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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2024
- Social deduction has some big key issues in using it to develop a board game, mostly stemming from how group reliant they are. Issues can be player elimination in long games, or by the game boiling down to a 50/50 pick. Sure, there's also the issue where your group just does not want to lie, which also is a counterpoint to how group dependent these games are. You don't want to be playing a subpar team game for many hours after the traitor has been revealed! Tabletop traitor games issues get somewhat solved by Human Punishment: The Beginning, but that unleashes so many more mechanics for this more casual genre.
Are the super big memories from Battlestar galactica worth it, or should you just play other games for swingy moments? Or maybe just play shorter social deduction party games, like Werewolf. Or just look into video game social deduction!
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Games mentioned: Battlestar Galactica (with Pegasus and Daybreak expansion), Dead of Winter (with Long night Expansion), Spyfall, Spyfall 2, Fake Artist goes to New York, The Mole, Nemesis, Blood on the Clocktower, Shadows over Camelot, SanGuoSha, Mafia, Werewolf, Secret Hitler, Bang!, Dark Moon, Unfathomable, Human Punishment: The Beginning
Table of Contents:
Intro - (0:00)
What is social deduction? - (1:17)
Why is it so good? - (2:51)
Issues - (5:51)
Human Punishment: The Beginning - (11:22)
Final Thoughts - (13:12)
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#boardgames #tabletop #tabletopgames - เกม
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.
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.
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
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’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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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'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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!! :)
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.)
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
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 👍
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.
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 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)
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
the biggest problem in my eyes is nobody has a perfect poker face, I find it incredibly easy to spot people who are lying in face-to-face games no matter who I end up playing with. A slight smirk here, taking too long to read a card there, a nervous glance, whatever. someone slips up eventually.
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.
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"
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.
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.
Great video, would highly highly recommend feed the kraken, our favourite social deduction game now.
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.
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
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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 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!
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
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!
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
My problem with these games is that the lying and betrayal is real. It's not a game mechanism where a character uses the "lie through your teeth" card and I'm invited to roleplay that interaction. My best friend literally looked me in the eye and told me something that wasn't true, then laughed at me for believing him. I don't understand why that's fun; don't you feel sick to your stomach when you lie like that? I know I do.
Plus the learning experience is terrible a lot of the time because there's no way to ask for help understanding the rules of the game without giving away which side you're on.
As someone on the Autistic Spectrum, this, this so much. I am totally unable to play deception based games like this because I basically *cannot* lie, and have serious legitimate problems detecting lies, so I'm very badly handicapped. Because of that I rely on people being truthful and honest with me a lot in real life, so even though it's happening 'in a game' it just reinforces to me that someone *could* be lying to me and I wouldn't know. It's so corrosive to my ability to trust them, and it's literally the way my brain is wired, so playing deception based games causes me serious anxiety problems. Which is an issue, since one of my friends really really enjoys them and cannot be persuaded that i fundamentally can't enjoy them too.
This might be the most fucking pathetic comment I've read today.
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)
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.
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
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'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 pick the social deduction game based on how drunk the players are. Sober go to "resistance". Buzzed go to "secret papalatine". Drunk go to "one night ultimate werewolf".
I adore these types of games. I've had wildly different experiences than you. The true downfall is when you have to argue and be aggressive when faced with truth. I lost a friend this way.
Resistance. He already hates the force of my personality, so he checked my card on day 1 with a plot card. I was a Spy. Queue three straight hours of us arguing and me reminding people that while it's unlikely we are both good, it's possible that both of us are bad and this could gain credibility for one of us. But continued the false narrative of me being good and him being bad. I wish it didn't turn out that way, but that's the risk of traitor type games!
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 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.
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.
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.
I really recommend you try Nemesis Ashton, it's a bit on the long side, but objective are varied so it's difficult to identify ''bad'' players and with an experienced group such as yours, I'm sure there will be some epic moments
We gotta do it! I want to do a full length review :D -Ashton
I bought Nemesis plus several of its expansions this past Summer after playing it digitally for a while. It's certainly one of those thematic games where winning isn't really as important as the experience of playing it. Absolutely brutal game, but if you're there to enjoy the cinematic moments it can create, it's one of the best in its class. If you want to win, even if you're a "bad guy", some cooperation is still required to even survive, which creates an interesting dynamic.
My friend group has the issue of having one or two among us who just can't stop from taking things personal even in the context of a game and discussions in those games tend to get heated sometimes so it can lead to arguments afterwards. It's a shame but my point is those types of games just aren't for everyone and that's okay.
it's easy to take too seriously for some reason. Especially games where you have to lie to throw someone else under bus when you are the villian/hitler/spy whatever. Just playing the game as designed but it still feels kinda personal. I don't really think either role is that fun.
