In your various groups, how do you handle voting? It can be somewhat chaotic in our group.

What I do as moderator is, I let anyone nominate anyone for a vote. I ask for a second - if the nomination is seconded, then I ask who wants to see the person be hanged. The player does not vote, but they need a majority of votes in order to be hanged - so if there are 7 players remaining, then it takes 4 votes for in order to hang a person.

If there's an even number of players, then I use the sheriff, where the sheriff gets 2 votes. I still look for a majority, so if there are 10 players, it takes 6 votes to have someone hung.

How do you do it in your games? I'm looking for a better system.

We've tried several styles of voting in our games and now stick with the following:

After general discussion about who to lynch (3 minutes or until the moderator gets bored - whichever comes first)the player to the left of the vicitm from the previous night nominates someone. This continues around until everyone who can nominate has nominated.

The two people with the most nominations (they keep track by holding fingers up)get to make their defence (30 seconds)starting with the player to the left of corpse.

Voting goes around again in the same way except the two nominees don't vote.

The player with the most votes get lynched - except on the first night they get a stay of execution until the second lynching.

In the case of tied votes one of our villagers is the Village Elder On the first night he is awoken and declares himself to the moderator and indicates either clockwise or anticlockwise which will split any tied vote. He has no further power in the game - his initial choice stays throughout the entire game. Of course if he is tied with one other then the other will get the decision!

The system I like the best is simply pointing to the one to be lynched (with one hand, while raising the other). This has a few benefits, and simulates a "mob mentality" nicely.

But if you want something less chaotic, I'd go with the recommendation above (which is basically the Lupus in Tabula rules, with the addition of a village elder).

From a strategic standpoint, I recommend trying out "secret" voting (each nominee is assigned a color - red or blue, and each person has a red and blue chip...choosing one to put in their hand and display at the same time).

I've tried methods quite similar to the first two described above when introducing the game to new players, and I didn't care for either. With the first method, I found that players often voted to kill the first person accused, since their only concern was keeping themselves alive. The second method I found a bit hard to resolve.

After a bit of pondering and forum lurking, I think I'm going to use the following method: At any time, a player may accuse another player. If that accusation is seconded by someone, the accused gets a defense speech, after which he is allowed to accuse any other player (though I predict they'll often accuse the original accuser), who also gets a short defense speech. Then everyone else votes secretly for one of the two players, choosing one of two coloured chips in their possession representing the two players. Whoever gets more votes is killed.

Just my two cents!