Playing The ritual/Cry Wolf: a quick guide

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The basics

The rules are fairly simple for a game of cry wolf/mafia/werewolf. You have two teams: the sheep and the wolves. The aim of the sheep is to discover who the wolves are and save themselves. The aim of the wolves is to kill everyone aside from themselves. The game takes place over a few days and nights, or however long it takes until all the wolves are dead or the number of sheep matches the number of wolves left. Each night, the sheep must convene and vote on who they think is a wolf. If they’re wrong, one of their fellow sheep dies. If they’re right, they’ve gotten rid of a wolf. If all the wolves are dead by the end of the game, the sheep win. If not, the wolves win.

The wolves and sheep are assisted in their endeavor by a shepherd. Only the shepherd knows who all the sheep and the wolves are, and they are allowed to give hints to the sheep. The shepherd must not implicate anyone in the game in these clues, remaining neutral at all times. (If they don’t, the emblems will be rather displeased.) The sheep must determine who the wolves are in their groups by using these clues, or by asking questions of anyone else involved in the game.

The Roles

The sheep

Most at risk, the sheep must ferret out who the wolves are by using their wits, instinct, and figuring out the clues. After a few nights the gang can start narrowing down who was and wasn’t in a clue to determine the “safe” sheep. At this point said sheep are most in danger because their role is now known, and the wolves can eliminate them without much surprise. Sheep must kill someone during voting.

The wolves

The wolves, as stated earlier, must kill one person a night. They are not allowed to reveal their roles to the sheep, and can only converse about their plans with other wolves in a separate, wolf-only post. However all players can communicate in locked posts in their own journals, just they have to have the shepherd and the mod account in on the lock as well.

The shepherd

The shepherd gives clues to who the wolves are via a daily event. This can be a clue that needs to be figured out, an activity that reveals the names, or even the shepherd just telling the players three names. The clue will always point to two sheep and a wolf, and it’s up to the sheep to figure out which is which.

At no point is the shepherd allowed to directly say what side characters are on, but they’re allowed to react to what goes on and have their biases. As long as that doesn’t get in the way of them doing their job? All’s good.

order of events

-Day: clues or events given and suspicion votes cast. These votes are done anon.
-Ousting: two defendants are chosen from the polls and have an hour to defend themselves, during which the characters vote on who they think the wolf is.
-Night: The players kill whoever has the most votes against them, and the wolves promptly kill a sheep.

If the sheep think they have cornered a wolf, they must vote on whether or not to leave them alive at the end of the day. If there is a tie, it will be decided by a coin-flip. Days and nights in the game are more-or-less the same as our own days and nights. There will be a set time for voting and ousting if it is necessary, and the time limit on voting is an hour. If a character does not want to vote, then they are allowed to do so, but they may have to deal with the consequences of said actions later on in the game, whether it’s guilt or suspicion from the other characters. A character must be chosen every night, if there is no one chosen it will be a random drawing!

At the beginning of a day, the shepherd will warn if the sheep need to kill a wolf to survive another night, as once the number of sheep matches or would be fewer than the number of wolves at the end of the night, the game is over.