No Man's Land

Probably a lot of you know of the classic game of Mafia, where the players are handed slips of paper with their "secret identities" on them and are separated in 2 groups, the mafia and the townsfolk, each with the objective of eliminating the other. Some 7 years ago I came across this concept in the form of The Werewolves of Miller's Hollow, by the french game makers Lui-même. I saw it sitting innocently on a shelf of the comic book store I used to visit and asked the owner, Dan, about it. He told me a lot of pretty cool things, how the game was all about bluffing and manipulating the other players to turn them on each other or make them commit a mistake and reveal their identity, so I bought it and tried it out with my friends.

This little guy started it all.

It was a blast, the game has become a staple of meetings with my friends and I've been basically obsessed with it ever since. It has been my goal since then to make a more personal version of it, snooping around for more characters and rules and expanding the concept much in the way the Ultimate Werewolf version by Bézier Games did. I've made a couple versions to date, but they weren't much in term of innovation, without any deviation in the original "werewolves" theme and using MTG card templates, making it all look rather bland and lazy. But some 5 months ago I started feverishly working on a new version, with a whole new background story and theme, called No Man's Land.

Examples of a character card for No Man's Land.

It's progressing slowly, like wading through molasses, but it's eventually going to get done. I will post details about the game world and gameplay in future posts, but I've ranted enough about how much I love this kind of games in this one that I should probably put a ring on them and shut up. So, if you've ever played any similar game, feel free to write about your experiences in the comments and give any suggestions or, hopefully, words of encouragement, heavens know I need them.

See you next time, have a nice day!