Love Letter is a physical card game created by Seiji Kanai for a party setting, in which players compete to end the round with the highest card by using the abilities of cards they have along the way. The score of the card you play each turn, its ability, and what you choose to do with the ability all give hints as to the card you currently hold. The bluffing arises from reading those hints from others while trying to muddy the hints you give off. I played in a group of six people at game night and, interestingly, while I usually consider myself a fairly outgoing person, in this environment I instead withdrew, becoming reserved and unassuming in order to protect my secret information and slyly extract others’.
The guard mechanic, which enables targeting higher-score players, encourages players to seem discontent with their card, an impression that being shy or reserved could contribute to. The most common card in Love Letter is the guard. While it is only worth one point, when played the guard allows its holder to guess the card of another player; if they are correct that player is eliminated. Its cleverly low point value encourages you to play it to make the game more volatile. Furthermore, using a guard on a player gives everyone information about them—a lower bound on their current card’s score—so the next person to play a guard is encouraged to also guess their card. This emphasizes the importance of bluffing in the early game when a guard-player’s target is just a guess—or, a read on someone’s demeanor.
An impression of weakness also discourages other players from using abilities that change your hand, like the king and the prince. The former allows its user to swap cards with a player of their choice, and the latter forces one player of the user’s choice to discard their current hand and redraw. My reaction to these particular mechanics may honestly have been impacted also by my luck with card draws: in two consecutive rounds, I had the two highest score cards; therefore, I did not want someone to play these hand-altering cards on me, but in other circumstances a player might. Performing disappointment or general passivity suggests that one has a low card, which another player would not care to help you get rid of or take themselves.
Because players must play a card every round and many of them are combative, a mild-presenting player can disguise their calculated, prodding gameplay as mere compliance with the rules. Some of the more aggressive cards—like the baron or the king—may make a player some enemies; however, this obligation to play a card, the one card one has, provides an easy scapegoat. Adopting a more quiet, even shy, attitude can make more aggressive moves seem less eager and more happenstance—transfering the target’s frustration from the user to the card or the game, itself—which is a helpful affordance because these moves provide crucial information.
While I ultimately really enjoyed this game, this relatively simple way to blend in is one reason I think the deck is too small for the number of players I played with. I think this game would work better with four people, in which case there is a smaller crowd to hide in, or with more cards, in which case there is more time one must stay hidden. While I didn’t love the communication style and group role this game brought out in me, and thus didn’t think it best facilitated getting to know people, I did really enjoy playing it—and winning it!
Ethics response:
I do not think lying in a game constitutes a moral wrong, and I think this is due to the “magic circle” around the game — the clear establishment and agreement of boundaries. From a consequentialist standpoint, lying’s “wrongness” comes from the damage that the resultant misinformation, and decisions based on it, can cause. Lies told within the “magic circle” of games only have consequences within these boundaries where, assuming the game is reasonably made, there is hardly anything at stake, except maybe one’s pride. As for lying as categorically wrong, when a group chooses to play a bluffing game, there is an explicit awareness that lying will take place and an implicit agreement that that is ok. Each person’s willing entrance into the game is like their signing this mutual contract that gives their consent to be deceived.
