One of the problems I've noticed with social deduction is that it becomes increasingly harder to be the "bad guys" once players figure out the "meta". Good guys will eventually figure out the exact steps which lead to the most efficient win, and anyone not following that rigid path is instantly suspicious. This is somewhat alleviated with more complex games, but those come with their own issues like you described in the video.
Yeah it can be hard to make mechanics where there are actions that strengthen the party and traitor so it doesn't make it too obvious too early. Having it be around characters I think can help, where all characters need to get stronger if you're to overcome the challenges, but you don't want to risk the traitor(s) getting too powerful either. It discourages you from just sabotaging strong players and actions that are risky but with good rewards don't seem as suspect because everyone has a reason to do it.
I like Night of the Ninja because all though there are teams - the teams switch up every round and you have a personal score so any betrayal is relative and doesn't actually cause a game loss.
I ownder if a level of controlled randomness could fix the "solved game" issue. I'm not that big into long boardgames, so I'm gonna use among us as the example. you have the map, a grid where you can move up to X steps per turn, and each person gets a set of task cards to do. Each task needs you to be in a location to attempt, and each attempt works basically like a round of yahtzee: roll 5 dice, choose up to 5 to reroll, and check the final score; the difficulty of the task is determined by the score needed. Except, you roll your dice hidden, and only show the final result, so players cant know if you had a hand to fix the thing from the get-go and threw it away or if you just got unlucky. That sounds (to me) like a simple enough game that can't really be solved - unless you have mathematician players who know the odds of yahtzee by heart. Add more card mechanics for voting and for an end-of-round sabotage, make the game time-based (as in, number of rounds) and it sounds like you could surpass that... but idk
I always hate people suggesting the most efficient route even if I’m not a traitor, like in SH. It just takes out the fun. Players will always try to remove the fun out of a game through efficiency. There are entire essays on this.
The word I would use to describe the weakness of social deduction games is "fragility". There are many points of failure that can either make a social deduction game flat out not work, or just become unenjoyable. I've played in games with people who play randomly, which breaks the game; people who refuse to lie, which breaks the game; people who forget what their role is, which breaks the game; people who don't fully understand or grasp mechanics, which breaks the game; and so on. The games need equal buy-in and attentiveness from each player, and if any one player doesn't match the others in their capacity to do so, the game most likely won't work. I've also noticed that most deduction games end up just distilling into witch trials a lot of the time. Regardless of how "well" or skillfully you might play the game, saying "they are the witch!" inherently holds more power and control over the outcome.
On the point on people refusing to lie or cant lie. They dont really enjoy social deduction game in the first place or after trying once, dont play social deduction game with them. For the point on people forgetting the roles, that is a bad excuse and in games like werewolf and blood on the clocktower, the moderator would have told the player their role or they can always check with the moderator. Playing randomly is uncontrollable but at the same time can be quite funny, but they might not always fit the same group and probably in games with moderators. Cant talk about werewolf. But for blood on the clocktower there usually some logics so it wont become a witch trial kind of game.
@@yugiwinninglex I'm the player who can't lie, and doesn't enjoy it. So I hate social deduction... I wish I could find a group that played anything else!
Personally, I just think that's the social part of the social deduction game. People aren't going to be fully rational, this isn't a game theory model. There are gonna be people who aren't good at lying or can't lie, and the game can still be fun. Strong players getting voted out isn't rational, but from the perspective of a weaker player it's in their best interest to kill off the strong player because if they are the killer, their skill would make them a hard killer to pin down, so it's easier to just get them off the board.
The point about the bad guys winning more often than the good guys made me think of the show The Traitors. Based on Mafia, a group of people play a social deduction game for money where a handful of them are playing as the titular Traitors while the rest are the Faithful. It’s honestly a fun show, especially for anyone who enjoys social strategy reality shows, but even though it’s in its infancy it is abundantly clear that the Traitors have a massive advantage over the Faithful. Not only are they exempt from half the eliminations as they’re not eligible to be murdered, but the Faithful aren’t even incentivized to get rally against the Traitors if the suspect them as it will likely just get you killed the following night (only the survivors at the end can win the money and it’ll be split evenly between whichever members are remaining on the winning team) and if you’re too good at taking out the Traitors then production will just add more to the mix since they can’t exactly end the show if all the Traitors die, they have to fill in their timeslot on the broadcast schedule. The better strategy is to deduce a Traitor and form an alliance with them so they hopefully don’t murder you in the night and then cut them at the end, or to get recruited yourself into the Traitor team. Without spoiling the series, the Traitors are more favorable by far compared to the Faithful and it’s not even close. Imo the producers need to figure out a way to skew the power imbalance a bit more and create a mechanic that incentivizes the Faithful to actively seek out Traitors. Otherwise the deduction part is bound to get lost as each new season forms the meta and the show will just be about alliances instead.
I've noticed some people just essentially get picked on. My wife's experience with social deduction games is "She's being quiet!!! She's the traitor!!!"... "She's not being quiet!!! She's the traitor!!!"
Same thing vor me! In my school we would always play Werewolf. Early on, a fUnNy jOkE evolved, where my class would always kill me off first, no matter what I did. I tried to tell myself that it was just my imagination, that they were not actually ON PURPOSE denying me the chance to play, until a few years later. Once again, it was the end of the year. At this point, classes had changed, but we were still playing Werewolf. It was the second day I think, and it was accusation time. And then one girl, who I actually kinda liked, said “she has to be the werewolf, because in our old class, we would always kill her the first night. Since she is not dead yet, she must be the werewolf!” I still think about that moment, and I bet that she does not. In fact, I don’t even think she was aware of how much pain they were causing me. But the worst part about it is, that I LOVED the werewolf game. But I never got the chance to properly play it, because some people thought it was funny.
@@Shelfside As a fun combo I have been killed off early because I "talked too much" and it was suspicious. I had not said a word aside from explaining the rules to some newer players. Then the next game they killed me off early because I was too quiet (because I had already explained the rules last game). In that game I had in fact been interacting more as I was no longer preoccupied with helping others. This or similar scenarios have happened multiple times. It probably does not help that I'm usually the metagamer of the group, but also have a good poker face while being horrible at reading others social queues (asd). All these factors combined mean I die early in a lot of these games. And yes I do tend to also be the owner of these games.
ugh I see this happen in a lot of games, and in my experience it's often the silent minorities being picked on. Games are inherently social, and regardless of the game type it's important to be playing for everyone's enjoyment. it's like people who try d&d for the first time and try to kill their friends, all you're doing is ruining someone else's experience. it's great that game design can mitigate stuff like this but ah the end of the day you gotta choose your friends wisely.
Something else that happens when the group has a few strong players, is that the rest of the group defaults to assuming they're the traitor. I've experienced this a fair amount where the group gets a vote early on and doesn't have any strong leads, so they say something like "well he's scary and we've got this vote so we can vote him off just in case"
Yeah thats another problem. There is very often a difference between a good strategy and a fun strategy. There are usually less bad than good guys so if you have to guess to eliminate someone, you should always choose the best player because he is a big potential threat but a slightly lesser potential help.
I'm VERY CAREFUL about betraying females for this reason. In these types of games, you're more often than not good. So very good players can sus out the bad players. This will get weaker players to trust you. HOWEVER, although most males can handle your betrayer when you sheep them and they will trust you the next game when you convince them, females are often the opposite. I've learned the hard way that 1 single betrayer with many females will turn them against me, even if I prove 100% that I'm good in the next few games. It won't even matter if I lead the goods to victory 3 games in a row. The short of it is this. When I'm bad, to males, I will use information to manipulate them. More often than not they will say "man, I thought were good the whole game, GG". With females, I have to try to win without manipulating them specifically because the next 10 games in a row, they will be voting me out because they will feel "that one game you seemed good because you gave good information, so you must be bad again despite giving good information and even getting out 3/4 of the evils all by yourself." Obviously exceptions to every rule, but this is very common on my end. I'm not saying all females are weak players and all males are strong players, I see a mix of both. I just happen to see different reactions to master level manipulation from both.
My biggest frustration is games where there's no actual data to make deductions with. Werewolf or mafia. Occasionally you get actual info, with the right group, but usually everyone's just making random choices.
I remember playing werewolf in a chatroom. There was no logic or reasoning to suspect someone, and no way to validate or refute claims. It just boiled down to who was better at getting others to follow them.
@@gamemode_cat6606to add to this it usually just boils down to paper typing or yelling over each other, too and no one will listen to what someone has to say so all diplomacy is thrown out the window, especially in timed games like Town of Salem.
@@gamemode_cat6606 Well tbf thats the reason why this game exists. It was a social experiment by scientists, not meant to be sold as a boardgame. Its supposed to show how people tend to follow a person without any logical reason. Yadda yadda witchhunts and WW2 Still a terrible game. Cant recommend.
One of my early experiences with social deduction was playing The Resistance: Avalon at a friend's birthday party, with both friends and people I didn't know. Despite realizing early on who one of the traitors was, I could never get the unanimous (if I remember right) vote I needed to expose them. After the game was over, one of the player revealed that he didn't really "get" the game when it was explained, and so decided to simply ignore everything that happened at the table and instead just never vote that someone was a traitor. He was pleased with himself as he bragged about this. The good team had lost before the game began, all because one player wasn't invested. His non-investment made the entire game meaningless, and I don't think he ever realized that. I've found it extremely hard to get excited for any social deduction games ever since.
That's why I love that one character in Werewolf that can kill someone when he dies, you can finally kill the guy who's been clearly lying the whole time.
To be fair, that kind of obnoxious and willfully ignorant player can ruin a lot of different games. I can't really think of a style of game I would like to play with someone who purposefully ignores the rules and plays in a way that just annoys the other players.
@@DoinkertonGreeble You're right in that someone who doesn't care can bring down the mood of a lot of games, and potentially spoil any game with certain player dynamics. I think Social Deduction is particularly vulnerable to it, being neither wholly cooperative (a confused player can't necessarily trust you to help them) nor competitive (a lot of competitive games can handle a player being eliminated early). It's not a unique problem, but again, I think they're particularly vulnerable to it.
That type of reasoning is beyond me. Why even participate if you’re gonna actively go against your individual or team role? It just makes it not fun for the rest of the team if they have no recourse past a teammate who wants to lose.
Ah yes. the old traitor in a traitor game problem... I like the game The Thing: Infection at outpost 31, but a smart friend of mine discovered a problem with the rules. At the end, you MUST reveal EVERY imposter, or the imposters win. So he came up with the strategy to never check his card. If he was a good guy, he would have worked his hardest to win, and if he was the alien, he STILL had the best chance to win because he had never acted suspicious. He both solved...and destroyed, a game that my friend group really liked.
"You're yelling, you must be the impostor" (This happened to me once, I was not the impostor, also I said that if I was a crew mate, the guy I was accusing/was accusing me (I don't remember) was an impostor, they did not eject them, they were an impostor)
I’m not good at lying. But I’m good at role playing. The first few times I played Spyfall, I figured this out. Because as I was figuring out the game, more experienced players would mistakenly accused me as the spy, and after so many mistakes, by the time I was the spy, I realized I’ll just act the same and won. One guy even said “no, he can’t be the spy, because this is how he acts” Ofc, the more I played, the better I got, and the more my friends knew my “role playing” 😅
That's the exact way I play werewolves. Act super suspicious all the time, so people can't tell if I'm actually evil or not. I honestly find it more enjoyable to trick people into thinking I'm the traitor than to trick people into thinking I'm not. (I obviously only do this if I can tell the other players don't mind. I'm aware that by all means I am playing the game wrong)
That’s kinda how Markiplier got away with being the impostor in so many Among Us matches. He even flat out said he was the impostor at one point, but people couldn’t tell if he was being serious or just his regular goofy self, so they decided w the latter
I hate social deduction games, so when I'm roped up into one, I take it as an opportunity to role-play. It annoys my friend to no end, but that's their fault :P
Yeah, this is a fun counter to the "optimal play pattern" others complained about. You can either play the good guys well, or play the good guys badly and up your chances of winning when you're a bad guy
The main flaw with social deduction games is that in order for them to work, the players simultaneously need to know each other well enough to trust that everyone is going to buy into the premise of a social deduction game and play it according to the spirit of the game, yet simultaneously you need those players to not know each other at all so that they don't bring their experiences with the other players into the game.
Yeah I played Secret Hitler for more hours than I’m proud to admit on Table Top Simulator with a revolving door of people on discord. We were all dedicated to getting really good at the game, but didn’t know the first thing about each other. It was a bit like poker at a casino where you might recognize the regulars and learned a bit how they played, but you were never walking in immediately suspecting anyone. It was the best way to experience the game for sure, and it’s what kept me playing a pretty basic game for so many hours
I think that’s really part of the crux of it. Some players will inherently know other players better. Some will play for the sake of winning, thus more intent on technique usage. Etc
@@jacobrippy5586I don't know if this improved or ruined the game, but I once played Secret Hitler with friends who were drinking heavily. On about the third game, we had a Hitler who FORGOT HE WAS HITLER and helped hunt down and vote out my fellow fascist. It was either awful or hilarious when the group voted that he was Hitler, he put on his most smug expression and said "NOPE!" while flipping his card that said Hitler. The next day we found out he was blackout drunk and didn't remember a thing.
Yeah, ironically, because you _know_ you're playing a game, and because you _know_ there's a traitor, your mentality changes. A better version of these games might be one where, sometimes, there simply isn't a traitor at all, and you just have to cooperate. Leading to times where you assume there's _no_ traitor when there is, or assuming there's a traitor when there isn't.
As a social deduction connoisseur, I can confidently say that Blood on the Clocktower is the best social deduction game I've ever played, and that's by a wide margin. DEFINITELY worth getting into if you like social deduction games!
exactly this, it fixes a lot of my biggest issues with nearly every other game, ive had so many wild and fun moments and it keeps the entire group engaged till the end. HIGHLY recommend
why? BotC essentially takes away everything that made social deduction games good and replaces it with givong the narrator the power to decide. that alone makes it the worst social deduction game I've ever heard of.
Secret Hitler and Werewolf were originally two of my favorite games to play with friends in college, and now that we've moved away from each other, we've turned to things like Among Us. Settlers of Catan was also a frequent favorite. However, there is one issue with social deduct games that we've discovered and put quite a damper on us playing them for a few months before we had some talks about how to deal with it. That issue being.....I'm really good at certain aspects of social deduction games....and this resulted in me being killed off immediately by both the good guys and the bad guys (regardless of which side I was actually on) because no one could tell when I was lying and I could usually spot incongruencies in people's stories. The good guys couldn't risk me being a bad guy, so they'd rather take the shot at sacrificing one potential good guy to kill me, and if the bad guys hadn't killed me as soon as they could, it was because I was a bad guy. The bad guys couldn't risk me figuring out they were the bad guy right away, so they'd kill me first before I could tell anyone who was the bad guy, and if they couldn't, they'd point out I must be a bad guy because I was still alive and everyone would believe them. Ultimately, the first parts of our games devolved into "Who could kill Doomful first.". It all culminated in four Among Us games in a row where I hadn't even done or said anything, even moved, and got killed or voted out first. I had actually muted myself and was watching something on TV while it was happening, knowing I'd die right away. When I turned down playing any more next time and revealed to the group why, it kinda put us off social deduction games for a few months. Eventually we came back with a house rule.....The same two people cant be killed/voted out first or second between two different games. If you get voted out first game one, then game two you are guaranteed to survive at least until the third kill.
Same problem with me in among us way back in the day. It was painfully obvious that I was an impostor when I wasn't dead by the third or so meeting. When we came back to it for the fungle, we mitigated it by inviting someone just as good as me with these games to the group and adding the guardian angel role.
Exactly what’s happening right now, my group of friends love Secret Hitler and when I played I was always trustworthy even when I was a Fascist or a Liberal. Now they don’t trust anything I say in the game because if I’m a fascist i usually win cause they trust me. It’s incredibly frustrating because now I’m usually thrown under the bus 9/10 times by fascists who’s caught on this trend. It makes me quickly realize who the other fascists are but no one believes me because I’m too trustworthy. This is how our games have played out. Fascists claim that I am a fascist because I am to trustworthy. The group agrees and kill me. Because of this I know who the fascists are I make my claim and then die. The group realizes I wasn’t a fascist and either forgets who I claimed was a fascist before I died and has a chance of losing or remembers and wins. If I am a fascist then the fact that I’ve survived for so long is the reason I am a fascist. I have just accepted I’m a martyr through it all. I’ve changed my strategy to be as sus as possible which somehow has surprisingly worked. No one kills me because I’m too sus to be a fascist. The only problem is that sometimes it backfires. So I use the strat very rarely.
@@cokeking8295 One of my favorite moments of this kinda thing was during a Settlers of Catan game. Four of us were sat around and it was pretty clear from the start that everyone was too afraid if they made a trade with me, it would somehow cascade into a huge string of me pushing ahead of everyone. So I'm sitting there, only getting what I'm drawing, accepting that I'm gonna lose cause I've got all three other players dead set on working together to block me, so I just decided to have fun with one of them, and started helping him (he was the least skilled of our group). At the end stages of the game, he was just behind the guy in first (last guy had long since been boxed into third because of me helping the other guy). All he needed was three lumber and he could build....I forget what, but it would have put him decidedly in first. I had like 3 lumber and 2 wool in my hand, so I offered a trade. My 3 lumber for his wool. He said no. I offered my 3 lumber for any 1 of his resources....he said no. I finally offered to just give him three lumber, and the guy gets all worked up, red in the face, going "I don't know, I don't know. What if it's a trap!?" And I'm just laughing. I'm dead last, offering free resources, it's two turns till game, and he's about to faint because he's so worried that somehow Ive set up a perfect gambit that by giving him free shit, I'm going to snatch victory somehow. He ultimately didn't take the lumber and lost.
Oh my god Toast?? Is that you??? Jkjkjk but yeah being the smartest in the group really has its limitations cause your friends know the optimal play is just get rid of the smartest player
100% Blood on the Clocktower is a great fix for all of issues you had. And while many treat it as a lifestyle game it definitely isn't required. There is very little rules explanations and you can jump in and just start learning and discovering. And the game ends when it needs to end. Only really downside of Blood on the Clocktower is that it is only as good as the Storyteller running the game. An experienced confident storyteller will basically mean every game (new players or veterans) will be engaging fun and not be drawn out too long.
