor game with murderous criminals. I like the
Speaker 1: idea of the fantastic Werewolf's gotta be monsters. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so there are a million different ways you can throw
Speaker 1: some spice into this game, right, People play this game
Speaker 1: with all different kinds of crazy invented third party characters,
Speaker 1: so it's not necessarily just villagers and werewolves. What if
Speaker 1: you add in Robert, give me, give me another player class?
Speaker 1: The one I love the most is the sear. Okay,
Speaker 1: how does that work? The seer has a separate phase
Speaker 1: in the night. So there's the phase where the werewolves
Speaker 1: get to open their eyes and pick out who's gonna
Speaker 1: die and then close their eyes. But then you have
Speaker 1: another phase where the sea or opens their eyes and
Speaker 1: they get to point to one person and the game
Speaker 1: master will give them a thumbs up or at comes
Speaker 1: down about there the presence of lecanthropy, So this gives
Speaker 1: one villager the chance to have secret knowledge. Generally, it's
Speaker 1: you know, the odds are gonna play out that it's
Speaker 1: probably gonna be about who is not a werewolf as
Speaker 1: opposed to who is a werewolf? But then they have
Speaker 1: to be careful about tipping their hand and the argument
Speaker 1: so that that follow exactly. So you say, uh, day
Speaker 1: comes around and you say, well, I know Jeff is
Speaker 1: a werewolf because I'm the Seer and I got the
Speaker 1: thumbs up on him last night. Guess who's going to
Speaker 1: die tonight? Obviously the person who's revealed themselves as the
Speaker 1: Seer right now. There are other variations on the privileged
Speaker 1: Knowledge character. There is a for instance, the Innocent Child,
Speaker 1: and this is when I tend to not use. But
Speaker 1: this one involves one player who gets to peak during
Speaker 1: the night, so it's risky. So instead of having a
Speaker 1: separate phase in the night where you can ask the moderator,
Speaker 1: you have the option if you choose to open your
Speaker 1: eyes while the werewolves are conferring, right, and this gives,
Speaker 1: of course the werewolves a chance to actually spot you spying.
Speaker 1: So it adds this extra extra level to the play.
Speaker 1: I guess now. One way I know I have played
Speaker 1: is with a character that would be a doctor, or
Speaker 1: maybe maybe even better would be the apothecary. Well, this
Speaker 1: is kind of like the Seer, but instead of asking
Speaker 1: the moderator every night, the doctor can choose one person
Speaker 1: to make immune. So say the apothecary, can they wake
Speaker 1: up at a different phase in the night and they
Speaker 1: give a potion to someone and if that is the
Speaker 1: same person that the werewolves have selected. That person, that
Speaker 1: person gets saved by the potion. The werewolf attack does
Speaker 1: not succeed. Oh that's nice. There's one that we sometimes
Speaker 1: use called the Hunter, where they get to take somebody
Speaker 1: down with them if they die, which adds some sort
Speaker 1: of like shootout mentality to the proceedings. Another one, I
Speaker 1: don't man if that happens early in the game, the
Speaker 1: Hunter probably is going to be randomly getting another villager, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's what of the problems with a real
Speaker 1: you know, itchy crossbow finger, you know. So tell me
Speaker 1: about the Cupid, Robert, Oh, the Cupid is one of
Speaker 1: my favorites. So this is just a villager basically, but
Speaker 1: they get a phase at the very beginning of the
Speaker 1: game where they get to secretly pick two players to
Speaker 1: be star crossed lovers. So if one dies and they
Speaker 1: could be they could be a human villager or they
Speaker 1: could be a werewolf, you know, in masquerading as a villager.
Speaker 1: But if the other lover dies, their character throws themselves
Speaker 1: off a bridge. Love knows no boundaries monster them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's so this one also adds that sort of
Speaker 1: crossfire dynamics of whoa, this happened and then something else
Speaker 1: happened as well. Now you can imagine that the strategy
Speaker 1: in this game. This game is odd because at one level,
Speaker 1: it seems like when you start the game, you're just
Speaker 1: going to be making these totally random accusations. I mean,
Speaker 1: what do you have to go on? Maybe you thought
Speaker 1: you heard somebody next to you opening their eyes. I
Speaker 1: mean it's hard. It's hard to have anything to go
Speaker 1: on at the beginning of the game other than just
Speaker 1: mere suspicion. But strategy I do think tends to come
Speaker 1: in more as the game goes on. Yeah, that first
Speaker 1: phase of play, I think they're in my experience, there
Speaker 1: are basically two elements that are gonna work. Unless somebody
Speaker 1: really does creak their chair and make a very audible
Speaker 1: sign that that clues and everyone else. You're gonna have
Speaker 1: existing uh social dynamics coming into play. So like two
Speaker 1: friends who kind of pick each other at each other
Speaker 1: a lot um, they're likely to accuse each other of
Speaker 1: being awarewolf just because other factors. Uh. If an individual
Speaker 1: in the group has a large beard, I found, they're
Speaker 1: likely to to draw the uh you know, the fun
Speaker 1: suspicion of everyone else because there's nothing else to go on.
Speaker 1: What if they've just got dark dried blood on their lips,
Speaker 1: that'll do it too. Now another thing that comes into
Speaker 1: play so is this when when I play it. When
Speaker 1: I am the gamemaster for a game Awarewolf, I generally
Speaker 1: ask everyone to choose a role in the village. This
Speaker 1: is not a game mechanics role, but just a fluff roll.
Speaker 1: So you're just a villager, but you get to I'm
Speaker 1: the dairy farm Yeah, you get to be the dairy farmer.
Speaker 1: Or you're the you know, you're the town fool, you're
Speaker 1: the you work at the winery, you're a monk, etcetera.
Speaker 1: It just gives it an extra level of role playing fun.
Speaker 1: What do you what do you all do here? What
Speaker 1: are you up doing? The demokratic Republic of I'm a tailor,
Speaker 1: but I'm real bad at it. I'm the I'm the
Speaker 1: leacher in the town. I hear that help you prevent
Speaker 1: pantherpy Yeah? Okay, useful? Useful. A lot of industries sprung
Speaker 1: up around this whole werewolf thing. Try since I build coffins, coffins, lechers,
Speaker 1: terrible tailors, what do you do on the town want
Speaker 1: of you werewolves? Yeah, I'm the werewolf groupiece. I don't
Speaker 1: really have a job. I just like go from North
Speaker 1: Catatonia to South Catatonia and I'm just like, look at
Speaker 1: the werewolf remains. So you would not be wanting to
Speaker 1: kill a werewolf or put one on trial or is
Speaker 1: that your thing? Yes? I leave it there. The werewolf
Speaker 1: traumas has really had an effect in the populary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I see that, all right. I'm a warlock. Warlock, Okay,
Speaker 1: do you need any fancy ropes? I can make them uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: I need you to come by my place at three
Speaker 1: to do another werewolf protection spelled werewolves. Midwife an the
Speaker 1: only person do anything. Nobody in this village makes food. No, no,
Speaker 1: So we've got a warlock, we've got a midwife, we've
Speaker 1: got a groupie, we've got a terrible tailor, we've got
Speaker 1: a coffin maker, and we've got a bleacher. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: there's just a voice that tells you things that happen,
Speaker 1: Like right now is the sun sets mazy sky and
Speaker 1: the babbling group comes up. If there are two were
Speaker 1: most among us, let me see your eyes. But this
Speaker 1: can also give people ammunition for making blind accusations in
Speaker 1: the opening phase. Okay, so sometimes the accusations wouldn't be
Speaker 1: truly strategic just in terms of winning the game, but
Speaker 1: they might be playing along with some you know, not
Speaker 1: actually strategic elements that are just part of the fluff.
Speaker 1: So it's this weird mix of rationality and irrationality in
Speaker 1: the game play. Yeah, yeah, I would say so. But
Speaker 1: in terms of player classes, classes that have mechanics attached
Speaker 1: to them, the list just goes on and on. There
Speaker 1: there are tons of fun classes to play with. Some
Speaker 1: of them, you know, they kind of break the game, uh,
Speaker 1: and you decide, well, we're not going to have that
Speaker 1: one again. Other ones introduce new mccans, new dynamics that
Speaker 1: they can just keep you playing Werewolf into the wee hours.
