I'm the last to arrive. I'm player thirteen.
As she explains the rules I'm breaking down strategy in my head. I'm tired, scared, really just want this to go okay - but instincts are instincts and I don't know how to play any way but well. Right, alliances, elimination mechanic, single winner, first-mover advantage, got it. I pick an ally and rapidly eliminate other players, starting with the first person kind enough to introduce himself. We split the spoils as we go. A momentary diversion gives me the chance to turn on my ally and eliminate him to get the other half of the treasure. He doesn't see it coming.
(By chance it doesn't work. But that's not important)
It's not until we stop that I notice how I'm feeling. There's no glory in this, not afterwards.
And 'afterwards' is where we spend most of our time. The remembering self is more important than the experiencing self. My games are designed to produce short, powerful, memorable moments, stories that can be told in the pub afterwards.
Why would you tell a story you're not proud of?
Even the stories are secondary. They're there to produce 'shared secrets', the knowledge that welds a team together. If you've turned on someone in a game.. well, it's a game. It doesn't matter, mostly. Mostly. We're just playing, right?
I've never liked Werewolf, either. I don't mind that it bites hard; I want games to do that. I mind that, after the game, the biting doesn't entirely stop.
Constraints must have real consequences. I'd been working on a format called The Turn; a desperate band of friends, under-equipped and surrounded, tries to hold out against fearsome odds - but one of them is a traitor. Or maybe all but one are traitors. Adding paranoia to the already adrenaline-soaked atmosphere of Outbreak would guarantee an even-higher-energy game. But I'm going to scrap it.
After four years of flailing I'm now increasingly clear on exactly what Fire Hazard is and what it does.
We don't do betrayal.