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The Game involves a pack of werewolves hunting a human runner. Traditionally, it had rules that were strictly followed, and a quick and clever runner stood a decent chance of evading pursuit long enough to reach civilization or run out the clock, at which point he would be rewarded with a sum of money, a dinner at the werewolves' castle (at which he was not the main course), and presumably a certain amount of notoriety. Should he fail to do so, of course, he was eaten. (In this sense, Game is what you hang on a hook in the larder for a few days to allow the meat to flavour. Samuel Vimes, a man who won the Game, noticed lots of ominous-looking hooks in the werewolves' castle at just the right height...)

In recent times, certain of the werewolves changed the nature of the Game dramatically. It became merely an entertaining way of killing, especially those they wanted dead, with no prior agreement with the prospective runner and no rules that a werewolf need obey. With the demise of Wolfgang and the downfall of his faction, the future of the Game is unclear.

In one of those multi-layer associations that TP delights in generating, it should be noted that here on Roundworld, The Game, or the Great Game, was a Victorian euphemism for the business of spying and espionage. (ref. novels by Rudyard Kipling and George McDonald Fraser's Flashman series. ). In the wider contest of The Fifth Elephant, this is also a very fitting term, as Ankh-Morpork's spies in Überwald, when discovered, were forced to participate in the Werewolf version of the Game...

Elsewhere on the disc, The Game is also the complex boardgame played out by the Gods, on a board representing the mortal world, using mere mortal sentient creatures as the pawns. This is where the Lady habitually throws sevens, and Gods gamble with the fate of mortals. However, Gods have short memories and are always surprised to learn what happens when a pawn makes it to the other end of the board...