Speaker 1: Here's the one I would go with. Tell me if
Speaker 1: you think this would break the game. The RoboCop. So
Speaker 1: the village has one RoboCop that each night can administer
Speaker 1: harsh justice just to a random individual. Or how does it?
Speaker 1: How does the RoboCop decide? I guess the robocops following
Speaker 1: something you a list of orders. Well, it's by the
Speaker 1: rubric of serve the public trust, protect the innocent, and
Speaker 1: uphold the law, and then maybe a secret fourth category
Speaker 1: of course we don't know. Well, hey, hey Robert, Okay,
Speaker 1: so here's the thing. We've just described. This weird game
Speaker 1: about killing your friends and then accusing your friends and
Speaker 1: then killing more of your friends. Why is this so popular?
Speaker 1: I I've had the experience that whenever you introduced this
Speaker 1: to a group of people, especially if they haven't played before,
Speaker 1: they get ravenous for the game and they're they're like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we gotta play more. Let's let's keep going. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: so very addictive, and and I think the the appeal
Speaker 1: of the game does come down to a few key reasons.
Speaker 1: So some of these we've already touched on. But first
Speaker 1: of all, there's a very low learning curve. Virtually anyone
Speaker 1: can play. Don't have dn D rules, it's just you
Speaker 1: can learn it in five minutes. And also, again, while
Speaker 1: you can brought by some pretty cool print versions of
Speaker 1: the game, everything you need is easily printed out or
Speaker 1: just scribbled on index cars and you're good to go again.
Speaker 1: Howard Johnson, Stationary and pen and you're playing Werewolf. And
Speaker 1: then there's this if anyone out there has ever played
Speaker 1: rock band or guitar hero at a social gathering. You
Speaker 1: know how that can just sort of treat was popular
Speaker 1: for a while. It was, and I always noticed how
Speaker 1: it just turned the room into this is this zombified
Speaker 1: state where people aren't really interacting socially with each other.
Speaker 1: They're only interacting with each other in this this soulless
Speaker 1: presentation on the screen. It's like what was imagined by
Speaker 1: the bad guys in the movie video Drone exactly. Yeah, Werewolf.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, it actually in Courage is social
Speaker 1: interaction among the players as well as varying degrees of
Speaker 1: role playing depending on you know, how comfortable the group
Speaker 1: is with that. But that will that will come out
Speaker 1: organically as you play. And then, like a lot of
Speaker 1: great games, it's deceptively complex, easy to learn, but full
Speaker 1: of new twists and challenges as the players adapt and
Speaker 1: as new optional rules are introduced, So you learn to
Speaker 1: lie better and you get better at spotting the lies
Speaker 1: of others, and if as you're doing a lot of
Speaker 1: back and forth role playing as well, it just gives
Speaker 1: you more and more ammunition. Now I know. There was
Speaker 1: one interesting article about this game that was published in
Speaker 1: two thousand ten and Wired that we both read, and
Speaker 1: one of the things that it points out is that
Speaker 1: this game is tremendously popular among people who work in
Speaker 1: the tech business. That's a kind of odd thing to note, Like,
Speaker 1: why do you think that is? Yeah, this was an
Speaker 1: interesting article. They talked to Frank Lance, director of the
Speaker 1: New York University Game Center, and he pointed out that
Speaker 1: the game sanctions a lot of a titilating social activity.
Speaker 1: So we're you know, we're talking stuff like flirtation, confrontation, betrayal,
Speaker 1: meaning that it's not only great for extroverts because obviously
Speaker 1: a bunch of extroverted theater majors are going to jump
Speaker 1: in and have a lot of fun with this, but
Speaker 1: introverts as well. Uh, it's instantly have license to engage
Speaker 1: in all of this fun social interactions. Yeah, stuff that
Speaker 1: you might normally be very intimidated to do in real
Speaker 1: life is sanctioned within the game. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of direct eye contact and accusing people and being yeah,
Speaker 1: like you said, just being very confrontational. It's appealing to
Speaker 1: do that in a controlled setting for people who don't
Speaker 1: feel much permission to do that in the rest of
Speaker 1: their lives, right. So so Frankie pointed out that this
Speaker 1: obviously ended up appealing to more introverted members of the
Speaker 1: tech industry. However, there's a c net article from the
Speaker 1: two thousand nine that pointed out that that the game
Speaker 1: was also a hit with more of the corporate types
Speaker 1: as well, because sure, you're you're not pitching an idea
Speaker 1: to a room full of investors, but you are a
Speaker 1: secret werewolf trying to shift blame onto an innocent human.
Speaker 1: And that's basic CEO of material, right, That's like what
Speaker 1: they teach in business school. Or you're a seer or
Speaker 1: a child with secret inside or info when you're trying
Speaker 1: to make a purely logical case without revealing your privileged status,
Speaker 1: so the level of social interaction can be seen. It's
Speaker 1: practice for actual villainy, or or just this fun exercise
Speaker 1: that lets you, uh, you know, move social muscles that
Speaker 1: don't get a lot of exercise otherwise. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to get all the CEO hate mail and it's gonna
Speaker 1: be great and like Mark Zuckerberg's right, and then you
Speaker 1: guys are totally biased ps not a werewolf. Okay, So
Speaker 1: I've got a theory about why the game is so appealing,
Speaker 1: And I think it's that it mirrors and simultaneously simplifies
Speaker 1: so many high stakes, real life decision dilemmas because cause
Speaker 1: the dynamics sort of like you just mentioned with with
Speaker 1: the idea of this business. You know, you've got some
Speaker 1: bisbro who is a secret werewolf and trying to pull
Speaker 1: one over on the people who are being disadvantaged by
Speaker 1: what he's doing. The dynamic of the informed minority versus
Speaker 1: the uninformed majority is so common in the real world. Basically,
Speaker 1: this is a description of what is meant by the
Speaker 1: word conspiracy. Oh yeah, it's a werewolf conspiracy. Now, the
Speaker 1: concept of a conspiracy, I think gets a bad rap
Speaker 1: because it gets associated with the more wild versions like
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories tends to mean people who think interdimensional Sasquatches
Speaker 1: did nine eleven. But but there's no doubt that under
Speaker 1: the broad definition, conspiracies exist all around us. Like any gang,
Speaker 1: any criminal gang is a conspiracy. Every network of corrupt
Speaker 1: politicians and people who buy favors from them, that's a conspiracy.
Speaker 1: It's an informed minority trying to get advantage over an
Speaker 1: uninformed majority. Unethical company is of course as we mentioned
Speaker 1: could be described as conspiracies, and in every case there's
Speaker 1: this small group working against the interests of the larger group,
Speaker 1: trying to keep their behavior secret and avoid accountability. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the larger group is trying to root out all the
Speaker 1: people who are working in secret against them. And it's
Speaker 1: entirely possible in all these real world scenarios that this
Speaker 1: will lead to innocent people getting blamed and unfairly punished.
Speaker 1: And so Where Wolf is cool because it reduces these
Speaker 1: most vexing problems in human civilization to this simple party game.
Speaker 1: This really distilled dynamic and one of the one of
Speaker 1: the cool and appealing things about Where Wolf is that
Speaker 1: at the end of the game, you always get to
Speaker 1: find out what actually happened, right, even if you lose,
Speaker 1: there's resolution to the mystery. You know, in our constant
Speaker 1: prosecution of the various mundane conspiracies in real life, time
Speaker 1: after time we find that we can't be certain what
Speaker 1: really happened. You know, the bad guy gets away with
Speaker 1: it and you never find out what they did or
Speaker 1: who they were, or you prosecute somebody and they claim
Speaker 1: innocence all the way to the gallows and you can
Speaker 1: never really be sure you did the right thing. The
Speaker 1: appeal of Werewolf, I think is you get to play
Speaker 1: this dangerous game that we're all constantly playing in real
Speaker 1: life in simulation, and you get to find out for
Speaker 1: sure how well you did at it. Alright, listeners, on
Speaker 1: that note, I'm gonna ask everyone to close their eyes
Speaker 1: as the commercial break session of play commences, and then
Speaker 1: when we come back, you may open your eyes and
Speaker 1: we will discuss the history of Mafia and Werewolf. The
Speaker 1: Warlock goes by the coffin shop three pm. Un He's
Speaker 1: got his uncomfortable robin that the terrible tailor has tailored
Speaker 1: for him terribly. The coffin acres nowhere to be seen,
Speaker 1: so while he's waiting, the Warlock is taking a tour
Speaker 1: of the facilities. Opens a little baby coffin with spider lamps,
Speaker 1: opens a medium sized coffin, empty satinliner. Opens the large
Speaker 1: sized coffin, and the coffin maker is within everything except
Speaker 1: for his face. The Apothecary, I shouldn't have. I don't
Speaker 1: have any direct dealings with her now. The apothecary has
Speaker 1: wanted to be a werewolf for a long long time,
Speaker 1: so maybe we should just kill her. Alright, open your eyes.
