Werewolves of Miller's Hollow: Lying as Horror

GrantPicture a giant hall, hundreds of people in the seats, and on stage, a row of friends are lying to each other's faces.

MilesAnd the crowd is loving it.

GrantPaying to watch a betrayal. Plot to us, nobody's getting robbed.

MilesWell, somebody's getting voted off a village, Grant.

GrantOkay, fair. Somebody's a werewolf snack.

MilesMy name's Miles, this is Grant, and we spend our days arguing about why games work.

GrantMostly about why they don't. Loudly.

MilesLoudly, yes.

GrantSo here's my itch. Why does lying to your friends never get old? Forty years of it, and we still fall for it.

MilesAnd my itch is the flip side. Plenty of these games just feel like a group of people accusing each other.

GrantWhich is a bad night out.

MilesRight. But sometimes the same setup gives you real dread. Hairs-up-on-your-neck dread.

GrantOh, man, I wanna know what flips that switch.

MilesStick around, because we're gonna chase it through a stage, a university pastime, and the awkward spot where you get voted out.

GrantThat sounds like the setup to a joke, and I am absolutely in.

MilesThen we start with the stage itself, because the scale is the proof.

GrantOkay, so get this. Asmodee's own press release dated the 23rd of September says it will host a special game of The Werewolves of Miller's Hollow at the Grugahalle on the 22nd of October.

MilesWith Rocket Beans.

GrantRight. And Asmodee expects close to 1,000 spectators.

Miles1,000.

GrantExpects. That's a forecast, not a turnout. Nobody's counted heads yet.

MilesFair, but picture 1,000 people in a hall all watching a few people on stage decide who to blame.

GrantVillage trial stadium seating.

MilesAnd the timing matters. The official fair site lists the Rocket Beans event on Thursday evening after the fair day and confirms the fair runs the 22nd to the 25th.

GrantSo it's opening day, not a sideshow on a quiet Sunday.

MilesExactly. You spend all day walking the halls, then you sit down and watch people lie.

GrantOh, man, what a way to end a day.

MilesAnd that's the part I think people underrate. A crowd that's been on its feet all day, and then everybody leans in at once to watch one face try not to give anything away.

GrantOkay, that's a vibe. I'll give you the vibe.

MilesAnd the fair itself is no small room. The official Fair site gives 2025 numbers, 948 exhibitors.

GrantOkay.

MilesAnd 1,716 novelties, meaning new releases, plus about 220,000 visitors.

GrantWait, which one's the headline?

MilesThe visitors. 220,000 people in 2025, and the Fair is billed as the world's biggest board game Fair.

GrantSo a game with roots in a Moscow University pastime is getting a prime evening slot against nearly 1,700 shiny new boxes?

MilesWhich should tell you something.

GrantIt tells me they know it sells tickets, but does it tell me anything about design?

MilesHere's what I'd point at. BoardGameWire reports Canal+ made a TV show, Loups-Garous, built on the game's play, and Season 2 got an International Emmy nomination.

GrantEmmy. For people accusing their neighbors?

MilesAnd BoardGameWire says Season 1 drew 15 million views per Asmodee. A German edition passed 5 million streams in its first season.

GrantHold on. Those are viewing numbers. Nobody's playing.

MilesThat's my point. Watching Werewolves is a draw on its own. It's theater. The reveal, the face when the card flips, the guy who swore he was a villager. Half the fun is watching somebody try to hold their face still.

GrantHmm, sure, but I'm skeptical that a crowd tells us the design is scary.

MilesWhy?

GrantBecause spectators have no skin in it. They can't be eliminated. They can't be lied to. They're in on it. Fun to watch a car crash, doesn't mean it's a good ride.

MilesOkay, but the reveal is where it earns its keep. Everybody's been guessing, then one card flips and the whole room reacts at once.

GrantSure, and that's great theater. I just don't know it's fear. Relief and surprise are cousins of dread, not twins.

MilesOkay, but dread is a spectator sport too. Every horror movie proves that.

GrantA movie doesn't ask me to vote.

MilesFine, you'll have to sit in the circle yourself.