To add to this, the other downside of BotC is player count. It run extremely well at 9-13 players + the Storyteller. This means it requires a larger group to fully enjoy the game. As an experience player and storyteller I 100% agree that this game is a quintessential Social Deduction game that keeps players involved from start to finish. A good group of players can keep a game to less than an hour.
It’s become a lifestyle game for me just because my friends and I love it so much. I’ve never had another game have such a dramatic effect on my players lives, lol, it’s crazy (in a good way)!
BOTC is legit the best social deduction game and it will make you never want to play another one. It does get better depending on who you have as your DM(or storyteller). You need to give it a try shelfside i think would love it!
Doesn't the storyteller running the game just mean that it doesn't matter what you do/say they'll just manipulate it to balance it? Doesn't feel like there's any reward for being good at the game so why would I care about it?
I love social deduction games but my group is horrible to play them with. They are very casual players who don't like complex rules, so half the time the clues you think are them being the betrayer is actually just them not knowing what they are doing. It's really hard to for example manipulate them into voting off a specific player when they are all effectively flipping a coin to decide.
This was 100% my experience in Among Us. No one explained the game to me. I bought it and jumped in immediately with friends. Then kept getting voted out because I was "acting sus." It was 100% because I had no idea what the rules or objectives were other than someone(s) might be bad guys. I lost interest *very* quickly.
Social deduction requires the right group to play with. Actually, i think thats the case with board games in general. Most people are very casual with board games so if you bust out something remotely more complicated than Catan, you lose their interest and it's too complicated.
@justvibing4796 To an extent yes, but you need a minimum amount of buy in and skill from your fellow players to have fun. It’s really frustrating when a player has incredibly useful info but never shares it because they don’t realize they are supposed to be cooperating with the other townies. Or they have no clue how to use their power to gather info effectively and so they just pick randomly at night and forget what the game master told them because they couldn’t immediately see its usefulness.
what i noticed playing werewolf is that players with info dont tell because they usually die in the next turn, because the bad guys will know if the info is acccurate before the good players confirm it, and being out of the game isn't fun, if i had a role that could protect people i would let them know i would protect them if they revealed something@@fakjbf3129
I'd recomend to check out One night ultimate werewolf, it's might be hard to explain all cards but each game is so short that simply playing people quickly get to play each role and start understanding.
I have ASD and used to play board games regularly with a big group. Learned quickly that I didn't like social deduction, and that I was a serious hazard to the integrity of the game. I have basically no ability to tell if someone is lying, and my mannerisms are atypical enough that nobody can reliably tell if I'm lying. I basically become a random factor in the game and ruin the whole thing because I can't play it correctly. I can be really good at logical deduction, but when I run out of hard facts I just have to guess. That said, I've had a lot of fun observing social deduction games from the sidelines. Like trying to predict the end of a mystery as it plays out in real time.
Same issue. I remember having trouble with any truth/or/lie type games because I could not for my life tell the truth convincingly. I just look like I'm lying all the time due to nerves, which becomes a self-defeating cycle. I feel you.
Fascinating. I use exactly this ambiguity to my advantage. People need to watch me extremely close to know whether or not I'm lying. I got a pokerface, so to say. Am I the traitor? Who knows! And even social behaviors can be a "fact". Someone has a higher pitched voice than usual? He's suspicious from the get-go, better watch him now more closely. The worst part is, that also makes me suspicious. But alas, it's not only that you can try to predict the end of a mystery but also influence it to your liking. Sometimes it's fun to lose while also stirring chaos! :D
Same. Worst was when I was playing the Jack box party pack equivalent for secret Hitler. I was naturally sus and so bad at the tests, I can't draw for shit so the traitors saved sabotages for me, that I was voted out almost all the time and only had one game when I was actually a traitor. I just stopped bothering defending myself after like game 4 because it just didn't matter. Shout out to the 1 guy who trolled my buddy, who suggested we play it, and convinced the others to vote him out immediately because he jokingly revealed he was a traitor. Laughed like mad when that went through.
Ideally, you don't try to "read" people to see if they're lying. You really should only be looking at the facts, and try to figure out when someone's claims don't add up. Otherwise, assign probabilities to each option and go with the higher probability play. People *thinking* they can read people or truly ignoring logic just to go with a gut feeling are what actually ruin the experience for me.
I love social deduction games, specifically Ultimate Werewolf. My issues with them typiclly stem from players instead of the game's themselves. Sometimes people will just refuse to interact with each other, or refuse to work with imperfect information and just sit silently the entire time, whick usually makes the game play worse
The genre being dependent on having comfort with lying is something I have a lot of trouble getting my friends to understand. I cannot count how many times I've had to go at length to explain why I don't want to play amogus or town of salem. Usually a lengthy back and forth of people telling me "but it's fun!" and ignoring that I don't enjoy having to lie on the spot or figure out if i'm being lied to.
Dropped my playgroup entirely because "I hate these games, I'll sit this out" was met with "[groan] Don't be like that, you have to play" into a ton of dirty looks because I "don't play (social deduction games) right". These games are instant frustration for me, I hate it, leave me out. The chief guy who pushes for 2+ hours of social deduction games every meet was also the guy that would instantly take control of the conversation every round so he ends up winning 100% of the time whether he's good or bad. It's apparently bad form to point out that "guy who interrupts everyone and takes control of the narrative" is also winning every game because you guys are just following his story every time. It's also really emasculating to be forced to lie, hate it, do it poorly, then get made fun of because "you're bad at this". I told you I was bad, you begged me to play anyway, I would rather just watch 🤷♂
There are games with elements of social deduction that don’t require lying. Like coup skull and such. That said sucks if your friend group makes you feel bad for not liking a game they like. My among us/digital board game group is super chill if someone doesn’t like a game.
Oh also one night ultimate werewolf with the right setup can remove some of this as it’s a deduction game about who has the werewolf at the end. So the goal is to figure out if you ended with it or not still might run you the wrong way, but the advantage of one night is it’s only one round so people don’t have to sit out
For me, the issue with Among Us and Town of Salem is how trigger happy people are and how they often do not understand the point of gathering evidence. In Among Us, if you just say something wrong, or you have a particularly funny typo, or just for no reason at all, people will gang up on you. In Town of Salem, it often comes down to the Jailor just executing people after demanding to know their role.
The big killer of social deduction games is exactly that - player elimination mechanics. Elimination is already bad on its own, since nobody likes to leave the table while everyone else plays. Couple that with dogpiling the player who is perceived as "most experienced" and therefore "the biggest threat," it naturally ruins the experience for the theoretical biggest fans of the game. Secret Hitler has 1-2 bullets, late-game, and that's it, and so far that's our go-to.
If you like SH, I recommend Avalon. It gives players more things to do, rather than letting only two people be active per round. It hits a lot of the same tension but I think is a more balanced and fun layout of gameplay. Also nobody gets eliminated.
There is also a big issue with these games: Skill mismatch and experience with your group. I'm decent at these types of games, and significantly better at lying than my friend group. This results in me being suspicious by default, and frequently a first target for whatever elimination mechanic exists, despite my actions in the game (mostly because they know I'm willing to be the most helpful person for however long it takes until the critical backstab). This does however mean that all the games I *am* a traitor I have to play incredibly defensively, and whenever I'm not, the traitors have a big advantage. The one thing I found to help with this is things like Bang!-s "ghost" mechanic, where if you are dead you can still play but with a limited hand, and thus can help your team out still.
Yeah thats another problem. There is very often a difference between a good strategy and a fun strategy. There are usually less bad than good guys so if you have to guess to eliminate someone, you should always choose the best player because he is a big potential threat but a slightly lesser potential help.
@@Currywurst-zo8oo that's why you just need to play with people who aren't annoying metagamers and know how to let everyone at the table have their fun.
I'm a beginner Storyteller of Blood on the Clocktower and I can tell you that BotC basically crushes all those issues but adds one single other which is the need of a good amount of players... I love storytelling 10-12 players, and that is kinda difficult to get... What I can guarantee to anybody that doubts this game is that I was one that doubted before: the recurrent "storyteller makes the game moot taking out the skill of the player"... I thought that was true, but as a former Dungeon Master as well for RPG's, I saw how it works and how amazing it is to provide a balanced game for your players, and how amused they get at the end with the shocking reveals, whether they win or lose which at the end, if you had the right experience, the result is just a single bit of it all... So once again I encourage everyone to try because it is the best social deduction game ever, and probably one of the best games ever designed...
This. I've been playing and STing for 4 years. This is one of my favorite games of all time, and that's including all of the video games I've played throughout the years. I play on streams a lot, including the official stream, so I get to play custom scripts with all the new characters that they've created. The fact that you can create so many different scripts and have so many different options for game play keeps it fresh and exciting. Its not always the same thing every time. I've made a lot of friends on the game, too. I've met some at Clocktower Con last year and I plan on going back this year.
Yup it is @@DIMOHA25, I'm a hardcore social deduction fan and love blood on the clocktower but it's the only game I just haven't been able to run irl. The online community is pretty nice though and it's still possible to get a nice experience playing botc with them, though I'm told irl is apparently much better.
@@eggyolk6735 I'm actually including online play in my assessment too. I routinely have trouble gathering more than two people for things. 10-12 is a nightmare online. IRL it's actually impossible.
My experience with social deduction games was that real life relationship dynamics bleed into the game heavily. I had a small group where there was a couple. I had never been able to convince the girl that her boyfriend is the traitor until he was already in the position that it was obvious. She just couldn't believe that his boyfriend had ulterior motives. And in case of a small group, losing one player to the bad guys can turn the tides easily.
This just sounds like a person who refuses to understand the premise of the game requiring you to drop past allegiances, or refusing to play along. These types of people are admittedly way too common, but I wouldn't really fault the game for people choosing to ignore the spirit of the game for no real advantage
Social deduction is probably my favorite genre of board games. I like logic puzzles and board games are (mostly) meant to be social. So these games put the emphasis on the social side while letting me flex my logic skills. At least, the ones I really like put a lot of emphasis on the social with a lot of table talk.
Great video. I would say that social deduction shines its brightest when it’s 1) simple, and 2) played with a large group of non-gamers who lean more towards extroversion. Games like Avalon and One Night are simple enough to teach to the mildly inebriated and have immediate emotional stakes. These games may not be the most balanced, but I'm not bringing them out when I want tactical depth; I play them whenever I want a guaranteed way to make fun memories with people I care about. I have friends I could convince to play Twilight Imperium, and then I have others who struggle with anything deeper than Codenames. Knowing your audience is crucial to any successful board game night, and that's not something unique to social deduction.
I like Avalon but also Social Deduction does require a bit of integrity. While it is true we were able to teach someone with "challenges" to play the game (and he did so quite well) there was another person who thought it was a good strategy to play fail as Merlin because he picked a bad team. We didn't find out until the 2 spies asked who played the first fail.
@@Marinealver wait no that absolutely is a good idea haha. If the Minions play no fails then his fail cues the rest of the group onto their presence. If they play one then his fail exposes both even if they were coordinated, and if they play two then three fails kinda just makes them all look bad. depends on the group size, but in a smaller group where there's only two minions, this is a good play, and in a larger group where there's a Percival, the Percival should realize that no Morgana would ever do that. That's a really strong opening play!
@@asdf4ettsIt is a terrible play by Merlin: 1. It lets the bad players know who Merlin is, which loses the game 2. It (sometimes) gives the bad team one extra failing mission, which should be enough to let them win 3. It confuses the good players, especially Percival (who should probably assume Merlin is bad, i.e. is Morgana) Also I just checked the official rules, and good players are required to Succeed.
@@raysun1209 I agree about Avalon, I just meant "unbalanced" in comparison to perfect information, zero-luck games. Assymetry will always involve some degree of unwieldiness, and that's totally cool.
There’s also a case that after a while you learn your friends specific tells. For example a video of Among Us I watched (sort of mid-high skill spread, where a few of the players had the deductive ability to determine optimal vs non optimal pathing and how variation on that could be seen as sus, but because that is more effort and less fun they don’t) where the POV was crewmate, some commenters noted that one of the other players was likely evil, not because she played suspiciously, but because when she was describing her pathing for the round, she was- in essence- too specific. Instead of saying something like “I finished win this task, went to that task and passed this person,” she essentially said “I finished with this task, went up through this door, passed this person at the doorway, they went that way, then I went down and did that task.” She was imposter, and because of that she focused a lot more on where she was moving, who saw her and when. Some of those details, like the exact path from task A to B could be recalled if questioned, but because she wanted to have her story be as airtight as possible, she actively took in a lot more information. She made no misplays, but once you are aware of that tell, you can’t really ignore it and to not suspect her would be ignoring information.
Really enjoyed this video. I absolutely hate social deduction and found out the hard way that I just have zero fun playing that kind of game. Not only am I awful at lying and feel bad about it, not only am I terrible at figuring out when people are lying and feel awful when I'm lied to, but I also tend to get with people who pick their decisions based on completely arbitrary decisions, so it doesn't even feel like I _could_ get better at the game if I wanted to. People latch onto very weird things like "you spoke up too soon, i think you're suspicious" "you didn't speak up at all, I think _you're_ suspicious" "any form of refuting suspicion is in and of itself suspicious!" and it just becomes an absolute nightmare to navigate. I appreciate these games exist both because people who love them can get a lot of fun out of them, but also if I see "social deception" or "traitor mechanic" on a game I immediately know I can move on. _Huge_ help to my mental load to know that there's a game mechanic or two I just do not like at all, and can almost wholly skip over (aside from the rare game that actually makes it work for me).
@@littlemisspipebomb4723 I'd not say so; it presumes that being well-suited to social deduction games is something that everyone wants to be. StarkMaximum evidently isn't interested, and neither am I.
@@LollipopKnight2 that's not what I meant at all. I'm saying it's a very brutal and effective comment to make. The little thumbs up just adding insult to injury. It's impressive and almost poetic in its simplicity
Well, I’m not sure if betrayal at house on the hill is a social deduction game or not I think it’ll be that would be good for you to try because while it does have a traitor mechanic. It doesn’t start out like that and it actually starts out cooperative until too many omens are triggered but even then once someone is turned traitor they are not trying to lie to the other players and instead are trying to complete their objective first before the other people can
I only can handle social deduction in short bursts, especially if I'm a traitor, as I feel I cannot lie consistently for hours. My favorite is One Night Ultimate Werewolf, where a round last less 10 minutes, then we can play an another round, with peoples getting new roles, thus if somebody found to be a liar, we don't know what they will do next round.
The problem i had with it is that you dont know what team youre on because your character couldve been switched with someone else's. You could be a good human and try to hunt down the werewolf, only for one guy to tell everyone he switched you with the wolf. As a result people just stopped saying anything meaningful. Anything you say can and will be used against you.
I can also only handle social deduction in short bursts, but that's because I just don't like socializing. For One Night Ultimate Werewolf, I simply can't find it fun, because it often feels like you can just role call, quickly figure out everything, and then kill a wolf, not to mention switching that can happen. It being one round ultimately takes anything I can find fun and throws it away.
@@bretginn1419 That is true until the groups figures out that if they always tell the truth as a villager, they sometimes turn into werewolf and can't do anything about it. That is why there is a switching (or should be, with the troublemaker or a witch at least), as if everyone tells the truth, the werewolf's story quickly falls apart, so the villagers should be motivated, to don't tell the truth before they figure out that they are still a villager.
@@bretginn1419ah, see, that role switching is why it's a bad idea to tell the truth ever, EVEN when you're playing as a villager. If you could have been swapped with a wolf during the night, showing your whole hand immediately could doom you to a basically guaranteed loss. EVERYONE has to lie - otherwise you risk an unbeatable loss every round. If everyone is (at least partially) lying on their way to the truth, it's a game with a great balance between how much you reveal to get more info, how much you hide, and how much you think everyone else is hiding.
@@Kai-tu7xwthis. Surprising how many people don’t get this. It’s obvious once you get screwed over for role revealing and then finding out you were swapped with a wolf.
For simple social deduct games, my favorite one is Werewords. It's ultimate werewolf but with 20 questions tacked on. I really like it because it gives something very direct to lie about that isn't the direct question of "what is your role what are you doing". It's a very approachable game for people who aren't great at lying and the whole thing happens over the course of 5-10 minutes so it's easy to get practice with all the roles.
Blood on the Clocktower definitely is my choice when it comes to social deduction. I am very lucky to have found a pretty consistent group to play it with (usually once a month), which is very much needed for this game and which also is its biggest issue and the reason I still own other social deduction games (Ultimate werewolf, SH, Chameleon, Fake Artist, you name 'em), to have a quick and light party alternative to BotC.
@@jurgnobs1308 That's not how it works. Yes, depending on the script in play, the narrator really can influence the game by quite a lot, but I think his primary function is to be sort of a referee. You could also compare the narrator role to a dungeon master like in D&D, because he can create interesting scenarios to create unique experiences, but his main goal should be to keep the game fair and balanced.
@@geii6466 the only way to actually keep a game fair and balanced is to NOT have a narrator making ANY decission. a game that gets forced into as close as possible to a 50/50 outcome is not "fair and balanced". it's just boring.
@@jurgnobs1308 Well, I and a bunch of others see this differently. I think you kinda overestimate the narrators power, but I also understand your point. I personally think it's a great experience every time I play, which funnily enough I am in this very moment lol, it's always a blast.
In my family, we play a social deduction variant of 20Q, where one "traitor" knows the word and inconspicuously tries to help the guessers by asking good questions if time is running out and they're not making enough progress. They kept guessing me as the traitor until I finally convinced them that I'm just good at 20Q...
Some of my best gaming moments came while playing One Night Ultimate Werewolf. Some of my worst gaming moments came while playing One Night Ultimate Werewolf. Social deduction games are just too group dependent. All it takes is one person that's not into it to ruin a whole game.
The best and worst social deduction game I've ever played was a 22-person version of One Night ultimate werewolf, which took 3 hours and literally gave me back pain bc I refused to move from my chair lest it be suspicious. I was a wolf and I lasted down until there were only 7 people left. I basically let myself get caught because I was ready to go. It was an incredible game. I was really proud of lasting as long as I did. I also fucked up my back by sitting in the same folding chair for 3 hours and barely moving. 😂
@@serrasedai That sounds like regular Ultimate Werewolf. One Night only lasts ten minutes which is what I like about it! I never played regular werewolf and I really have no desire to. I'm a person that always looks suspicious and I'd get knocked out early no matter what and I'd just have to sit there for the rest of the game.
