Photo by Sander Sammy on Unsplash So,
What is a Social Deduction game and what are the strengths/weaknesses of these kinds of games?
A social deduction game focuses on deception and discovery as primary elements of their play. In these games players usually have a secret goal, a secret role, and, often times, secret powers. To win these games player must do what they can to conceal their roles while discovering the roles of their opponents. Misdirection is the name of the game here with many games of this type allowing players to do all manner of surreptitious sculduggery short of actually breaking the rules.
This makes the act of deducing player roles and goals a challenging affair, with players needing to flex their ability to catch tells, discern fact from falsehood, catch patterns of action, and inconsistencies of data across time.
Consider the game Blood on the Clock Tower. One of the more complex entries in this style of game, Blood on the Clock Tower features a plethora of secret roles and powers that players are assigned at the start of the game. These roles are associated with either the demon team or the human team. Both teams have a collective objective. The demon team's goal is to protect one player who is the demon through various means. The human team's goal is the discover the demon and kill it. If the humans' methods of killing the demon are killed or otherwise neutralized completely, the demon team wins. If the humans kill the main demon, the humans win.
The roles vary wildly in the types of things they can do. For instance, the Ravenkeeper's ability activates when they are killed, allowing them to learn one player's identity and role. The monk chooses one person to protect with each night. The Poisoner can cause player's abilities to malfunction making them get false information for a day. The demon can kill one person per night (straight forward, but it is very possible for them to mistakenly kill an ally)
This game hinges on the fact that the abilities are so wildly different that the tells for who is using them, and therefore what role they have can be tricky to hide. On the flipside it also means that players who are savvy to the roles of the game can impersonate other roles to throw the other team off of their scent.
From a design standpoint, this kind of game encourages a great deal of social interaction between players, as the whole thing plays out as one big ongoing conversation about who is what role and what should be done about them. It can allow for some interesting play strategies, but can be very hard for people who are poor liars or actors.
But what of Social Deduction games where player abilities are relatively homogenous? Let us consider the game Bang! In this game One player is the sheriff, one player is a deputy, and everyone else is either an outlaw or a renegade. Everyone knows who the sheriff is, but all other role information beyond this is hidden. The outlaws goal is to kill the Deputy and the Sheriff. The Deputy's goal is the protect the Sheriff. The Renegade's goal is to be the last man standing. The way to defeat any player is to shoot them enough times with bullet cards that they run out of HP.
Again in this game players are encouraged to impersonate other player's roles, and trick their opponents into shooting their allies. For instance a Renegade could try to pass as a deputy, handing defensive items to the sheriff, and aiding
him when he targets an opponent. In this way he could trick the sheriff into shooting the deputy. Likewise the deputy could impersonate an outlaw to protect himself from the other outlaws while trying to find out who the renegade is.
Here the tells are more ambiguous, mostly dove tailing off of who the player attacks and who the player helps. Even here misdirection and discernment are the key skills at play. So once again, the game plays out as a grand conversation about who is who and what should be done about it. Now, however, there is a more simplified landscape of actions that can be taken, making certain elements of discernment harder and easier.
Both of these games illustrate the biggest strength of the Social Deduction games, which is the fact that they encourage players to interact with each other in creative and sometimes out of the box ways. That said, these games can require a bit of a thicker skin for some, as players need to be okay with being lied to and tricked within the confines of the game. But as they say, all's fair in love and gaming.
...what? People don't say that? Well they should!
Anywho, what do you think of this play archetype dear reader? Do you have a favorite Social Deduction game? What's your favorite role that you've occupied in one of these games? Comment below, inquiring minds want to know!
Comentarios