Speaker 1: The sun has risen. Now we've established that the clearly
Speaker 1: superior version of this game is the one with the
Speaker 1: werewolf fluff instead of the Mafia fluff. But we've got
Speaker 1: it it. It was Mafia before it was Werewolf. It
Speaker 1: was definitely Mafia before it was where Wolf. Invented by
Speaker 1: a guy named Dimitri david Off. And I've seen nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six in nineteen eighties seven sided I think, I
Speaker 1: guess it was just around that period of eighty six
Speaker 1: eighty seven in Russia, right, Yeah, Yeah, he was a
Speaker 1: teacher in Russia, and I think this adds to that,
Speaker 1: maybe the appeal at the mafia uh motif, I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And he invented it as a psychological exercise for his students. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So he was a psychology student at the time and
Speaker 1: he was teaching high school. And he explains that he
Speaker 1: wanted to teach psychology concepts, but thought that this type
Speaker 1: of game might be better at teaching some of these
Speaker 1: psychology concepts, or at least more appealing to students. Then,
Speaker 1: I don't know, say a traditional lecture might be. I
Speaker 1: can certainly imagine why classes would have more fun playing
Speaker 1: Mafia than they would listening to you talk about the
Speaker 1: latest findings on the science of deception exactly now. Wired
Speaker 1: interviewed David Off in two thousand ten, and it's it's
Speaker 1: a fun article to look up directly, the same one
Speaker 1: we mentioned. I'll try to include a link to it
Speaker 1: on the landing page for this episode. He insisted on
Speaker 1: being interviewed by Wired within the m m O world
Speaker 1: of warcraft for starters. Dude, that's even better than saying
Speaker 1: I'll only do an interview in second life. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he was. He was extremely dodgy with some of his answers,
Speaker 1: so the resulting interview piece spence most of its time
Speaker 1: placing him within the context of his Russian upbringing before
Speaker 1: moving to the United States. So he was born in
Speaker 1: comments Gurowski near the Kazakhstan border, and this was not
Speaker 1: too far from the nineteen fifty seven Uh kissed him
Speaker 1: nuclear disaster that your Noble explosion, which we've discussed on
Speaker 1: the show before, occurred in nineteen eighty six while he
Speaker 1: was designing Mafia. He was teaching high school at the time.
Speaker 1: As we discussed any tap of game to his students,
Speaker 1: And the crazy thing is it kind of just spreads
Speaker 1: out from there. Yeah, And one thing I love about
Speaker 1: this article is it to Stab Publish, is that he's
Speaker 1: about as weird as you would suspect from somebody who
Speaker 1: invented this weird social deception virus that infects people's parties
Speaker 1: all around the world. Now yeah, uh, Like, I know
Speaker 1: I already mentioned video Drome once today, but it makes
Speaker 1: me think, you know, a person who says I will
Speaker 1: only be interviewed within World of Warcraft is like Brian
Speaker 1: Oblivion and video Drome who will only be interviewed on
Speaker 1: television on a television. Oh man, there's so much potential
Speaker 1: to create a horror franchise about some sort of a
Speaker 1: social deception game like this that just spreads, and it
Speaker 1: spreads so easily based on just how addictive it is
Speaker 1: and the various benefits of play, as we've discussed already.
Speaker 1: But but the crazy thing too here is that this
Speaker 1: is largely a pre Internet age which is spreading, so
Speaker 1: it really doesn't start picking up online until after that's
Speaker 1: when it it hits the the u US according to
Speaker 1: accounts that that we were reading. And this is where
Speaker 1: Andrew Plotkin a k aesarf you might know, missarf Uh.
Speaker 1: He he's the one who picked it up in the
Speaker 1: US and updated it with the werewolf fluff and then
Speaker 1: began distributing it spreading the word of it online. So
Speaker 1: he told Wired magazine the following in two thousand and ten.
Speaker 1: I was fascinated with the game design. I had never
Speaker 1: seen a game with such a pure strategic underpinning, no
Speaker 1: mechanics to be strategic about. It was what poker would
Speaker 1: be if you didn't play with the deck of cards
Speaker 1: but bets solely on other people's bets. It shouldn't have worked,
Speaker 1: but it did. I think he's exactly right about that.
Speaker 1: Like it's it's kind of hard to understand what's so
Speaker 1: appealing about the game until you play it. And I
Speaker 1: wonder out there, if you're somebody who's never played this
Speaker 1: game before and you're listening and you don't get it,
Speaker 1: You're like, what is fun about this? It just sounds boring.
Speaker 1: You've got to try it. I suspect your mind will
Speaker 1: be changed, or maybe this is an occasion for more
Speaker 1: hate mail. And I should point out to that the
Speaker 1: game is is so simple that not only is it
Speaker 1: a popular physical parlor game like that where people physically
Speaker 1: gather into space and play with each other. It also
Speaker 1: is played a lot online in online communities because you
Speaker 1: don't have to have a spec. As long as you
Speaker 1: have a basic social interaction platform, like just a basic
Speaker 1: chat room, you can play a Werewolf. Yeah. You really
Speaker 1: don't need much much more, as long as you have
Speaker 1: some method of of randomizing the roles, which is a
Speaker 1: pretty simple programming feat. That's all you need. As long
Speaker 1: as you've got some kind of side messaging private messaging service. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can do it now. Another thing I love about
Speaker 1: Werewolf is how closely it resembles a couple of key movies,
Speaker 1: that one one of which I know that you love
Speaker 1: as well. I know where you're going, but hit the
Speaker 1: first one first. Okay. So there's a nineteen four film
Speaker 1: titled The Beast Must Die. It stars Peter Cushing, a
Speaker 1: thirty four year old Michael Gambon Charles Gray seven. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: he played Blowfield. He was Blowfeld and Diamonds Are Forever,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, he played the Criminologist and Rocky Horror,
Speaker 1: and he also played microft homes on the Jeremy Brett
Speaker 1: Granada Sherlock series. I'm sure he was great at that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was great and it was terrific and everything. He
Speaker 1: is dry as a bone, yes, man, this is a
Speaker 1: very dry British film, as one might expect, and it's
Speaker 1: a it's a werewolf Who've done it based in a
Speaker 1: large part on the Agatha Christie book and movies, um
Speaker 1: and then there were none. So the film climaxes with
Speaker 1: a scene in which everyone gathers in a parlor and
Speaker 1: they're tested with I think a silver candlestick. They pass
Speaker 1: it around to see who's a werewolf. And this is
Speaker 1: the only movie that I know of to feature a
Speaker 1: werewolf break. This is a brief intermission for the audience
Speaker 1: to discuss their theories on who the werewolf is and
Speaker 1: then vote on the werewolf before you get the big
Speaker 1: reveal in the movie. Now, the really great version of
Speaker 1: this would be that the audience vote determines which real
Speaker 1: they load into the projector and becomes the werewolf in
Speaker 1: the final scene. Yeah, I that was not the case, though.
