@Saposhiente - No, I did not invent it, but I have read the original research for the purpose behind the game. The ENTIRE point of this game is the uninformed majority versus the informed minority. That said, to make the game "fun" several roles were added to the fantasy version called "Are You a Werewolf." The problem is that a werewolf can claim Seer D1 as well. And he can even point to one of his brethren to get a confirmed kill and "confirm" a villager is safe. For others, he can claim ignorance. The Devil can ALWAYS claim Seer D1 as well, and get exactly the same information. The possibilities are endless. All I know is that in a RL game, the Devil never got anything in the way of special communications with the Wolves, and neither did the Seer. IMHO, from what I've heard here, it's all this PMing groups business that got WAY out of hand and has flat-out ruined games. Please try to tell me I'm wrong. A friend in one of the games emailed me a screen-capture of a message chain for on of the Classic games. PMing has been misused and abused, again, IMHO. The ONLY reason I had PMing in the beginning was so that the wolves could contact me as to who to do night kills, and the Baner could PM me as to who to protect, and the Seer and Devil could see who they wanted (of course the Fool getting whatever fancy I took at the moment). You want to run Werewolf however you want, that's fine, but Classic was ALWAYS intended to mimic the RL party game. Lucky and I had EXTENSIVE conversations about this exact thing, especially after he (I'm pretty sure it was he that was approved to post the original WW CENTRAL Sticky) and some others Re-Started Classic.

Look, I'm not trying to pick a fight, and I'm not trying to ruin anybody's fun. What I am trying to do is keep WW Classic the game it was always intended to be. You want to run all of that other stuff on Werewolf? Go ahead. Leave Classic to the purists who want a fun game where a player gets pointed at first day because he was a werewolf in the last game, where they can lynch the Seer or Baner (with groans of agony), where the Wolves sweat when they realized one of them has been made, and begin to jump on the bandwagon to save their own hides in voting for a fellow wolf, and the Devil quietly manipulates the whole thing to help the wolves win in the end. *THAT* is the game I originally brought here 9 years ago while I was deploying to Afghanistan. *THAT* is what we had intended this to be.

Sorry for the rant.

That said, the only thing I can conceivably do to make it any more balanced, without giving the game to the wolves, is let the Devil know who the wolves are, but not vice versa. I can see where he/she would know who works for him/her but not vice versa.

How does that work for everyone?

The problem with this whole conversation is that the Devil's whole point of being in the game is to give more flair to the wolves. In the original game, it is Werewolves, Villagers and Seer, with the wolves comprising 25% of the total population. Don't you see? The Seer's whole job is to be the balance for Team Villager! When you add in the Baner, it doesn't do much because he will likely only protect himself until he is sure he is protecting the right person. We used to run it with the Baner being unable to protect himself, but changed our minds around WW III or IV, before we had to differentiate between Classic and non-Classic. When you add the Masons (who are only 1/10 of the population, and can't be used unless the number of players can support them), they provide a touch more power to the villagers because they are two villagers who know that each other is safe. Any keen observer will notice them working together and then accuse them of being wolves. With Masons MUST come the Devil role. The Devil must then be brought in to steer votes towards the villagers, specifically the Seer.

Sorry to beat the dead horse here, but the whole idea of PM'ing behind the scenes for reasons other than discussing who the werewolves are going to kill at night is counter to the kind of game Classic was intended to be.

@Alarra and Zeb the Troll: Didn't we have this same conversation years ago about this role?