Critical Play – Social Deduction

I chose to play Blood on the Clocktower this time around.

I’ve played quite a few of the most common social deduction games, like Secret Hitler, the Resistance, Avalon, Coup, but Blood on the Clocktower I think is my new favorite. The game works similar to ONUW where everyone is assigned a role – but everyone is assigned a role. We played the simplest of the various sets, Trouble Brewing. Just look at the array of characters there are in the simplest version!

There’s Townsfolk, Outsiders, Minions, and Demons. Every day, there is discussion, and a nominations/votes for an execution. Every night, everyone closes their eyes and abilities trigger one at a time in a set order. Townsfolk and Outsiders are aligned and win if the demon is executed. The minions and demon are aligned and win if there two players remaining, and one is the demon. That’s specific because of abilities like the Mayor, where the Mayor can win for the good team if there’s just one good player and two evil players remaining. Of course they’d probably execute the mayor in such a circumstance, but if you play with <=6 people, the minion and demon don’t know who eachother are.

I think this game does a terrific job at fostering discussion and social deduction because everyone has something to contribute to their side. In “Trouble Brewing,” mechanics include the night phase where players with special abilities can use them (e.g., the Undertaker, who learns the true role of a just-killed player), and the day phase where players discuss, deduce, and vote to execute. On top of that, ambiguity is brought in, because you could be drunk and not know it, which means you’re getting false information the entire time. You could also be poisoned if there’s a poisoner in play. This means you sort of have to hide your role, but you have to communicate your role as well to help your side, so the group I played with (they were pretty experienced) were doing things like role-swaps, where two players would for whatever reason trust each other, or good players would pretend to be a role they aren’t to other good players. E.g., they’d claim they’re the washerwoman, but rather than the washerwoman just coming up and saying “no, I’m the washerwoman, you must be evil!” – they’d go up privately and ask them what was up, and then they’d perform a role swap where the washerwoman would say “i’m the fortune teller” which is a highly valuable role. The mechanics lead to a certain level of emergence and metagaming depending on the permutation of roles in a specific game, all of which are singly focused on the goal of social deduction – trying to collaboratively figure out who dun it. The mechanics do this by, indeed, literally giving each player information, which assists with the goal of deducing, by conversation and cooperation, certain hidden information.

the key aesthetics include:

1. Fellowship: The game fosters a sense of camaraderie and collective problem-solving. Players need to work together to identify the demons and minions, or evil works together to cover for each other.
2. Challenge: Players are intellectually challenged to piece together clues, roles, and behaviors to figure out who is lying. This is heightened by the ambiguity introduced by the mere potential existence of a drunk/poisoner.
3. Expression: Players have substantial room to craft their persona in the game, including deciding when to reveal their roles or whether to lie about them, or role swapping, or any number of things!
4. Discovery: Uncovering the true roles of other players and seeing how different roles interact each game.

“Blood on the Clocktower” leverages several types of fun

1. Social Fun: Through characters like the Empath (who learns how many of their immediate neighbors are evil), players engage in discussions, alliances, and deception. Almost all of the game is just talking talking talking. Everyone is valuable.
2. Narrative Fun: The game’s lore and character roles, such as the Saint (who must keep their identity secret to avoid giving demons an easy win), create a rich story that players contribute to and influence with their choices. This is heightened by the fact that one player serves as the “storyteller,” sort of like the game master in TTRPG’s, which facilitates the entire game and private information like what’s revealed at night.
3. Challenge Fun: Roles like the Investigator (who learns two players at least one of whom is a minion), add complexity and the need for strategic thinking and deduction. There’s a lot of layers of depth that can happen.