Speaker 1: It was just a chance to discuss what you thought
Speaker 1: about about the movie up to that point. But I
Speaker 1: feel like we need more werewolf breaks in our films,
Speaker 1: even in non werewolf films. Say, for instance, you're watching
Speaker 1: Glen Gary Glen Ross the movie. Yeah, okay, there are
Speaker 1: no actual werewolves in it, but there I think that
Speaker 1: it's constructive to have a point where the audience talks
Speaker 1: about who might be a werewolf. Well, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a burglary scene, like you could say, pause to discuss film,
Speaker 1: and everyone pauses and goes into an extremely profanity lace
Speaker 1: discussion about who broke into the office and stole those leads. Now,
Speaker 1: another great scene that comes to mind that is very
Speaker 1: reminiscent of Werewolf is, of course, the scene in John
Speaker 1: Carpenter filmed The Thing. I love it. It's the best
Speaker 1: the scenes where you do you're doing the test to
Speaker 1: determine who's got thing blood and who's got human blood.
Speaker 1: That's right. If you've never seen The Thing, it's one
Speaker 1: of the best horror movies ever made, and it's it's
Speaker 1: got what's so great about it, apart from just the
Speaker 1: music and the cast and all that, is that it's
Speaker 1: got these scenes where they're trying to figure out who's
Speaker 1: the thing that's right and uh. And in the original
Speaker 1: John Carpenter adaptation and not the original film version of it,
Speaker 1: obviously Howard hawks. Yeah, And in Carpenter's version, they test
Speaker 1: everyone's blood sample one by one, sticking a heated piece
Speaker 1: of copper wire in there to see if the blood
Speaker 1: acts to defend itself, because the blood would act independent
Speaker 1: of the individual, because it's a crazy shape shifting organism, right,
Speaker 1: Each part is its own organism and the thing, right,
Speaker 1: And so that's the test in that version. However, in
Speaker 1: the two thousand eleven remake, which or it's kind of
Speaker 1: a remake, it's kind of a prequel. Uh I thought
Speaker 1: it was still fun. A lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: people kind of ragged on it, but they do an
Speaker 1: alternate version of the test and by checking to see
Speaker 1: who's who lacks amalgam dental feeling of fillings because the
Speaker 1: theory is that the thing can't form inorganic matter or
Speaker 1: can't replicate it on getting matter. What So if you
Speaker 1: practice good dental hygiene, they're just gonna burn you alive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not as satisfying, but but it's still amusing. That's
Speaker 1: kind of my that's my general review of the film. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you're still with us and you haven't just
Speaker 1: paused the podcast to go play We're Wolf with your friends.
Speaker 1: You're probably wondering, what is that stuff we referenced earlier
Speaker 1: about We're Wolf showing up in academic literature. Well, We're
Speaker 1: Wolf is an interesting game from several standpoints, and one
Speaker 1: of those standpoints in in academic research would be game theory, right,
Speaker 1: that's right, Yeah, I mean in general, do you see
Speaker 1: it popping up in a lot of different academic papers,
Speaker 1: A lot of different psychological studies, even AI studies as
Speaker 1: well discussed, and a lot of it just comes down
Speaker 1: to the fact that this is a simple game that
Speaker 1: depends heavily on deception and also social inter interaction and
Speaker 1: observational skills good things to model in computers if you
Speaker 1: are very sinister and is David Off himself points out,
Speaker 1: it's not a game you can master. So yeah, you
Speaker 1: can do a certain amount of math in your heads
Speaker 1: sort of card counting, I guess, but it's only going
Speaker 1: to get you so far, and it's ultimately difficult to
Speaker 1: predict who is going to win. Uh, you know, werewolves
Speaker 1: are humans, which is this is This is another wonderful
Speaker 1: thing about it and another reason why gaming can go
Speaker 1: on till one or two in the morning, because you
Speaker 1: don't reach that point where everyone's figured it out and
Speaker 1: you've you've essentially beat the game, or you've evolved beyond
Speaker 1: this game and you need more complex games. The crazy thing,
Speaker 1: of course about all of this is that the game
Speaker 1: started out as a sort of psychological exercise and he
Speaker 1: comes for comes around full circle and becoming a tool
Speaker 1: in various psychological experiments, or or a tool used to
Speaker 1: generate data sets for psychological experiments. And remember how we
Speaker 1: said that you don't need a board, you don't need dice,
Speaker 1: you don't need any other materials. You just need that
Speaker 1: card the glance at once and then stick in your
Speaker 1: pocket or you know, push up under your your butt
Speaker 1: while you play. That isn't that's another key advantage here there.
Speaker 1: The cards are just initial reference points, so there's really
Speaker 1: no reason to break from communication and immersion with other players.
Speaker 1: This is especially important for studies that factor in gaze pattern.
Speaker 1: So it's in a way, it's it's again it's like
Speaker 1: poker without the cards. It's just the pure social experiment, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't have to look at your cards, you don't
Speaker 1: have to go examine your character sheet. You're just in
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah, like there's a there's a game that
Speaker 1: has some similar style to it called Spyfall that came
Speaker 1: out a few years back, and it's one of these
Speaker 1: that if you're if you're up for the work, you
Speaker 1: can create a pin and paper version of it, but
Speaker 1: you generally have to buy a set. But it's a
Speaker 1: game where there's a lot of fun social interaction, but
Speaker 1: you end up referencing sheets a lot to remind yourself,
Speaker 1: like what are the possible locations to guests in the
Speaker 1: course of play. It's still a fun game, but there
Speaker 1: is a distraction uh element to it that is not
Speaker 1: present in Werewolf. Okay, so we're going to game theory, psychology,
Speaker 1: and artificial intelligence. Let's look at game theory first. How
Speaker 1: how does this game figure into game theory? Well, I
Speaker 1: guess we just need to define what game theory is
Speaker 1: real quick for anyone who's not familiar with it. Uh.
Speaker 1: Its origins lie with John von Neuman and Oscar morgen Stern,
Speaker 1: and they introduced game theory to the world in with
Speaker 1: theory of Games and Economic behavior. So basically, this is
Speaker 1: the study of systems that have differential payoffs and different
Speaker 1: actors within them that have competing motivations. Right, that's right.
Speaker 1: As David k. Levine of the Department of Economics that
Speaker 1: u c. L A. Points out, it's an econom mistake
Speaker 1: on what psychologist would call the study of social situations.
Speaker 1: And you have two branches of game theory broad branches.
Speaker 1: You have cooperative and you have non cooperative. I think
Speaker 1: these are pretty straightforward. And then you have sub branches
Speaker 1: that include decision theory, general equilibrium theory, and mechanism design theory. Now,
Speaker 1: if you've seen papers on game theory before, or explanations
Speaker 1: of game theory before, one thing you're going to see
Speaker 1: a lot of is, for example, tables of payoffs where
Speaker 1: you can have axes along a table that show different
Speaker 1: kinds of decisions you can make within this system. Whatever
Speaker 1: the system is, applies to various you know, vast different
Speaker 1: kinds of situations, but different decisions you can make within
Speaker 1: the system, and what the probability of different payoffs for
Speaker 1: those decisions is. Yeah, they create the creation of, say
Speaker 1: a matrix that shows you what the different payoffs are
Speaker 1: based on different player decisions. Like the classic example of
Speaker 1: this is of course, the the Prisoner's dilemma. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: this is a game where it's a very simple version
Speaker 1: of a game where you don't know what the other
Speaker 1: player is doing, but you can make smarter decisions and
Speaker 1: less smart decisions depending on what the potential payoffs and
Speaker 1: punishments are for different decisions you could make. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: when we say game, it's not a fun parlor game
Speaker 1: now the same my werewolf is. But it's just the
Speaker 1: mechanics of it are simple and and fairly fairly interesting.
Speaker 1: The idea is that you have two prisoners. They each
Speaker 1: were brought in because they're suspected of robbing a bank,
Speaker 1: and they have money stashed away somewhere, and then the
Speaker 1: police are trying to get each one in a separate
Speaker 1: room to turn on the other. So, so rat out
Speaker 1: your buddy and you'll go free. If neither rats, then
Speaker 1: they both got walk free and get their fifty share
Speaker 1: of the stolen money fifty percent. What if I want
Speaker 1: more percent? Well, then you've got to be willing not
Speaker 1: only to rat out your partner, but be darn sure
Speaker 1: that they are not going to rat you out, because
Speaker 1: they're faced with the same problem exactly. So if you
Speaker 1: both rat each other out, then you both go to prison,
Speaker 1: and that money just rots in a hole somewhere. But
Speaker 1: if you rat them out and they don't rat out you,
Speaker 1: then you get to keep all of it and they
Speaker 1: rot in a whole somewhere or at least in the penitentiary.
