FANG - A history - Part 2

In 2020, I had my friends play FANG for the first time. I have gotten good at figuring out when a game is doing what I want it to, and it was pretty obvious that the core mechanic of letting players wander at night worked like a charm. Games begin like what a classic social deduction game would be, but weird interactions (such as the Chairman and Alpha running into each other) lead to interesting outcomes - once I had the werewolves and vampires carving up territory I knew it was working!

The biggest trick with FANG has always been getting the humans incentivized to go places other than the saloon. The first 2 modifications were directed at this while also solving other problems. First is the Town Hall rule, which punishes cowardly humans and provides an alternative objective for the monsters. Also early on were the Soulmates, which give the humans an extra objective to chase and encourage a little bit of risk taking to spend some time alone.

While successful, adding some more dynamic features happened in 2022, with the goal of giving players more interesting tasks to try and complete. A lone wolf Necromancer looking just to kill, and encourage chaos, but the biggest additions were the Cultists and the Aliens. Cultists took the soul mates idea to the extreme and needed to be watched carefully to prevent them from completing their dark ritual. The Alien device also added the chance for a late coming human turned monster to upend the game at the last second.

However, I’ve since walked back these groups, both had been successful for several games in a row, reducing the core Vampire vs Werewolf battle to a side show. The team work was also reduced as players were less likely to be part of a larger team. But I still need to keep the humans from hiding out, so how do we change that?

Instead of punishing the humans by giving them all sorts of things that can hurt them out beyond town, how about give them rewards. This year, we will start using Items to encourage human players to get out and build up an arsenal so late game they have a chance against the monsters.

I hope that FANG 2024 (which will be up soon!) will be an even bigger improvement over the last few iterations and that more players will find joy in stabbing their neighbors in the middle of the night.