GrantGive me a seat. I'll bluff my way through. Anyway, if it fills a hall, somebody must have figured out how to make friends lie to each other on purpose.

MilesAnd that goes back a long way. Further back than any stage, any broadcast, any fair.

GrantSo let's go find the first liar and see who thought a game about it was a good idea. The whole family tree starts with a psychology student at Moscow State University.

MilesDmitry Davidoff. Wikipedia's Mafia entry credits him with creating the game around 1986.

GrantAround. Because?

MilesBecause the same entry says Davydoff himself dates the first game to spring 1987, so the year wobbles by one.

GrantA one-year wobble on a 40-year-old party game. I'll allow it.

MilesAnd here's the detail I love. Wikipedia describes it as a model of an informed minority against an uninformed majority. That's a psychology student's framing, not a game designer's.

GrantWhich is a very polite way of saying a few people know a secret, and everybody else is guessing.

MilesRight.

GrantAnd notice who holds what. The minority knows something, but it's outnumbered. The majority has the numbers, but it's in the dark.

MilesSo each side is weak in a different way. Knowing isn't winning, and numbers aren't winning.

GrantWhich is why the lie matters. If you're the one who knows, your only real weapon is how you sound when somebody asks you a question.

MilesAnd if you're in the majority, your only weapon is how well you read a face. That's a very human fight to build a game on.

GrantOh, and the original rules had no special ability roles. No detective, no doctor, none of it.

MilesWait, really? None?

GrantThat's what the entry says about his original rules. So the first version was basically bare plumbing.

MilesOkay, so name the plumbing for me, Grant.

GrantThree parts. Asymmetric information, meaning some people know things others don't, a vote where the group points a finger, and elimination, where the finger has consequences.

MilesHold on. That's the engine, fine, but I'd argue you're underselling the skin. Swap the mafia with accountants, and nobody has goosebumps.

GrantAccountants. Lock the doors. The auditors are here.

MilesI'm serious. Werewolves turn your neighbor into a thing that eats you at night. The fur does the dread.

GrantDoes it, though? Picture the structure with zero theme. Five people, two know a secret. Everyone votes someone out. You still sweat.

MilesYou sweat because you're scared of being wrong in front of friends. That's social. Sure. Is it horror?

GrantIt's the same stomach drop. Somebody looks at you and says, "I think it's you."

MilesOkay, but a skin tells you how to feel before the first accusation lands. The campfire, the full moon, the village that sleeps. Mafia gives you a room and a grudge.

GrantAnd Mafia lasted anyway. Wikipedia credits a Moscow student, and here we are.

MilesFair. The structure is the load-bearing wall. The skin is the Paint, and Paint matters when you're asking people to be afraid.

GrantPaint that makes you check the locks. I'll take that.

MilesHa. Good.

GrantOne more test, though. Explain the Accountants version to a stranger, and they'll nod politely.

MilesAnd explain the Werewolf version, and they'd ask who the wolf is before you finish. The skin recruits you before the rules even start.

GrantBut the engine has a flaw, and the flaw is baked into the middle of those three parts.

MilesThe Elimination.

GrantNow, here's the Problem with that engine. You get voted out. Now what do you do for the next Forty minutes?

MilesStare at your phone.

GrantLet's start with a museum shelf. There's a museum catalog entry from the Powerhouse collection on a 2014 handmade prototype of Blood on the Clocktower. It says Steven Medway designed the game after noticing that players were excluded once eliminated.

MilesHold on. So the whole game starts as a complaint about the dead seat?

GrantThat's the rationale the catalog gives. A designer noticing the pain and deciding it didn't have to be the rule.

MilesOkay, I like that. Designers fixing the thing everybody just shrugs at.

GrantAnd it's a very designer thing to do. Notice the pain, then refuse to treat it as a law of nature.

MilesMost of us just complain and go refill the snacks.

GrantAnd the same entry quotes Medway on what he wanted instead. He wanted every player to be important, and he wanted the game to generate conversation.

MilesGenerate conversation. That's a very polite way to say arguing.

GrantSure, but notice what he doesn't say. Not make it scarier. Important players and talking. My read is he figured the dread would come out of the conversation.

MilesHmm. That's a bet. Conversation can also be a very loud, very dull group chat.