Speaker 1: So yeah, depending on what the different types of payoffs are,
Speaker 1: there are ways of solving this game. And I guess
Speaker 1: in the case where you're comparing money versus jail time,
Speaker 1: you would have to sort of render the jail time
Speaker 1: in a monetary value or something. But you can work
Speaker 1: out probabilities of what your best decision should be given
Speaker 1: decision matrices like this. Now, as you can imagine, this
Speaker 1: relates to Werewolf, because you have it's a it's a
Speaker 1: great opportunity to try and and chart out the motivations
Speaker 1: and respective payoffs for both villagers and werewolves. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: part of the problem with Werewolf, though, is it highly
Speaker 1: it depends very much what variables you allow to come
Speaker 1: into play, because as you've said, the game is deceptively
Speaker 1: simple at its core, but there's all this stuff going
Speaker 1: on and it that makes it more complicated than the
Speaker 1: simple rules would lead you to believe. Yes, and then
Speaker 1: you have, of course, all these social elements you're coming
Speaker 1: into play as well, especially in an opening round, like
Speaker 1: how do you how do you create a proper probabilities
Speaker 1: for Hey, Ramsey has a really long beard and looks
Speaker 1: kind of like a werewolf, So we're going to just
Speaker 1: blindly accuse him of murdering a villager. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: we would say that in reality, since we know the
Speaker 1: cards are distributed at random, that would be basically a
Speaker 1: random accusation. But I've seen this that that first round
Speaker 1: random accusation pick up a lot of steam because ultimately
Speaker 1: there there are no real world stakes to Werewolf. Of course,
Speaker 1: the question is do players actually do any better when
Speaker 1: they're playing with some kind of strategy than they would
Speaker 1: if they were playing randomly. We'll come back to that,
Speaker 1: all right. So we're not going to hit you with
Speaker 1: a bunch of matrices and equations here, And we also
Speaker 1: can't possibly cover every study, every proproposal, every research project
Speaker 1: to use Mafia or Werewolf, but we're gonna touch on
Speaker 1: some of the interesting studies and it's worth recognizing some
Speaker 1: of the recurring features of these studies. So more often
Speaker 1: than not, you're going to encounter a very boiled down
Speaker 1: version of the Werewolf rules. So no cupids or anything, right, Like,
Speaker 1: generally they're gonna be most interested with just villagers and werewolves,
Speaker 1: no detectives, no seers or what have you, because let's
Speaker 1: face it, those are those are pretty great mechanics, just
Speaker 1: right out of the box. Right. And also we mentioned
Speaker 1: the social dynamics that come into play, and these again
Speaker 1: can be very difficult to model. So you might be wondering,
Speaker 1: as a matter of course, generally, who wins when you
Speaker 1: play this game you've got werewolves versus villagers. Is there
Speaker 1: is there a standard way to predict who wins more often? Well,
Speaker 1: there was a probability paper called a Mathematical Model of
Speaker 1: the Mafia Game in by PYOTR mcdowah uh, and it
Speaker 1: found and this is a big this is a big caveat,
Speaker 1: but it found in a simulation where all killings are random,
Speaker 1: so nobody has any special information. In each round, the
Speaker 1: villagers execute somebody random and the werewolves kill somebody random.
Speaker 1: In this version of play quote, it turns out that
Speaker 1: a relatively small number of the Mafia members i e.
Speaker 1: Proportional to the square root of the total number of
Speaker 1: players gives an equal winning chance for both groups. So
Speaker 1: if your number of mafia members is about the square
Speaker 1: root of the total number of players. It should be
Speaker 1: roughly fifty fifty. But the game isn't always that simple,
Speaker 1: and maybe the maybe players are better than random chance.
Speaker 1: What do you think, Robert, Yeah, I mean, especially when
Speaker 1: you factor in all these just additional aspects of the
Speaker 1: social dynamics. Uh. So the author here, he has another
Speaker 1: quote that I think sums up the difficulties of modeling
Speaker 1: the game. He says, quote a dry mathematical model maybe
Speaker 1: a backbone of a more complex one, but certainly is
Speaker 1: not enough to describe a real game. During course of play,
Speaker 1: citizens gain some information, either by discovering another's identity by
Speaker 1: themselves or trying to catch messages. Furthermore, voting maybe subject
Speaker 1: to some kind of witch hut mentality. Moreover, rarely are
Speaker 1: all players the same. Usually they are ones with higher
Speaker 1: and lower influence on the others. Right, so some people
Speaker 1: are just really good at leading the angry mobs to
Speaker 1: drag somebody to the gallows. Uh. Sometimes people do actually
Speaker 1: get some kind of useful information in the course of play.
Speaker 1: I discovered a section in a book um that goes
Speaker 1: into some of these interesting variations on the game and
Speaker 1: so so Robert, see if you'll follow me down this path,
Speaker 1: I want to see how this comparison to your werewolf experience.
Speaker 1: So the American writer Adam gott Nick, you might know
Speaker 1: him from good essays in the New Yorker. Yeah stuffs
Speaker 1: come up on here before Yeah um. He published a
Speaker 1: book in two thousand and eight called Through the Children's Game,
Speaker 1: A Home in New York, which is basically a memoir
Speaker 1: about life in New York City, especially after nine eleven,
Speaker 1: And in one section of the book he talks about
Speaker 1: this period where his friends have become addicted to a
Speaker 1: variant of Werewolf. Though the version they plays Mafia. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't judge them too harshly. They are in New York. Uh,
Speaker 1: so that's a touchstone for them. And they play in
Speaker 1: groups of fifteen to twenty with three Mafia a narrator
Speaker 1: called God one commandante who's the detective character basically the
Speaker 1: same as the Seer, and then the rest are villagers.
Speaker 1: That's a big game. I like it. So Gotten Ex
Speaker 1: played a lot, and he reports that the villagers win
Speaker 1: more often than the Mafia. So a minute ago we
Speaker 1: saw that mathematically, if if players are doing no better
Speaker 1: than random, you should predict about a fifty fifty chance
Speaker 1: for each team to win. But Gottenix says the villagers
Speaker 1: win more often, and he says that in his experience,
Speaker 1: the best starting strategy if you're a villager is simply
Speaker 1: to look at everybody's face as and as God commands
Speaker 1: you to open your eyes. And basically what you do
Speaker 1: is you just look around and you try to get
Speaker 1: a feeling for who looks guilty, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: he says in his in his experience, this works better
Speaker 1: than you would expect, which if he's correct about that,
Speaker 1: that would indicate that we do have some kind of
Speaker 1: natural guiltiness detection system built in how we recognize other
Speaker 1: people's faces. We might get to more about that in
Speaker 1: a study we look at in a minute. But as
Speaker 1: the game goes on, he says, deductive reasoning becomes more important.
