Quantum Werewolf is a game based on the party game "The Werewolves of Millers Hollow" (known as "Weerwolven van Wakkerdam" to Dutch audiences) with a quantum mechanical twist: Players play in a superposition of possible games of werewolves!
The game is published on PyPI and can be installed using pip as follows:
$ pip install quantumwerewolf
Start the game in a terminal by running the quantumwerewolf command in a terminal.
The Werewolves of Millers Hollow is a classic(al) party game where each player (save the game master) gets a secret role card assigned to them. There are two teams: the werewolves and the village (consisting of all roles except the werewolves). At night, each player secretly takes an action corresponding to their role: The seer gets to see another player's card; Cupid can make two players fall in love; and the werewolves choose who they will eat that night. During the day, all players vote on another player to be lynched. The village's goal is to kill all werewolves, and the werewolves' goal is to kill all non-werewolves. When only one faction is left, they win.
The quantum twist introduced in Quantum Werewolf is a superposition of roles. This means that every player is every role at once, and gets to take actions corresponding to all roles at night. Of course, the superposition can be collapsed by measurements. Currently, there are two ways of measuring the superposition:
- A player uses his Seer action to look at someone else's role, partially collapsing the superposition (and introducing entanglement!);
- A player dies, which reveals his role to all players, collapsing the superposition quite a bit.
Since there is no way of knowing the final gamestate (in fact, your actions influence what the final measurement will be), it is important to players to "crack" the permutations and try to make the superposition collapse in their favour. The game is very complex, and honestly isn't much fun to play with your grandma. However, it can be used as an education tool for superpositions, or as a way to pit physicists against each other in cracking the code.
When you start a game of quantum werewolf, you are first prompted to enter the names of all participating players. After entering and confirming the list of players, you are presented with the standard role selection of a number of werewolves and the seer. You may refuse this role selection and choose the amount of werewolves as well as the additional roles.
A game of quantum werewolf needs at least 1 werewolf, optional roles are:
- Seer: Inspects the identity of a player each night, revealing their role to the seer.
- Cupid: Chooses two players to fall in love during the first night. Whenever one of the lovers dies, the other dies as well. The lovers win if they are the only 2 players left, regardless of role.
- Hunter: Whenever the hunter dies, they may choose to kill another player.
You should decide on the rules to follow during the day phase. For example a popular vote with a mayor as tiebreaker.
During the night all special roles get to take their specific actions. In quantum werewolf all players will take all their actions in turns. During your turn you must specify how you would act as each role. You are only promted for actions corresponding to roles for which you have a non-zero probability to be. At the start of your turn you will be shown all the players that are still alive and the current distribution of your own role. During your action as a werewolf you will be shown what the probability is that the other players are a werewolf together with you. Furthermore after the first round and if cupid is in the game, you will also be shown the likelihood that each other player is your lover.
At the start of the day phase all players that have died during the night will be revealed, as will their roles (this is a measurement and partially collapses the game). After the reveal, the players are presented with the current state of the game in which all players and their chances of being each role is tabulated. All players in the table are anomymous except for dead players. The order of the players is random, but fixed throughout the game.
All players that are still alive must now discuss whoever they will lynch. This discussion is separate from the interface of the game. You should decide beforehand on the format of this discussion and how the lynch target will be decided.
Original "Schrödinger's Wolves" puzzle by Steven Irrgang in the 2008 CISRA puzzle competition: https://web.archive.org/web/20080719133809/http://puzzle.cisra.com.au/D-5-Schroedingers-Wolves.pdf
Original solution and explanation: https://web.archive.org/web/20181116123708/https://puzzle.cisra.com.au/2008/quantumwerewolf.html