Armenian Werewolves in Vanadzor with a Pittsburgh sidebar.

I had wanted to do something in my class for a while, and so I finally asked them about the idea of playing the game Werewolves (or Mafia, as it is also known).

For those who don't know either version of the game, it is a psychological role-playing game. Everyone gets a role, but no one knows what role other people are playing. The roles are villagers, which do nothing special, werewolves, which kill a villager each night, and the wizard, who can secretly find out the role of one person each round. The round consists of a night part, where the werewolves choose someone to kill, then a day part where the village can choose someone to kill that is hopefully a werewolf. But remember no one knows who anyone else actually is, everyone is trying to convince everyone else they are a villager. There are many other additional roles and rules you can add to the game, but this is the basic game.

The reason I wanted my students to play was because of the natural way it lends to authentic language interaction, and specifically with using degrees of certainty. We brainstormed a list of ones we knew and went over modal verbs and how they were formed and organized them on the board according to not sure, maybe, and certain. Then I explained the rules of the game as above, my student had played their version and I had them explain in English their version so most of the rules were the same.

One rule I did add, and really this was the point of playing the game, not just for the sake of playing a game in class, was that if you spoke Armenian (or Russian) you were out of the game. Werewolves speak Russian and Armenian.

During our first game, one of the rules I took for granted was broken. The wizard had identified a werewolf and was very forceful in condemning the werewolf, which other people (not knowing her role) thought might be a sign of a werewolf. So she showed them her card, indicating she was a wizard. She said this was okay in Armenian games, but I'm not so sure, because the uncertainty of the roles is the crux of the game, and without them, everyone just shows their cards, and it's no longer a game.

I was overall happy with how the game went because I have had trouble getting this class to speak and use English in class during our discussions, and this class was the first one where they all spoke almost entirely in English. There were a few minor breaks into Armenian, and I wasn't good in uniformly kicking them out of the game, but they all stopped immediately and continued in English so that was okay.

Totally unrelated:

I was reminded of Pittsburgh today, specifically their public transportation system. I was waiting for the marshutni to go to work (I don't always take it but I was running late and I had my computer with me, and work is about a mile away) and I waited for a good while, not seeing any buses at all, until there is 4 that come all at the same time, one after another.

Just like Pittsburgh. You'd be waiting, then all the buses would come in a row. If you could see right now, I'm shaking my head, but you can't see me, so that's why I typed it.