Speaker 1: So you look for, say, patterns and who gets killed
Speaker 1: after accusing whom, So you might start to notice that
Speaker 1: everyone who accuses Alice of being part of the werewolf
Speaker 1: mafia tends to get killed the very next night. You
Speaker 1: can probably guess what's going on. Then again, they might
Speaker 1: just be trying to throw you off the track people
Speaker 1: are crafty um got Nick writes that the ostensible pleasure
Speaker 1: of the game is in testing how good you are
Speaker 1: at lying uh, and how good you are at spotting
Speaker 1: lying behavior, and others like this captivating question. You always
Speaker 1: wonder how good you are at spotting a liar, because
Speaker 1: it's hard to know in real life. Like I was
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, real life is full of so much
Speaker 1: ambiguity in questions that are never resolved, and trying to
Speaker 1: root out the deception of other people. And there's one
Speaker 1: excellent section. I just wanted to read a quote from
Speaker 1: his book and see if it matches with your experience,
Speaker 1: so goth Nick writes, quote, The really fascinating thing about
Speaker 1: Mafia is seeing how much pure irrationality lingers in its play,
Speaker 1: how little real deduction, and how much sheer panic govern
Speaker 1: its conduct. The game quickly breaks down as social groups
Speaker 1: will into small circles of belief, which become lynch mobs
Speaker 1: of mistrust on the next turn. As these small circles
Speaker 1: within the group form and break the emotional authenticity of
Speaker 1: the alliances, The felt pleasure of trusting another is startlingly
Speaker 1: frightening lee real. I think it's Larry. It must be Larry,
Speaker 1: George says to you, filling his eyes with sincere persuasiveness,
Speaker 1: leaning forward, confident, conspiring, and you nod with conspiratorial glee. Yes,
Speaker 1: it must be Larry, look at him, and for that moment,
Speaker 1: the bond between you and George is so intense as
Speaker 1: to overshadow your general and complete lack of interest in
Speaker 1: George as a person. You and George against the mafia,
Speaker 1: But then the quick nightly shadow intrudes, what if George
Speaker 1: is the mafia? Yet the proper suspicions, though they rise,
Speaker 1: rarely override these instant bonds. The impulse to trust and
Speaker 1: go on trusting a confidant is so strong that it
Speaker 1: often survives even overwhelming evidence that the confidant is a rat. So, Robert,
Speaker 1: you've played a lot. Does this match your experience? Do
Speaker 1: you think that that the game really, more than anything else,
Speaker 1: hinges on establishing bonds and connections with other players. Um.
Speaker 1: I think it is a huge part of it, and
Speaker 1: it it gets back to that sort of icebreaker quality
Speaker 1: of the game, because I've certainly played it in settings
Speaker 1: where I don't know a lot of people and they'll
Speaker 1: be like a large portion of the group that is,
Speaker 1: you know, another friend group that I'm not privy to.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to play in a group like that because
Speaker 1: he mentioned connection, the connection that exists during these accusations
Speaker 1: in the in the middle of all of this debate,
Speaker 1: and it does give you this this amazing chance to
Speaker 1: have this really intense connection with somebody that you you
Speaker 1: maybe even not even sure what their name is right now.
Speaker 1: You just know them as oh, well, they're they're the
Speaker 1: they're the the bread baker in the medieval town, and
Speaker 1: that's the that's maybe the as much as you know
Speaker 1: about their life, but you have this intense connection based
Speaker 1: on the game. Um like. By the way, that's another
Speaker 1: reason as a as the game master, I like to
Speaker 1: dish out the different or not dish them out, but
Speaker 1: ask people to choose a role in the medieval village
Speaker 1: because it gives you something to refer to. If you
Speaker 1: don't know their name yet, you can just say, oh,
Speaker 1: if you can't remember, it's Carroll, you can just say.
Speaker 1: And then the cobbler of the town, uh is found dead.
Speaker 1: You don't have to say care, Uh, well, I've got
Speaker 1: an observation along similar lines. Got Nick says another part
Speaker 1: of what's great about the game is it eliminates the
Speaker 1: need for other conversation and small talk with your neighbors
Speaker 1: at a party, he says, quote, instead of telling them
Speaker 1: elaborate social lies in an unformed context, you get to
Speaker 1: tell them elaborate social lies in a formal one. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this comes back to just the immersion of the Werewolf
Speaker 1: gaming experience, because it is often the case where people
Speaker 1: just go they just go all in on it, and
Speaker 1: they're not gonna be talking about anything else. They're not
Speaker 1: talking about the you know, the day that everyone had,
Speaker 1: or or what supper was like. They are just all
Speaker 1: in firing along these these these new communicative pathways. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One more dynamic, he mentions, is that the game is
Speaker 1: actually filled with many games based on existing relationships. Specifically,
Speaker 1: he singles out couples that are playing. Each couple tries
Speaker 1: to catch the other, the partner in that couple lying,
Speaker 1: and focuses primarily on whether they should be suspicious of
Speaker 1: their own partner. Does that match your experience? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, especially in that opening round of play, they
Speaker 1: don't have anything else to go on except existing real
Speaker 1: world social connections. A lot of times and those those
Speaker 1: end up being used and then when people start making accusations, uh,
Speaker 1: those shows social dynamics come into play as well. It's
Speaker 1: another reason I really like the cupid role because you
Speaker 1: get into this like why why does the cupid choose
Speaker 1: these two people to be star crossed lovers? You know,
Speaker 1: because they're actually a couple. Is it because they were
Speaker 1: like teasing each other early in the evening or it's
Speaker 1: just hilarious to think of them as lovers to make
Speaker 1: them embarrassed. Yeah, yeah, so it add that is a
Speaker 1: case where it adds this extra level of of interaction. Uh,
Speaker 1: not only with the in game social dynamics, but the
Speaker 1: real world social dynamics as well. Right, it's it's like
Speaker 1: dad humor, like tell us about your boyfriend exactly. Okay,
Speaker 1: we should take a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the science of deception and
Speaker 1: were wolf death by can't do and Beneath was about
Speaker 1: a human she should never pretend to be a werewolf?
Speaker 1: What does those werewolves triumph? Again? Unfortunately I was the seer.
Speaker 1: I knew that she was away. You never got and
Speaker 1: I never got to be the werewolves. And the first
Speaker 1: thing I was gonna do is declare that I was
Speaker 1: the he here and in point out the werewolf. Right,
Speaker 1: that would have put a whole different dynamic that we
Speaker 1: had not inexperience. That's what I'm saying. You good thing.
Speaker 1: We off with your hand at the beginning. You're being
Speaker 1: very aggressive like it, and I think you're the Werewolf.
Speaker 1: I don't know. How do I think Joe is, because
Speaker 1: he's I'm seriously I would say, no, I'm trying. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to get a vibe on somebody, and she actually
Speaker 1: seems kind of sincere um. I think Robert. I think
Speaker 1: maybe Robert. I again, am just look at that devilish
Speaker 1: grin on his face. This is the grind of someone
Speaker 1: who knows perfectly well that their soul was pure. My
Speaker 1: hard work has a scrubbed away whatever minor satanic delight.
Speaker 1: Look at this now. Earlier we mentioned a Wired article
Speaker 1: from two thousand and ten about the game, and it
Speaker 1: addressed this question of the scientific study of deception and
Speaker 1: what what psychology can tell us about deception within the
Speaker 1: game of Werewolf. According to a gaming psychologist at the
Speaker 1: London Metropolitan University named Simon Moore, there's actually not much
Speaker 1: diversity in our skill at spotting liars. According to More,
Speaker 1: there are not human lie detectors walking among us. Quote,
Speaker 1: if you ask someone on the street, are they better
Speaker 1: at detecting a liar than a police officer, they'll probably
Speaker 1: say no. But a police officer and a general person
Speaker 1: both have a fifty percent success rate at detecting liars. Man,
Speaker 1: that's that's frustrating. You would hope there would be people
Speaker 1: who would be better at it among us. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you certainly when you do start using lie as
Speaker 1: you become even more self conscious, do you think, oh,
Speaker 1: they're going to see right through it? But really they have, Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly so, so that's at first. Though, certain circumstances, according
Speaker 1: to More, do tip the balance and change our ability
Speaker 1: to get away with lies and also to detect a
Speaker 1: lize in others. For example, when you're stressed, it's harder
Speaker 1: to get away with lying. Now we all know about
Speaker 1: the uh the fallibility of the polygraph tests a true
Speaker 1: lie detector test, but there is some truth to the
Speaker 1: principle on which the polygraph test is based. It's just
Speaker 1: not necessarily as reliable as it is often depicted in fiction,
Speaker 1: or maybe even in some people who actually use it.
