My team is designing a social deduction game similar to Avalon, where votes are a resource that can be traded for uncertain information. Thus, for this week’s comparative analysis, I played Coup, a social deduction card game where players use coins and roles to overthrow their opponents. Our game and Coup share the dynamic of individual decision making through deducing players’ roles and effectively managing resources. However, our game differs by addressing Coup’s key weaknesses by encouraging fun through fellowship and providing more information to allow for deductive reasoning, rather than purely social reasoning.
Coup is a physical card game designed by Rikki Tahta and published by Indie Boards & Cards and La Mame Games. The game is intended for 2-6 players with a suggested age range of 13+. With its relatively fast-paced gameplay and simple rules compared to other social deduction games, Coup’s target audience may be broader than the general “social deduction” niche, but also still consists of players who enjoy outwitting their opponents.
Its strength lies in effectively combining player agency and social deduction. Mechanically, play passes in turns, where each player gets to choose an action and all other players can choose whether or not to counter. This creates the dynamic of continuous decision making, where players are directly responsible for their own individual outcomes. Thus, players experience fun through challenge and competition because, unlike other team-based social deduction games, one cannot passively rely on a team to win.
However, Coup’s lack of verifiable information means social reasoning (eg: deducing lying purely based on expression) makes up a majority of this challenge and its card-drawing mechanic means successful strategic reasoning can be beaten through luck. Because of the mechanic where players are able to lie about any role they declare, the only initially known information is the two influences you draw. Additionally, incorrectly calling someone’s bluff causes a permanent loss of one of your influences and losing all your influences causes you to lose the game. These mechanics create a dynamic where players are extremely cautious of calling each other’s bluff and also where players can blatantly lie about their role. In our first game of Coup, we quickly realized that pretending to play as the Duke, which gains you three coins (the highest possible amount from a single action), was the most strategically beneficial. Thus, for the first two rounds every player claimed to be the Duke, even though this was statistically improbable. However, one opponent gaining 3 coins was not worth the risk of losing one of your two influences (which could roughly be considered equivalent to the 7 coins needed for an opponent to Coup you), making it difficult to call someone’s bluff. As seen in the photo on the left, when Jeffrey did call my bluff, I revealed I actually had the Duke putting him at a great disadvantage. Jeffrey was then down an influence and I still was able to complete my turn and gain 3 coins because I was lucky enough to draw the Duke at the beginning. The reliance on social reasoning decreases replayability as experienced players tend to gravitate towards the same strategies and can effectively lie, making the winner largely determined by luck. Thus, the aesthetic of challenge is decreased because luck can dominate effective strategy.
Our game incorporates Coup’s strength of individual decision making and addresses the weakness of lack of verifiable information through the mechanic of investigation: a player can choose to spend resources to learn (uncertain) information about another player. Thus, every player has the ability to make decisions on their turn, similar to Coup, creating the same dynamics of strategic reasoning and resource management. However, unlike Coup, because the actions allow you to gain information about other players, future actions can be more informed, instead of starting from square one. Additionally, because roles are static in our game (assigned once at the beginning) instead of being able to be swapped like in Coup, information can build up over time, reducing the luck involved as the game goes on.
Additionally, the formal element of the outcome being zero-sum creates the dynamic in which, while players may temporarily collaborate, they ultimately must betray or attack their fellow players to win, decreasing fun through fellowship. By the law of reciprocity for friendship formation, building trust is a necessary step, yet it is easily broken through betrayal. Coup actually encourages this behavior: in the game I played, Brooke and I strategized to take down Jeffrey over the course of the next round. However, after Brooke successfully assassinated Jeffrey, I realized Brooke was now a much more powerful opponent and couped her instead. As shown by the photo on the right, Brooke, with her 6 coins (almost enough for a Coup) was distraught. While betrayal can still be fun (we laughed it off after), you lose out on the long-term sense of trust created by repeatedly collaborating over the course of a game.
Our game addresses this through the formal element of players: ours is a team vs. team competition while Coup is multilateral competition. While all “evil” players know each other, the “good” players don’t, allowing for the dynamic of betrayal. However, unlike Coup, ultimately each round will have set teams allowing for long-term collaboration and building of trust that carries through the end of the game. Thus, players can experience fun through fellowship as outcomes will be determined on a team-basis.
Coup’s resource allocation and role-based actions allow for high individual reasoning which our game hopes to recreate. However, through the mechanic of investigation and team vs. team competition, our game addresses Coup’s weaknesses to increase our fun through challenge and fellowship.
