Happyville Basic Rules
This map relies on several non-standard game mechanics to facilitate an atmosphere appropriate to a paranoia game.
Chase Camera
While playing the game, rather than seeing the standard WarCraft overhead view, your view will be locked in a position close behind your character. This will make it easy to see the area directly in front of your character, but you won't be able to see very much to the sides or behind you, and your view will be blocked by obstructions, such as buildings. The purpose of this view is to make it easier to sneak up on people, so you can attack by surprise.
Tip: Looking Around
You can look around without moving much by telling your character to move to a spot a little to the side or behind him; your character will turn to face his destination, and the camera will rotate with him. If you're not moving around very fast, you should occasionally check behind you to see if anyone is coming; you can also use this technique to quickly check in several directions when you reach an intersection.
If you de-select your character while there's some obstacle between him and the camera, you can easily re-select him by dragging a selection box over the appropriate part of your screen, or by clicking the icon in the lower-left part of the viewable area (if your character is idle).
Combat
A single successful attack is always fatal; if you successfully ambush someone and get off the first hit, he won't get a chance to strike back.
However, your attacks sometimes miss. The chance of hitting is affected by several factors, but the most important one is the angle you strike from. You will tend to miss more if you attack people from the front, and hit more often if you attack from behind. The probability of a hit changes smoothly with the angle of attack, so if you can't get directly behind someone, you can still maximize your chances of a hit by getting as close as you can (make sure they're not lining up an attack on you at the same time).
Tip: Learning the Odds
If you type "-stats" (without the quotes) as a chat message in the game, you can turn statistic display on and off. While turned on, you'll see messages telling you your probability to hit and evade on each attack, and how fast you're moving when your movement speed changes.
If you are happy, and you attack another happy person, you will suffer intense remorse over the accidental death of your fellow happy citizen. The crushing pain of this remorse will cause you to die after 10 seconds, so be careful whom you choose to attack.
Tip: Killing Spree
Once you're under the effects of remorse, you might as well kill as many other people as you can. The remorse isn't any worse for two deaths than for one, and you might just manage to kill an unhappy person before you die.
Special Skills
Your character has three special abilities that can be turned on and off: Caution, Stealth, and Observation. These can each be turned on or off separately. While turned on, each of these provides you with some advantage, but also decreases your movement speed.
Caution: You have a significantly increased chance to dodge attacks from other players. Your movement speed is reduced by 33% while Caution is on.
Stealth: You become invisible, even while attacking. Other players will not be able to see you until you get very close to them, unless they have Observation turned on. Your movement speed may be reduced by as much as 40% while Stealth is on, but you can reduce this penalty by increasing your Stealth skill.
Observation: You can see players using Stealth from a much greater distance. Your movement speed may be reduced by as much as 40% while Observation is on, but you can reduce this penalty by increasing your Observation skill.
In certain scenarios, special characters might have other abilities.
Skills
Every character has five skills with affect their performance:
When the game starts, you will have a certain amount of gold, which you can use to buy skill upgrades from the marketplace in the town square (there will be a brief time to do this before combat is allowed, so you won't get killed while shopping). You can get additional skill upgrades (and additional gold) by picking up the tomes and gold coins that appear randomly around the map. You will also get additional gold when you kill other players, but keep the remorse rule in mind when doing so.
Tip: Improving Your Skills
Other players will also be trying to collect skill upgrades. You can maximize your chances of getting a lot of upgrades if you keep moving, and frequent places where there aren't a lot of other people. Upgrades tend to accumulate in areas where players don't go very often, or where visibility is poor (so they don't see the upgrades). Search them out to maximize your skills!