Last night I played Blood on the Clocktower for the first time (and the second), and some more problems arose in them. Surprisingly, they were ones I hadn’t covered before in my previous two articles. So let me get into them.

Bug # 7: First One to Talk

The whole point of hidden role games is to learn information. Often, the roles themselves are what end up providing information. That makes sense, since it means that any bit of information has the potential to be a lie, so there’s always some plausible deniability. That’s all well and good, but there’s another problem: providing information often means giving away information on yourself. You’re telling other people who you are and what you did. That’s dangerous. And, if your information is relatively small (as is often the case, because it forces you to work together), the it won’t matter unless someone else can confirm or refute it. So in other words, it’s most useful if there’s other information already out. So the question is: who breaks the silence?

Some games force this. Bang and games with a similar style force the sherrif, an important role, to reveal themselves immediately, but at least give them a bonus to offset the annoyance of not getting to lie to people. Other times games just give one role an ability so powerful that they feel confident in revealing themselves first just to make sure they get to use it. Other games just don’t do anything. Let the players argue amongst themselves with no one willing to do anything. Eventually stuff will just happen. It has to, otherwise one side will gain an advantage. Not terrible, but it would be nice if it could be avoided.

Bug #8: Lying From the Start

This is one I’m shocked I’ve never covered, but it overlaps a lot with other bugs. If a player has a role they don’t want other people to know about, then they have to pretend to be another one. So which one? Well, you might expect them to be able to guess one or figure it out over time, but they can only do that if some amount of roles have already been revealed. But what if they are one of the first ones asked? They have to know from the start, since every other player knows what they are from the start. Any hesitation is taken as guilt. If you change your story, that’s suspicious. So how do you give a player a little bit of breathing room?

One neat trick is just telling them what to pretend to be. Maybe show them some unused roles (if there are any). Maybe have a solid pick that’s obvious to lie about. As much as I hate the Tanner and other “kill me and I win” roles, it’s mostly there as something the evil team can lie about. A common solution that’s not preferable is to have roles that are unimpactful. If you can lie about it and no one can disprove you because there’s nothing you could have done, that’s maybe fine, but it leads to less interactions, and of course it’s terribly boring for the player who actually got the role.

Bug #9: Forms of Metagaming

Metagaming is a very nebulous term. I might even write another article on it some time. But the short definition is “anything that happens outside of the game that affects things in the game.” Some people specifically say things outside the rules, but nothing done in communication-based games could really be spelled out that well. So anyway, where is the bug here? Well, what exactly counts as metagaming, and which metagaming is fun? Most social deduction fans would say they really enjoy trying to figure out if someone is lying by how they speak, like an interrogation. I do think that’s fun. Some people say they hate that because they sweat and stumble their words even when telling the truth. That’s bad. But even outside of lying there’s also mechanics that aren’t explicitly present in the rules. If two players go offf to have a private conversation, is it metagaming to walk up to them and join them? Is it metagaming to eavesdrop? Is it just cheating? Arguably anything that can be done within the space the game is being played can be allowed.

Some games are very clear about this and others aren’t. Two Rooms and a Boom has very specific rules on how to share cards. Diplomacy (maybe not a hidden role game) lets you do things like sign treaties and bribe players. Basically, this all comes down to what’s fun for the players, but the designer has to have some sort of say in that sooner or later.

Conclusion

I thought the last time was my conclusion! But I guess bugs will keep popping up. I love this genre, but boy is it one prone to a lot of flaws. Maybe that’s the reason some people enjoy it. Maybe it’s not about making a perfect game. Maybe things not going the way they should is part of the appeal.