Werewolv.es vs Forum Mafia
Just to set out upfront, I have played around 300 games of long form forum werewolf/mafia and over 150 games of long game werewolv.es, numerous quick games of both types and have been playing in person werewolf for over 10 years. I cannot claim to be the best player, but I’ve sucked for a long time, so that has to count for something. I enjoy and still play all three types, and hope that I can offer a good overview of the differences between the online versions.
So what are those main differences?
Post by post vs livechat
This is the fundamental difference that will mean you either like a format or you don’t. Forum posts are normally wordier, you can quote things you're responding to, you can do silly things with formatting and might feel most comfortable if you are someone who grew up using the internet in the 2000s - this is how lots of community sites functioned and it feels very natural to people of earlier generations. Livechat, on the other hand, is very much the common way, in instant messaging groups, Discord servers, even social media sites seem more like a livechat than a forum, and so the way of playing is a bit more chaotic, people talking over each other, shorter sentences, much more in-the-moment interaction. For modern internet users, this is how we communicate, it feels much more modern, the flow of conversation is more natural and is generally much more device agnostic.
Use of meta knowledge
This was a big adjustment for me, as I started playing on forum and came later to werewolv.es as a regular player. On forum, I will use my knowledge of how my fellow players play, their tone, their experience level, and my expectations of how they will respond to a given situation in order to form my read of them and the game state. This is a hugely powerful database when you’ve played regularly with the same people, often playing the same setups (see below!). It enables you to form quicker judgements, rely less on intel from power/special roles, and get into the detail of a game quicker - Player B sounds weird in their first two posts? What’s going on Player B, you sound weird, I think you might be evil, [votes for Player B]. These interactions breed more comments, more data points and the game quickly gets going. On werewolv.es, we play with anonymised avatars, and explicitly have a no meta policy. It is not okay to say “I know that Batman is Player B and they sound weird”, so it can be a little bit slower to get started, and a little more reliant on intel to start making informed reads. It’s also tougher to point to your own past history to potentially defend yourself - on forum I might say “you can read this other game, I behaved really similarly there in this situation”, your fellow player might not be interested in reading, but it’s fine to point to it. Here, you can’t. It makes for a more cagey game, having to feel each other out. As time goes on, you might begin to recognise someone’s general typing style, and begin to develop a feel for how some people might play, but you need to find in-game reasons to voice those suspicions. I missed relying on meta knowledge at first, but as time has gone on, I’ve had to improve my rhetoric, my arguments, and my ability to guide the game in the direction I want to go. I genuinely think I’m better now, at all werewolf, because of being restricted in using meta knowledge.
Regular setups and role reveal
Though not the same for all forum sites, it’s quite common for most forums to have a bank of game setups that get played regularly, and that are open knowledge as to what is in them. Veterans might have played the same setup tens of time, and a game with multiple vets will be pulling on a vast history of games on which to judge the flow of the current game. While werewolv.es has the wlf games, which are fixed setups, player count variation and special player hosted games means that these same setups aren’t in constant rotation, keeping things fresh, but, again, meaning you have less history to pull on. Often in those player hosted games, the setup will not be known, meaning you’re left with a vast field of possibility for what could be in the game. Alongside this, almost all werewolv.es games are played with no role reveal on death, meaning that you get no feedback on your decision making. Again, this makes for very tight, paranoia-riven games, where players are arguing as much over the possibilities of what could have happened as they are over actual reads and intel that has been given. I think both ways amount to an almost entirely different variant of the same base game, neither better, and both enjoyable.
Avatar swapping, tarot cards, items and auras
While it’s entirely possible to do things beyond general role on forum, it’s a bit more clunky and, in my experience, requires significant admin by the person running the game. Because werewolv.es is (virtually) admin free once the game has started, the array of items and auras that are built in make mechanics possible and straight-forward that might not otherwise be. They also allow for a lot more variability in a fairly simple setup than otherwise might be done on forum. This, to me, is the unique thing with this format of the game. You can allow for vague intel results that help bring conversation out, without forcing a game state where it is A or B. It’s A, or B, or maybe C, and could be D if this has happened, and possibly E, but E seems unlikely. And because it could be any of those things, the interconnectedness of other bits of intel mean that you have a whole range of possibilities, where you can build connections between players and claims based on a whole pinboard of circumstantial evidence. If you’ve ever wanted to be the subject of this meme, this is the game for you. The anonymous play through avatars also means that you can swap your avatar for another in a variety of ways, mostly nefarious, and try to pass yourself off as another player, something that would be all but impossible on a forum, where you would need to log in as a different user to enable this.
I hope that this helps you see what some of the main differences are between these two styles of online werewolf/mafia. If you’ve played forum before, I encourage you to come check us out, play a few games, and see if you like it. If you’ve played in person, and are venturing into online play for the first time, I think you’ll find this feels a bit more similar to the in person game - jokier, and more responsive. As always, the players are what makes any game of werewolf, and any online community. Come and join us, we’d love to see you and have you be part of what makes this a great site to play at.