Victory Conditions

What parity means

The village wins by removing every evil player from the game. Almost every other faction wins on parity instead, and parity is the single idea worth understanding properly, because it decides when the game ends rather than who is right.

A faction has parity when its living members are at least half of the living players who count. At that point the village can no longer out-vote them, so nothing the village does the following day can change the outcome, and the game stops. That is the important consequence: an evil faction does not have to kill everyone. It has to stop being out-votable.

A worked example. Eight players are alive and three of them are wolves. That is not parity: five villagers can out-vote three wolves. The wolves kill one villager overnight, leaving seven alive with three wolves, which is still not parity. The village then executes a villager, leaving six alive with three wolves, and the game ends there at nightfall. The village was never outnumbered. It lost at the moment it spent an execution on the wrong player. This is also why a Protector saving a life and a village executing correctly are worth exactly the same amount: both change the count by one.

Two categories of player are excluded from these counts. Puppets and Zombies do not count as players for any parity check, so they neither help their own faction reach parity nor pad out the number the attacking faction has to overcome. The village does not have to kill them to win either.

When victory is checked

Victory is checked twice per cycle: at nightfall, after any execution has been carried out, and at dawn, after all kills and revives have been reported. A faction wins the instant its conditions are met at one of those two checks. Nothing is evaluated in between, which is why a night that visibly ends the game still waits for dawn to say so.

When the game ends, a public message is broadcast and everyone moves to the post-game lobby. Account names appear next to character names, and every player's role is revealed in the sidebar. This is the part where you find out which of your reads were correct and which were a coincidence you talked yourself into.

The Village

Remove every member of every evil faction from the game. In practice that means executing them, since the village has limited ability to kill at night. Puppets and Zombies do not have to be killed for this to be met, and neither does the Bloodmoon Cult.

Two village sub-factions carry an extra objective of their own. Both are objectives rather than gates: the rest of the village still wins if the sub-faction fails, and the sub-faction's own claim on the win is what is lost.

The Illuminati

Destroy the Masons before the game ends, alongside the ordinary village condition. The Illuminati and the Masons are two groups who can confirm each other privately, which makes each one the other's most dangerous rival for the village's trust.

The Inquisition

Eliminate every Heretic before the game ends, alongside the ordinary village condition. A Heretic is anyone who reads as using witchcraft, which is not the same as anyone who is evil. The reading can be changed by an aura, so an Inquisitor's Heretic result is evidence about how the engine sees a player rather than proof of their alignment. See the Inquisitor for what the check returns, and the roles that use witchcraft.

The Wolfpack and the Bloodmoon Cult

Reach parity with the village, and see off every rival: as long as one Vampire, Coven member, Undead or other evil creature is alive, the Wolfpack cannot win.

The Bloodmoon Cult is the one faction that wins without counting. Cult members win if the Wolfpack wins, but they count as village aligned for every parity calculation, and the village can win with cult members still alive. A cult member is therefore not a spare wolf: recruiting one does not move the Wolfpack any closer to parity, and killing one moves the Wolfpack closer. What the cult provides is a mouth on the village side of the count and a set of players who benefit from a bad execution, which is a different and often better weapon.

The Coven

Reach parity with the village, and kill every Vampire, Werewolf, Undead and other evil creature. As long as one of them is alive, the Coven cannot win.

Puppets are Coven-aligned but do not count towards the Coven's own parity, so the Puppetmaster making one removes a player from the other side of the equation rather than adding one to the Coven's. That still shortens the game, but not as fast as a kill would.

The Vampires

A basement is one Vampire master and their Familiars. Each basement counts separately, and the largest one is the one that decides the game. Parity is measured against every living player except Puppets and Zombies.

Vampires are the exception that catches people out. They can win on parity while Werewolves, Coven members or Undead are still alive, where every other faction has to clear the board first. The consequence runs the other way too: while a Vampire master is alive, no other faction's victory is checked at all. A game with a Vampire still in it does not end until the Vampire does.

• If the Vampire master is dead, their Familiars count as village for every other faction's parity check. Familiars on their own cannot stop another faction winning through parity, but a basement of Familiars whose master died can still take the game if every other evil faction has been cleared out.

The Undead

Reach parity with the village, and kill every Werewolf, Vampire, Coven member and other evil creature. As long as one of them is alive, the Undead cannot win.

Zombies are the Undead's equivalent of Puppets. They are excluded from the count, so the Voodoo Doctor zombifying a player is buying a body to hide in rather than a step towards parity. It does remove a living player from the other side of the count, which is the part that matters.

Neutral roles

Neutral players win on their own terms, and their conditions have nothing to do with parity. The Tanner wins by being executed and loses if the game ends any other way. The King Taker takes the win from everyone else by surviving into the final three. The Merchant wins by ending the game richer than any other living Merchant.

Some neutrals also block everyone else: while certain solo neutrals are alive, no faction victory is checked at all. Their exact conditions are on their own pages, and the full list is under neutral roles.

Where to go next

Parity is why a night matters more than it looks: every kill, block and protection moves the count. Night action order covers which of those actually lands when several collide, and intel checks covers the evidence you get to argue with the following morning. If you are new to the game here, start with how to play Werewolf online.