My favorite social deduction for the last few years has been **Secrets,** which doesn’t get nearly enough love. It gives all of the best vibes from social deduction and manages to dodge most of challenges described in this video. My favorite aspect is that you can play it without lying, which drastically relaxes the “right group” requirement. It also doesn’t require manipulation or majority vote, which removes the tension and arguing. Since the teams are evenly split instead of “majority vs traitors,” it’s a good idea to keep your faction secret but you never need to defend yourself and claim that you’re something you’re not or try to convince people beyond a single sentence like “I think we’re friends , Jane.” In fact you can even do little nods and gestures. Lastly, your faction can change, which also dissipates the “us vs them” feeling pervasive in Secret Hitler and others.
Yep, Secrets is a great intro to the social deduction genre. I remember during a debrief with a friend who didn't have a great game because he both wasn't a fan of social deduction and was given the hippie role. He felt better and was a more engaged in the next few games after I said that oftentimes my strategy as the hippie is just to amass a lot of points and just be a tempting target to be recruited onto other teams to win, rather than trying to win as hippie.
@@RocketSlug love it. So many fun and viable strategies in Secrets. Certainly wasn’t my introduction, but it did get me to sell 3 of my social deduction games (Bang!, Hail Hydra, Secret Hitler) and I haven’t played my other 3 that I kept or bought since I got Secrets.
On the topic of group, another factor to consider besides skill is varying levels of investment. If some people are taking the game very seriously while others aren't, or some people are just there to spend time with friends but aren't really fans of the format, there's a lot of room for frustration and interpersonal drama.
Highly recommend Two Rooms and a Boom. Personally speaking one of the best Social deduction experience I every had. pros: Easy to teach(about 5 mins); Everyone constantly have things to do; Game only last for about 15 mins no downtime. Tons of character to pick from which have different ability and people usually can understand in one sentence. Depends on the character used, game can be super chaotic (in a good fun way) or very deductive. cons: You will need at least 10+ people to enjoy all the content it can offer(Personally speaking I would recommend at least 15+ player, maximum player count is 30). You can't find one copy anymore.(I just find the cards on-line print it out and stick it on poker cards and sleeve it.)
During highschool, for about 3 years every lunch period, me and my friend group would play a lot of social deduction game, after a while, it became evident that we had "solved" the game within our friend group. We played a lot of one night ultimate werewolf until we reached a winrate in every permutation of towns/evils that matched the coin flips we had to inevitably made at the end of our games. We then switched to secret hitler, where most games would end up elevating someone as leader managing the entire decisions, and made others not as involved. I'm really glad I found this video because most of the points you mention are things that me and my friends experienced with social deduction games, and me more specifically, things I've experienced trying to get others to try social deduction games. I will definitely be checking out the games you mentioned in your video!! :)
One of the difficulties I have with these (besides being not good at social stuff in general) is the high reliance on memory. Especially when playing multiple rounds it all just blurs together. I genuinely have no idea if your actions this turn are consistent with what you said before because I have no memory of what you said before.
legit, any social deduction game that's even moderately complex is gonna have HUGE balance mismatches between players, as some furiously take notes while others play by the seat of their pants. This can't be fixed, it's entirely a consequence of the genre. The only way around it is to just play rules-light social deduction games.
This is one of the many reasons I’m bad at Among Us. Even when I’m crewmate and I did some tasks, it’s hard for me to remember when/what order I did them, which always makes me seem sus to other people
That's part of the game though. If the good guys could remember everything perfectly then they'd probably win every time. These games are not meant to be optimized, being bad at it is where the fun is.
@@CGFillertext Yeah Among Us is deceptively complex, as it hides most of its mechanics within its programming. If it were a board game, the rules would look ridiculous.
As with every other commenter, I am a die-hard Blood on the Clocktower fan. I’ve introduced so many friends to it and even friends who were initially unsure ended up loving it. Basically all other social deduction games feel stilted and unbalanced in comparison. I’m learning to be a storyteller but the curve there is pretty steep!
@@dancebenny again, the concept itself is terrible. no matter what decission the storyteller maked, the problem is that he had to make one in the first place. so, even with the best storyteller inaginable, it would still be a terrible concept. no matter how hard I try, I can not think of a worse mechanic in a game.
@jurgnobs1308 The point of the game isn't to be as competitive as a game like Sorry or Street Fighter. The mechanics which "balance" the experience are so everyone can take part in the collaborative storytelling experience. And the DM existing effectively means everytime you play, you get a very different experience
@@matthewclark1857 but you won't. the experience will always be that your choices don't actually matter and you will have your hand held until an ending that is essentially a coin toss because the "balancing" made it come as close as possible to a 50/50. the idea that fairness means getting everything as close to 50/50 as possible is extremely widespread and actually has implications that go way beyond the game.
One night ultimate werewolf is a great game for many situations. Its short and incredibly simple, but because of how short every game is (literally one night) compared to normal werewolf you can play it so many more times. Which causes even an inexperienced group of people to quickly start strategizing and the most fun is seeing how and when people lie change as times go by.
My group I used to play with played the Resistance until we figured out a Meta that was almost impossible for the Resistance to break (without revealing Merlin). If a spy was team captain and picked another spy on the mission, the spy that picked the team will play the fail or pass the mission while the spy (or spies) picked will always play pass. This prevented the multiple fails that exposed spies.
4 words: Blood on the Clocktower. Best social deduction game by MILES, and probably my favorite game ever. The only warning: it's so good that it makes it hard to play any other social deduction game again because of how worse everything else is by comparison. :)
nah. absolute garbage where the narrator actually decides the game, and not the gameplay of the players. when one side is doing "too well", the narrator can just start letting your actions fail. it's an insanely dumb system and I can not understand how anyone can enjoy that game concept. i honestly thinl Blood on the Clocktower is the dumbest and worst game concept that ever had any sort of relevant spread.
@@jurgnobs1308I've not had an experience where a storyteller balancing a game felt arbitrary or unfair. Lots of roles have the chance to work in different ways, and finding out what happened when something didn't go the way you expected is just another part of the puzzle solve for me. The storytellers I've played with are ones I like and trust a lot; they tend to reward smart choices and sympathize with unluckiness, all while making the game fun and interesting for everyone. When I said I'm sorry, I meant that I'm sorry that you haven't played with a storyteller that you can trust.
My friend group had some of our best times in college playing these games. Even 6 years later I still have great memories of the times we had. It definitely helps to have everyone engaged and to have a few different options to chose from on any given night to play so that way the same games don't get stale
You need to try Coup, but the original version. Everyone gets two role cards, and each role gets a power like assassinating one of someone elses roles or blocking an assassination, etc. If you guess someones roll (when they use an ability) they lose one of their cards, and if you guess wrong you lose one. It takes 2-3 games to learn but each game is about 15 minutes. I have played literally thousands of games and it is brilliant.
@@VaultBoy13 can you explain the how bluffing and guessing roles in coup is different to bluffing and guessing roles in Werewolf? Why is one a "bluffing game" and the other is "social deduction"
@@kredonystus7768 Obviously way late, but for anyone who comes across this, since this video seems to have caught the algorithm: In Coup, you don't have a fixed role. Your cards (and therefore, your available actions) can change throughout the course of a game, so you're not trying to convince people that you do or don't fall in a certain category, just that you're able to take a certain action at the time you claim you can. As opposed to something like Werewolf, where your role defines what you *can* do, in Coup your cards ("role") define what you can't get *punished* for doing-- a Villager in Werewolf can't go out and eat someone, but in Coup, you can take any action at any time as long as you can convince the other players not to call you out on it. It's less about trying to figure out what everyone else has/is and more about trying to keep everyone else guessing about you; you can make it to the top two in every game without figuring out what roles any other player is holding as long as no one is willing to take a risk accusing you of a lie.
I've mostly heard them being called Hidden Role games, which was on that list. Maybe Hidden Role is a bit broader and includes other type of games though.
Blood on the Clocktower has become one of my favorite social deduction games as of recent. I love having the info cards and preset game types, and the ability to go talk to people privately for info and play after you die makes it super fun and enjoyable throughout the whole game imo. And it also doesn't take more than a couple hours max (Average for my games has been around 60-90 mins)
Blood on the clocktower is very balanced in many ways. Been playing it for over a year almost every week and it’s completely different every time, different roles all the time, and you never know who’s gonna win everyone is important. Rules are very simple. Etc.
Rules are anything but simple. The ruleset includes learning about every role in play. There's also mechanics that require specific roleplay such as being mad. The problem with Blood that may be difficult is that it's a social deduction game that takes a LOT more cognitive load than most other social deductions, because potentially false information blows open the possibilities of potential game states. Blood is a deduction game based a lot less on reading others, but a game of information gathering without revealing too much about yourself.
@@TheJuicyTangerine I think this entire comment is just plain wrong. BoTC is not a difficult teach, it's a very common convention game where you teach tens of players at a time, the game comes with role lists for each player so you know what everyone does, madness is not in any basic script, BoTC requires a tonne of reading other people - you usually cannot 'solve' the game completely and must rely on reads to find the demon. I agree that it requires info gathering without revealing too much about yourself; but that's the same with every social deduction game.
@@TheJuicyTangerine I find social deduction games that rely mostly on reading people instead of reading their actions extremely unfun. It's totally valid to enjoy the other type but I like crunchy logic puzzles with my main meal of teamwork, trust building, and lying.
I've been playing for 4 years. Just ran a game in person with a few new players. I'm used to including new players into the game since I've been doing it through discord for so long. Its not hard to teach. You start with Trouble Brewing. Its simple to understand, characters interactions aren't too complicated, information is pretty straight forward, mechanical abilities are very straight forward. We played two games, 1 good win, 1 evil win. From what I've seen from statistics, it goes about 50/50. I definitely recommend this for the lack of player elimination and actually information and skill involved. I've meet some REALLY strong players in my days, especially since I play on a few streams, including the official one.
I have to admit that I've gotten to be increasingly lukewarm on the more complex social deduction games. When everyone is supposed to be working together and the game in general is already really difficult to win, it can be REALLY hard for a traitor player to do anything to further their cause without drawing immediate suspicion. I enjoy BSG, but that can be a perfect example where sometimes all the player can do is try to throw a skill check. It reached a point where I had to kinda ban "playing by committee" at my table, because the folks I play with tend to approach co-op games with the idea that we all will discuss everybody's turns and collectively decide what the best move will be or will sometimes come up with big plans that have the next 7 actions all played out. And this obviously leaves the traitor in a spot where they either have to go along with the plans or be immediately found out. So some degree of planning is allowed, but I started really trying to push the idea of letting each person's turn BE their own turn. That all being said, I do like the second (I think) expansion that gives an outed Cylon more options and things to do to help keep them engaged in a more interesting way. Dead of Winter kinda has the opposite problem though.... everybody have secret objectives inevitably results in everybody acting sus, which partially makes it easier for the real traitor to fly under the radar, but also makes it so that the traitor has to put a lot less effort in because everybody is sabotaging the group to a degree.
Blood on the Clocktower is a complex game, but all the roles are on a handy dandy sheet, I’ve found it’s easier to play than most simple deception games.
Would Love to see your take on Blood on the Clocktower! Balance is very fluid, because it can be changed from game to game (by changing the script). informed minority vs the uninformed majority is a fun dynamic, and both sides win often. Getting revealed as evil is an explicit mechanic for several characters, and for some it's fun either way. There are no turns, you don't have to wait for anyone, and the game takes as long as it needs to. If the demon is found and killed, the game ends (most of the time). Very fun.
I think some people like/dislike social deduction games based on whether they truly like/dislike their own friends. Some groups would be better off playing a game that accommodates shitty friendships.
About the different friend groups giving different types of the same game is so true. I used to play Avalon a lot, and I would usually play with super logical people, so the depth of logic and probability becomes huge. But I had also played it with a different friend group with people that are less logical and more social, and the dynamic has changed. I remember one game where I was Merlin and I was in a situation to try to out a spy. The problem was that they contributed pretty much nothing to the game, so it was hard to bring up anything that was suspicious. Normally, when I'm playing with others, the other players know not contributing always favors the spy team, so that would sus them out, but being quiet wasn't a reason to be sussed out in the social friend group. There was nothing I can do to convince my teammates that the other player was a spy. I tried to push it onto them to possibly give them the hint that I was merlin but they didn't take a hint, and if you're wondering, percival was a newbie and didn't know what to do. We did eventually pick the correct team, but I was already horribly outed as merlin, so we lost anyway. The player I had tried to out as a spy so badly felt so bad. But I don't quite know why. Maybe it appeared that I was pressuring her so hard and she didn't know what to do, when in reality, that was exactly what I was trying to achieve as merlin. Made me think about how playing with a different group doesn't make the game easier or harder, but I had to play it differently.
I think Avalon is more of a gamers game because it has more straightforward deduction and experienced players should win more and be less prone to being bluffed. I find the games stressful because with good deduction it's harder to lie. In my opinion Avalon is best with gamers. I believe for non gamers SH would be better if you don't play meta and count cards. Much easier to lie so the social aspect gains more relevance than deduction.
I hate hate hate these kinds of games because every damn time I get forced to play one I'm anxious, I probably do badly, and then get asked "how didn't you figure out *this person* was the bad guy?" or even worse if I have to lie. I also pretty much can't speak over anyone so most of the time I just end up being quiet which doesn't help at all.
Battlestar Galactica is hands down my favorite board game and thus social deduction is my favorite genre. Glad you talked about some others in the genre - very few people talk about Human Punishment and it's a fascinating "evolution" of the genre, doubtlessly with its own massive issues.
I feel like when playing a lot of these games you need to be willing to just go "yeah the game isn't actually over but we're kind of just going through the motions now" if all the traitors have been found out etc. and just start a new game
I think the most vital part out of all you mentioned is the social group. My gaming group growing up never enjoyed it, but one member always REALLY wanted to play social deduction. It became pretty exhausting and started to fray the group.
Personally, I have a strong dislike for this entire genre. For a long time I thought they were just terrible games until I saw some of the better ones. I can say that they aren't objectively bad as a genre, but as someone with serious social anxiety, these types of games just turn that up to 11 and I wish you would've talked about this in the video. It isn't just me. There is a wide world of people who will always hate these games with a passion and there's a lot of overlap between people like me and people who love tabletop games. Most tabletop games give you a set of rules, consequences, and rigid choices you can make. It's a very appealing environment for people who just want to blend in and have a good time. And in groups I've played with throughout my life, that has been a pretty common personality type. Like 1-2 players at every gaming table. These games fundamentally exclude these players from your game night and I think that needed to be brought up.
The only thing you're gonna "hear" from me is that I'm hella jealous of your game group - I love both social deduction games AND long complicated games, and my old group fell apart. Anyway this video was great and I really wanna check out Human Punishment!
haha, yeah a group that likes human punishment is gonna be really niche. I thought I would even like it more, but Daniel is over the moon with it! -Ashton
Love nemesis because even if you show your hand early that you’re trying to kill 1 player, they can’t just shoot your or vote you off and it almost adds a cat and mouse chase while also avoiding the intruders
Deception: Murder in Hong Kong is the best detective board game I've played, by adding a very freeform puzzle for the deducing part. The killer's choice of cards in reference to other cards on the table is much more interesting than "sabotage or not" and the Lead Investigator has a lot of creativity. In a way it's part word game / social concept game. The real time aspect forces you to "think on your feet". Perfect social deduction game, IMO.
I have a couple friends like that. They tend to do well by later naming between silence, then agreeing with people who are saying..."helpfully untrue" things. Basically, just quickly encourage people who are on the wrong track, then retreat back to silence. People barely even notice you were involved.
Great video! While it's not a social deduction game per se, Coup offers great lying opportunities with super short games and extremely satisfying conclusions!
I do love social deduction games. In fact, my favourite gaming memory comes from a particularly tense game of bag about 15 years ago. That said, I find the large complex board games that incorporate social deduction can have high highs, but also can really drag out, be unbalanced, or just lack a good climax. I switched to resistance like games when it came out and played soooo much. It didn’t have the same lvl of climax, but it still felt great and it wrong about 1/10 the time. Now, I’m a little bored by the simpler social deduction games and I have two favourites. Werewords! And blood on the clocktower!
Two Rooms and a Boom is fantastic. People are split into two rooms, and instead of being voted out of the game, you move people between those rooms. That way, everybody gets to play to the end. And because there are two rooms, even if you figure out who everybody is, that doesn't guarantee victory because you don't know what the other room is going to do. There are lots of crazy roles as well. The only problem is the very high player count - you want decently sized groups in both rooms for good interactions, so while it can be played with 6 people, you ideally want well over 10 players.
This is my favorite atypical social deduction game (atypical referring to its mix of board game and social deduction elements and the fact that there’s little player elimination), I even made a google colab to host the game for online groups (unfortunately means a host is necessary but there’s no way around that)
Great video. Some of my best gaming experiences have been with social deduction games. Blood on the Clocktower and Veiled Fate are as close to perfect as games have come for me. Fake Artist and Spyfall are on the more comical side, side along with The Insider. Have yet to get Human Punishment to the table as it looks like a nightmare to teach.
The main problem I've experienced is if at least most of the players don't or can't think more logically than they think emotionally. That's when it turns into a mob fight.
"players don't or can't think more logically than they think emotionally," these types of people are poorly suited for social deduction games. I avoid them.
I think part of the problem is there's no real punishment for people falsely accusing an innocent or removing them other than having their chances of winning lowered but some players don't really seem to care and focus on when their random accusations were correct rather than wrong. It'd be better if there we real consequences for the players who harm innocents. If the game is online with enough players you could maybe make it so a random innocent who votes guilty on an innocent gets taken out with the other innocent so players are less likely to vote off vibes or alternatively they could take a hit to their own resources or something if it's a game with less players. It's hard to balance but there really does need to be negative consequences to the false accusers outside of "I lost a teammate" because some people don't seem to care.
To be fair those are all "traitor games" in the sense you have given good guys / bad guys roles throughout the game. These games tend to take a while and are hard to get into, at least for my friend-group. In a more broad social deduction genre I would also include games like Sheriff of Nottingham, where there is no traitor role. The playtime is shorter, it's easier to get into and since there are no teams it is fairly balanced for each player. BGG has this under the "Bluffing" category, which I think also covers all the social deduction games like BSG, Werewolf and Resistance.
