Week 06 - Social Deduction

This week I was unable to be apart of the first day but was able to join the second day. Luckily, social deduction games are myJAM. I love them, so I am very familiar with games like Mafia, in fact it is a game I play very summer with my summer camps group under the different name: Werewolf. Mafia is a very quick game to understand that hits, almost, all of the Six Elements. The action and goals of the game go hand in hand: ask questions and deduce who in the group is the mafia member before said person "kills" the villagers. The rules are simple with simple characters and the game can be played by however large a group you want. The original rules, written out by Dimitri Davidoff, the creator of the game (Buddhiraju), stated that there is as twice as many villagers as mafia members, other games like Werewolf create more roles, like doctor, sherriff (Seer in the card game version),  and, in my version, a witness. These games create the group to work together and creates more levels for the mafia/werewolf to overcome. The best part about this game is that it can be played practically anywhere. Park? Yes. Classroom? Yes. Theatre? Yes. Mall? Sure, though it would be loud. It is a great travelling game too, as it involves no objects, just the players. On the other hand, Two Rooms and a Boom is not able to be played anywhere, as you need two rooms and a speaker system for each room. This game can handle a lot of players also, along with giving roles to both the red and blue team but also the grey team, with their weird and wacky goals. The goal in this game is for the bomber to be in the same room as the president and the president hopes to not be in the same room. This games are not as easy to understand, but after a few playthroughs, it does get a bit easier. Objects used in this game is a timer and cards that tell you what your role is. Social deduction games are by far my favorite games to play and I have been very excited to play these games. The fun part about these games, in my opinion, is the acting part. Just like Buddhiraju says, the players and their personality are the currency of the game. If you are the mafia members, or the bomber/president, you have to act like a villager or regular team member to blend in, in fact the game starts before it actually does because people begin watching for people to be out of character. I didn't realize that practically every social deduction game stemmed from Mafia, but it makes sense. I was going suggest looking into Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, but was surprised to see it mentioned in Buddhiraju's article.