Lougawou
The werewolf
Kills a player every night, with the pack. Members of the pack know one another.
The Creole werewolf
The rules of the game
How a game of Lougawou is played.
Lougawou is the Creole Werewolf game: bluff and deduction, face to face, in Saint-Pierre, 1902. Each player secretly receives a role card on their phone. At night, the Lougawou pack kills; by day, the town debates and votes to unmask it. A host runs the game and does not play.
The essentials
- At least four players, in the same room, plus a host who does not play.
- Everyone joins with the host’s code or QR code, and receives their card on their phone. The app replaces the cardboard cards, never the talking.
- The host chooses the roles, runs each phase and enters the night’s choices. The host sees every card, receives none, and never chooses a victim.
- Voting is by show of hands, out loud: nothing goes through the app.
The factions, and how to win
Every role card belongs to a faction. Players win with the faction of their card at the end of the game, even after dying.
- The town’s faction: the residents, the roles that help them, and Le Béké until he has imposed his debt. It wins when neither a member of the pack nor La Tanbouyè is left alive.
- The Lougawou faction, the pack: Lougawou, La Diablesse and anyone transformed. It wins when the town can no longer outvote it, counting one vote per living player and two for the Mayor, who breaks ties.
- The factionless loners: La Tanbouyè, who wins alone when she has put every other living player into a trance, or when she outlives everyone.
- The partners: if La Marchande and her business partner are the last two alive and from different factions, both win together.
A game, round by round
Everyone looks at their card in secret, then the town may elect a Mayor. After that, the game runs in rounds, each made of a night, a morning, a debate and a vote, until one faction wins.
Night
Players close their eyes. The host wakes the roles one by one; each role that wakes points to a player in silence, and the host enters the choice. The other living players’ phones show a night landscape, the same for everyone. The pack always chooses a quarry: if it cannot agree, the quarry is the one most of its members point to, and in a tie the game draws lots.
Morning
The host announces the night’s dead, and their cards are turned face up for everyone. The cause of a death at night is never revealed.
The debate
Three minutes by default, which the host can pause or extend. The living accuse, defend themselves and bluff; the dead no longer speak.
The vote
By show of hands; the dead do not vote. The player with the most votes is condemned; abstaining is allowed. In a tie, the Mayor decides; with no Mayor, the tied players face a second vote, and if the tie remains, or if the town refuses to condemn, no one is condemned. The condemned player’s card is turned face up for everyone, then night falls again.
The Mayor
A title, not a card: the Mayor keeps their card and faction, and their card wears the tricolour ribbon. At the vote, the Mayor’s hand counts double, and the Mayor breaks ties.
The election is optional. The town votes by show of hands, once everyone has seen their card, or on any day without a Mayor; only the living may stand, and when several stand, lots are drawn between them. When the Mayor dies, the town elects a new one.
Death, and leaving the game
Every death turns the dead player’s card face up for everyone. The dead no longer speak or vote, but they still play: at night, they answer Pelée’s quiz.
A player can always leave the game: they join the dead without revealing their card or setting anything off, they do not answer the quiz, and they do not come back. A phone that turns off, though, kills no one: its player simply takes their seat again.
The role cards
The host sets the number of Lougawou and chooses the other roles, each at most once; residents fill the remaining seats, then the game deals the cards at random. Role names are never translated.
The pack
La Diablesse
in Creole: Djablès
Chooses the quarry every night with the pack. Once per game, she may turn the quarry into a Lougawou instead of killing it: the transformed person joins the pack the following night. Neither Doktè Fèy nor the saving bottle can stop a transformation.
The town’s faction
Manman Dlo
She who sees the truth in the water
Discovers a player’s true role every night, in secret, on her phone.
Le Quimboiseur
Healer and killer
Holds two bottles, one that saves, one that kills, each usable once. The saving bottle works only on the night’s quarry, including himself if he is the quarry; the killing bottle, on any living player but himself.
Doktè Fèy
The protector
Each night, protects one player from the pack’s attack: never himself, never the same person two nights in a row.