As someone with mental issues that inhibit my ability to read social cues and spot deception, I find that not only do I often have a huge disadvantage with social games like this that rely on both of those things, but I've had "friends" that use the game as entertainment for themselves by purposefully watching me struggle and get more and more frustrated until I quit. That's why I'm terrified of these games, "I'll just watch you guys, it's fine." :/
As another social deduction nerd i found the perfect game for me. One night ultimate werewolf is perfect in so many aspects since its super easy to understand and takes max 6-7 minutes for a round. Its able to scale and get really complex. Its a decent game for new players, but gets really complex and competitive with other deduction nerds. Been playing the game for 4 years, still havnt gotten tired of it and im still growing as a player
I love social deduction board games but it’s so rare I can have a truly great game because there always someone in our group plays who feels uncomfortable lying or gets very salty… it’s always aspirational for me 😅
None of the issues brought up are exclusive to social deduction games. Especially when the main issue seems to be "sometimes people are bad at the game."
@@Miranda17137 I have to disagree here. A moderatelly good chess player will always win against an inexperienced player without even having to think about it. It can be fun for one game if the good guy has fun with "dunking on the noob" and the novice is impressed in a "how did you even see that" way. But the second game after that is completelly pointless for both.
@justaguy8982 I didn't say "will be hard" or "will be good". I meant the mechanics are all still there. The best analogy I can think of is playing chess against a new player who doesn't know about en passant, but en passant is 75% of the game, not 5%.
I think social deduction games need to be highly customizable to accommodate different player groups. I like Mafia/Werewolf-style games that are scalable in terms of player count, team balance, and complexity. A mixture of "required" and "optional" roles to make the game either beginner-friendly or complex. Guidelines about team sizes but ability to tweak and re-balance to suit a particular group. Do the "bad guys" or "good guys" always win in your player group? You can shift the ratio of good/bad guys. You can add or remove roles/abilities from the game. You can apply optional rules that fundamentally change the core gameplay mechanics. Social deduction games that are inflexible end up being a bad fit for some groups. Also, a social deduction game with more than two required teams is a red flag to me since it becomes too complicated for beginners and too difficult to balance. Make only two teams required, balance the core gameplay around the dynamic between those two required teams, and make any additional teams optional for groups that want to include them (i.e., "Serial Killer" and "Cult" in Mafia/Werewolf-style games). More bells and whistles is not always better. Finally, social deduction games are intrinsically more interesting and easier to balance with a larger player group. Some of the footage in this video shows a group of only four or five people playing. I think some game companies do people a disservice by creating game rules that technically allow playing with such a small group. The game is almost guaranteed to suck at that group size. Just don't do it.
I like how Among Us lets you have up to 15 players (although generally if you have 2 imposters you need more than eight players) and also makes the bonus roles optional- if you have someone less familiar with the game you can disable shapeshifters, for example.
You were most of the way into your final thoughts when I started writing that I'm disappointed that you neglected to mention Blood on the Clock Tower. That was about the fastest I've ever jumped on the backspace key!
Hey if you liked Human Punishment:The Beginning, perhaps you should try their new game „Among Cultists“. It‘s a much more streamlined experience, without player elimination and a clever system for the player interaction. It was a big success for them on the Spiel in Essen, Germany this year 🙂. Basically it’s „Among Us the Boardgame“ with a little more dark theme.
I have played it and there is honestly no reason to play Among cultists if you can just download among us for free on your phone. Works well if everyone is in the same room and it's just the better game. Godot games tried really hard to mimic it and managed to add nothing of value to the concept. At least imo
Glad to hear you mention Nemesis at the end as I believe it's the best personally, with you all possibly betraying each other while also needing to work together to not die to the aliens
You talking about someone being very good at reading body language reminded me of a game of One Night Ultimate Werewolf I played once. I was the drunk and they just choose a card from the three middle cards at random and swap their role with that. They have no idea what they are now, and therefore don't know their role. Everyone revealed their roles and I told them I had no idea what role I was anymore and my mom was so certain I was werewolf now, despite it being a one in three chance. Somehow, she was right! I didn't even know what I was, yet somehow she got it! That's when I decided to quit playing with her because it just made it no fun if there's no guesswork at all. XD
a couple friends and i consistently play secret hitler in group settings, because we’ve found it to be a great game for almost anyone. having the rules be so simple means most people can basically instantly pick it up. however, we run into a few issues. the first is that, since a core 2-4 of us have always played more than the rest of the players, there’s a huge imbalance of who knows what and who knows how to game the system/spot who’s gaming the system. for example, if i see someone saying we should vote in a highly-suspicious person to “test them” during the policy-playing phase, it raises so many red flags of that person’s intentions for me. meanwhile, other people may find it totally reasonable (even though that’s like textbook fascist behavior in that game). and, because of that, there’s just a huge imbalance of who can lie well and who will believe them. there have been games where i know my friend is one of the fascists, he knows that i know, but it doesn’t matter. because, in the end, if we’re playing with 6 other people who aren’t experienced in the game, anyone being persistent in calling another player the fascist is just as (if not more) suspicious than the actual fascist. it’s still super fun, but these sorts of games really do run into issues of skill barriers and META tactics ruining the fun. not to ramble forever, but that’s another thing that bothers me about among us - META tactics (like having the rules that turn on visual tasks or non-anonymous voting on the mechanical side, or constantly partnering up in the game purposefully to ensure that, if anyone dies, you know who did it) for the crewmate team can make it genuinely impossible to win in a lobby of even just halfway decent players.
@@NihongoWakannai when you start doing the "if you love mes" and the "we're gonna have to talks" at the table then I think yeah I know what I'm saying but please go off.
I've only played Nemesis (the first one) a few times but I think it addresses some of the issues you discussed, in similar ways to Human Punishment. Each player draws a "corporate goal" and a "personal goal" at the start of the game (you need to achieve one or the other to win) but players don't look at their cards or make a decision on which goal they pursue until the Nemesis is spotted for the first time. It's good roleplay and immersion (the characters discover the strength of their principles in the face of alien terror) but it also makes the teams dynamic every time. The corporate objectives tend to be more difficult to achieve, pitting you against the alien intruders and making you jump through several hoops, but they're more "co-operative" and everyone that picks their coroporate objective can win the game together. On the flip side, the personal objectives are often easier to achieve with less personal risk and less hurdles, but they require you to betray your teammates and seek being the sole winner. Add in the fact that you can't directly harm each other (the game explains this as in-universe, your characters received neural implants that prevent them from killing their co-workers, so you have to indirectly kill them by locking them in rooms with aliens or throwing grenades in their general direction), and it's pretty fun. I'd play it more but it is a super dense game -- long set-up/tear-down of the game components, and it requires a hefty commitment from each player to learn all the rules and mechanics. I was interested in the 2nd and 3rd Nemesis games but the 1st one has been gathering dust ever since I kickstarted it, sadly.
I'm actually hoping to try out The Thing this weekend at a board game retreat. People seem to have had good experiences with it and it's the first chance I've had to try to get a group of 8 for a game like this.
Which The Thing? There are at least 3 published games about The Thing/Who Goes There? - with one titled The Thing: The Board Game and the other The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31.
I agree a lot with this video. Even though I evangelize blood on the clocktower and have a fairly regular group I play with, a lot of these problems still come up. Experienced/talented players vs inexperienced is a really tricky balance especially. What I will say is this true of every game though, not just social deduction. If you have someone play concordia or scythe who's experienced vs someone who isn't, the one who isn't is much more likely to lose than if the same matchup happens in blood on the clocktower. I.e. someone who has good boardgame mechanics or engine building vs someone who isn't very good is a much more unfair matchup than someone who can lie well in blood on the clocktower vs someone who can't. Not speaking much is always an option in blood on the clocktower, and additionally acting entirely random is a good strategy. I've trained my regular group to believe I'll do entirely nonsense stuff or make terrible plays because it creates a good story to me or seems fitting. I encourage people to really not take blood on the clocktower too seriously or become a whole group of mega-mind genius'. My worst games are where I've become so stressed that even if I won I don't feel like I won at all, and some of my best games are "losses". One of my favorite games of secret hitler when I played that years ago was my own mother betraying me on purpose for a whole game despite the fact I was hitler and she was fascist (the evil team in that game) because she refused to be fascist for the game's sake and made a point of it for her first game. Do stupid stuff. Do clever stuff. Be quiet one game. Hell, I've been entirely silent for a whole game as a gimmick. Another, I wouldn't stop talking, but only about things that had nothing to do with the game and was just personal anecdotes. Mess with it, that's the social part, that's the fun part that makes it a interactive game. If you let the game get meta for too long or don't change up, I find that the game becomes knowable because everyone knows how each other play and things no longer are fun. More than anything, I think social deduction games are hard to balance because they're social. You have to know your group or be able to figure out what will get them the most enjoyment. We've had new people come into BOTC and never come a second time because their first two games weren't all too interactive and were hard for them to follow. I've had sessions I really didn't enjoy because I hate one particular character I was playing in that game. But the malleable nature of social deduction is the really fun part too. Where a lot of boardgames struggle to balance how replayable the game is with how much crap is added to the game to introduce random different setups, the setup and change in social deduction is often the people more than anything. Celebrate that part and understand that. I don't go to every social gathering and entirely enjoy it, some days are just like that. Social deduction is kind of the same.
This is why I LOVE the Resistance. It's very fun but can easily be balanced with the Hidden Agenda rules. Spies win too much in regular game? Add ONLY the Commander, no Assassin. Resistance is too good at finding the spies? Add the Assassin, use the Defectors, etc etc. 5:35 Hidden Agenda is better than Avalon, due to the better theme, having all the features (current edition Resistance includes Inquisitor / Lady of the Lake), and even MORE roles. Hostile Intent is good for even more chaos. 8:52 if all the spies are not found out, the remaining spies can carefully try and make certain people look suspicious, or at least divert everyone's attention from finding them out.
Shadow hunters is a game you might find interesting as it’s fixes a lot of these issues. It’s quite hard to find these days, but it’s my all time favourite social deduction game.
At some point in gaming you reach a crossroads. Do you enjoy playing with humans, or tinkering with puzzles. The more games I play the less impressed I am with the puzzles, and more time I want to spend with the "unbalanced" games. Having said that, a 3-4 hour social deduction game sounds like torture.
Agree, it actually pains me how many board game reviewers on TH-cam just rave about multiplayer solitaire worker placement or engine builders. YAWN. I can play video games for a great solo experience, I board game for the human interaction.
My favorite "social deduction" game uses it as an extra mechanic rather than a core one. "BANG!" Is a western shootout where the only known role is the sheriff, and all the win conditions are tied to when and how the sheriff dies.
My favorite types of social deduction games, are often ones that divert from the classic major good group going against the minor evil group. Like 2 rooms and a boom. Not only is the game, at base, 2 hidden groups of equal size going against each other. There are also a bunch of neutral roles that can be mixed in and shake up the game. Then there is Bank Heist, while yes, it does have the typical majority "good" group, it has 2 minority "evil" groups, and combined, the 2 "evil" groups have the same amount of role cards than the "good" team has (putting good and evil in quotes, because the "good" group is a bunch of bank robbers and one of the two "evil" groups are cops)
While I'm not sure if things like Coup technically fall into the game type, but ive always found in that in game not lying and likability in general are the best allies to winning. For board games in general likeability is an underated tool. Sure there are times that screwing someone specific over helps, but as a repeat game people will remember previous games even if that makes no sense to
1) these comments make me think a lot of people need to find or be better friends 2) more people need to get into the role play aspects of social deduction games 3) ironically, people need to take these games less seriously which doesn’t mean “enjoy losing” but just means “don’t take it to heart”
Oor… I know it sounds crazy but hear me out, not everyone has to enjoy and want to play all kinds of games and not wanting to play social deduction games is perfectly valid.
@@painandsuffering7130 Now, if you could tell me where this was said, that would be really helpful. Because the person never said that everyone has to like social deduction games. However, from the comments, it seems to appear that they have the wrong idea about them. A lot of comments describe the same problems like the same people getting voted out. Which again, only happens if you either have a bad group to play with OR because everyone only thinks about winning and not about having fun. Secondly, thinking that you can't play these games because you are bad at lying or bad at telling lies, again shows a bad group, because the lying part isn't even that important in these games to begin with (at least in the simple ones like Werwewolf). The point of these games is that they are simple enough so everyone immediately understands how to play, don't need any big boards and allow you to talk in between rounds making the gathering of friends more involved than with more strategic games where you have to think about your own turn. And if you understand that, you realize that these games are mostly an excuse to get the group together and make everyone (even the more introverted people) talk and just have fun.
@@painandsuffering7130 Nobody said you're forced to play them just tell people they aren't your thing if you're invited. Don't half ass it and ruin the fun for others.
I feel many of the problems you described happen in the exact same way in every board game, it's the concept of meta itself. In strategy games you will know what are the best moves, the best choices, and so on. The end of that meta is like in chess where you know so many combinations and situations, and you study those. The problem might be that social games are too simple in the interactions, and must be explored more, which is something that is happening right now in the market of board games more than before, I feel
@@chuckm1961what's a massive draw for some is a nightmare for others. Personally, I'm not the biggest fan considering it heavily relies on friendship dynamics and as an autistic person it kind of comes with an inherent disadvantage. It's far more preferable to prove I'm better at a mechanic, or strategising or just playing the game. However, it's also fun casually when you treat it less like OP said and more like a strategy game, where you don't rely on information from other players and simply treat it like a card game where it's known Vs unknown information, verified Vs unverified. Then it goes from a frustrating unknown social battle to a challenging fight of whits
That's honestly more true for a negotiation game like dune or bluffing games like coup than a social deduction game. There. you're trying to figure out if someone is lying because they would have a reason to lie to you, while in most social deduction games you're trying to figure out if they're lying because they got the "be evil and lie" role
I end up ignoring what role I have and just play "mildly evil" no matter what I'm dealt. It's literally the only way for me to play "competently" for multiple rounds of any of these kinds of games. Otherwise, my thorough inability to lie will get me caught immediately.
@@bye1551 Gotta say, as an autistic person social deduction is really fun for me. I've spent so much time figuring out how people form trust and connections that playing a game that is both all the social stuff and a (possibly impossible) logic puzzle just really gets my brain gears turning. It also helps that I can "multithread" my brain and run a pretend good player in parallel with my actual plans to keep from doing anything that would out me when I'm on the evil team. When I'm tired or forgetful though they're aweful
Definitely agree that long social deduction exacerbates some of its weaknesses, even as the length helps it with some of its strengths. For a shorter experience, I think Saboteur handles most of the issues fairly well, although it has some balancing problems and I think the reward system could use a tinker. It does a good job of confounding some of the info that might ‘confirm’ a saboteur by limiting your actions based on the cards you’ve picked up, plus the saboteurs aren’t completely out of the game if they get figured out. Each round being fairly quick makes it easy for everyone to stay engaged, too.
I made the mistake of late backing human punishment the beginning, no clue what I was thinking, since I don't think my group will be into it. One of my favourite games of all time is social deduction adjacent, New Angeles. I highly recommend this one, even to people who think they hate semi co-op games. It's really great! (And the traitor aspect of the game is also optional if you really don't want one and the game still works well without one)
New Angeles has been on my to-play list for the longest time. My friend has it, but we haven't gotten the time or group to take it out yet. Looking forward to it!
New Angeles is also pretty cool, we played it once and maybe we can talk about it one day! I remember it feeling REALLY stressful even though I pulled off a traitor win :) -Ashton
Maaaan, I'm so bad at this type of game, that at one point when playing The Resistance, I just decided to say I was the spy because remaining silent always led to me being talked over by those who were much better than me, and I wasn't very good at defending myself.
One of the problems I've noticed with social deduction is that it becomes increasingly harder to be the "bad guys" once players figure out the "meta". Good guys will eventually figure out the exact steps which lead to the most efficient win, and anyone not following that rigid path is instantly suspicious. This is somewhat alleviated with more complex games, but those come with their own issues like you described in the video.
It also depends on the player count. Secret H at 6 players give liberals a winrate of 60 percent. At 9 players fascits have a winrate of 60 percent
Yeah it can be hard to make mechanics where there are actions that strengthen the party and traitor so it doesn't make it too obvious too early. Having it be around characters I think can help, where all characters need to get stronger if you're to overcome the challenges, but you don't want to risk the traitor(s) getting too powerful either. It discourages you from just sabotaging strong players and actions that are risky but with good rewards don't seem as suspect because everyone has a reason to do it.
I like Night of the Ninja because all though there are teams - the teams switch up every round and you have a personal score so any betrayal is relative and doesn't actually cause a game loss.
I ownder if a level of controlled randomness could fix the "solved game" issue. I'm not that big into long boardgames, so I'm gonna use among us as the example. you have the map, a grid where you can move up to X steps per turn, and each person gets a set of task cards to do. Each task needs you to be in a location to attempt, and each attempt works basically like a round of yahtzee: roll 5 dice, choose up to 5 to reroll, and check the final score; the difficulty of the task is determined by the score needed. Except, you roll your dice hidden, and only show the final result, so players cant know if you had a hand to fix the thing from the get-go and threw it away or if you just got unlucky. That sounds (to me) like a simple enough game that can't really be solved - unless you have mathematician players who know the odds of yahtzee by heart.
Add more card mechanics for voting and for an end-of-round sabotage, make the game time-based (as in, number of rounds) and it sounds like you could surpass that... but idk
I always hate people suggesting the most efficient route even if I’m not a traitor, like in SH. It just takes out the fun.
Players will always try to remove the fun out of a game through efficiency. There are entire essays on this.
The word I would use to describe the weakness of social deduction games is "fragility". There are many points of failure that can either make a social deduction game flat out not work, or just become unenjoyable. I've played in games with people who play randomly, which breaks the game; people who refuse to lie, which breaks the game; people who forget what their role is, which breaks the game; people who don't fully understand or grasp mechanics, which breaks the game; and so on. The games need equal buy-in and attentiveness from each player, and if any one player doesn't match the others in their capacity to do so, the game most likely won't work.
I've also noticed that most deduction games end up just distilling into witch trials a lot of the time. Regardless of how "well" or skillfully you might play the game, saying "they are the witch!" inherently holds more power and control over the outcome.
well said! Mob mentality is real -Ashton
Great description. The genre is far too intrinsically flawed for me to personally enjoy
On the point on people refusing to lie or cant lie.
They dont really enjoy social deduction game in the first place or after trying once, dont play social deduction game with them.
For the point on people forgetting the roles, that is a bad excuse and in games like werewolf and blood on the clocktower, the moderator would have told the player their role or they can always check with the moderator.