"can't stop from taking things personal," these sound like insecure people that I wouldn't want to be friends with in the first place.
@@J.J._777_ I wouldn't judge the entire personality of a stranger off of one single character flaw that I took from a random TH-cam comment. I'm friends with them for many reasons, good or bad, doesn't matter.
Thanks for your 2 cents though.
This is why I love One Night so much, i feel like it isnt hurt by any of these issues.
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.
Love social deduction games, glad you are covering them
Social deduction in my oppinion works best with bigger groups (7+) where all the possible constellations become difficult to grasp. For smaller groups we liked Nemesis, as there is some tangible cooperative goal that might or might not be sabotaged by traitors. Human punishment, at least as I recall it, had more of a everyone versus everyone else feel to it, and the secret roles came more as a distraction, in an addition to the mechanics bloat. I did not enjoy that one.
"works best with bigger groups," yes, definitely
Thank you for the video discussing this topic.
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.
The most underrated social deduction game is scapegoat.
It's also the only social deduction that works with 3 players.
Genius and very innovative game where everyone conspiring against 1 person. Made by the guy who made Air land and Sea.
Dang, I'll have to take a look! -Ashton
@@Shelfside Tom Vasel has a pretty fair review of it.
I liked it much more than he did ( and he liked it).
although I agree the art is awful
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
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.
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.
Should maybe check out Feed the Kraken. I found it pretty fun, and it's not too long which is nice if you end up getting suspected early.
This looks like a solid entry into the genre.
In general, I avoid these because I tend to get targeted and disbelieved a lot. All social deduction games are heavily weighted towards charismatic people and heavily disadvantage neurodivergent people, so I'll only play those that make an effort to fix that. For example, Secret Hitler and Avalon have real information you can use for deductive reasoning, but Werewolf and Mafia have next-to-nothing. The 'abilities' they introduce offer more ways to argue, but no concrete information to use for deduction. So the ultimate decisions end up leaning towards people who are charismatic and brash. I ended up playing three rounds of One Night Werewolf last night. I explained the problems to the group after the second round, they didn't believe me, and then every single one of those problems caused them to lose the third. It's a terrible game and I really don't like the genre as a whole.
"All social deduction games are heavily weighted towards charismatic people and heavily disadvantage neurodivergent people"
I'm neurodivergent, and I think this depends on the player group.
In my personal experience, the types of people that I wouldn't want to play a social deduction game with are the same types of people I wouldn't want to be friends with in the first place.
Please try Night of the Ninja! It took One Night Werewolf and solved almost all the issues I had with it: imbalanced teams/playercounts, selecting roles, annoying teach due to complex roles, clumsy app-assisted night phase, even art/theme lmao
Night of the Ninja balances itself at all playercounts (4-11) by using symmetrical teams which change over multiple short rounds. No one starts off knowing each others roles or abilities. I find that instead of being forced to lie, the game presents opportunities to lie naturally. It's been a hit with my casual friends as well as a hardcore One Night Werewolf group I introduced it to.
Just a little help on terminology, the mechanic your referring to is the hidden role mechanic or hidden role games. Idk if all games that have a social deduction element have hidden roles, but I'm fairly certain every game that has hidden roles has an element of social deduction. But yeah, there's a hidden role classification on BGG and I'm 99% sure every game you discussed in the video is on the list. This is my favorite genre of games by far though. I love the mind games paired with the tension that these games create. Secret Hitler is my current favorite (only with 9-10 players though, I think it has pretty bad balance issues with any fewer players) and I've played at least 60 hours of it alone (150 hours of social deduction games total). It definitely takes the right group, but all in all there's just nothing I'd rather play if I can get a group together to do so.
Social deduction just seems better as an online game. It's so dependent on play group, so online matchmaking is practically a silver bullet. Of course, balancing MMR is a feat itself, but I can't help but notice how well Among Us and Town of Salem handle the play group issues.
Online people are toxic as fuck
I found the perfect balance in (CS Files) Deception: Murder in Hong Kong. i took the forensic role for the first 10 or so games to get everyone comfortable then went crazy passing it around after that.
This has my vote for the best social deduction mechanic by a mile. Just handles everything so well including even ability to "scale" the difficulty if one side is tougher than the other to grasp.
Deception is solid, but I think I slightly prefer Obscurio, which is Deception with a bit of Mysterium mixed in. I think there's more room to be clever from both the DM and the traitor in there. Worth checking out if you haven't already!
I highly recommend a little known traitor game called "Night of the Ninja". It's simple, fast paced, and fixes literally every problem I have with social deduction games.
One of the biggest aspects of NotN is that the roles and abilities are separate. Your role simply states what team you're on, and every player gets 2 ability cards from a shared pool regardless of your role.
