Werewolf Without a Moderator

Whenever a group sits down to play werewolf, someone says it:

“I’ll moderate.”

Generous — and also an announcement that this person is not playing tonight. On an evening when only five people showed up, moderating means a four-player game. In werewolf, losing one player is a serious difference.

This article covers how to let everyone at the table play.

What is the moderator actually doing?

• Moderator's job By hand, that means Auto
• Deal the roles Tell each player privately, one by one ✓
• Run the night Get everyone to close their eyes, wake them in turn ✓
• Handle the kill Remember who attacked whom ✓
• Count the votes Manage runoffs when it ties ✓
• Call the winner Recount the survivors ✓
• Keep it lively Prompt people when it goes quiet —

“Can we skip the moderator?” reduces to a question about who handles these six things.

The first five are procedure. They follow the rules mechanically, so a machine can do them. Only the last one — keeping the energy up — is really a human job, and it is not exclusive to a moderator. Anyone at the table can do it.

So if something covers those first five, you no longer need a moderator.

Option 1: pick a ruleset with no night

The heaviest part of the job is running the night. Get everyone to close their eyes, wake the werewolves, confirm the target, put everyone back to sleep. That sequence is the reason a moderator exists.

1. Night

   Werewolves & roles

   The werewolves pick a target. The seer and others act too

2. Morning

   Everyone

   The attacked player is announced and leaves the game

3. Discussion

   Survivors

   Cross-check contradictions and suspicious silence

4. Vote

   Survivors

   Most votes is eliminated. The day ends here

Repeats until one side wins

Which means that with no night phase, the job mostly disappears.

One-night werewolf variants are the well-known example: a single night, or none at all, with the game decided by discussion and a vote. One-Night Werewolf vs. Photo Werewolf compares the two.

Option 2: automate only the role dealing

If you want to keep a ruleset that has nights, there is a middle path: automate the role dealing alone.

An app or site that assigns roles removes the private-message chore. But the night phase and the counting remain, so the moderator’s load shrinks without the moderator going away. This one is for the person who is willing to run the game but wants it to be less work.

Option 3: automate the whole thing

The thorough version. Role dealing, the night phase, vote counting, and the win check all happen in software.

Each player’s screen shows only what they should see, so nobody has to close their eyes at all. With no moderator, the number of people who showed up is the number of people playing.

What you lose, and what you do not

The real inconvenience of having no moderator shows up when people disagree about a rule. A moderator can rule on it; without one, the table has to decide together.

That said, a game with few roles and simple rules does not produce those disagreements in the first place. If you are playing without a moderator, keeping the role list short pays off.

• 3 or more
• About 10 min per round
• When everyone wants to play

Photo Werewolf needs no moderator

Photo Werewolf, the game on this site, runs entirely on its own.

• Role dealing — automatic. Only you see whether you are the werewolf
• The night phase — there isn’t one
• Vote counting and the win check — automatic
• Net result: no moderator — everyone who showed up plays

There is no night because there is no killing mechanic at all. Everyone submits one photo for the same theme, and the werewolves quietly have their submissions swapped with each other. A werewolf has to explain a photo they never chose as if they had. One discussion, one vote, done.

There are only two roles — villager and werewolf. No seer, no bodyguard, so there is nothing to argue about.

The number of werewolves changes every round: there may be none, or two or more — never exactly one. A round with zero werewolves is a “peaceful village”, and nobody’s photo gets swapped. That “maybe there are no wolves tonight” doubt supplies the tension a moderator would otherwise have to build.

Play video

Photo Werewolf Play Photo Werewolf free in your browser A new kind of online Werewolf where you bluff with photos on your phone. Grab some friends. Play a round for free

Three steps, everyone playing

Here is how one round ends. The theme was “something delicious.” Of the five photos, the three labeled as werewolves were not chosen by the person presenting them.

Common questions

Q. Without a moderator, can people cheat? A. When roles only ever appear on each player’s own screen, nobody can see anyone else’s. It is actually less error-prone than dealing by hand.

Q. Can we play if nobody knows the rules? A. Yes, if the game runs itself. The screen tells you what to do, so there is nothing to learn beforehand.

Q. Does this work in person too? A. Yes. As long as everyone has a phone, being in the same room works exactly the same way.

Summary

Nobody has to volunteer to sit one out.

The button below plays with three to ten people and no moderator (4 including the host on the free plan). There is nothing to install. Invited players join without registering; only the person creating the village needs an account.