Playing randomly is uncontrollable but at the same time can be quite funny, but they might not always fit the same group and probably in games with moderators.
Cant talk about werewolf. But for blood on the clocktower there usually some logics so it wont become a witch trial kind of game.
@@yugiwinninglex I'm the player who can't lie, and doesn't enjoy it. So I hate social deduction... I wish I could find a group that played anything else!
Personally, I just think that's the social part of the social deduction game. People aren't going to be fully rational, this isn't a game theory model. There are gonna be people who aren't good at lying or can't lie, and the game can still be fun.
Strong players getting voted out isn't rational, but from the perspective of a weaker player it's in their best interest to kill off the strong player because if they are the killer, their skill would make them a hard killer to pin down, so it's easier to just get them off the board.
The point about the bad guys winning more often than the good guys made me think of the show The Traitors. Based on Mafia, a group of people play a social deduction game for money where a handful of them are playing as the titular Traitors while the rest are the Faithful. It’s honestly a fun show, especially for anyone who enjoys social strategy reality shows, but even though it’s in its infancy it is abundantly clear that the Traitors have a massive advantage over the Faithful. Not only are they exempt from half the eliminations as they’re not eligible to be murdered, but the Faithful aren’t even incentivized to get rally against the Traitors if the suspect them as it will likely just get you killed the following night (only the survivors at the end can win the money and it’ll be split evenly between whichever members are remaining on the winning team) and if you’re too good at taking out the Traitors then production will just add more to the mix since they can’t exactly end the show if all the Traitors die, they have to fill in their timeslot on the broadcast schedule. The better strategy is to deduce a Traitor and form an alliance with them so they hopefully don’t murder you in the night and then cut them at the end, or to get recruited yourself into the Traitor team. Without spoiling the series, the Traitors are more favorable by far compared to the Faithful and it’s not even close. Imo the producers need to figure out a way to skew the power imbalance a bit more and create a mechanic that incentivizes the Faithful to actively seek out Traitors. Otherwise the deduction part is bound to get lost as each new season forms the meta and the show will just be about alliances instead.
I've noticed some people just essentially get picked on. My wife's experience with social deduction games is "She's being quiet!!! She's the traitor!!!"... "She's not being quiet!!! She's the traitor!!!"
Same thing vor me! In my school we would always play Werewolf. Early on, a fUnNy jOkE evolved, where my class would always kill me off first, no matter what I did. I tried to tell myself that it was just my imagination, that they were not actually ON PURPOSE denying me the chance to play, until a few years later. Once again, it was the end of the year. At this point, classes had changed, but we were still playing Werewolf. It was the second day I think, and it was accusation time. And then one girl, who I actually kinda liked, said “she has to be the werewolf, because in our old class, we would always kill her the first night. Since she is not dead yet, she must be the werewolf!”
I still think about that moment, and I bet that she does not. In fact, I don’t even think she was aware of how much pain they were causing me.
But the worst part about it is, that I LOVED the werewolf game. But I never got the chance to properly play it, because some people thought it was funny.
aah yep, that's the classic. Or, owner of the game gets targeted, beacuse they obviously know the best plays -Ashton
@@Shelfside As a fun combo I have been killed off early because I "talked too much" and it was suspicious. I had not said a word aside from explaining the rules to some newer players.
Then the next game they killed me off early because I was too quiet (because I had already explained the rules last game). In that game I had in fact been interacting more as I was no longer preoccupied with helping others. This or similar scenarios have happened multiple times.
It probably does not help that I'm usually the metagamer of the group, but also have a good poker face while being horrible at reading others social queues (asd). All these factors combined mean I die early in a lot of these games.
And yes I do tend to also be the owner of these games.
@justme-dg8uf dang, that's straight up sad. I hope you get to play the werewolf game for reals one day
ugh I see this happen in a lot of games, and in my experience it's often the silent minorities being picked on. Games are inherently social, and regardless of the game type it's important to be playing for everyone's enjoyment. it's like people who try d&d for the first time and try to kill their friends, all you're doing is ruining someone else's experience. it's great that game design can mitigate stuff like this but ah the end of the day you gotta choose your friends wisely.
Something else that happens when the group has a few strong players, is that the rest of the group defaults to assuming they're the traitor.
I've experienced this a fair amount where the group gets a vote early on and doesn't have any strong leads, so they say something like "well he's scary and we've got this vote so we can vote him off just in case"
Yeah thats another problem. There is very often a difference between a good strategy and a fun strategy.
There are usually less bad than good guys so if you have to guess to eliminate someone, you should always choose the best player because he is a big potential threat but a slightly lesser potential help.
I'm VERY CAREFUL about betraying females for this reason. In these types of games, you're more often than not good. So very good players can sus out the bad players. This will get weaker players to trust you. HOWEVER, although most males can handle your betrayer when you sheep them and they will trust you the next game when you convince them, females are often the opposite. I've learned the hard way that 1 single betrayer with many females will turn them against me, even if I prove 100% that I'm good in the next few games. It won't even matter if I lead the goods to victory 3 games in a row.
The short of it is this. When I'm bad, to males, I will use information to manipulate them. More often than not they will say "man, I thought were good the whole game, GG". With females, I have to try to win without manipulating them specifically because the next 10 games in a row, they will be voting me out because they will feel "that one game you seemed good because you gave good information, so you must be bad again despite giving good information and even getting out 3/4 of the evils all by yourself."
Obviously exceptions to every rule, but this is very common on my end. I'm not saying all females are weak players and all males are strong players, I see a mix of both. I just happen to see different reactions to master level manipulation from both.
thats what we in the industry call "meta grudging", targeting a player not because of their actions in the current round, but from previous rounds.
@@jfast8256 Man never seen this happen to me.
@@jfast8256 Relatable, had this happen to me quite a few times with different people.
My biggest frustration is games where there's no actual data to make deductions with. Werewolf or mafia. Occasionally you get actual info, with the right group, but usually everyone's just making random choices.
first day phase is soooo rough, I feel ya -Ashton
I remember playing werewolf in a chatroom. There was no logic or reasoning to suspect someone, and no way to validate or refute claims. It just boiled down to who was better at getting others to follow them.
@@gamemode_cat6606to add to this it usually just boils down to paper typing or yelling over each other, too and no one will listen to what someone has to say so all diplomacy is thrown out the window, especially in timed games like Town of Salem.
@@gamemode_cat6606 Well tbf thats the reason why this game exists. It was a social experiment by scientists, not meant to be sold as a boardgame. Its supposed to show how people tend to follow a person without any logical reason. Yadda yadda witchhunts and WW2
Still a terrible game. Cant recommend.
I recommend blood on the clocktower to you, every single town player can get info.
One of my early experiences with social deduction was playing The Resistance: Avalon at a friend's birthday party, with both friends and people I didn't know. Despite realizing early on who one of the traitors was, I could never get the unanimous (if I remember right) vote I needed to expose them.
After the game was over, one of the player revealed that he didn't really "get" the game when it was explained, and so decided to simply ignore everything that happened at the table and instead just never vote that someone was a traitor. He was pleased with himself as he bragged about this.
The good team had lost before the game began, all because one player wasn't invested. His non-investment made the entire game meaningless, and I don't think he ever realized that. I've found it extremely hard to get excited for any social deduction games ever since.
That's why I love that one character in Werewolf that can kill someone when he dies, you can finally kill the guy who's been clearly lying the whole time.
To be fair, that kind of obnoxious and willfully ignorant player can ruin a lot of different games. I can't really think of a style of game I would like to play with someone who purposefully ignores the rules and plays in a way that just annoys the other players.
@@DoinkertonGreeble You're right in that someone who doesn't care can bring down the mood of a lot of games, and potentially spoil any game with certain player dynamics. I think Social Deduction is particularly vulnerable to it, being neither wholly cooperative (a confused player can't necessarily trust you to help them) nor competitive (a lot of competitive games can handle a player being eliminated early). It's not a unique problem, but again, I think they're particularly vulnerable to it.
That type of reasoning is beyond me. Why even participate if you’re gonna actively go against your individual or team role? It just makes it not fun for the rest of the team if they have no recourse past a teammate who wants to lose.
Ah yes. the old traitor in a traitor game problem...
I like the game The Thing: Infection at outpost 31, but a smart friend of mine discovered a problem with the rules. At the end, you MUST reveal EVERY imposter, or the imposters win. So he came up with the strategy to never check his card. If he was a good guy, he would have worked his hardest to win, and if he was the alien, he STILL had the best chance to win because he had never acted suspicious.
He both solved...and destroyed, a game that my friend group really liked.
I once got eliminated in among us because, and I quote “he’s using logic! He must be the imposter”
I was not the imposter.
“Apple or banana?”
“Orange”
*-- is not The Imposter*
Skill issue fr
You did not pass the vibe check
I got eliminated multiple times for that, and one time for “she’s talking too much, she’s the imposter”
"You're yelling, you must be the impostor"
(This happened to me once, I was not the impostor, also I said that if I was a crew mate, the guy I was accusing/was accusing me (I don't remember) was an impostor, they did not eject them, they were an impostor)
I’m not good at lying. But I’m good at role playing. The first few times I played Spyfall, I figured this out. Because as I was figuring out the game, more experienced players would mistakenly accused me as the spy, and after so many mistakes, by the time I was the spy, I realized I’ll just act the same and won. One guy even said “no, he can’t be the spy, because this is how he acts”
Ofc, the more I played, the better I got, and the more my friends knew my “role playing” 😅
That's the exact way I play werewolves. Act super suspicious all the time, so people can't tell if I'm actually evil or not. I honestly find it more enjoyable to trick people into thinking I'm the traitor than to trick people into thinking I'm not.
(I obviously only do this if I can tell the other players don't mind. I'm aware that by all means I am playing the game wrong)
Thats how I enjoy social deductions games, playing the character. If I am supposed to play as the pearl-clutching old lady I'm gonna act like it.
That’s kinda how Markiplier got away with being the impostor in so many Among Us matches. He even flat out said he was the impostor at one point, but people couldn’t tell if he was being serious or just his regular goofy self, so they decided w the latter
I hate social deduction games, so when I'm roped up into one, I take it as an opportunity to role-play. It annoys my friend to no end, but that's their fault :P
Yeah, this is a fun counter to the "optimal play pattern" others complained about. You can either play the good guys well, or play the good guys badly and up your chances of winning when you're a bad guy
The main flaw with social deduction games is that in order for them to work, the players simultaneously need to know each other well enough to trust that everyone is going to buy into the premise of a social deduction game and play it according to the spirit of the game, yet simultaneously you need those players to not know each other at all so that they don't bring their experiences with the other players into the game.
Yeah I played Secret Hitler for more hours than I’m proud to admit on Table Top Simulator with a revolving door of people on discord. We were all dedicated to getting really good at the game, but didn’t know the first thing about each other. It was a bit like poker at a casino where you might recognize the regulars and learned a bit how they played, but you were never walking in immediately suspecting anyone. It was the best way to experience the game for sure, and it’s what kept me playing a pretty basic game for so many hours
I think that’s really part of the crux of it. Some players will inherently know other players better. Some will play for the sake of winning, thus more intent on technique usage. Etc
@@jacobrippy5586I don't know if this improved or ruined the game, but I once played Secret Hitler with friends who were drinking heavily. On about the third game, we had a Hitler who FORGOT HE WAS HITLER and helped hunt down and vote out my fellow fascist. It was either awful or hilarious when the group voted that he was Hitler, he put on his most smug expression and said "NOPE!" while flipping his card that said Hitler. The next day we found out he was blackout drunk and didn't remember a thing.
Simple: play with people who embrace chaos.
Yeah, ironically, because you _know_ you're playing a game, and because you _know_ there's a traitor, your mentality changes.
A better version of these games might be one where, sometimes, there simply isn't a traitor at all, and you just have to cooperate. Leading to times where you assume there's _no_ traitor when there is, or assuming there's a traitor when there isn't.
As a social deduction connoisseur, I can confidently say that Blood on the Clocktower is the best social deduction game I've ever played, and that's by a wide margin. DEFINITELY worth getting into if you like social deduction games!
I was going to say this exactly.
Battlestar Galactica and BotC are my favourite two games.
exactly this, it fixes a lot of my biggest issues with nearly every other game, ive had so many wild and fun moments and it keeps the entire group engaged till the end. HIGHLY recommend
Was going to say this too. It deals with practically every negative point of other social deduction games while keeping what makes it fun
why? BotC essentially takes away everything that made social deduction games good and replaces it with givong the narrator the power to decide. that alone makes it the worst social deduction game I've ever heard of.
Secret Hitler and Werewolf were originally two of my favorite games to play with friends in college, and now that we've moved away from each other, we've turned to things like Among Us. Settlers of Catan was also a frequent favorite.
However, there is one issue with social deduct games that we've discovered and put quite a damper on us playing them for a few months before we had some talks about how to deal with it. That issue being.....I'm really good at certain aspects of social deduction games....and this resulted in me being killed off immediately by both the good guys and the bad guys (regardless of which side I was actually on) because no one could tell when I was lying and I could usually spot incongruencies in people's stories.
The good guys couldn't risk me being a bad guy, so they'd rather take the shot at sacrificing one potential good guy to kill me, and if the bad guys hadn't killed me as soon as they could, it was because I was a bad guy.
The bad guys couldn't risk me figuring out they were the bad guy right away, so they'd kill me first before I could tell anyone who was the bad guy, and if they couldn't, they'd point out I must be a bad guy because I was still alive and everyone would believe them.
Ultimately, the first parts of our games devolved into "Who could kill Doomful first.". It all culminated in four Among Us games in a row where I hadn't even done or said anything, even moved, and got killed or voted out first. I had actually muted myself and was watching something on TV while it was happening, knowing I'd die right away. When I turned down playing any more next time and revealed to the group why, it kinda put us off social deduction games for a few months. Eventually we came back with a house rule.....The same two people cant be killed/voted out first or second between two different games. If you get voted out first game one, then game two you are guaranteed to survive at least until the third kill.
Same problem with me in among us way back in the day. It was painfully obvious that I was an impostor when I wasn't dead by the third or so meeting. When we came back to it for the fungle, we mitigated it by inviting someone just as good as me with these games to the group and adding the guardian angel role.
Exactly what’s happening right now, my group of friends love Secret Hitler and when I played I was always trustworthy even when I was a Fascist or a Liberal. Now they don’t trust anything I say in the game because if I’m a fascist i usually win cause they trust me. It’s incredibly frustrating because now I’m usually thrown under the bus 9/10 times by fascists who’s caught on this trend. It makes me quickly realize who the other fascists are but no one believes me because I’m too trustworthy. This is how our games have played out. Fascists claim that I am a fascist because I am to trustworthy. The group agrees and kill me. Because of this I know who the fascists are I make my claim and then die. The group realizes I wasn’t a fascist and either forgets who I claimed was a fascist before I died and has a chance of losing or remembers and wins. If I am a fascist then the fact that I’ve survived for so long is the reason I am a fascist. I have just accepted I’m a martyr through it all. I’ve changed my strategy to be as sus as possible which somehow has surprisingly worked. No one kills me because I’m too sus to be a fascist. The only problem is that sometimes it backfires. So I use the strat very rarely.
@@cokeking8295 One of my favorite moments of this kinda thing was during a Settlers of Catan game. Four of us were sat around and it was pretty clear from the start that everyone was too afraid if they made a trade with me, it would somehow cascade into a huge string of me pushing ahead of everyone.
So I'm sitting there, only getting what I'm drawing, accepting that I'm gonna lose cause I've got all three other players dead set on working together to block me, so I just decided to have fun with one of them, and started helping him (he was the least skilled of our group).
At the end stages of the game, he was just behind the guy in first (last guy had long since been boxed into third because of me helping the other guy). All he needed was three lumber and he could build....I forget what, but it would have put him decidedly in first.
I had like 3 lumber and 2 wool in my hand, so I offered a trade. My 3 lumber for his wool. He said no. I offered my 3 lumber for any 1 of his resources....he said no.
I finally offered to just give him three lumber, and the guy gets all worked up, red in the face, going "I don't know, I don't know. What if it's a trap!?" And I'm just laughing. I'm dead last, offering free resources, it's two turns till game, and he's about to faint because he's so worried that somehow Ive set up a perfect gambit that by giving him free shit, I'm going to snatch victory somehow.
He ultimately didn't take the lumber and lost.
Oh my god Toast?? Is that you??? Jkjkjk but yeah being the smartest in the group really has its limitations cause your friends know the optimal play is just get rid of the smartest player
@@g-man7322 YOU CAUGHT ME!
Hehehehe, jk too. Although I will admit I watched a lot of Toast around that time and learned a few things about Among Us.
100% Blood on the Clocktower is a great fix for all of issues you had. And while many treat it as a lifestyle game it definitely isn't required. There is very little rules explanations and you can jump in and just start learning and discovering. And the game ends when it needs to end. Only really downside of Blood on the Clocktower is that it is only as good as the Storyteller running the game. An experienced confident storyteller will basically mean every game (new players or veterans) will be engaging fun and not be drawn out too long.
+1 to this.
To add to this, the other downside of BotC is player count. It run extremely well at 9-13 players + the Storyteller. This means it requires a larger group to fully enjoy the game. As an experience player and storyteller I 100% agree that this game is a quintessential Social Deduction game that keeps players involved from start to finish. A good group of players can keep a game to less than an hour.
It’s become a lifestyle game for me just because my friends and I love it so much. I’ve never had another game have such a dramatic effect on my players lives, lol, it’s crazy (in a good way)!
BOTC is legit the best social deduction game and it will make you never want to play another one. It does get better depending on who you have as your DM(or storyteller). You need to give it a try shelfside i think would love it!
Doesn't the storyteller running the game just mean that it doesn't matter what you do/say they'll just manipulate it to balance it? Doesn't feel like there's any reward for being good at the game so why would I care about it?
I love social deduction games but my group is horrible to play them with. They are very casual players who don't like complex rules, so half the time the clues you think are them being the betrayer is actually just them not knowing what they are doing. It's really hard to for example manipulate them into voting off a specific player when they are all effectively flipping a coin to decide.
This was 100% my experience in Among Us. No one explained the game to me. I bought it and jumped in immediately with friends. Then kept getting voted out because I was "acting sus." It was 100% because I had no idea what the rules or objectives were other than someone(s) might be bad guys. I lost interest *very* quickly.
Social deduction requires the right group to play with. Actually, i think thats the case with board games in general. Most people are very casual with board games so if you bust out something remotely more complicated than Catan, you lose their interest and it's too complicated.
