The Last Will is a piece of paper that is shown to the rest of the town after you die. Players can edit what is shown in a will using the button at the top of the screen, looking like an empty piece of paper. A Forger can edit another player's last will. A Last Will and a Death Note may hold up to 400 characters each. For your changes to a Last Will to be saved, it must be closed before you are killed (reopening will not reset it). If a player dies, their Last Will will be shown upon death and can be reopened and reviewed at any time by selecting their name in the graveyard.
The Use of Wills
A player's last will often includes critical information, although it is a focal point for the use of deception in the game. Town members will often include descriptions of what they were doing in each of the nights.
For example, a Lookout's will might include:
Lookout:
N1: Watched John Willard - Deodat Lawson and Cotton Mather visited them.
N2: Watched Betty Parris - Giles Corey visited them (Betty died? Giles suspicious?)
In this example, the nights are shown as N1 and N2 for each of the nights. Many players like to show their wills in this fashion but there are a number of advantages and disadvantages for the Townies when used this way. Other roles, such as the Mafia, won't use wills in such a way. A Neutral role, such as the Jester, will sometimes use the will as a means of teasing the other players for having hanged them. Players should show caution in when they use wills, as they are capable of turning the game in many different ways, for any side.
Some roles gather a lot of information, such as the Lookout who is mentioned below. Instead of writing all the names, you can use the number displayed in the list of names. For example:
N3: 4 (by 3 and 7)
This means that on night 3 you watched number 4 in the list, who was visited by number 3 and number 7.
Learning how to use numbers in Last Wills helps speed up writing them and reading them.
Also, generally, names stick to memory better than numbers so a lot of people will end up wasting time on deciphering your numerical code each time they need to re-check your will. Thus actually slowing down reading of your will instead of speeding it up.
Advantages of using Last Wills
For Townies
- Thorough but simple wills will help the Town determine other players' roles or find out if they are suspicious. This is especially the case when the will's owner is a Town Investigative; e.g. a Lookout's will containing "N3: John Hathorne visited by Samuel Sewall, Deodat Lawson. John Hathorne blackmailed!"
- If a will has suggestive evidence, this may incite the Retributionist to revive the victim, giving them the chance to tell the Town if the evidence is crucial or not. E.g. the Jailor, having been killed by the SK, writing in their will who they jailed last.
For Any Role
- A will which is updated daily can be copied and pasted into the chat as a form of evidence for one's innocence, even if it doesn't contain helpful evidence.
For Mafia
- A Mafia can reveal information to direct the Town's attention to lynching a Neutral role. E.g. "Ann Sears is immune - Serial Killer" may get the person lynched if they cannot convince the Town of their innocence.
- It's possible for a mafia member to call out roles that otherwise would benefit from not being known. Exposing the Spy, Veteran, and other roles allows the mafia to target said roles in the town.
- Additionally, a Consigliere can claim certain people are a specific role, in order to get the town to lynch them or not to trust them.
Disadvantages of using Last Wills
For Townies
- Wills can lead to many wrong lynches as well, especially when details about townies who have been framed or (wrongly) accused are included. Mafia members can use this to their advantage.
- Although wills can contain important information, the nature of deception in the game may lead to some wills being disregarded whereas the information included is actually correct.
- Some players may find unentered information suspicious. If a player is killed before they can complete the will for that night, then the next day it may come up partly completed and may lead to a wrong lynching (or possibly a correct one). The Investigator for instance may have found them not suspicious but they get lynched anyway.
- Some wills will contain information about who might be what role. This information is just as precious to the Mafia as it is to the Town. The Mafia might use the information to select their next target which could be a key role.
- A Janitor can clean the body of the victim and the will will not show up.
- Last Wills may reveal who the Veteran is if they visited the Veteran on alert the night they died and wrote the name in their will.
- Jesters, the Mafia, and a Serial Killer may have fake roles, taking the suspicion off of them.
- A Forger can seriously screw up the town, especially if it was an Investigator's will they had forged.
For Mafia, and other evil roles
- There are some people who use the last will to rat out their fellow mafia, which can be very annoying and is gamethrowing. In most cases, if a fellow Mafia rats you out, you are most likely dead, as trying to fight back to convince the town you are not a mafia will make yourself seem more suspicious. However, most of the time the mafia "reveals" who their fellow mafia are, they are really just framing other players. Use this to your advantage if a mafia betrays you, and point out to the town that it wouldn't make sense for the will to be telling the truth, because it would make them lose.
- When writing a fake will, it might be a nice idea sometimes to include a bottom line saying "Last Visit: <player name>". This might be done by those evil visiting roles who want to keep a fake will of visits, but at least give everyone information about their last visit in case they get killed by a Veteran, attack an immune player or they role block the Werewolf or Serial Killer. For example, a Consort's fake will might look like this:
John Willard the ESCORT
N1 William Phips
N2 Alice Young
CONSORT
Last visit: Giles Corey
This way, if John Willard dies from a Serial Killer or Werewolf on Night 2, everyone who reads the Last Will will realize that the first half is just a big lie, and the last visit of the Consort was Giles Corey, not Alice Young, thus Giles Corey should be suspected of being the Serial Killer or Werewolf. Same applies for a Serial Killer that attacks an immune player, but in the same night the Serial Killer gets killed by someone else (such as Werewolf or Arsonist). People reading the "Last visit:" line of the Serial Killer's Last Will, might realize that, that player was attacked by the Serial Killer and survived, thus he/she is suspicious.- As Mafia, this strategy can be pointless, as the other Mafia will see who you visited last night and write it in their Death Note.