Le Pêcheur
The avenging harpooner
If he dies, he takes someone with him: once his card is turned, he immediately points to a living player, whom his harpoon carries off. He may also choose not to.
La Makrèl
The spy
During the pack’s turn, she may half-open her eyes to spy on it, at her own risk: if the pack catches her, it may make her its quarry.
La Marchande
La business woman
On the first night, she chooses her business partner, and the two partners see each other’s card. She wakes only once: that night. If one of the two people dies, the other goes bankrupt and dies too.
La Conteuse
Survives the pack’s first attack, without knowing it. But if she is condemned at the vote, the town’s faction loses all its powers until the end of the game.
Le Béké
Your life to pay his debt
His debt grows by one with every death in the town, faster in small games. Once it is full, by the fourth night at the latest, the host wakes him first, and he imposes his debt on a player, who pays it by handing over their role and becomes a resident. Le Béké then takes on that role and its faction. He may wait one more night, once.
The residents
No power: their weapons are intuition, accusations and the vote.
The loners
La Tanbouyè
The trance drummer
Plays alone. Each night, the beat of her drum puts one person into a trance, or two in games of eight players or more. The trance is invisible to everyone, even the person in the trance, until the end of the game.
Mount Pelée
A rule found only in Lougawou: during the game, Mount Pelée wakes above the town. The dead tip it in secret towards their faction, and on the day it erupts, it favours one faction and an effect falls on the game.
The waking gauge
A gauge, the same for everyone on every screen, shows how close Pelée is to erupting. It rises by day only, with deaths, passing days and certain events, and every rise makes it rumble. At night, nothing moves. It never says which faction Pelée favours, and its red zone is not a countdown.
The dead answer
From the first night after the first death, while the host runs the roles, the dead answer a quiz on their phones about the Creole and Caribbean world: mythology, history, slavery and liberations, language and traditions, living culture. Up to five questions a night, twenty seconds each; when time is up, all the dead learn at the same moment whether they were right, with a short explanation.
A right answer wins points for the dead player’s faction; not answering loses a few, and a wrong answer loses many: when in doubt, better to stay silent than to be wrong. A dead player counts for the faction of their card at the moment of death, and points are weighted by the size of each faction at the start of the game: a small faction weighs as much as a large one. These points stay secret from the living, host included: only the dead see, each night, which way the Pelée’s balance leans.
The eruption
When enough players have died and the gauge is in the red zone, the host receives the alert. The host chooses the strength of the eruption, weak, moderate or strong, and launches it that day, whenever they like; night cannot begin until then. The host chooses neither the faction nor the effect, and does not know them.
On every screen, Pelée erupts and reveals the faction it favours. Then an effect falls on the game, drawn by lot among those that can apply to it: a secret protection, a power that regains or loses a use, a look from Manman Dlo doubled or clouded, a second quarry for the pack, a transformation undone… The greater the strength, the heavier the effect. In its announcements, Pelée says “the residents” for the whole town’s faction.
There is only one eruption per game: after it, Pelée falls silent for good, and the quiz stops. And it does not erupt until at least one dead player from the Lougawou faction has had the chance to answer the quiz.
The false alarm
If the dead of both factions have cancelled each other out, everything starts like an eruption, but Pelée rumbles, then falls back asleep, with no effect. The gauge drops, the quiz goes on, and it may wake again, until it erupts.
La Tanbouyè, when she dies
La Tanbouyè belongs to no faction. If she dies before the eruption, she has forty-five seconds to choose to help the residents, help the Lougawou, or help no one; if she helps a faction, she answers the quiz for it and counts as one of its dead. Her choice stays secret from the other players; the host knows it.
Pelée is in play from four players up, but a game can end before it has spoken. At the end, the game recounts what it did: the faction it favoured, the effect that fell, and the dead who tipped it.
The end of the game
As soon as a faction wins, the game records it and the host announces it. Everyone then discovers who was who and receives an end-of-game title, and the host may award distinctions. If no one is left alive, the game ends with no winner.
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