@justvibing4796 To an extent yes, but you need a minimum amount of buy in and skill from your fellow players to have fun. It’s really frustrating when a player has incredibly useful info but never shares it because they don’t realize they are supposed to be cooperating with the other townies. Or they have no clue how to use their power to gather info effectively and so they just pick randomly at night and forget what the game master told them because they couldn’t immediately see its usefulness.
what i noticed playing werewolf is that players with info dont tell because they usually die in the next turn, because the bad guys will know if the info is acccurate before the good players confirm it, and being out of the game isn't fun, if i had a role that could protect people i would let them know i would protect them if they revealed something@@fakjbf3129
I'd recomend to check out One night ultimate werewolf, it's might be hard to explain all cards but each game is so short that simply playing people quickly get to play each role and start understanding.
I have ASD and used to play board games regularly with a big group. Learned quickly that I didn't like social deduction, and that I was a serious hazard to the integrity of the game. I have basically no ability to tell if someone is lying, and my mannerisms are atypical enough that nobody can reliably tell if I'm lying. I basically become a random factor in the game and ruin the whole thing because I can't play it correctly. I can be really good at logical deduction, but when I run out of hard facts I just have to guess. That said, I've had a lot of fun observing social deduction games from the sidelines. Like trying to predict the end of a mystery as it plays out in real time.
Same issue. I remember having trouble with any truth/or/lie type games because I could not for my life tell the truth convincingly. I just look like I'm lying all the time due to nerves, which becomes a self-defeating cycle.
I feel you.
Fascinating. I use exactly this ambiguity to my advantage. People need to watch me extremely close to know whether or not I'm lying. I got a pokerface, so to say. Am I the traitor? Who knows! And even social behaviors can be a "fact". Someone has a higher pitched voice than usual? He's suspicious from the get-go, better watch him now more closely. The worst part is, that also makes me suspicious. But alas, it's not only that you can try to predict the end of a mystery but also influence it to your liking. Sometimes it's fun to lose while also stirring chaos! :D
Yeah, it ends up with me just never enjoying the game genre. And that's how I became the achievement hunter of my friend group...
Same. Worst was when I was playing the Jack box party pack equivalent for secret Hitler. I was naturally sus and so bad at the tests, I can't draw for shit so the traitors saved sabotages for me, that I was voted out almost all the time and only had one game when I was actually a traitor. I just stopped bothering defending myself after like game 4 because it just didn't matter.
Shout out to the 1 guy who trolled my buddy, who suggested we play it, and convinced the others to vote him out immediately because he jokingly revealed he was a traitor. Laughed like mad when that went through.
Ideally, you don't try to "read" people to see if they're lying. You really should only be looking at the facts, and try to figure out when someone's claims don't add up. Otherwise, assign probabilities to each option and go with the higher probability play. People *thinking* they can read people or truly ignoring logic just to go with a gut feeling are what actually ruin the experience for me.
I love social deduction games, specifically Ultimate Werewolf. My issues with them typiclly stem from players instead of the game's themselves. Sometimes people will just refuse to interact with each other, or refuse to work with imperfect information and just sit silently the entire time, whick usually makes the game play worse
I don’t enjoy lying to my friends. Add to that the other issues you mentioned and this genre has never been for me.
The genre being dependent on having comfort with lying is something I have a lot of trouble getting my friends to understand. I cannot count how many times I've had to go at length to explain why I don't want to play amogus or town of salem. Usually a lengthy back and forth of people telling me "but it's fun!" and ignoring that I don't enjoy having to lie on the spot or figure out if i'm being lied to.
@@Chadekaful Yes, that's why I mentioned it. I was saying, that aspect he mentioned is something I struggle to get my friends to understand.
Dropped my playgroup entirely because "I hate these games, I'll sit this out" was met with "[groan] Don't be like that, you have to play" into a ton of dirty looks because I "don't play (social deduction games) right". These games are instant frustration for me, I hate it, leave me out.
The chief guy who pushes for 2+ hours of social deduction games every meet was also the guy that would instantly take control of the conversation every round so he ends up winning 100% of the time whether he's good or bad. It's apparently bad form to point out that "guy who interrupts everyone and takes control of the narrative" is also winning every game because you guys are just following his story every time.
It's also really emasculating to be forced to lie, hate it, do it poorly, then get made fun of because "you're bad at this". I told you I was bad, you begged me to play anyway, I would rather just watch 🤷♂
There are games with elements of social deduction that don’t require lying. Like coup skull and such. That said sucks if your friend group makes you feel bad for not liking a game they like.
My among us/digital board game group is super chill if someone doesn’t like a game.
Oh also one night ultimate werewolf with the right setup can remove some of this as it’s a deduction game about who has the werewolf at the end. So the goal is to figure out if you ended with it or not still might run you the wrong way, but the advantage of one night is it’s only one round so people don’t have to sit out
For me, the issue with Among Us and Town of Salem is how trigger happy people are and how they often do not understand the point of gathering evidence. In Among Us, if you just say something wrong, or you have a particularly funny typo, or just for no reason at all, people will gang up on you. In Town of Salem, it often comes down to the Jailor just executing people after demanding to know their role.
The big killer of social deduction games is exactly that - player elimination mechanics. Elimination is already bad on its own, since nobody likes to leave the table while everyone else plays. Couple that with dogpiling the player who is perceived as "most experienced" and therefore "the biggest threat," it naturally ruins the experience for the theoretical biggest fans of the game.
Secret Hitler has 1-2 bullets, late-game, and that's it, and so far that's our go-to.
If you like SH, I recommend Avalon. It gives players more things to do, rather than letting only two people be active per round. It hits a lot of the same tension but I think is a more balanced and fun layout of gameplay. Also nobody gets eliminated.
I recommend Clocktower. No player elimination.
There is also a big issue with these games: Skill mismatch and experience with your group.
I'm decent at these types of games, and significantly better at lying than my friend group. This results in me being suspicious by default, and frequently a first target for whatever elimination mechanic exists, despite my actions in the game (mostly because they know I'm willing to be the most helpful person for however long it takes until the critical backstab).
This does however mean that all the games I *am* a traitor I have to play incredibly defensively, and whenever I'm not, the traitors have a big advantage. The one thing I found to help with this is things like Bang!-s "ghost" mechanic, where if you are dead you can still play but with a limited hand, and thus can help your team out still.
Yeah thats another problem. There is very often a difference between a good strategy and a fun strategy.
There are usually less bad than good guys so if you have to guess to eliminate someone, you should always choose the best player because he is a big potential threat but a slightly lesser potential help.
@@Currywurst-zo8oo that's why you just need to play with people who aren't annoying metagamers and know how to let everyone at the table have their fun.
I'm a beginner Storyteller of Blood on the Clocktower and I can tell you that BotC basically crushes all those issues but adds one single other which is the need of a good amount of players... I love storytelling 10-12 players, and that is kinda difficult to get... What I can guarantee to anybody that doubts this game is that I was one that doubted before: the recurrent "storyteller makes the game moot taking out the skill of the player"... I thought that was true, but as a former Dungeon Master as well for RPG's, I saw how it works and how amazing it is to provide a balanced game for your players, and how amused they get at the end with the shocking reveals, whether they win or lose which at the end, if you had the right experience, the result is just a single bit of it all... So once again I encourage everyone to try because it is the best social deduction game ever, and probably one of the best games ever designed...
This. I've been playing and STing for 4 years. This is one of my favorite games of all time, and that's including all of the video games I've played throughout the years. I play on streams a lot, including the official stream, so I get to play custom scripts with all the new characters that they've created. The fact that you can create so many different scripts and have so many different options for game play keeps it fresh and exciting. Its not always the same thing every time. I've made a lot of friends on the game, too. I've met some at Clocktower Con last year and I plan on going back this year.
@@DragonCharlz Oh damn, I've been watching you play for ~1 year on Nate's stream 😁
10-12 players is actually insane. It's fucking impossible for me. Trying to successfully organise such a game would take MONTHS.
Yup it is @@DIMOHA25, I'm a hardcore social deduction fan and love blood on the clocktower but it's the only game I just haven't been able to run irl. The online community is pretty nice though and it's still possible to get a nice experience playing botc with them, though I'm told irl is apparently much better.
@@eggyolk6735 I'm actually including online play in my assessment too. I routinely have trouble gathering more than two people for things. 10-12 is a nightmare online. IRL it's actually impossible.
My experience with social deduction games was that real life relationship dynamics bleed into the game heavily. I had a small group where there was a couple. I had never been able to convince the girl that her boyfriend is the traitor until he was already in the position that it was obvious. She just couldn't believe that his boyfriend had ulterior motives. And in case of a small group, losing one player to the bad guys can turn the tides easily.
Some people just aren't well-suited for social deduction games. I would avoid playing with a girl like that.
This just sounds like a person who refuses to understand the premise of the game requiring you to drop past allegiances, or refusing to play along.
These types of people are admittedly way too common, but I wouldn't really fault the game for people choosing to ignore the spirit of the game for no real advantage
@@DodgeThatAttackwho was faulting the game for that?
Good for their relationship! I salute their bond
@@kingol4801 yes, they are now married and have children. I am happy for them.
Social deduction is probably my favorite genre of board games. I like logic puzzles and board games are (mostly) meant to be social. So these games put the emphasis on the social side while letting me flex my logic skills. At least, the ones I really like put a lot of emphasis on the social with a lot of table talk.
Great video. I would say that social deduction shines its brightest when it’s 1) simple, and 2) played with a large group of non-gamers who lean more towards extroversion. Games like Avalon and One Night are simple enough to teach to the mildly inebriated and have immediate emotional stakes. These games may not be the most balanced, but I'm not bringing them out when I want tactical depth; I play them whenever I want a guaranteed way to make fun memories with people I care about.
I have friends I could convince to play Twilight Imperium, and then I have others who struggle with anything deeper than Codenames. Knowing your audience is crucial to any successful board game night, and that's not something unique to social deduction.
I like Avalon but also Social Deduction does require a bit of integrity. While it is true we were able to teach someone with "challenges" to play the game (and he did so quite well) there was another person who thought it was a good strategy to play fail as Merlin because he picked a bad team. We didn't find out until the 2 spies asked who played the first fail.
@@Marinealver wait no that absolutely is a good idea haha. If the Minions play no fails then his fail cues the rest of the group onto their presence. If they play one then his fail exposes both even if they were coordinated, and if they play two then three fails kinda just makes them all look bad. depends on the group size, but in a smaller group where there's only two minions, this is a good play, and in a larger group where there's a Percival, the Percival should realize that no Morgana would ever do that. That's a really strong opening play!
@@asdf4ettsIt is a terrible play by Merlin:
1. It lets the bad players know who Merlin is, which loses the game
2. It (sometimes) gives the bad team one extra failing mission, which should be enough to let them win
3. It confuses the good players, especially Percival (who should probably assume Merlin is bad, i.e. is Morgana)
Also I just checked the official rules, and good players are required to Succeed.
@Commander6444 I actually think Avalon is incredibly well-balanced (with Percival/Morgana).
@@raysun1209 I agree about Avalon, I just meant "unbalanced" in comparison to perfect information, zero-luck games. Assymetry will always involve some degree of unwieldiness, and that's totally cool.
There’s also a case that after a while you learn your friends specific tells. For example a video of Among Us I watched (sort of mid-high skill spread, where a few of the players had the deductive ability to determine optimal vs non optimal pathing and how variation on that could be seen as sus, but because that is more effort and less fun they don’t) where the POV was crewmate, some commenters noted that one of the other players was likely evil, not because she played suspiciously, but because when she was describing her pathing for the round, she was- in essence- too specific.
Instead of saying something like “I finished win this task, went to that task and passed this person,” she essentially said “I finished with this task, went up through this door, passed this person at the doorway, they went that way, then I went down and did that task.”
She was imposter, and because of that she focused a lot more on where she was moving, who saw her and when. Some of those details, like the exact path from task A to B could be recalled if questioned, but because she wanted to have her story be as airtight as possible, she actively took in a lot more information.
She made no misplays, but once you are aware of that tell, you can’t really ignore it and to not suspect her would be ignoring information.
Online games try to remedy this by having you play with randoms but irl you need to learn your tells and adapt.
Really enjoyed this video. I absolutely hate social deduction and found out the hard way that I just have zero fun playing that kind of game. Not only am I awful at lying and feel bad about it, not only am I terrible at figuring out when people are lying and feel awful when I'm lied to, but I also tend to get with people who pick their decisions based on completely arbitrary decisions, so it doesn't even feel like I _could_ get better at the game if I wanted to. People latch onto very weird things like "you spoke up too soon, i think you're suspicious" "you didn't speak up at all, I think _you're_ suspicious" "any form of refuting suspicion is in and of itself suspicious!" and it just becomes an absolute nightmare to navigate. I appreciate these games exist both because people who love them can get a lot of fun out of them, but also if I see "social deception" or "traitor mechanic" on a game I immediately know I can move on. _Huge_ help to my mental load to know that there's a game mechanic or two I just do not like at all, and can almost wholly skip over (aside from the rare game that actually makes it work for me).
Some people just aren't well-suited for social deduction games. Kudos 👍
@@J.J._777_ damn that is possibly the most insulting killshot of a comment I've ever read
@@littlemisspipebomb4723 I'd not say so; it presumes that being well-suited to social deduction games is something that everyone wants to be. StarkMaximum evidently isn't interested, and neither am I.
@@LollipopKnight2 that's not what I meant at all. I'm saying it's a very brutal and effective comment to make. The little thumbs up just adding insult to injury. It's impressive and almost poetic in its simplicity
Well, I’m not sure if betrayal at house on the hill is a social deduction game or not I think it’ll be that would be good for you to try because while it does have a traitor mechanic. It doesn’t start out like that and it actually starts out cooperative until too many omens are triggered but even then once someone is turned traitor they are not trying to lie to the other players and instead are trying to complete their objective first before the other people can
I only can handle social deduction in short bursts, especially if I'm a traitor, as I feel I cannot lie consistently for hours. My favorite is One Night Ultimate Werewolf, where a round last less 10 minutes, then we can play an another round, with peoples getting new roles, thus if somebody found to be a liar, we don't know what they will do next round.
The problem i had with it is that you dont know what team youre on because your character couldve been switched with someone else's. You could be a good human and try to hunt down the werewolf, only for one guy to tell everyone he switched you with the wolf. As a result people just stopped saying anything meaningful. Anything you say can and will be used against you.
I can also only handle social deduction in short bursts, but that's because I just don't like socializing. For One Night Ultimate Werewolf, I simply can't find it fun, because it often feels like you can just role call, quickly figure out everything, and then kill a wolf, not to mention switching that can happen. It being one round ultimately takes anything I can find fun and throws it away.
@@bretginn1419 That is true until the groups figures out that if they always tell the truth as a villager, they sometimes turn into werewolf and can't do anything about it. That is why there is a switching (or should be, with the troublemaker or a witch at least), as if everyone tells the truth, the werewolf's story quickly falls apart, so the villagers should be motivated, to don't tell the truth before they figure out that they are still a villager.
@@bretginn1419ah, see, that role switching is why it's a bad idea to tell the truth ever, EVEN when you're playing as a villager.
If you could have been swapped with a wolf during the night, showing your whole hand immediately could doom you to a basically guaranteed loss.
EVERYONE has to lie - otherwise you risk an unbeatable loss every round. If everyone is (at least partially) lying on their way to the truth, it's a game with a great balance between how much you reveal to get more info, how much you hide, and how much you think everyone else is hiding.
@@Kai-tu7xwthis. Surprising how many people don’t get this. It’s obvious once you get screwed over for role revealing and then finding out you were swapped with a wolf.
For simple social deduct games, my favorite one is Werewords. It's ultimate werewolf but with 20 questions tacked on. I really like it because it gives something very direct to lie about that isn't the direct question of "what is your role what are you doing". It's a very approachable game for people who aren't great at lying and the whole thing happens over the course of 5-10 minutes so it's easy to get practice with all the roles.
Blood on the Clocktower definitely is my choice when it comes to social deduction. I am very lucky to have found a pretty consistent group to play it with (usually once a month), which is very much needed for this game and which also is its biggest issue and the reason I still own other social deduction games (Ultimate werewolf, SH, Chameleon, Fake Artist, you name 'em), to have a quick and light party alternative to BotC.
why? what's enjoyable about a game where the narrator is meant to punish you for doing well?
@@jurgnobs1308 That's not how it works. Yes, depending on the script in play, the narrator really can influence the game by quite a lot, but I think his primary function is to be sort of a referee. You could also compare the narrator role to a dungeon master like in D&D, because he can create interesting scenarios to create unique experiences, but his main goal should be to keep the game fair and balanced.
@@geii6466 the only way to actually keep a game fair and balanced is to NOT have a narrator making ANY decission.
a game that gets forced into as close as possible to a 50/50 outcome is not "fair and balanced". it's just boring.
@@jurgnobs1308 Well, I and a bunch of others see this differently. I think you kinda overestimate the narrators power, but I also understand your point. I personally think it's a great experience every time I play, which funnily enough I am in this very moment lol, it's always a blast.
@@geii6466 yea, that's probanly more because of the group you play with than the game.
I've had Human Punishment: The Beginning up, mid-game, on my gaming table fpr 4 months because it's hard to get 5 adults' schedules to line up.
In my family, we play a social deduction variant of 20Q, where one "traitor" knows the word and inconspicuously tries to help the guessers by asking good questions if time is running out and they're not making enough progress. They kept guessing me as the traitor until I finally convinced them that I'm just good at 20Q...
Sounds like you've independently invented Insider! Look up WereWords as well.
Some of my best gaming moments came while playing One Night Ultimate Werewolf. Some of my worst gaming moments came while playing One Night Ultimate Werewolf. Social deduction games are just too group dependent. All it takes is one person that's not into it to ruin a whole game.
That's where I started, but I ended up on Blood on the Clocktower for about 4 years.
The best and worst social deduction game I've ever played was a 22-person version of One Night ultimate werewolf, which took 3 hours and literally gave me back pain bc I refused to move from my chair lest it be suspicious. I was a wolf and I lasted down until there were only 7 people left. I basically let myself get caught because I was ready to go.
It was an incredible game. I was really proud of lasting as long as I did. I also fucked up my back by sitting in the same folding chair for 3 hours and barely moving. 😂
@@serrasedai That sounds like regular Ultimate Werewolf. One Night only lasts ten minutes which is what I like about it! I never played regular werewolf and I really have no desire to. I'm a person that always looks suspicious and I'd get knocked out early no matter what and I'd just have to sit there for the rest of the game.
