Back from Florida Poly Retreat!

I still plan to post more about both FPR and Frolicon (which was last weekend), when I have time to get around to it. Apparently, during the weekend, some spammer forged the domain name of the place where I work for a spam run,a nd the powers that be are freaking out about it, even though it had nothing to do with any sort of attack against or compromise of our servers. *sigh* No matter how many times you tell someone never to trust what it says in the From: field of an email, folks don’t get that the From: address is trivial to fake.

In any event, Florida Poly Retreat was a roaring success, and there was much strip “Are You a Werewolf?”. I had a great deal of fun giving a presentation on ways to screw up a polyamorous relationship, and I’ve even put a PDF of the workshop’s handout on my Web site (though it isn’t linked directly from my poly pages yet…it will be). This handout probably shouldn’t be read by anyone who is satire-impaired.

Dropping back into the real world always makes for a bit of culture shock, and I think I’m going to bed early tonight to catch up on missing sleep.

22 thoughts on “Back from Florida Poly Retreat!

  1. OK, how do you play strip “Are you a werewolf?”
    Does it involve the werewolves actually eating people?
    If so, why would anybody even want to catch them?

    • Strip Werewolf is a strip variant on the game Are You a Werewolf?, which is hella fun.

      Essentially, it works like this. cards are given at random to each of the players–typically about 10 or 12 of them. Two cards have “Werewolf” on them, one card says “Seer,” and all the other cards say “Villager.” Each player is one of those three things–a werewolf, the seer, or a villager. One additional player is the moderator; he does not directly participate in the game and does not receive a card.

      All the players close their eyes and make noise. The moderator calls for the werewolves to awaken. The werewolves look up, make eye contact with each other and the moderator, then silently choose a vicim–one of the other players. They then go to sleep.

      The moderator calls for the seer to wake up. The seer silently chooses another player; the moderator silently indicates “yes, that player is a werewolf” or “no, that player is not a werewolf.”

      The seer goes back to sleep. The moderator calls for the entire village to wake up and announces a terrible tragedy; during the night, werewolves have killed a player. He names the player the werewolves chose; that player is out of the game, and his card is revealed to the other players.

      The players must now take action. The village grabs the torches and pitchforks and starts arguing about who to lynch for the crimes. Te villagers are seeking to lynch the werewolves, though of course they don’t know who the werewolves are. Eventually, they choose, by simple majority vote, a villager to be strung up; that player is now out of the game, and his card is revealed.

      Then the village goes to sleep, and the cycle repeats.

      The werewolves win if they reduce the number f villagers to the same as the number of werewolves, at which point the villagers can’t get a quorum to lynch the werewolves and the werewolves devour the remaining villagers. The villagers win if at some point they lynch both werewolves.

      The fun is in the negotiation and social engineering. The seer tries to steer the mob in the direction of the werewolves (if he has identified them), without outing himself; if the werewolves figure out who the seer is, hes on the short list for a messy lunch, since he’s the only player who can positively identify a werewolf. The werewolves seek to cast suspicion off themselves. The other players seek to figure out who has something to hide.

      The real fun is in the optional strip rules. At the end of each game, which usually takes 10 or 15 minutes, all the villagers remove an article of clothing if the werewolves win, or the werewolves remove an article of clothing if the villagers win. (The seer is a villager.)

  2. OK, how do you play strip “Are you a werewolf?”
    Does it involve the werewolves actually eating people?
    If so, why would anybody even want to catch them?

  3. Whether I open the PDF in Safari or in Preview, the title line “How to Screw Up a Poly Relationship” has weird artifacting on the top half of the letters. Very odd. Like the top half of the upper-case letters are in a different font or something…

    Not sure what’s up there, but the rest of it comes through fine.

  4. Whether I open the PDF in Safari or in Preview, the title line “How to Screw Up a Poly Relationship” has weird artifacting on the top half of the letters. Very odd. Like the top half of the upper-case letters are in a different font or something…

    Not sure what’s up there, but the rest of it comes through fine.

  5. Strip Werewolf is a strip variant on the game Are You a Werewolf?, which is hella fun.

    Essentially, it works like this. cards are given at random to each of the players–typically about 10 or 12 of them. Two cards have “Werewolf” on them, one card says “Seer,” and all the other cards say “Villager.” Each player is one of those three things–a werewolf, the seer, or a villager. One additional player is the moderator; he does not directly participate in the game and does not receive a card.

    All the players close their eyes and make noise. The moderator calls for the werewolves to awaken. The werewolves look up, make eye contact with each other and the moderator, then silently choose a vicim–one of the other players. They then go to sleep.

    The moderator calls for the seer to wake up. The seer silently chooses another player; the moderator silently indicates “yes, that player is a werewolf” or “no, that player is not a werewolf.”

    The seer goes back to sleep. The moderator calls for the entire village to wake up and announces a terrible tragedy; during the night, werewolves have killed a player. He names the player the werewolves chose; that player is out of the game, and his card is revealed to the other players.

    The players must now take action. The village grabs the torches and pitchforks and starts arguing about who to lynch for the crimes. Te villagers are seeking to lynch the werewolves, though of course they don’t know who the werewolves are. Eventually, they choose, by simple majority vote, a villager to be strung up; that player is now out of the game, and his card is revealed.

    Then the village goes to sleep, and the cycle repeats.

    The werewolves win if they reduce the number f villagers to the same as the number of werewolves, at which point the villagers can’t get a quorum to lynch the werewolves and the werewolves devour the remaining villagers. The villagers win if at some point they lynch both werewolves.

    The fun is in the negotiation and social engineering. The seer tries to steer the mob in the direction of the werewolves (if he has identified them), without outing himself; if the werewolves figure out who the seer is, hes on the short list for a messy lunch, since he’s the only player who can positively identify a werewolf. The werewolves seek to cast suspicion off themselves. The other players seek to figure out who has something to hide.

    The real fun is in the optional strip rules. At the end of each game, which usually takes 10 or 15 minutes, all the villagers remove an article of clothing if the werewolves win, or the werewolves remove an article of clothing if the villagers win. (The seer is a villager.)

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