Our game is a moderation on capture the flag that is meant to be a fun and physical game to be played outdoors. The main modification is that there is also a third team who are spies that are spread amongst both teams. There are several questions that we hope to answer using prototyping.
Would players have a preference of what team to be on, and would their experience be worse if they were assigned to a certain team?
This could mainly be done by playtesting and asking the test groups what their thoughts are and how they feel. I think of this because our game has some similarities to games like Mafia and Secret Hitler. In Mafia, it is objectively more fun to be a mafia as there is more action. However, that is less so the case in Secret Hitler due to the nature of the game needed all players to take actions. I think that after all this, players will still prefer to be the spy but all will have fun and be excited regardless, much like Secret Hitler.
How should teams be decided? Who gets to decide?
Right now, our idea is fairly loose, so we haven’t thought about all of the small details yet. To do so we could look at the ways that other similar social deduction games choose roles and try those all out through playtesting. We need to know this in order to create the best experience for all, and if it includes a game master, the best experience for them too. My prediction is that we can hand out cards to everyone and then have everyone shut their eyes and the spies can reveal themselves to each other. This way, there is no need for a game master and everyone will be able to play.
Where should the optimal number of players be? What should the ratio of spies to other players be?
Again, due to the nature of our game, this prototyping will likely also need to be done through play testing. This is an extremely important thing to know. Our game, like other social deduction games, would not work if there were too many or too few players on a given team. By trying out different ratios and looking at other similar games, hopefully we can find the right number.