My favorite social deduction for the last few years has been **Secrets,** which doesn’t get nearly enough love. It gives all of the best vibes from social deduction and manages to dodge most of challenges described in this video. My favorite aspect is that you can play it without lying, which drastically relaxes the “right group” requirement. It also doesn’t require manipulation or majority vote, which removes the tension and arguing. Since the teams are evenly split instead of “majority vs traitors,” it’s a good idea to keep your faction secret but you never need to defend yourself and claim that you’re something you’re not or try to convince people beyond a single sentence like “I think we’re friends , Jane.” In fact you can even do little nods and gestures. Lastly, your faction can change, which also dissipates the “us vs them” feeling pervasive in Secret Hitler and others.
Yep, Secrets is a great intro to the social deduction genre. I remember during a debrief with a friend who didn't have a great game because he both wasn't a fan of social deduction and was given the hippie role. He felt better and was a more engaged in the next few games after I said that oftentimes my strategy as the hippie is just to amass a lot of points and just be a tempting target to be recruited onto other teams to win, rather than trying to win as hippie.
@@RocketSlug love it. So many fun and viable strategies in Secrets. Certainly wasn’t my introduction, but it did get me to sell 3 of my social deduction games (Bang!, Hail Hydra, Secret Hitler) and I haven’t played my other 3 that I kept or bought since I got Secrets.
On the topic of group, another factor to consider besides skill is varying levels of investment. If some people are taking the game very seriously while others aren't, or some people are just there to spend time with friends but aren't really fans of the format, there's a lot of room for frustration and interpersonal drama.
Blood on the clocktower is an incredible social deduction game and solves the issue of outed evil by allowing the main baddie to swap players at times
Highly recommend Two Rooms and a Boom. Personally speaking one of the best Social deduction experience I every had.
pros: Easy to teach(about 5 mins); Everyone constantly have things to do; Game only last for about 15 mins no downtime.
Tons of character to pick from which have different ability and people usually can understand in one sentence.
Depends on the character used, game can be super chaotic (in a good fun way) or very deductive.
cons: You will need at least 10+ people to enjoy all the content it can offer(Personally speaking I would recommend at least 15+ player, maximum player count is 30).
You can't find one copy anymore.(I just find the cards on-line print it out and stick it on poker cards and sleeve it.)
During highschool, for about 3 years every lunch period, me and my friend group would play a lot of social deduction game, after a while, it became evident that we had "solved" the game within our friend group. We played a lot of one night ultimate werewolf until we reached a winrate in every permutation of towns/evils that matched the coin flips we had to inevitably made at the end of our games.
We then switched to secret hitler, where most games would end up elevating someone as leader managing the entire decisions, and made others not as involved.
I'm really glad I found this video because most of the points you mention are things that me and my friends experienced with social deduction games, and me more specifically, things I've experienced trying to get others to try social deduction games.
I will definitely be checking out the games you mentioned in your video!! :)
One of the difficulties I have with these (besides being not good at social stuff in general) is the high reliance on memory. Especially when playing multiple rounds it all just blurs together. I genuinely have no idea if your actions this turn are consistent with what you said before because I have no memory of what you said before.
I take notes on my phone. lol
legit, any social deduction game that's even moderately complex is gonna have HUGE balance mismatches between players, as some furiously take notes while others play by the seat of their pants. This can't be fixed, it's entirely a consequence of the genre. The only way around it is to just play rules-light social deduction games.
This is one of the many reasons I’m bad at Among Us. Even when I’m crewmate and I did some tasks, it’s hard for me to remember when/what order I did them, which always makes me seem sus to other people
That's part of the game though. If the good guys could remember everything perfectly then they'd probably win every time. These games are not meant to be optimized, being bad at it is where the fun is.
@@CGFillertext Yeah Among Us is deceptively complex, as it hides most of its mechanics within its programming. If it were a board game, the rules would look ridiculous.
As with every other commenter, I am a die-hard Blood on the Clocktower fan. I’ve introduced so many friends to it and even friends who were initially unsure ended up loving it. Basically all other social deduction games feel stilted and unbalanced in comparison.
I’m learning to be a storyteller but the curve there is pretty steep!
BotC is "balanced" by making the narrator simply punish players for doing well by letting their future actions fail. it's an insanely dumb concept.
@@jurgnobs1308 It sounds lke you had a god awful storyteller.
Shame how one bad Dungeon Master can run D&D for somebody forever.
(:
@@dancebenny again, the concept itself is terrible. no matter what decission the storyteller maked, the problem is that he had to make one in the first place. so, even with the best storyteller inaginable, it would still be a terrible concept. no matter how hard I try, I can not think of a worse mechanic in a game.
@jurgnobs1308 The point of the game isn't to be as competitive as a game like Sorry or Street Fighter. The mechanics which "balance" the experience are so everyone can take part in the collaborative storytelling experience. And the DM existing effectively means everytime you play, you get a very different experience
@@matthewclark1857 but you won't. the experience will always be that your choices don't actually matter and you will have your hand held until an ending that is essentially a coin toss because the "balancing" made it come as close as possible to a 50/50.
the idea that fairness means getting everything as close to 50/50 as possible is extremely widespread and actually has implications that go way beyond the game.
One night ultimate werewolf is a great game for many situations. Its short and incredibly simple, but because of how short every game is (literally one night) compared to normal werewolf you can play it so many more times. Which causes even an inexperienced group of people to quickly start strategizing and the most fun is seeing how and when people lie change as times go by.
My group I used to play with played the Resistance until we figured out a Meta that was almost impossible for the Resistance to break (without revealing Merlin). If a spy was team captain and picked another spy on the mission, the spy that picked the team will play the fail or pass the mission while the spy (or spies) picked will always play pass. This prevented the multiple fails that exposed spies.
4 words: Blood on the Clocktower. Best social deduction game by MILES, and probably my favorite game ever. The only warning: it's so good that it makes it hard to play any other social deduction game again because of how worse everything else is by comparison. :)
nah. absolute garbage where the narrator actually decides the game, and not the gameplay of the players. when one side is doing "too well", the narrator can just start letting your actions fail. it's an insanely dumb system and I can not understand how anyone can enjoy that game concept. i honestly thinl Blood on the Clocktower is the dumbest and worst game concept that ever had any sort of relevant spread.
@@jurgnobs1308 I've never had an experience like that. I'm sorry you have. :(
@@nerdpiggy it's literally the basic principle of BotC. you can not play it without this mechanic.
@@jurgnobs1308I've not had an experience where a storyteller balancing a game felt arbitrary or unfair. Lots of roles have the chance to work in different ways, and finding out what happened when something didn't go the way you expected is just another part of the puzzle solve for me. The storytellers I've played with are ones I like and trust a lot; they tend to reward smart choices and sympathize with unluckiness, all while making the game fun and interesting for everyone. When I said I'm sorry, I meant that I'm sorry that you haven't played with a storyteller that you can trust.
My main issue is the game is way too expensive for what it has.
In my circles these usually devolve into who can yell the loudest or “I saw this person smile they’re definitely the traitor”.
My friend group had some of our best times in college playing these games. Even 6 years later I still have great memories of the times we had. It definitely helps to have everyone engaged and to have a few different options to chose from on any given night to play so that way the same games don't get stale
You need to try Coup, but the original version. Everyone gets two role cards, and each role gets a power like assassinating one of someone elses roles or blocking an assassination, etc. If you guess someones roll (when they use an ability) they lose one of their cards, and if you guess wrong you lose one. It takes 2-3 games to learn but each game is about 15 minutes. I have played literally thousands of games and it is brilliant.
i didn't get that game at all and didn't like it
i love coup! we used to play it a ton at game nights. easy to learn, despite looking complicated at first glance.
Coup is fun, but it's a bluffing game. The game isn't long enough nor does it provide enough information about roles for their to be social deduction.
@@VaultBoy13 can you explain the how bluffing and guessing roles in coup is different to bluffing and guessing roles in Werewolf? Why is one a "bluffing game" and the other is "social deduction"
@@kredonystus7768 Obviously way late, but for anyone who comes across this, since this video seems to have caught the algorithm:
In Coup, you don't have a fixed role. Your cards (and therefore, your available actions) can change throughout the course of a game, so you're not trying to convince people that you do or don't fall in a certain category, just that you're able to take a certain action at the time you claim you can. As opposed to something like Werewolf, where your role defines what you *can* do, in Coup your cards ("role") define what you can't get *punished* for doing-- a Villager in Werewolf can't go out and eat someone, but in Coup, you can take any action at any time as long as you can convince the other players not to call you out on it.
It's less about trying to figure out what everyone else has/is and more about trying to keep everyone else guessing about you; you can make it to the top two in every game without figuring out what roles any other player is holding as long as no one is willing to take a risk accusing you of a lie.
I've mostly heard them being called Hidden Role games, which was on that list. Maybe Hidden Role is a bit broader and includes other type of games though.
Blood on the Clocktower has become one of my favorite social deduction games as of recent. I love having the info cards and preset game types, and the ability to go talk to people privately for info and play after you die makes it super fun and enjoyable throughout the whole game imo. And it also doesn't take more than a couple hours max (Average for my games has been around 60-90 mins)
Blood on the clocktower is very balanced in many ways. Been playing it for over a year almost every week and it’s completely different every time, different roles all the time, and you never know who’s gonna win everyone is important. Rules are very simple. Etc.
Rules are anything but simple. The ruleset includes learning about every role in play. There's also mechanics that require specific roleplay such as being mad. The problem with Blood that may be difficult is that it's a social deduction game that takes a LOT more cognitive load than most other social deductions, because potentially false information blows open the possibilities of potential game states. Blood is a deduction game based a lot less on reading others, but a game of information gathering without revealing too much about yourself.
@@TheJuicyTangerine I think this entire comment is just plain wrong. BoTC is not a difficult teach, it's a very common convention game where you teach tens of players at a time, the game comes with role lists for each player so you know what everyone does, madness is not in any basic script, BoTC requires a tonne of reading other people - you usually cannot 'solve' the game completely and must rely on reads to find the demon. I agree that it requires info gathering without revealing too much about yourself; but that's the same with every social deduction game.
@@TheJuicyTangerine
I find social deduction games that rely mostly on reading people instead of reading their actions extremely unfun. It's totally valid to enjoy the other type but I like crunchy logic puzzles with my main meal of teamwork, trust building, and lying.
I've been playing for 4 years. Just ran a game in person with a few new players. I'm used to including new players into the game since I've been doing it through discord for so long. Its not hard to teach. You start with Trouble Brewing. Its simple to understand, characters interactions aren't too complicated, information is pretty straight forward, mechanical abilities are very straight forward. We played two games, 1 good win, 1 evil win. From what I've seen from statistics, it goes about 50/50. I definitely recommend this for the lack of player elimination and actually information and skill involved. I've meet some REALLY strong players in my days, especially since I play on a few streams, including the official one.
I have to admit that I've gotten to be increasingly lukewarm on the more complex social deduction games. When everyone is supposed to be working together and the game in general is already really difficult to win, it can be REALLY hard for a traitor player to do anything to further their cause without drawing immediate suspicion. I enjoy BSG, but that can be a perfect example where sometimes all the player can do is try to throw a skill check. It reached a point where I had to kinda ban "playing by committee" at my table, because the folks I play with tend to approach co-op games with the idea that we all will discuss everybody's turns and collectively decide what the best move will be or will sometimes come up with big plans that have the next 7 actions all played out. And this obviously leaves the traitor in a spot where they either have to go along with the plans or be immediately found out. So some degree of planning is allowed, but I started really trying to push the idea of letting each person's turn BE their own turn. That all being said, I do like the second (I think) expansion that gives an outed Cylon more options and things to do to help keep them engaged in a more interesting way.
Dead of Winter kinda has the opposite problem though.... everybody have secret objectives inevitably results in everybody acting sus, which partially makes it easier for the real traitor to fly under the radar, but also makes it so that the traitor has to put a lot less effort in because everybody is sabotaging the group to a degree.
Blood on the Clocktower is a complex game, but all the roles are on a handy dandy sheet, I’ve found it’s easier to play than most simple deception games.
I like games like Dead of Winter and Lockdown as there doesn't need to be a "traitor" people just have competing goals.
Would Love to see your take on Blood on the Clocktower! Balance is very fluid, because it can be changed from game to game (by changing the script). informed minority vs the uninformed majority is a fun dynamic, and both sides win often. Getting revealed as evil is an explicit mechanic for several characters, and for some it's fun either way. There are no turns, you don't have to wait for anyone, and the game takes as long as it needs to. If the demon is found and killed, the game ends (most of the time). Very fun.
I think some people like/dislike social deduction games based on whether they truly like/dislike their own friends.
Some groups would be better off playing a game that accommodates shitty friendships.
About the different friend groups giving different types of the same game is so true. I used to play Avalon a lot, and I would usually play with super logical people, so the depth of logic and probability becomes huge. But I had also played it with a different friend group with people that are less logical and more social, and the dynamic has changed. I remember one game where I was Merlin and I was in a situation to try to out a spy. The problem was that they contributed pretty much nothing to the game, so it was hard to bring up anything that was suspicious. Normally, when I'm playing with others, the other players know not contributing always favors the spy team, so that would sus them out, but being quiet wasn't a reason to be sussed out in the social friend group.
There was nothing I can do to convince my teammates that the other player was a spy. I tried to push it onto them to possibly give them the hint that I was merlin but they didn't take a hint, and if you're wondering, percival was a newbie and didn't know what to do.
We did eventually pick the correct team, but I was already horribly outed as merlin, so we lost anyway.
The player I had tried to out as a spy so badly felt so bad. But I don't quite know why. Maybe it appeared that I was pressuring her so hard and she didn't know what to do, when in reality, that was exactly what I was trying to achieve as merlin.
Made me think about how playing with a different group doesn't make the game easier or harder, but I had to play it differently.
I think Avalon is more of a gamers game because it has more straightforward deduction and experienced players should win more and be less prone to being bluffed. I find the games stressful because with good deduction it's harder to lie. In my opinion Avalon is best with gamers. I believe for non gamers SH would be better if you don't play meta and count cards. Much easier to lie so the social aspect gains more relevance than deduction.
"people that are less logical and more social," i.e., people that are poorly suited for social deduction games.
I hate hate hate these kinds of games because every damn time I get forced to play one I'm anxious, I probably do badly, and then get asked "how didn't you figure out *this person* was the bad guy?" or even worse if I have to lie. I also pretty much can't speak over anyone so most of the time I just end up being quiet which doesn't help at all.
Battlestar Galactica is hands down my favorite board game and thus social deduction is my favorite genre. Glad you talked about some others in the genre - very few people talk about Human Punishment and it's a fascinating "evolution" of the genre, doubtlessly with its own massive issues.
I feel like when playing a lot of these games you need to be willing to just go "yeah the game isn't actually over but we're kind of just going through the motions now" if all the traitors have been found out etc. and just start a new game
"we're kind of just going through the motions now" tends to happen in poorly-designed games. I would just play something different.
I think the most vital part out of all you mentioned is the social group. My gaming group growing up never enjoyed it, but one member always REALLY wanted to play social deduction. It became pretty exhausting and started to fray the group.
Personally, I have a strong dislike for this entire genre. For a long time I thought they were just terrible games until I saw some of the better ones. I can say that they aren't objectively bad as a genre, but as someone with serious social anxiety, these types of games just turn that up to 11 and I wish you would've talked about this in the video.
It isn't just me. There is a wide world of people who will always hate these games with a passion and there's a lot of overlap between people like me and people who love tabletop games. Most tabletop games give you a set of rules, consequences, and rigid choices you can make. It's a very appealing environment for people who just want to blend in and have a good time. And in groups I've played with throughout my life, that has been a pretty common personality type. Like 1-2 players at every gaming table. These games fundamentally exclude these players from your game night and I think that needed to be brought up.
The only thing you're gonna "hear" from me is that I'm hella jealous of your game group - I love both social deduction games AND long complicated games, and my old group fell apart.
Anyway this video was great and I really wanna check out Human Punishment!
haha, yeah a group that likes human punishment is gonna be really niche. I thought I would even like it more, but Daniel is over the moon with it! -Ashton
Love nemesis because even if you show your hand early that you’re trying to kill 1 player, they can’t just shoot your or vote you off and it almost adds a cat and mouse chase while also avoiding the intruders
Deception: Murder in Hong Kong is the best detective board game I've played, by adding a very freeform puzzle for the deducing part. The killer's choice of cards in reference to other cards on the table is much more interesting than "sabotage or not" and the Lead Investigator has a lot of creativity. In a way it's part word game / social concept game. The real time aspect forces you to "think on your feet". Perfect social deduction game, IMO.
It's hard to play these kinds of games when the only way you know how to convincingly lie is staying completely silent.
I have a couple friends like that. They tend to do well by later naming between silence, then agreeing with people who are saying..."helpfully untrue" things.
Basically, just quickly encourage people who are on the wrong track, then retreat back to silence. People barely even notice you were involved.
Great video! While it's not a social deduction game per se, Coup offers great lying opportunities with super short games and extremely satisfying conclusions!
I do love social deduction games. In fact, my favourite gaming memory comes from a particularly tense game of bag about 15 years ago. That said, I find the large complex board games that incorporate social deduction can have high highs, but also can really drag out, be unbalanced, or just lack a good climax. I switched to resistance like games when it came out and played soooo much. It didn’t have the same lvl of climax, but it still felt great and it wrong about 1/10 the time. Now, I’m a little bored by the simpler social deduction games and I have two favourites. Werewords! And blood on the clocktower!
Two Rooms and a Boom is fantastic. People are split into two rooms, and instead of being voted out of the game, you move people between those rooms. That way, everybody gets to play to the end. And because there are two rooms, even if you figure out who everybody is, that doesn't guarantee victory because you don't know what the other room is going to do. There are lots of crazy roles as well. The only problem is the very high player count - you want decently sized groups in both rooms for good interactions, so while it can be played with 6 people, you ideally want well over 10 players.
I'll add another mention of Feed the Kraken. My favorite social deduction game & I've had friends who generally don't like social deduction enjoy it!
I hate social deduction games, but I bought this one.