The rounds are quick, and roles consistently change every round.
Legitimately a game that is really easy to explain to new groups and allows inexperienced players to still engage in an interesting way. No "boring roles" here.
my favorite social deduction game has to be Coup, everyone is kinda the traitor. of the 5 role cards everyone gets 2, which dictate what actions they have available. the point of the game is to lie to each other so you can pretend you have different cards than you do and take any actions that you please. players can call each other out and whoever is wrong loses one of their 2 cards. you can also pay to kill if you get enough coins. its super quick like 5-10 minutes, your out when you lose both your cards and the last player standing wins. even with player elimination the rounds are so short you wont be sitting around for long, and since its a free for all you can still be invested in the other players and if your guesses about their cards where right after all
I really enjoy social deduction games with my kids , family and friends. It’s very accessible. Usually easy to set up and good replayability. My favorite ones are Salem 1692 and Blood on the Clocktower.
Deception: Murder in Hong Kong is my favorite social deduction game. It fixes my issues with elimination, it's fast enough for everyone to be able to play a few rounds and play a few different roles, and it takes a lot if creativity and logic
what if i tell you. deception is just codenames wrap inside social deduction 😏 the job of forensic scientist is just using 6 clue the let investigator find out the 2 word murderer chosen.
Social decuction games are either very mechanically complicated or far too simple/easy. Almost like the basic concept doesn’t hold up very well and grafting more mechanics to separate you from the purely social game is the only way these games work. Plus if the mechanics aren’t fully thought out then you end up with situations like SH which has a roughly 40% Blue Team winrate if everyone abstains all the time. I’ve never seen a group that can reliably beat that win-rate…so the dominant strategy becomes non-participation
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.
As someone who has won Shadows over Camelot as a good guy multiple times, I'll say that the key to winning is to:
1) Save merlin cards for countering particularly nasty effects from the evil deck
2) Draw cards until your hand is full before setting out on quests. I also recommend going down to 2 health to delay evil as long as possible (1 health tends to be a bit too risky, but is also something you can do)
3) At the start of the game, hard focus the grail and lancelot quest by getting all grail cards of the entire group to the people on the quest, and having the person with the best combat cards go off to lancelot
4) If someone has rubbish cards (or claims to have rubbish cards) they get assigned excalibur's quest so they can discard them all.
5) For quests other than the grail and excalibur, you are hoping to complete them when as many evil cards as possible have been played there. After all, if the forces of evil play 4 lancelot cards and then you kill lancelot, evil basically just wasted 4 turns. Abilities that allow you to see the future help tremendously for doing this safely for swingy stuff like saxons (though I don't recommend doing the saxons/picts; it's OKish but generally pretty low value and high risk)
6) Once the grail and excalibur have been completed, siege engines start accumulating very fast, so have someone at home smashing them.
7) If you don't know who the traitor is, you need 9 white swords so you need to complete some of the repeateable quests (don't try the dragon quest - seriously it's not worth it). If you do know who it is, you only need 7 (and you get 1 for correctly accusing them so 6 in practice). Once you have the required number of swords to win, don't bother going on quests - losing quests is actually good for you since it makes the game end quicker - instead just kill siege engines.
8) Have Galahad in your party and hope he's not the traitor. Seriously that character is OP. And pass him all your special cards so he keeps playing them. (if he doesn't play them that means he's the traitor so make sure you keep track of what cards Galadad was given)
Is it normally hard to win as the good guys? I've only ever played it on two very distant occasions, and the good guys won both times.
My main issue with social deduction games is that in most cases being the bad guy is *way* more fun and exciting than being the good guy, but you only ever get to be the bad guy a small minority of the time. So most of the time I'm just sitting waiting around playing through relatively dull and boring games until I can finally be the impostor or murderer or traitor or whatever.
Have you played SpyFall? It's the only one where I like being a good guy more than a bad guy, since then you have to come up with clever and subtle ways to persuade your fellow good guys that you know what they know. But you have to phrase it in such a way that the spy doesn't understand.
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
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 could play video games for a great solo experience, I board game for the human interaction.
I usually refuse to play social deduction games (particularly light and open-ended ones like Werewolf) because they turn me into a psychopath. My main problem is that if you're really good at them, it's hard for people to separate your in-game manipulation from your actual personality and it can affect your real relationships.
"it can affect your real relationships" for insecure people, sure.
The problem I've always had with social deduction is that too quickly "the meta" of the game is established, and deviating even slightly from said meta instantly makes you a target.
This is both frustrating for new players that don't know what they're doing and their inexperience gets them forced out of the game before they get to learn anything; and also experienced players because it leaves very little wiggle room to make interesting plays since deviating from the norm gets you sussed out.
Sounds like a shitty social deduction game or a shitty player group or both.
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.
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