One of the points of creating this thread was to provide an opportunity to look for particular patterns arising from the games that have been played. The recent talk concerning those who have survived games prompted me to wonder about the extent to which survival to the end is related to one’s role.
So I made a list of the number of survivors in each role. This covers all of the games concluded to date, with the exception of Sleepy’s game. The latter has not yet been “catalogued” here and, frankly, I am confused over just who survived. It looks to me, however, that most of those who survived the game (if not the final narrative) were ordinary villagers, which would not affect the statistics below too much.
Survivors:
Werewolf: 22
Black Beorning: 0
Cobbler: 1
Mytho: 2
Cursed: 2 (once as a Wolf, once as an Ordinary Villager)
Seer: 1
Ranger: 0
Hunter: 6 (or 7, if you count Naria’s disappearance in WW17)
Shirriff: 3
Ordinary Villager: 29
(For Anguirel’s game, the Heroes have been counted as Wolves and the un-gifted Wolves as Ordinary Villagers.)
While this is fairly “rough and ready”, since it is affected by the number of times each role has been used and the number of villagers with that role in each game, I think that some broad conclusions can still be drawn.
Obviously, the “safest” role is that of Ordinary Villager, but that is because of the “safety in numbers” principle (similar to the survival tactics of herd animals
). Ords are the most numerous in any game, and therefore have a much better chance of survival.
It does not surprise me that the second “safest” role is that of Werewolf, because on average the Werewolves tend to win more times than the Villagers and, where an equal number of Wolves and innocent Villagers are left on the final day, the Wolves survive whereas the innocents do not.
The figures suggest that your chances of surviving if you are a Ranger or the Seer are pretty negligible. That makes sense, given that these roles are prime Werewolf targets and the nature of the role can also often prompt a misconceived lynching. It also doesn’t surprise me that Werebears and Cobblers are more likely to die than not, given the nature of their roles.
But what is quite noticeable is that, proportionately (given that there is usually only one per village), Hunters have a very high survival rate. I suppose that this is explicable by the fact that Wolves are often able to identify the Hunter, and Hunters are more likely to declare themselves or drop obvious hints, and Wolves are then more likely to avoid them as nightly kills for fear of one of their own being taken down.
The Shirriff survival rate is also quite impressive, given that they have only been included in a relatively small number of games.
No doubt this post confirms Mith’s view of me as borderline Aspergis …