GrantFair, and that's exactly the risk. But he also talks about almost every role being incomplete on its own.

MilesIncomplete how?

GrantThe catalog doesn't spell out the mechanics, so I won't invent them. The idea is that no single role gives you the whole picture. You need other people's information to make yours mean anything.

MilesOh, that's sneaky. So you can't sit in a corner with your secret and win.

GrantRight. Your role is half a sentence, and you have to go find who finishes it.

MilesWhich means talking, which means lying or trusting somebody you shouldn't.

GrantExactly.

MilesNow, the dead but still voting part. The catalog ties that to his reasoning, so let's treat it as an idea on the table, not a rule book. Does keeping the dead in the game kill the dread?

GrantI say it deepens it. If the ghost at the table still has a vote, then every death is a new problem, not a goodbye.

MilesSee, I think it leaks air. Dread needs loss. If dying is just a costume change, why would I sweat the accusation?

GrantBecause you're still in the room when your friends get it wrong. That's worse than leaving.

MilesGrant, you want haunted attendance.

GrantI want the dead to have to watch and still matter.

MilesMm. Fair, but it changes the fear. Werewolf scares you with the end. This scares you with the aftermath.

GrantAnd aftermath is slower, which I'd argue is better dread. The end is a jump scare. The aftermath is the basement door creaking for an hour.

MilesSlow dread needs patience, though, and I've seen tables run out of it by the second round.

GrantThen the design has to earn that patience. A dead player who can still be wrong in public is under a different kind of pressure than one who just watches.

MilesSo the ghost isn't safe. They're accountable. Okay, I'll admit that has a creepy edge. A vote from the grave still points a finger at somebody.

GrantAnd you can see the family tree here. Mafia, Werewolf, Among Us all in the same lineage, and every one of them has to answer what happens to the people who get voted off.

MilesPlot twist, they probably answer it differently, but I'm only putting Among Us on the tree, not telling you how it handles the dead.

GrantRight. And I'm not pretending I've got its rule book in front of me. The point is that the question follows the whole lineage all the way to a hall of people watching Werewolves.

MilesOkay, so elimination is the problem, and incomplete rules are one answer, but one answer isn't a recipe. So let's argue about what the full recipe for scary actually looks like.

GrantGo on then. I can tell you've got a list. Okay. The list. Four items. You're gonna hate one of them.

MilesI already hate one of them, and you haven't said them.

GrantFair. Item one, a believable hidden threat. Somebody at the table really could be the thing, not a vague someone is bad. A specific shape of danger you can almost see.

MilesAgreed, but that's the cheap one. Every hidden role game ships with a villain.

GrantShipping a villain and making it believable are different jobs. Okay, item two.

MilesIncomplete information.

GrantYou stole my-

MilesLine, yes. Nobody should be able to solve the table. The second you can reason your way to certainty, it's a logic puzzle with snacks.

GrantLogic puzzle with snacks. Item three, stakes that survive elimination. Dead players still have something riding on the outcome.

MilesMm.

GrantAnd item four, a theme that gives you something to lose. Not points. A village, a home, a person you've been sitting next to.

MilesHere's my ranking. Theme goes first. Everything else is machinery, and machinery doesn't make anyone's stomach drop.

GrantWait, what? Theme first?

MilesThink about what you remember from a scary night. It's never the vote count. It's the moment someone you trusted looked you in the eye and you believed them.

GrantSure, but you believed them because the information was incomplete. Take that away and your beautiful theme is a costume party.

MilesA costume party with a really good Werewolf mask.

GrantWhich scares exactly Nobody. Information is number one. Stakes are the first thing to crack in every game I've watched go sour.

MilesOkay, but you're describing a mystery. A mystery is a puzzle until Somebody cares who's lying. Why would I care about a stranger's secret?

GrantYou'd care because you could be next. That's the part a theme can't fake, the real chance you're wrong with Everybody watching you be wrong.

MilesHold on. You're ranking elimination stakes below information? We just heard how bored the dead players get.

GrantAnd I'll say it again. Bored is fixable. Blind is not. If you've got a mystery, you can patch the dead players in later.

