Game Creation Guide

By Fiver 

The prospect of creating a TWG from scratch can be a daunting one indeed. Where do you begin? Well, chances are that your decision to apply to host a TWG didn't just happen overnight: it's probably something you've been considering for a while now, meaning that you've got lots of ideas you'd love to begin working with. That's excellent! While there's no set way to go about building a game, here's a formula that I've found works for me:

1. Developing Game Objectives

This might come as a surprise to some, but most good games start with one or more central objectives in the host's mind; that is to say, the host has an idea of what strategies players will use and what challenges they'll face during game play, and of what roles, items, and game structure will allow this to happen. You've probably had lots of experience playing TWGs in the past, and have lots of opinions as to what worked well and what didn't in each game. Consider using that as your starting point. Is there a particular role, say, you'd like to see used more prominently or simply differently than it has been in previous games? A number of past TWGs have been role-focused, such as TWG VII: Where There's a Will, There's a Wolf (Painters) and TWG IX: TWGbay (Item Forgers). TWG XII: Can't Trust Anybody is another example: The game is clearly Seer-focused, with two Seers, two Millwrights, two Master Wolves, a Wolf Spy, and an orange Human King among its seventeen players. In this case, host's objective might have been to force players to make alliances without the benefit of conclusive seering results.

Your objective needn't necessarily be role-oriented; you could decide instead that your objective is to build a game around a pre-established set of characters, say from a video game series or television show, with roles that correspond to those characters' skills, attributes, and personalities. Be mindful, however, of the danger in adhering to such a format. It may be tempting to stick to the pre-established canon too closely, granting characters powers that are redundant, useless, or overpowered, and throwing off the balance of your game. TWG VI: Fo' Cerealz is an excellent example of a game that borrowed a pre-established theme (breakfast cereal mascots) and turned it into an excellent TWG, with roles and special powers that suited the characters they were attached to.

Regardless of what route you choose to take, it's important to have a solid grasp of what you want to do with your game. This will make developing your game much, much easier, and help to avoid the kinds of structural flaws and loophole exploitation that can doom an otherwise solid game.

2. Brainstorming Roles, Items, and Structural Concepts

With an objective or three in mind, the skeletal structure of your game is already in place. Now, all you've got to do is flesh out those bones with a little meat. Let the creative process begin! If you decided to build a game around a pre-established canon, you've got the perfect template with which to work with already: start jotting down every character you can think of, then try to determine what role would best fit him or her. If no particular role comes to mind, consider creating one yourself. Mix and match powers if you like, but know that you may end up reducing a player's abilities during the balancing phase, to avoid overpowered roles. 

If your initial objective was role-centred, or centred around some element of game structure, start with the roles you want to focus on, then build outward, adding complementary roles and modifying them as they see fit. Perhaps you'd like to make a game with two Guardians, whose guarding powers, if both used on the same player at once, will kill a random wolf if that player is attacked during the night. Perhaps you'd like to make a game with two Vigilantes who can only kill in tandem, by targeting the same player overnight. Perhaps you'd like to make a game with second-order cardflipping and two special humans who, instead of seering or painting, have the ability to swap two players' colours, with those players receiving a PM from the host informing them of their new colours. 

While there's no right or wrong way to build a game, be mindful of the temptation to add roles just because they sound cool, and not because they fit in with your objective. If you'd like to add a Medium to your game, for example, consider exactly what information he could gain by contacting players after they've been eliminated from the game. If nothing comes to mind, consider replacing the Medium with another special role. One popular method of determining what roles to add to a game is to include similar roles on both the wolf and human side. In TWG IX, for example, the humans were given three Item Forgers to provide items for their team, while the wolves were given one Wolf Thief, who could steal those items and give them to his teammates to use. In jTWG IV: The Grapes of Wrath, the wolves were given a Charismatic Wolf, and the humans were given a Charismatic Human, both roles whose votes count as two. This method also helps with game balance.

3. Balancing Your Game

If there's one section in this guide I think every prospective host should read, it's this one. Balancing a TWG is probably the most difficult and time-consuming part of the game development process. Chances are that you produced many more ideas brainstorming than you actually need, and now you've got to cut a few of them out. It's natural for a host to want to include as many special roles as possible, especially if those roles are of his own design; however, doing so can lead to highly unbalanced games, especially in favour of the humans. 

When formulating your game, keep the following general guidelines in mind:

- at least six players should have plain, unclaimable Human roles

- the number of special humans (blues) should be approximately equal to the number of wolves (reds)

- the ratio of wolves to humans should be between 1:3 and 1:5, with smaller games trending toward a smaller ratio and larger games a larger one

Sticking to this formula is the best way to ensure your game is balanced. The above guidelines are by no means set in stone--elements such as card flipping, item scavenging, and the presence of Masons can certainly swing the balance--but sticking to them is the best way to ensure your game is at least close enough to being balanced that it won't be dismissed out of hand come Hosting Sign-ups. Ambitious game designers be forewarned that adjusting one of the above guidelines to accommodate an adjustment in another will not necessarily help balance your game. A twenty-five player game with eight wolf roles and twelve special human roles, drastically favours the humans, despite a wolf to human ratio of almost 1:2.

Another good way to achieve balance in your game is to provide some kind of check on many, if not all, of the players' powers. The most common example of this is probably including a Master Wolf, seer'd green, to combat the effectiveness of the Seer. The Vigibane Wolf being immune to the Vigilante's power or even killing him outright when targeted is another example; still others include the Loose Cannon (essentially a universal check), a Guardian who cannot guard himself, or the Commie Wolf's revoking power.

Finally, as hinted above, games can often be balanced easily by adding a wolf roles that correspond to human roles, and vice versa. If you give the humans a Seer, consider giving the wolves a Wolf Shaman to even things out.