THE WOLF AND THE VILLAGE

This is an amazing dynamic to practice arguing within an intermediate or an advanced group. It allows people to argue with each other, as they have to decide who is the wolf (or the witch, or the killer… just name it) in order to try and execute it.

How it does work:

The roles are decided randomly, for instance using deck cards. The most important role is the wolf (or however you want to call it) and the villagers (who are basically there either to die or to become a mob), and the director (that is you I’m afraid). Once everyone has their card the director (or god, or the mayor, or whatever you want to call it) will call everybody to sleep, so everyone will look down. Subsequently, the director will call the wolf to wake up, kill (by means of pointing or looking to its victim), and get back to sleep. Then the village will wake up and the director will inform the victim of his or her death. Immediately after, people will speak against each other for a few minutes- For instance Pedro may say: “I think that Manolo is the wolf because I saw him moving a little when the wolf was killing”. And Pedro might reply: “I think the wolf is Pedro because he accused first”. After a while there will be a vote. Whoever is voted wolf will be executed, and therefore will turn his or her card facing up. If it is the wolf (the real one,)the round is over and we shall assign new roles. If the person chosen is a villager, the whole process will start again.

We can adapt the background of the dynamic to whatever text we are working with. The characters can be animals, villagers, courtier, or whatever suits us; in the same way as the wolf can be any antagonist that appears in our story. In addition, once the game has become too easy and predictable, we can add up other characters. For instance we can have a hunter (or a cop, a guard…) who will have the chance to ask the director (silently, of course) if a certain person is the wolf after it has killed. The director will answer yes or know and the hunter is free to share the information with everyone else although they can believe him or not as he doesn’t necessary has to be the hunter. Another character that might be added to the game is the fairy (or the healer, the sorcerer…) whose ability is to bring back to life one person each turn (or try to, depending on the rules and the number of wolf/killers that are playing). We will normally use a character like the healer when there is more than one wolf/killer.

Try it and tell us what happened!!