I think CaH is not very popular in these parts. I initially enjoyed it but with a few more games the novelty wore off and the humor went from terrible to awful. I sold it cheaply and good riddance.
I had a couple really good games of Betrayal with a certain group many many years ago. So out of nostalgia I bought a copy some time later and … that one went with the big 2019 purge for the reasons you cited. With the right group, it can be fun but with that kind of group any game is fun.
But I don’t love the idea that the least experienced player in the group can suddenly be landed with all this stuff that they have to parse for themselves without any help from the rest.
If the selected traitor doesn’t feel up to it, they could switch characters with a more experienced player. For example, suppose Bob is playing the Jock (red) and Susan is playing the Girl (yellow). If the Jock becomes the traitor, but Bob is not up it, Susan can take over the traitor role and Bob plays the Girl for the rest of the game. All the information is open up to that point, so there is nothing lost from the game experience.
My two games of Betrayal were good, and I admit I wouldn’t mind playing it more, or even own it, as a introductory game for non-gamers friends that are very much into mystery and horror. Although I meet with them very rarely, so that is why I haven’t really pushed for it.
And I agree with @Sexagesimalian, if a less experienced player ends as the traitor, somebody else can offer to take over, or even help (to a degree). But I can see how easy it can go off rails, depends a lot on the group.
The only problem is that MTG sales keep, like, 90% of all FLGS afloat. Burn down MTG and poof, there go almost all brick-and-mortar game stores. It is shocking how much money it makes relative to the cost of getting the product.
Even the FLGS I work at, which is huge, does about 30% of all its sales in MTG. And the secondary market is even more lucrative… we buy cards off people for 50% Store Credit and turn around and sell them… and then often times buy them back when they’re “no good” for 50% of their new, lower value, and then sell them… it’s not quite printing money, but gosh it’s close.
There’s been a few comments on people disliking Social Deduction games (in the Recently Played thread) so I just came on here to go further than my original short post and say that I absolutely hate social deduction.
I think the recent NPI video on Werewolf summed up why: you’re entering into a contract with your friends where you’re all allowed to be horrible liars and betray each other with a straight face for the next hour, and the best sociopath wins. And that’s… boring, but also not really something that feels good to laugh about winning afterwards? Werewolf is awful, and The Resistance can get lost too.
Having said that, the one exception is Blood on the Clocktower which looks like enormous fun.
I would like to add that in my experience Blood on the Clocktower is the most vicious of all social deduction I‘ve played and I have never in my life lied as horribly as during the 2 forum games I participated in. I had fun doing it but it was also quite scary how that felt. I think the written format makes it more so, I am still waiting to get my copy played sometime this fall and/or winter. Will definitely write about it when I do
I found smaller games like Scapegoat much more relaxed. Also Secrets. Games where you don‘t get into a role as much seem to be easier on the social dynamics. Just my 2c.
Oh, from the online plays I’ve seen BotC is MUCH more vicious than other games, but for me somehow that takes the pressure off. It’s so outrageous (and fantasy) that I think it gets past some of the real-life awkwardness or hurt feelings, because it’s just such a big event.
I’ll throw Two Rooms and a Boom into that mix – both the biggest game I’ve ever played in terms of player count, and unquestionably the dullest experience I’ve had ‘playing’ any modern-day game. I think that when these sorts of games flop for someone, they flop hard 1. I would only play that game again if I was (inexplicably) being paid to do it.
I detest Mascarade (“I don’t even know whether I’m lying”) but I do like basic Resistance/Avalon – I think the Resistance version makes more sense, because “which of us is secretly the leader” makes more sense to me than “which of us is secretly Lancelot”.
I prefer it to BotC, in fact, though I’d like to see the game that is to Resistance/Avalon as BotC is to Werewolf.
And a lot of that is the speed. You’ve got a maximum of 20 mission votes (five missions, four votes each because the last one is a given), a maximum of five missions, a fairly limited set of things to keep track of while you’re deciding who’s a bad guy. (It’s the guy with the beard. It’s always the guy with the beard.)
It certainly helps that I haven’t burned out on it; even at its peak of popularity among people I know I’d play it once or twice in an evening, and not play it again for a month or more. And the groups changed their composition. So we never had a meta (e.g. “you never off-vote for proposal 1” or “the spy chosen first for the mission is the one who throws the fail”).
I’m not going to say anyone’s wrong for disliking social deduction games as a whole, but for me Resistance/Avalon is one that’s made the cut when I sold Dead of Winter and Secret Hitler.
(I’m also apparently the one person who likes One Night Revolution. And I guess Deception: Murder in Hong Kong counts too. Sigh, and Shamans, and Human Punishment…)
I found the online play of BotC quite stressful and hard honestly. I don’t think social deduction games are for me but I found it harder and more stressful via the more delayed medium of a forum.
As @Acacia have noted: Ethnos is just uugh. Super overrated. As usual, the owner of the game took up the deck and offer it to each of us because he knows we’ll be top-decking. It’s such a braindead game. And if I want something like this, then I want something that is actually fun. 6Nimmt! is always a winner, for example, because we laugh every single time.
I enjoy botc because I feel that the DM role if done correctly can keep things civil and light hearted (and I feel that’s part of their role)
Although I’ve only played it in forum to date and as a DM in the forum part of the problem in keeping civil is keeping it brief. There always seems to be a difficulty in cutting off discussion. Without being detrimental to those in different time zones.
I do enjoy the secret traitor against a joint goal or with a subversive goal but feel I’ve yet to see this mechanic delivered in a way that satisfied what I think is it’s potential (dead of winter, BSG I’m looking at you), although I have some games I have yet to table that I hope fair better in this regard (shamans, study in emerald 2nd edition).
The online ones I saw were actually on youtube, so probably were the usual play time (although I think it was several hours with 8+ people). Yeah, I can imagine forum play is very different.
My experience of 2 Rooms was super bad. Most the game people were figuring out who was ‘worth’ talking to, and if that wasn’t you, go and find something better to do. There was no bluffing and no one would talk to anyone without seeing their colour, so it just led to each team finding each other and separating into two groups. Might as well have told all the blue to stand on one side of each room and red to stand on the other from the very beginning.
It was one of those events where I’m sure we were taught the game wrong, because… where’s the game??? I spent the entire event just trying to have some impact on proceedings, but I was just a spare part.
Extrapolating back from the endgame, if both the Vip and the bomber are with different teams they completely trust, it comes down to a final decision to stay or go for both of them, which is basically a coin flip.
The best result, the only guaranteed win, is presumably having both bomber and VIP in your group with a trusted voting majority.
So, everyone should be aiming for the latter endgame, not the former, so I guess it works?
Non-bomber terrorists want the blues to think they are the bomber, and non-vip blues want the reds to think they are the VIP, etc., etc.
Still, not my kind of game, but I don’t think it’s broken.
