How to Play Werewolf Online

What a game looks like

The village is trying to work out who is killing them at night. The evil factions are trying to stay hidden long enough to whittle the village down to a number they can out-vote. Everything else is detail.

The evil factions are the Wolfpack, the Coven, the Vampires and the Undead. A game contains at least one of them and often more than one, and may also contain factions that assist them, or independent players outside any faction who win on their own terms. Two evil teams in the same game are not allies: for most of them, the other evil faction has to die before they can win. Which roles are in play is the moderator's choice, and it is announced with the setup before the game starts.

A game runs in one of two formats. Extended games use 12-hour days and 12-hour nights, so a full cycle takes a day and a game runs over a week or two. There is usually one extended game in progress and another taking sign-ups at any moment. Speed rounds compress the same structure into minutes and are hosted occasionally, normally at the weekend. Nothing about the rules differs between them. What differs is how long you get to think, and extended games are the format this site is built around.

The day phase: talking and voting

Daytime is where the game is actually played. The village talks in public, assembles whatever fragments of evidence exist, and votes. When the village has removed every evil player, it wins.

The first day is short and carries no execution. It exists so you can read your role, read the setup, and get a feel for the room before anything is at stake. It has one consequence worth knowing in advance: if you are evil, you do not get your private night chat until the first night is announced, so your opening day is spent guessing at your own team.

Why you play under a false name

Games normally assign every player a random name and avatar from a theme rather than running under account names. That is not decoration. It removes the reputation you brought with you, so a quiet player is not automatically read as the quiet player they were last game. Revealing which account sits behind your character, anywhere outside your own faction's night chat, is against the rules. The mapping is published when the game ends.

How the execution works

Votes are cast throughout the day and can be changed at any point, and everyone can see who is voting for whom. That makes the vote itself a piece of evidence rather than a tally: who moved, when they moved, and what they moved away from is often worth more than the count. At nightfall the player with the most votes is executed and leaves the game. A tie executes nobody, and most games also offer the village the option of deliberately executing nobody.

You must cast a vote at least once every two days, and preferably every day. Miss two days running and you are smited out of the game. This is not busywork: a player who has stopped participating still counts towards every parity check and still soaks up suspicion, so going quiet distorts the game for everyone still in it. Moderators can also smite a player at any time for breaking the rules.

The night phase: where the evidence is made

At night, evil factions talk privately and choose their victims, and roles with abilities pick their targets. Nothing is resolved while the night is running. Everything is submitted and then resolved together when the night ends, which is why you are never told during the night whether your action worked.

You find out in the morning, and only from what your report says. A silent morning is genuinely ambiguous: you may have been blocked, redirected, or simply have learned nothing worth telling you. Do not treat an empty report as proof of anything.

The kinds of night action you will meet

There are too many abilities to list, but nearly all of them fall into one of these families:

Kills, such as the Werewolf's. A successful kill removes the target and moves them to the Graveyard chat, and the death is announced publicly in the morning. Being killed does not cancel your own action: if you die tonight, whatever you did tonight still happens, including killing somebody else. Various effects prevent or redirect kills, and some kills are built to go straight through them.
Intelligence, such as the Seer's. You pick a target and receive a report in the morning. What the report contains varies more than people expect: an alignment, an actual role name, a list of who your target visited. A Seer returns an alignment phrase and never a role name, while a Gravedigger returns the role itself. Treating the first as if it were the second is one of the more reliable ways for a village to argue itself into a bad execution. Every kind of check is set out on intel checks.
Protection, such as the Protector's. The target survives attempts on their life that night. Usually the kill simply fails, but some protections do something back: the Huntsman kills everyone who attacks the player they are guarding and dies in the process. Some kills, such as the Militia's, bypass protection entirely.
Roleblocks, such as the Direwolf's. A blocked player's own action does not happen, and they are told they were blocked but not what they would have seen. Blocks resolve near the start of the night so that they catch as much as possible. Some roles are immune, including the Vampire and roleblockers themselves.
Revivals, such as the Reviver's. Rare, and disruptive when they land. A dead player returns with their vote, their night chats and any unspent uses of their ability, and with everything they heard while sitting in the Graveyard chat.
Identity swaps, such as the Shapeshifter's. Two players exchange names and avatars, and nobody but the pair involved is told. Nothing else moves with the swap: same faction, same abilities, same chats, same statuses, new skin. Swaps resolve last, after the game has already decided who dies, so a swap can never save the player. It can only change which character is announced dead, and it can leave your intel attached to the wrong name.

Because everything resolves at once, which action beats which is decided by a fixed sequence rather than by who acted first. That sequence is set out on night action order.

Where to go next

Before your first night, read buttons and abilities, because most abilities cannot be cancelled once you have pressed the button. Then read the rules, which are short, and victory conditions, so you know what your faction is actually counting towards. The role catalogue has every role in the game if you want to see what you might be dealt.

One last thing worth saying to anyone about to play their first game. If you draw a role with no night action, you have not been given a spectator's ticket. Noticing an inconsistency and saying so out loud is evidence that no ability produces, and the village has far more of that resource than any other. The Seer may well be dead already.

There is usually a game taking sign-ups in the lobby.