MilesPatch the dead? That's going on a T-shirt.

GrantSeriously though, a ghost with a job is more dangerous than a ghost with a phone.

MilesOkay. Item three earns its spot there. A ghost with a job is still in the story.

GrantFine. You take theme, I take information, and a threat is a tie.

MilesThreat's last. I'll die on that hill.

GrantPlot twist, so will I because I put it first only to bait you.

MilesShut up.

GrantLook, the point isn't who wins the ranking. A table can lose any one of these and still limp along. Lose two and you're not scared, you're just accusing your friends of things.

MilesAnd that's the line the stage show has to walk, right? Bluffing, paranoia, and elimination all have to feel like horror, not a very polite shouting match with a hall expecting close to 1,000 people watching.

GrantExactly. Enough theory. Let's talk about what you actually do with this at a table. The Tabletop family put out a list of favorite board games for Halloween posted back on September 19th. Spooky season has its own shelf now.

MilesWhich tells you people want the creepy night, not just the rules. So host the night, not the rules.

GrantFine, but where do you start? Lights?

MilesLights and sound. Candles, a low playlist, one person who controls the pace. If you're moderating, you're the narrator. Slow your voice down when night falls.

GrantA moderator is a haunted house docent.

MilesExactly, and pace matters. Cap the discussion at a few minutes a round. Arguments that run long turn into a meeting.

GrantOh man, I've been to that meeting. Nobody's scared. Everybody's tired.

MilesRight.

GrantNow, the dead friends. Give them a job the second they go out. Hand them a prop. Make them the sound crew. Let them knock on the table when something happens.

MilesOoh, a dead player who runs the creaking door.

GrantWait for it because it's better. Let them whisper a guess to you privately. The moderator tracks who the ghosts think is guilty and reveals it at the end.

MilesThat's good. It keeps them in the story without tipping the table.

GrantAnd it gives the ghosts a reason to listen, which is the one thing you can't afford to lose from a dead seat, Paying attention.

MilesPaying attention is the whole job of a ghost.

GrantAnd if you're a designer, watch the first elimination, not the win rate. Watch the face of the person who goes out.

MilesDo they lean in or pull out their Phone?

GrantPhone is a failed play test, full stop.

MilesAlso, watch who talks. If one loud person carries every round, your game has a voice problem, not a lying problem. And watch what the eliminated players do with the job you gave them. If they ignore it, the job's too dull.

GrantPlot twist, sometimes the quiet player is the best liar and Nobody suspects them for 90 minutes.

MilesWhich is the best night of the whole game, honestly.

GrantAnd for the moderator, that's your cue to keep your hands off. Resist the urge to rescue a slow table. Silence is where the paranoia grows.

MilesSilence is hard to sit in. Everybody wants to fill it with a joke.

GrantSo give people a reason to hold it. A beat before a reveal costs you nothing.

MilesA long pause before you flip anything beats any speech you could give. Cheap and it works.

GrantAnd it works on the dead players too because they feel the quiet the same way the living do.

MilesThen nobody in the room gets to coast.

GrantOkay, last argument. Hot take. The scariest hosted night has the fewest rules explained.

MilesDude, no. Explain too little and people just feel cheated, not afraid.

GrantEh, I say let the confusion do the work.

MilesWe are not settling this today.

GrantNope. Let's wrap it up. Okay, quick lap before we go. Four ingredients, one breath each. A threat you believe, information that stays incomplete, stakes that survive elimination, a theme with something to lose.

MilesAnd I still say theme goes first. Nobody lies well about a village they don't care about.

GrantInformation, Miles. Take it away and your village is just a sad group chat.

MilesA sad group chat with candles.

GrantFine. The candles stay. They help.

MilesCandles are the cheapest special effect in the world.

GrantAnd the only one that flickers on cue.

MilesHalloween's coming, so go lie to your friends on purpose. Dim the lights, hand out the cards, and watch who can't hold eye contact.

GrantThen tell us how it went. Head to thedesigndeck.com or tag us on social. Who got caught first? Who bluffed like a pro?

MilesNew episodes drop every Thursday.

GrantAnd if someone swears they're innocent a little too fast-

MilesCheck the locks anyway.