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Comment count is 8
Two Jar Slave - 2020-10-21

It's incredible how long it took for someone to successfully adapt the Werewolf / Avalon / Secret Hitler / Resistance genre into a videogame. I think a lot of us were already burning out on social deduction party games, what, eight years ago? And only now is Among Us a major hit, and with awful matchmaking to boot.

I actually had a lot of fun with it for a bit. Four friends and I played it for about a week. But the game's matter-of-fact "meta" quickly replaces the pleasure of casting paranoid accusations around and arguing for your own innocence. It turns rote very fast, though I definitely got my $5 worth of entertainment and then some.


Nominal - 2020-10-22

My experience with social deduction games has also been "devolves into rote meta very fast". It's long time players rotely sussing out who should vote exactly what, and shouting down anyone who says otherwise. I have no clue why anyone finds the experience enjoyable anymore.

The absolute worst of the genre though has come from the new-ish Blood on the Clocktower game. It's designed solely for the die hard meta mongs, by making the game so obfuscated that there's really no point in bothering to deduce anything. A game takes over 3 hours and it's always a random guess. i TRIPLY have no clue why anyone finds it enjoyable. It's also turned into a cult where EVERY damn semi-casual board game meetup group in my local area has become infested with the damn thing. A full 30-50% of every game night group now only plays it, all night, every night, with members trying to recruit every new member. I hate the thing with a passion.

I was into the Battlestar Galactica game for about a year. But even there, it quickly devolved into rote meta and the expansions only kept making it worse.

Dead of Winter is also garbage, also trying to break up the meta with "everyone is forced to look suspicious so there's no point in deducing anything".

Secret Hitler is the Cards Against Humanity of social deduction. Avoid it and fans at all costs.

The only 2 I still enjoy are Dark Moon and Bloodbound.

Dark Moon is like a stripped down Battlestar meets Liar's Dice. It's set up like Battlestar Galaxtica without the space combat, and hidden die rolls replace the skill cards. Everyone makes a secret roll for end of the turn checks, then submits a die. You have to determine over time who the traitors are by how many poor rolls they submit, whether it's intentional or who just got bad luck rolling. It really breaks up the meta without falling into the usual traps of "futile obfuscation" or "everyone is arbitrarily suspicious".

Bloodbound is good for how nothing is obfuscated, and games are very short so it doesn't hurt much if you screw up. It's 2 teams on equal footing, and you're not only trying to figure out who is on which team, but who the other team's leader is. Game is over the instant one player is killed, at which point you reveal everyone and if it was the other team's leader killed, you win. Otherwise, your team loses. That way it does away with the usual problem of early executed players getting bored.


Two Jar Slave - 2020-10-22

Nice breakdown, Nom. I'll look out for Darkmoon and Bloodhound.

I fully agree about Galactica; my group got hard into it to the point that I've probably played 7 - 10 rounds more than I ever wanted to. There is one expansion I actually enjoyed which sets up one player as an outed Cylon Leader from the very start. With the right number of players there's no "secret Cylon" at all, just the powerful Leader, so it becomes more like an old school d&d game with one player controlling the baddies and trying to kill everyone else. I only played it once, but it was the most fun I'd had with Galactica in a long time. But, yeah. It's a very old game now and it's fine to just never go back to it.

Blood on the Clocktower sounds like Diplomacy levels of shit design.


jfcaron_ca - 2020-10-22

I refuse to play board games that are partially-co-operative with a betrayal mechanic. Either everyone is competing with everyone as in a traditional game, the opponents are fully identified (e.g. Pandemic expansions), or it's fully co-operative and the enemy is the game itself (e.g. Arkham Horror). I've sat through enough Battlestar Galactica "BUT I'M NOT A CYLON" shouting sessions, it's not fun. There's a traitor mechanic in an Arkham Horror expansion but it comes out of a quest card and it's not in every game, so it doesn't ruin the game much (not that AH is a great game - it's a slog).


Two Jar Slave - 2020-10-22

Yeah, whining about who is and isn't a traitor is not fun, and this is especially true for any game that lasts longer than a few minutes. Galactica and Dead of Winter are the worst, folding the betrayal mechanic into an all-evening game that has lots of other strategic goings-on that you could, and do, invest yourself in. Just as you're settling into the fun of battling cylons or raiding gas stations, that's when the accusations heat up and the whole thing just falls apart. And why wouldn't it? Speaking as someone who has been a whiny traitor more than I'd like to remember, what are your options? Either you whine and cry to throw people off the scent, which quickly sours the evening, or you give up, out yourself as a villain, and sit there utterly bored for the next couple hours while the good guys play out the remainder of the game by rote. You're not even allowed to go watch TV: both games keep in the traitor involved with a sort of watered-down, ceremonial role.

One thing Among Us gets right is keeping the rounds blessedly short, especially with 4 - 6 players. I've experienced very little sulking because the games are short enough to keep things moving forward. And there's no "campaign mode" to snowball successes or failures over multiple rounds: each game is a clean slate. Those are good choices, even if they do promote the by-the-numbers meta to quickly take over.

But ultimately, it's pretty faint praise to say "the best social deduction games are the ones where you don't have long enough to feel invested."


Nominal - 2020-10-23

Another frequent social deduction pitfall: it only takes one dumb player to drag their entire team down with them. The evil team only has to trick one good team player to seal the game, and the evil team is so few that one player is a huge chunk of their team.

Secret Hitler is the absolute worst though. The main mechanic is one player is elected president and the other chancellor, and each team is trying to pass a certain number of good or evil laws. The president secretly draws 3 random laws, passes 2 to the chancellor, who then picks one to vote on.

Here is every round of Secret Hitler:

Chancellor: *plays evil law*
Chancellor: "I didn't have a choice! The president handed me both evil laws!"
President: "No I didn't!"

And then it turns into Monty Python's Argument Clinic.

Social Deduction games are the wine poisoning scene from the Princess Bride, and everyone is Vizzini.


simon666 - 2020-10-21

I watched this for a few minutes last night. AOC seems pretty personable and cool.


Two Jar Slave - 2020-10-22

*gestures with a cigar*
Why... I think this dame might just have a future in politics!


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