This is my favorite atypical social deduction game (atypical referring to its mix of board game and social deduction elements and the fact that there’s little player elimination), I even made a google colab to host the game for online groups (unfortunately means a host is necessary but there’s no way around that)
This is why I love BOTC, it literally gives you bluffs to help you lie and complicates things in a way that balances the game out more towards evils.
Great video. Some of my best gaming experiences have been with social deduction games. Blood on the Clocktower and Veiled Fate are as close to perfect as games have come for me. Fake Artist and Spyfall are on the more comical side, side along with The Insider. Have yet to get Human Punishment to the table as it looks like a nightmare to teach.
Great video, would highly highly recommend feed the kraken, our favourite social deduction game now.
The main problem I've experienced is if at least most of the players don't or can't think more logically than they think emotionally. That's when it turns into a mob fight.
"players don't or can't think more logically than they think emotionally," these types of people are poorly suited for social deduction games. I avoid them.
I think part of the problem is there's no real punishment for people falsely accusing an innocent or removing them other than having their chances of winning lowered but some players don't really seem to care and focus on when their random accusations were correct rather than wrong. It'd be better if there we real consequences for the players who harm innocents. If the game is online with enough players you could maybe make it so a random innocent who votes guilty on an innocent gets taken out with the other innocent so players are less likely to vote off vibes or alternatively they could take a hit to their own resources or something if it's a game with less players. It's hard to balance but there really does need to be negative consequences to the false accusers outside of "I lost a teammate" because some people don't seem to care.
To be fair those are all "traitor games" in the sense you have given good guys / bad guys roles throughout the game. These games tend to take a while and are hard to get into, at least for my friend-group.
In a more broad social deduction genre I would also include games like Sheriff of Nottingham, where there is no traitor role. The playtime is shorter, it's easier to get into and since there are no teams it is fairly balanced for each player. BGG has this under the "Bluffing" category, which I think also covers all the social deduction games like BSG, Werewolf and Resistance.
As someone with mental issues that inhibit my ability to read social cues and spot deception, I find that not only do I often have a huge disadvantage with social games like this that rely on both of those things, but I've had "friends" that use the game as entertainment for themselves by purposefully watching me struggle and get more and more frustrated until I quit. That's why I'm terrified of these games, "I'll just watch you guys, it's fine." :/
As another social deduction nerd i found the perfect game for me.
One night ultimate werewolf is perfect in so many aspects since its super easy to understand and takes max 6-7 minutes for a round. Its able to scale and get really complex. Its a decent game for new players, but gets really complex and competitive with other deduction nerds.
Been playing the game for 4 years, still havnt gotten tired of it and im still growing as a player
I love social deduction board games but it’s so rare I can have a truly great game because there always someone in our group plays who feels uncomfortable lying or gets very salty… it’s always aspirational for me 😅
This is why I love One Night so much, i feel like it isnt hurt by any of these issues.
None of the issues brought up are exclusive to social deduction games. Especially when the main issue seems to be "sometimes people are bad at the game."
a game of Chess still fundamentally works if one player is just bad at Chess
social deduction, not so
@@Miranda17137
I have to disagree here. A moderatelly good chess player will always win against an inexperienced player without even having to think about it. It can be fun for one game if the good guy has fun with "dunking on the noob" and the novice is impressed in a "how did you even see that" way. But the second game after that is completelly pointless for both.
@justaguy8982 I didn't say "will be hard" or "will be good". I meant the mechanics are all still there.
The best analogy I can think of is playing chess against a new player who doesn't know about en passant, but en passant is 75% of the game, not 5%.
I think social deduction games need to be highly customizable to accommodate different player groups.
I like Mafia/Werewolf-style games that are scalable in terms of player count, team balance, and complexity. A mixture of "required" and "optional" roles to make the game either beginner-friendly or complex. Guidelines about team sizes but ability to tweak and re-balance to suit a particular group.
Do the "bad guys" or "good guys" always win in your player group? You can shift the ratio of good/bad guys. You can add or remove roles/abilities from the game. You can apply optional rules that fundamentally change the core gameplay mechanics.
Social deduction games that are inflexible end up being a bad fit for some groups.
Also, a social deduction game with more than two required teams is a red flag to me since it becomes too complicated for beginners and too difficult to balance. Make only two teams required, balance the core gameplay around the dynamic between those two required teams, and make any additional teams optional for groups that want to include them (i.e., "Serial Killer" and "Cult" in Mafia/Werewolf-style games). More bells and whistles is not always better.
Finally, social deduction games are intrinsically more interesting and easier to balance with a larger player group. Some of the footage in this video shows a group of only four or five people playing. I think some game companies do people a disservice by creating game rules that technically allow playing with such a small group. The game is almost guaranteed to suck at that group size. Just don't do it.
I like how Among Us lets you have up to 15 players (although generally if you have 2 imposters you need more than eight players) and also makes the bonus roles optional- if you have someone less familiar with the game you can disable shapeshifters, for example.
cool friend in the rainbow dash shirt at 13:35 haha
You were most of the way into your final thoughts when I started writing that I'm disappointed that you neglected to mention Blood on the Clock Tower. That was about the fastest I've ever jumped on the backspace key!
haha. Probably need to do a review one day -Ashton
Hey if you liked Human Punishment:The Beginning, perhaps you should try their new game „Among Cultists“. It‘s a much more streamlined experience, without player elimination and a clever system for the player interaction. It was a big success for them on the Spiel in Essen, Germany this year 🙂.
Basically it’s „Among Us the Boardgame“ with a little more dark theme.
Was der Tigerbau sagt
Plus one for amoung Cultist
I have played it and there is honestly no reason to play Among cultists if you can just download among us for free on your phone. Works well if everyone is in the same room and it's just the better game. Godot games tried really hard to mimic it and managed to add nothing of value to the concept. At least imo
Glad to hear you mention Nemesis at the end as I believe it's the best personally, with you all possibly betraying each other while also needing to work together to not die to the aliens
You talking about someone being very good at reading body language reminded me of a game of One Night Ultimate Werewolf I played once. I was the drunk and they just choose a card from the three middle cards at random and swap their role with that. They have no idea what they are now, and therefore don't know their role. Everyone revealed their roles and I told them I had no idea what role I was anymore and my mom was so certain I was werewolf now, despite it being a one in three chance. Somehow, she was right! I didn't even know what I was, yet somehow she got it! That's when I decided to quit playing with her because it just made it no fun if there's no guesswork at all. XD
a couple friends and i consistently play secret hitler in group settings, because we’ve found it to be a great game for almost anyone. having the rules be so simple means most people can basically instantly pick it up.
however, we run into a few issues. the first is that, since a core 2-4 of us have always played more than the rest of the players, there’s a huge imbalance of who knows what and who knows how to game the system/spot who’s gaming the system. for example, if i see someone saying we should vote in a highly-suspicious person to “test them” during the policy-playing phase, it raises so many red flags of that person’s intentions for me. meanwhile, other people may find it totally reasonable (even though that’s like textbook fascist behavior in that game). and, because of that, there’s just a huge imbalance of who can lie well and who will believe them. there have been games where i know my friend is one of the fascists, he knows that i know, but it doesn’t matter. because, in the end, if we’re playing with 6 other people who aren’t experienced in the game, anyone being persistent in calling another player the fascist is just as (if not more) suspicious than the actual fascist.
it’s still super fun, but these sorts of games really do run into issues of skill barriers and META tactics ruining the fun. not to ramble forever, but that’s another thing that bothers me about among us - META tactics (like having the rules that turn on visual tasks or non-anonymous voting on the mechanical side, or constantly partnering up in the game purposefully to ensure that, if anyone dies, you know who did it) for the crewmate team can make it genuinely impossible to win in a lobby of even just halfway decent players.
Social Deduction is a great way to ruin at least one relationship per game night by discovering your friend's fiancee is a vicious gaslighter.
People who take the game too seriously and make real world extrapolations about a person based on how they act in the game are what ruin it.
@@NihongoWakannai when you start doing the "if you love mes" and the "we're gonna have to talks" at the table then I think yeah I know what I'm saying but please go off.
I've only played Nemesis (the first one) a few times but I think it addresses some of the issues you discussed, in similar ways to Human Punishment. Each player draws a "corporate goal" and a "personal goal" at the start of the game (you need to achieve one or the other to win) but players don't look at their cards or make a decision on which goal they pursue until the Nemesis is spotted for the first time. It's good roleplay and immersion (the characters discover the strength of their principles in the face of alien terror) but it also makes the teams dynamic every time.
The corporate objectives tend to be more difficult to achieve, pitting you against the alien intruders and making you jump through several hoops, but they're more "co-operative" and everyone that picks their coroporate objective can win the game together. On the flip side, the personal objectives are often easier to achieve with less personal risk and less hurdles, but they require you to betray your teammates and seek being the sole winner. Add in the fact that you can't directly harm each other (the game explains this as in-universe, your characters received neural implants that prevent them from killing their co-workers, so you have to indirectly kill them by locking them in rooms with aliens or throwing grenades in their general direction), and it's pretty fun.
I'd play it more but it is a super dense game -- long set-up/tear-down of the game components, and it requires a hefty commitment from each player to learn all the rules and mechanics. I was interested in the 2nd and 3rd Nemesis games but the 1st one has been gathering dust ever since I kickstarted it, sadly.
I'm actually hoping to try out The Thing this weekend at a board game retreat. People seem to have had good experiences with it and it's the first chance I've had to try to get a group of 8 for a game like this.
It's my all time favorite social deduction game. You'll have a blast with it. The IP is done extremely well.
Which The Thing? There are at least 3 published games about The Thing/Who Goes There? - with one titled The Thing: The Board Game and the other The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31.
I agree a lot with this video. Even though I evangelize blood on the clocktower and have a fairly regular group I play with, a lot of these problems still come up. Experienced/talented players vs inexperienced is a really tricky balance especially. What I will say is this true of every game though, not just social deduction. If you have someone play concordia or scythe who's experienced vs someone who isn't, the one who isn't is much more likely to lose than if the same matchup happens in blood on the clocktower.
I.e. someone who has good boardgame mechanics or engine building vs someone who isn't very good is a much more unfair matchup than someone who can lie well in blood on the clocktower vs someone who can't.
Not speaking much is always an option in blood on the clocktower, and additionally acting entirely random is a good strategy. I've trained my regular group to believe I'll do entirely nonsense stuff or make terrible plays because it creates a good story to me or seems fitting. I encourage people to really not take blood on the clocktower too seriously or become a whole group of mega-mind genius'. My worst games are where I've become so stressed that even if I won I don't feel like I won at all, and some of my best games are "losses".
One of my favorite games of secret hitler when I played that years ago was my own mother betraying me on purpose for a whole game despite the fact I was hitler and she was fascist (the evil team in that game) because she refused to be fascist for the game's sake and made a point of it for her first game.
Do stupid stuff. Do clever stuff. Be quiet one game. Hell, I've been entirely silent for a whole game as a gimmick. Another, I wouldn't stop talking, but only about things that had nothing to do with the game and was just personal anecdotes. Mess with it, that's the social part, that's the fun part that makes it a interactive game. If you let the game get meta for too long or don't change up, I find that the game becomes knowable because everyone knows how each other play and things no longer are fun.
More than anything, I think social deduction games are hard to balance because they're social. You have to know your group or be able to figure out what will get them the most enjoyment. We've had new people come into BOTC and never come a second time because their first two games weren't all too interactive and were hard for them to follow. I've had sessions I really didn't enjoy because I hate one particular character I was playing in that game. But the malleable nature of social deduction is the really fun part too. Where a lot of boardgames struggle to balance how replayable the game is with how much crap is added to the game to introduce random different setups, the setup and change in social deduction is often the people more than anything. Celebrate that part and understand that.
I don't go to every social gathering and entirely enjoy it, some days are just like that. Social deduction is kind of the same.
This is why I LOVE the Resistance. It's very fun but can easily be balanced with the Hidden Agenda rules. Spies win too much in regular game? Add ONLY the Commander, no Assassin. Resistance is too good at finding the spies? Add the Assassin, use the Defectors, etc etc.
5:35 Hidden Agenda is better than Avalon, due to the better theme, having all the features (current edition Resistance includes Inquisitor / Lady of the Lake), and even MORE roles. Hostile Intent is good for even more chaos.
8:52 if all the spies are not found out, the remaining spies can carefully try and make certain people look suspicious, or at least divert everyone's attention from finding them out.
Shadow hunters is a game you might find interesting as it’s fixes a lot of these issues. It’s quite hard to find these days, but it’s my all time favourite social deduction game.
At some point in gaming you reach a crossroads. Do you enjoy playing with humans, or tinkering with puzzles.
The more games I play the less impressed I am with the puzzles, and more time I want to spend with the "unbalanced" games.
Having said that, a 3-4 hour social deduction game sounds like torture.
Agree, it actually pains me how many board game reviewers on TH-cam just rave about multiplayer solitaire worker placement or engine builders. YAWN. I can play video games for a great solo experience, I board game for the human interaction.
@@Spudst3r Same.
My favorite "social deduction" game uses it as an extra mechanic rather than a core one. "BANG!" Is a western shootout where the only known role is the sheriff, and all the win conditions are tied to when and how the sheriff dies.
When you think about it, not being allowed to say hitler is pretty stupid
My favorite types of social deduction games, are often ones that divert from the classic major good group going against the minor evil group.
Like 2 rooms and a boom. Not only is the game, at base, 2 hidden groups of equal size going against each other. There are also a bunch of neutral roles that can be mixed in and shake up the game.
Then there is Bank Heist, while yes, it does have the typical majority "good" group, it has 2 minority "evil" groups, and combined, the 2 "evil" groups have the same amount of role cards than the "good" team has (putting good and evil in quotes, because the "good" group is a bunch of bank robbers and one of the two "evil" groups are cops)
Love social deduction games, glad you are covering them
While I'm not sure if things like Coup technically fall into the game type, but ive always found in that in game not lying and likability in general are the best allies to winning. For board games in general likeability is an underated tool. Sure there are times that screwing someone specific over helps, but as a repeat game people will remember previous games even if that makes no sense to
1) these comments make me think a lot of people need to find or be better friends
2) more people need to get into the role play aspects of social deduction games
3) ironically, people need to take these games less seriously which doesn’t mean “enjoy losing” but just means “don’t take it to heart”
Oor… I know it sounds crazy but hear me out, not everyone has to enjoy and want to play all kinds of games and not wanting to play social deduction games is perfectly valid.
@@painandsuffering7130 something that obvious would never sound crazy…
@@painandsuffering7130
Now, if you could tell me where this was said, that would be really helpful. Because the person never said that everyone has to like social deduction games. However, from the comments, it seems to appear that they have the wrong idea about them. A lot of comments describe the same problems like the same people getting voted out. Which again, only happens if you either have a bad group to play with OR because everyone only thinks about winning and not about having fun. Secondly, thinking that you can't play these games because you are bad at lying or bad at telling lies, again shows a bad group, because the lying part isn't even that important in these games to begin with (at least in the simple ones like Werwewolf). The point of these games is that they are simple enough so everyone immediately understands how to play, don't need any big boards and allow you to talk in between rounds making the gathering of friends more involved than with more strategic games where you have to think about your own turn. And if you understand that, you realize that these games are mostly an excuse to get the group together and make everyone (even the more introverted people) talk and just have fun.
@@painandsuffering7130 Nobody said you're forced to play them just tell people they aren't your thing if you're invited. Don't half ass it and ruin the fun for others.
I feel many of the problems you described happen in the exact same way in every board game, it's the concept of meta itself. In strategy games you will know what are the best moves, the best choices, and so on. The end of that meta is like in chess where you know so many combinations and situations, and you study those.
The problem might be that social games are too simple in the interactions, and must be explored more, which is something that is happening right now in the market of board games more than before, I feel
What makes social deduction so fantastic is that you get to play the players instead of just playing the mechanics of the game.
Sounds horrible to me.
@@chuckm1961what's a massive draw for some is a nightmare for others. Personally, I'm not the biggest fan considering it heavily relies on friendship dynamics and as an autistic person it kind of comes with an inherent disadvantage. It's far more preferable to prove I'm better at a mechanic, or strategising or just playing the game.
However, it's also fun casually when you treat it less like OP said and more like a strategy game, where you don't rely on information from other players and simply treat it like a card game where it's known Vs unknown information, verified Vs unverified. Then it goes from a frustrating unknown social battle to a challenging fight of whits
That's honestly more true for a negotiation game like dune or bluffing games like coup than a social deduction game. There. you're trying to figure out if someone is lying because they would have a reason to lie to you, while in most social deduction games you're trying to figure out if they're lying because they got the "be evil and lie" role
I end up ignoring what role I have and just play "mildly evil" no matter what I'm dealt. It's literally the only way for me to play "competently" for multiple rounds of any of these kinds of games. Otherwise, my thorough inability to lie will get me caught immediately.
@@bye1551
Gotta say, as an autistic person social deduction is really fun for me. I've spent so much time figuring out how people form trust and connections that playing a game that is both all the social stuff and a (possibly impossible) logic puzzle just really gets my brain gears turning.
It also helps that I can "multithread" my brain and run a pretend good player in parallel with my actual plans to keep from doing anything that would out me when I'm on the evil team.
When I'm tired or forgetful though they're aweful
Definitely agree that long social deduction exacerbates some of its weaknesses, even as the length helps it with some of its strengths.
For a shorter experience, I think Saboteur handles most of the issues fairly well, although it has some balancing problems and I think the reward system could use a tinker.
It does a good job of confounding some of the info that might ‘confirm’ a saboteur by limiting your actions based on the cards you’ve picked up, plus the saboteurs aren’t completely out of the game if they get figured out. Each round being fairly quick makes it easy for everyone to stay engaged, too.
I made the mistake of late backing human punishment the beginning, no clue what I was thinking, since I don't think my group will be into it.
One of my favourite games of all time is social deduction adjacent, New Angeles. I highly recommend this one, even to people who think they hate semi co-op games. It's really great! (And the traitor aspect of the game is also optional if you really don't want one and the game still works well without one)
New Angeles has been on my to-play list for the longest time. My friend has it, but we haven't gotten the time or group to take it out yet. Looking forward to it!
New Angeles is also pretty cool, we played it once and maybe we can talk about it one day! I remember it feeling REALLY stressful even though I pulled off a traitor win :) -Ashton
Maaaan, I'm so bad at this type of game, that at one point when playing The Resistance, I just decided to say I was the spy because remaining silent always led to me being talked over by those who were much better than me, and I wasn't very good at defending myself.