Speaker 1: But the principle it's based on is that lying causes
Speaker 1: the stress physiological stress reactions in the body that you know,
Speaker 1: messes with your heart rate, it messes with your blood
Speaker 1: pressure and stuff like that. Um, and as you get
Speaker 1: more stressed, it gets harder and harder to lie. So
Speaker 1: this would sort of mean that at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the game, lying might be easy when there's not much
Speaker 1: pressure on you. As other players get eliminated and the
Speaker 1: spotlight narrows on you and the stakes of the game
Speaker 1: go up, More predicts that it's going to be harder
Speaker 1: and harder for people to get away with lying without
Speaker 1: people seeing through their facade. Yeah, because early in the game,
Speaker 1: especially if you have a larger group, it's easy to
Speaker 1: just sort of set there quietly and decide with this
Speaker 1: faction or another. But yeah, it is things. Is things proceed,
Speaker 1: you have to be outspoken, uh, otherwise people are going
Speaker 1: to be suspicious of your silence, right, And that actually
Speaker 1: is a factor in another study I'm going to mention
Speaker 1: in a minute now. More also says lots of our
Speaker 1: lives are lives of exaggeration. I think we probably know
Speaker 1: this from experience. People are more likely to sort of
Speaker 1: turn a half truth into a big exaggerated claim than
Speaker 1: they are to just blatantly say something that is completely
Speaker 1: untrue with no basis in reality. Right, people are more
Speaker 1: more likely to fudge than just to make up a
Speaker 1: total lie, and so blatant lies like I am not
Speaker 1: a werewolf when you know you are are more difficult
Speaker 1: than these kinds of exaggerations. But More also says it's
Speaker 1: easier to lie about straightforward information than to lie about
Speaker 1: your own emotional state. So if you're trying to put
Speaker 1: on a show of outrage, like you know, how could
Speaker 1: you accuse me of being a ware wolf? After all
Speaker 1: of our friendship or whatever, how could you accuse me?
Speaker 1: You quickly exhaust yourself, and More says that a person
Speaker 1: doing that is going to start to falter at this
Speaker 1: deceptive performance. The feigned outrage turns into sort of more
Speaker 1: simple objection, or turns into other emotions that are easier
Speaker 1: to fake, like aggression, and people will pick up on this.
Speaker 1: You start to look like a dirty rat. And this
Speaker 1: is given as an explanation for why the villagers actually
Speaker 1: win more often than a simple random choice would would predict.
Speaker 1: Villagers at some point do start to be able to
Speaker 1: notice people lying? And we have some some studies to
Speaker 1: back this up. Yeah really, yeah, some some studies that
Speaker 1: are generally conference proceedings here, So who knows exactly how
Speaker 1: correct these claims are. But these are some claimed findings
Speaker 1: on how to detect deception that we found related to
Speaker 1: the game Werewolf. So one was called are You a Werewolf?
Speaker 1: Detecting deceptive roles and outcomes in a Conversational role playing game?
Speaker 1: And this was presented at a Acoustic Speech and Signal
Speaker 1: Processing in the I Tripoli International Conference. And the authors
Speaker 1: here created this automated method for detecting players determined to
Speaker 1: be liars by analyzing the acoustic properties of their speech patterns.
Speaker 1: So I thought that was interesting. Can a computer just
Speaker 1: listen to quantitative elements of what happens when somebody speaks
Speaker 1: and say I caught a liar here? So they tried
Speaker 1: to correlate that. They tried to find okay, can we
Speaker 1: can we listen with the computer and see does it
Speaker 1: detect patterns and lying? And they claimed that it did.
Speaker 1: They said their method could successfully predict the lying behavior
Speaker 1: better than chance just by listening to acoustic properties. What
Speaker 1: does this mean for human players. Well, one simple finding
Speaker 1: seemed to be that liars speak less, presumably to limit
Speaker 1: their risk of making revealing mistakes. This is interesting because
Speaker 1: one thing I've I've definitely seen before is you have
Speaker 1: a case where someone's a very outspoken werewolf critic. You know,
Speaker 1: they're very outspoken. They're they're going to be the lead
Speaker 1: detective in finding the murderers in the village. But then
Speaker 1: they'll come, uh, they'll come a game where there's suddenly
Speaker 1: a lot more quiet. They're not making all these acts.
Speaker 1: They're not they're not right at the front of the
Speaker 1: crowd with the pitch for it. And people notice and
Speaker 1: they say, well, John is kind of quiet this round,
Speaker 1: suspiciously quiet, as if perhaps he is a werewolf. Yeah,
Speaker 1: come on, Cynthia, didn't you have some zeal for werewolf
Speaker 1: killing in the last game. Yeah, suddenly you've got you've
Speaker 1: got soft on the anthropy. Yeah. So that does seem
Speaker 1: to be a good tell. People who are trying to
Speaker 1: maintain deception offer less information. They just talk less, And
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy to see why. This study seems to
Speaker 1: confirm that finding. Also, it found that quote the distribution
Speaker 1: of pitch and energy values are higher for liars. So,
Speaker 1: according to the study, if somebody is raising their voice
Speaker 1: in pitch and volume, they're slightly more likely to be
Speaker 1: a liar. Okay, that's interesting because I know that I
Speaker 1: have I sometimes raised my voice when I am I'm
Speaker 1: lying about not being a werewolf. Really, yeah, I'll be like, well,
Speaker 1: how dare you accuse me of that sort of thing? Now,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to be careful, gonna kept keep it low.
Speaker 1: You gotta talk more, and you gotta stay calm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but how do you stay calm about something like this?
Speaker 1: Are dying? How could you accuse me of being awarewolf?
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, I'm not aware wolf, and the reason
Speaker 1: is yeah. And this is where that this is actually
Speaker 1: where the fluff becomes nice sort of villager fluff, where
Speaker 1: you can say, how could I possible be the werewolf?
Speaker 1: I am the cobbler. I have to make shoes all night.
Speaker 1: If I was running around slaughtering townspeople, then everyone would
Speaker 1: be barefoot. Okay, So a couple more. One was a
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight paper by Jao and Sung which
Speaker 1: was called Cues to Deception in Online Chinese Groups. And
Speaker 1: this is a sample group of Chinese players playing online.
Speaker 1: The authors found that quote deceivers tended to communicate less.
Speaker 1: Yet again, so people who talked less are more likely
Speaker 1: to be liars. But also quote showed low complexity and
Speaker 1: this is in their speech meaning for example, shorter sentences
Speaker 1: and shorter words, and then they continue and high diversity,
Speaker 1: so that means for example, more unique words. So their
Speaker 1: analysis found that you want to look for a liar,
Speaker 1: look for the one who doesn't talk much. When they
Speaker 1: do talk, they might talk in shorter sentences or less
Speaker 1: complex words, but use more unique word choice. Interesting. Interesting, Okay,
Speaker 1: one more uh, This was paper called Detection of Deception
Speaker 1: in the Mafia Party Game. Obviously we've got some people
Speaker 1: who don't understand the benefits of wherewere And this one
Speaker 1: presented another automatic system for lie detection. This time it
Speaker 1: was based on facial cues, so the movements of eyebrows,
Speaker 1: eyes and mouths on videos. And this one's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to explain because it's hard to translate what they
Speaker 1: found about facial movement analysis into words here on this
Speaker 1: podcast in a useful way. But just quickly, some of
Speaker 1: their tentative findings apparently showed that I eyebrow and mouth
Speaker 1: movements caused by lying might be those more associated with fear, guilt,
Speaker 1: or delight, while truthful facial expressions might be those that
Speaker 1: you would more closely associate with sadness. Okay, but this
Speaker 1: is all with humans, right, humans, and arguably some werewolves.
Speaker 1: I don't know how the game would change if you
Speaker 1: had real werewolves playing among your party friends, but uh
Speaker 1: that that would be great if wherewolves were real, we'd
Speaker 1: have to get one of these studies and see how
Speaker 1: they played. But what we've not looked at so far
Speaker 1: is computerized players. That's right, and there there are a
Speaker 1: number of cool studies that looked at this. Because another
Speaker 1: great way to use were wolf is is if you're
Speaker 1: studying either lie detecting robots or robots that lie. And
Speaker 1: when I say robots, and of course using the fun
Speaker 1: version of robots, we're actually talking about uh programs and
Speaker 1: or or very soft AI to try and determine patterns
Speaker 1: of human behavior. Well, no, actually, so to clarify, I
Speaker 1: guess we have looked at a couple of papers that
Speaker 1: claim to have a method for determining some kind of
Speaker 1: automated lie detection. We haven't looked at AI liars yet,
Speaker 1: and we haven't, I guess, looked at like robust AI
Speaker 1: players that incorporate information about lie detection or that really
Speaker 1: try to uh to get in the mind of the liar,
Speaker 1: just more like they're detecting correlations and things sorted out
Speaker 1: by the humans. Anyway, let's let's let's look at some
Speaker 1: AI lying Okay, all right, Well, I was looking at
Speaker 1: a presentation titled the Great Deceivers, Virtual Agents and Believable Lies,
Speaker 1: and this was by the US at all. They'll come
Speaker 1: up again, And this was presented at the two thousand
Speaker 1: thirteen proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.
