What is the Werewolf Game?

The Werewolf Game is a social game that has gone through many incarnations. It started as a party game, where a group of people sat in a circle facing eachother. Another form of the game has evolved with the emergance of the Internet, which is played on forums and BBSs. Having recently discovered it, Darkshine and I decided to make an IRC version, with a bot as moderator. And here it is!

The basic rules are as follows: a number of people from the group are randomly selected to be 'Werewolves'. The rest are 'Villagers'. The game is split into 2 parts, night and day. During the night, the werewolf/wolves can secretly select a single villager to 'eat'. During the day, the victim from the previous night is revealed and removed from the game. During the day, everyone, including the werewolves, discuss who they believe the werewolves to be, using some guesswork, as well as logic and reasoning. At the end of the day, everyone must vote who they suspect to be a werewolf to be lynched. This continues until one of the two following winning conditions is satisfied.

* The Werewolves are equal to the Villagers. (Werewolves win)
* The Villagers lynch all the Werewolves. (Villagers win)

All votes for either choosing a victim (Werewolves) or voting someone to lynch (everyone) are given to a moderator, who keeps everyone's identity secret.

Various roles have been integrated into the game, including, but not limited to:

* Seer - who can select a single person each night to discover their identity (Werewolf or Villager)
* Vigilante - A Villager who can choose any person to attack and kill during the day only once in a game.
* Psychic - Similar to the Seer, is given information on the Villagers each night. But in this case, he is only informed how many Werewolves remain. Useful if the lynched person is a wolf, but the players roles are not revealed with their death.

As mentioned, there are many variations in gameplay, with different roles, as well as rules such as revealing the dead person's role in the game or not, etc.
What is the Werewolf Game Bot?

The Werewolf Game Bot is an IRC bot coded in Java, based on the PircBot framework found at http://www.jibble.org/.
It acts as the moderator in instances of the Werewolf Game. It assigns people's roles in the game, narrates the happenings in the village, times the duration of the day and night, collects people votes and calculates the results.
The rules it follows are the following (based on the rules found here):

* Minumum players: 5
* Maximum players: 12
* Maximum wolves: 2 (2nd introduced at 8 players)
* Special roles: Seer
* Identities revealed on death.
* Lynched Villagers are permitted a single line of text as their 'dying breath'.
* If a player doesn't vote for two consecutive rounds, they are automatically executed.

What Commands are available?

There are several commands available to users/players, to control the game.

* !start - Begins a game, and enters the person who gave the command into the game.
* !daytime (x) - (Channel OPs only) Determines the length in seconds of the day, when people can discuss suspicions etc. If no argument is provided, if gives the current duration.
* !nighttime (x) - (Channel OPs only) Determines the length in seconds of the night, when the werewolf/wolves select their victim and the Seer selects who to view. If no argument is provided, if gives the current duration.
* !votetime (x) - (Channel OPs only) Determines the length in seconds of the Lynch Vote, when people cast their votes on who should be lynched. If no argument is provided, if gives the current duration.
* !tie (on/off) - (Channel OPs only) Activates or deactivates the Lynch Tie. If the tie is activated and there are an equal number of votes for 2 or more players during the Lynch Vote, one of them will be randomly selected. Otherwise, no-one will be lynched. If no argument is provided, it gives the current status of the flag.
* !shush - Disable Idle chat from the bot
* !speak - Enable Idle chat from the bot
* /msg <botname> vote <player> - Casts a vote for <player> during the Lynch Vote. The player with the majority vote will be lynched. If there is a tie, refer to the!tie command.
* /msg <botname> kill <player> - Only werewolves may use this command at night. Selects a victim for the werewolf to kill during the night.
* /msg <botname> see <player> - Only the Seer may use this command at night. Selects a player, whose identity (Villager or Werewolf) will be revealed to the Seer the following morning.
* /msg <botname> alive - Provides a list of all players that are still alive in the current game.
* /msg <botname> role - Reminds the player of what his role in the game is.