Creating 'Unique' Roles - Smooshing

My favourite part of our beloved Werewolf game is creating roles. I enjoy it more so than the actual event of hosting the game itself, partially because a role will never go inactive on me, but mostly due to the process of thinking and the little skip of joy that creating a unique or interesting role gives you. So I thought I’d share some of the ways to make ‘unique’ roles, since roles are the heart and soul of Werewolf. Now, I say ‘unique’ roles, because a truly original and creative role is usually lacking some form of procedure to it. That’s not to say that a role created through format is any less enjoyable or unique, but you can understand the lessened impact of it. There’s a few of these formulated steps that I use, but that’s not to say that a host should stick to chronological thought process and nothing else, because personal ideas tend to be far better than those created via a template, in my opinion.

Regardless, sometimes I don’t want to have a plain old boring dreamer in my game. I want to mix things up a bit, but the normal flow of ideas isn’t quite working and so I use some of these things. In a few of these articles I’ll go through some of them to help you out. These will most likely benefit beginner hosts more than experienced ones, because regular hosts will have their own methods and those might include some of these. Enough rambling, though.

My favourite is something that I have labelled as Smooshing. As could be guessed, it’s because it involves the simple idea of smooshing roles together. This is by far the easiest way to create a ‘unique’ role, because it takes concepts already familiar to the host and creates a role that is familiar to the player, but also quite different. There are so many combinations and these combinations still require thought from you as the host, so they’re also unique to your mindset and style of creativity. A good example, which I use all the time, is the Martyr/Guardian Angel. They fit together very well, because the Guardian uses powers when it’s dead and the Martyr tries to get itself attacked. This is also a very good example, because it shows how more creative thinking must be applied. This role’s purpose is to die. That is incredibly bleak for a player, so you have to think about a change that can make it fun again. The change I make is that if the role dies because it redirected an attack at itself, then it is automatically resurrected a few days later. It’s not the most amazing role and nor was the change that phenomenal, but at the very least it brings something intriguing to the role table.

With that above method you can combine some interesting roles to make even more interesting ones, but never forget to look them over. Making sure they’re balanced is the most important issue. Having an Enchanter combined with a Resser to make a one-res-every-night ability is ridiculously overpowered, because it would resurrect players almost as fast as they were killed. If you think of a combination that seems imbalanced, such as a Beloved Prince/Sibling combination, then try to think of ways to adjust it to be viable, but still balanced. For example, the above combo would mean that two to three baddies are guaranteed to die, which is pretty awful gameplay wise. Instead, the Beloved Prince/Sibling roles might reduce the shield of their killer, and if their killer’s shield hits 0% because of this, their killer dies. This now seems more like a Sibling role with a slight tweak, but it’s still a different and balanced take on the Sibling than usually found. And, if nothing else, you could apply that shield reduction with an added chance to kill to a lot of things. It sounds like a good baddie power, actually… might steal that.

And that’s a surprisingly simple way to make unique roles. It does require an angle of thinking to balance it or to see a role inside a mess of others so think outside the box sometimes. It does work, though, and obviously not all combinations are going to give a good result, but I do love this method, because many hosts will understand how difficult it is to change roles such as the Dreamer. If you use methods such as this one, there’s a chance you’ll find an interesting change to dream through. However, careful with your imagination. Sometimes you’ll go a bit further than you want to. Just look at the Parasite and Symbiote roles. I got a bit carried away with smooshing the Enchanter and Psychologist/Serial Killer roles together, but I personally love the role. Just… just a bit carried… away.