Speaker 1: So they used Werewolf, and they used Werewolf not Mafia,
Speaker 1: so thumbs up. They used it to test a two
Speaker 1: level theory of mind model for virtual agents. Now theory
Speaker 1: of mind, of course, just to refresh, that is our
Speaker 1: basic human ability to conceive the mind state of another person. Right,
Speaker 1: It's absolutely crucial for lying. Right, It's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to lie if you can't imagine what somebody else's mental
Speaker 1: state is, because in lying, you're trying to make their
Speaker 1: mental state not correspond to what you know to be true, Right,
Speaker 1: now why would they be doing this. Well, they wanted
Speaker 1: to see which version, either a a one level or
Speaker 1: two level theory of mind model, would would make this
Speaker 1: actor seem seem more socially intelligent. A one level or
Speaker 1: two level theory of mind model. Okay, so let me
Speaker 1: guess what that is. One level theory of mind is
Speaker 1: I know what you're thinking, or at least I'm imagining
Speaker 1: what you're thinking. Two level would be what I imagine
Speaker 1: what you're thinking about what I'm thinking. Yeah, you get
Speaker 1: into that hole? Would he tell me that this door
Speaker 1: leads to the center of the labyrinth? Sort of a situation.
Speaker 1: So you're you're modeling someone else's theory of mind in
Speaker 1: two level theory of mind. Right, So, so here's a
Speaker 1: quote from the paper, just to boil it all down.
Speaker 1: Two versions of the Werewolf Agent were implemented. One has
Speaker 1: a single level theory of mind, able to represent what
Speaker 1: victims believe, but not what victims think it or the
Speaker 1: other their victims believe. The second has a two level
Speaker 1: theory of mind, able to represent what victims think about
Speaker 1: what it knows, and in general, what victims think about
Speaker 1: the suspicions of others. And then both versions had inference
Speaker 1: rules to determine suspects. Now, I would generally imagine that
Speaker 1: a computer that tries to go two steps down the
Speaker 1: rabbit hole would be better at lying and detecting lies, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's that's pretty much what they found. They found
Speaker 1: that a two level theory of mind where wolf had
Speaker 1: a leg up on single level theory of mind villagers,
Speaker 1: and then a follow up test showed that that indeed,
Speaker 1: the two level theory of mind where wolves were also
Speaker 1: perceived as being more intelligent than a single level theory
Speaker 1: of mind where wolf. And of course this becomes important
Speaker 1: when you're just you're not talking about like how to
Speaker 1: build uh an ai that is going around deceiving people
Speaker 1: or certainly going around killing people in the night, but
Speaker 1: just how to create something that comes off as more human, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it does sort of make you think that
Speaker 1: some of the same skills that are crucial for deception
Speaker 1: and constructing elaborate socialized for the people around us are
Speaker 1: the same skills that are good social lubricants and make
Speaker 1: us get along well with others. That would be a
Speaker 1: depressing finding, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's somewhat true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this sort of thing is ultimately about creating chatbots for
Speaker 1: the future that feel more human when they're scamming you. Now,
Speaker 1: another presentation when we ran across UH from two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: and this was another I Tripoli International Conference UH presentation,
Speaker 1: and this was by Dasuki Katagami at all titled Investigation
Speaker 1: of the Effects of Nonverbal Information on Werewolf. Okay, and
Speaker 1: the wait, is this an AI werewolf or an AI
Speaker 1: werewolf detector? Um? It's the purpose of the research, they stated,
Speaker 1: was to develop an intelligent agent quote a werewolf, which
Speaker 1: is enabled to naturally play where a Wolf with humans.
Speaker 1: So it's it's all about machine learning. Their findings were
Speaker 1: quote we found that non verbal information in the game
Speaker 1: of where Wolf has importance to winning or losing the game, which,
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of an overstatement of the obvious,
Speaker 1: I guess, but here we see it UH proven out
Speaker 1: in this this cool AI werewolf study. Now, people sitting
Speaker 1: at home might be thinking, why are we specifically training
Speaker 1: computers to be good at killing us in the night
Speaker 1: and getting away with it? Well, again, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: more that these are extreme versions of the skills that
Speaker 1: we use every day. You know. It comes down to
Speaker 1: that CEO analogy we made earlier. Uh, the average person
Speaker 1: is not engaging in in these in such titillating versions
Speaker 1: of social interaction, but we're engaging in varying lesser versions
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah, in the same way that you see, uh,
Speaker 1: animals wrestling at play and their children, you know, to
Speaker 1: sort of distill some of the main dynamics of physical
Speaker 1: struggle for survival. I guess this is sort of an
Speaker 1: adult version of wrestling with words and eye contact. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's that it's that most primal of games,
Speaker 1: but done at the the abstract level, at the level
Speaker 1: of social interaction, rather than just rolling around on the ground.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought up the children, Joe, because there
Speaker 1: was I'm gonna mention real real quick here that there
Speaker 1: was an additional study I came across Werewolves, Cheats and
Speaker 1: Cultural Sensitivity by limb at All And this was a
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen conference paper presented at Autonomous Agents and
Speaker 1: Multi Agent Systems. And this one was really cool because
Speaker 1: it basically boiled down to having children observed two different
Speaker 1: virtual games of Werewolf, so they're not playing there's watching
Speaker 1: right there. I think they used the term imaginary friend,
Speaker 1: like you're you're not a player, but you're these are
Speaker 1: real people supposedly playing and you're observing their game. And
Speaker 1: they use the version A inversion B have slightly different rules,
Speaker 1: so one version seems far more unfair, and so basically
Speaker 1: they were using the game is a way to to
Speaker 1: just look at cultural sensitivity or insensitivity and attempting to
Speaker 1: to model it. Uh, it's it's interesting though they said
Speaker 1: that it didn't work out all that well. The exercise
Speaker 1: actually caused the children to reinforce their view that the
Speaker 1: end group is correct and that the outgroup is incorrect,
Speaker 1: rather than seeing that there are different ways to go
Speaker 1: about it, different ways to play the game. I feel
Speaker 1: like that is a common dynamic I've come across multiple times,
Speaker 1: is that studies find some attempts to discourage toxic social
Speaker 1: cognition can often seem to reinforce it. It seems like
Speaker 1: something you've come across before. Yeah. Yeah, And of course
Speaker 1: it brings us back to Werewolf, because what is Werewolf
Speaker 1: but a game that looks at at at toxic social interactions.
Speaker 1: It's the only game where you get to have a
Speaker 1: vigilante mob that kills some bud every single day. That's right,
Speaker 1: all right, So there you have it now. Obviously, we
Speaker 1: would love to hear from everyone out there. Uh. Certainly
Speaker 1: newcomers to the game of Werewolf. If you listen to
Speaker 1: this episode and then you go out and try it
Speaker 1: for yourself, we would love for you to report back. However,
Speaker 1: if you've been playing this game for for years and
Speaker 1: years now, we obviously want to hear about about your
Speaker 1: favorite additional rules and maybe some even homebrew rules that
Speaker 1: you've come up with. Let us know about it. Give
Speaker 1: us your Werewolf tails or your mafia tales and uh
Speaker 1: and and and we'll chat with you about them. Here's
Speaker 1: what I want to hear. If you already have a
Speaker 1: Werewolf group that plays regularly, if you can find out
Speaker 1: a way to incorporate a RoboCop character class in a
Speaker 1: way that doesn't break the game and heightens the tension
Speaker 1: and makes it even more fun, right in, tell us
Speaker 1: about it, and we we guarantee we will read that
Speaker 1: on the air. All right, Hey, head on over to
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Speaker 1: directly as always the old fashioned way, the version that
Speaker 1: might be used by some medieval villagers conferring about how
Speaker 1: to kill a werewolf in their midst. You can email
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