werewolf/mafia tip 

so in some games of mafia/werewolf people have cards that they look at, but more normally the mayor assigns the mafia/werewolves and the detectives/seers. if you’re as obsessive by mathematical pseudorandomness as i am, here’s a simple algorithm for doing so that will minimize your own selection bias.

think of a random word. “penguin” will do for this example. let’s say you have 13 players. you start by converting the first 5 letters into their corresponding numbers

oh. and be like me and have every letter of the alphabet’s corresponding number memorized. a=1, b=2, m=13, t=20, etc.

so now you have “penguin” -> “pengu” -> “16 5 14 7 21″. if your number is greater than your your number of players, subtract the number of players. in this case this yields “3 5 1 7 8″. now start at the person whose name comes first alphabetically (or whoever happens to already be in front of you, doesn’t matter), that’s how many people you will skip over as you go around assigning. so starting at your friend Aardvark, go 3 people, that’s your first werewolf. then go 5 more, that’s your second one, etc.

well, at least it’s a decent pseudorandom starting point for you to ignore while you assign them based on what you think will be funniest.

incidentally, would anyone be up for a game of werewolf if i set one up?