Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to play Tragedy Looper a few times. I really like the concept, and the game play was fun. I can see stories unfolding from the game play.
The gist of the game is that something bad happens, and the Protagonist players have to stop that bad thing from happening. The Mastermind player knows the conditions that will cause the Protagonists to lose and wants to ensure that they do lose. When the Protagonists lose, everything resets, and the Protagonists use their newfound knowledge to prevent that tragedy from happening again. Unfortunately for the Protagonists, there is usually more than one way to lose. They have so many loops to cycle through. If they can make it through one loop without losing then they win.
How does this work? There are four locations and several characters. Each character has a role hidden from the Protagonist. Those roles have abilities that happen based on specific triggers or are activated by the Mastermind. One example is that the Key Person is someone who causes the Protagonists to lose if he/she dies. The Conspiracy Theorist is someone who can increase a nearby person's Paranoia levels. These roles may or may not be in play in any given scenario.
A Loop lasts several days where all players play cards on the different characters and resolve their actions. Then character abilities can be used. Protagonists can use abilities too by unlocking them with Goodwill. Basically, the character is befriended by the Protagonists, and they can do things. For example, the Police Officer can tell the Protagonist who caused an Incident.
After abilities, there might be an Incident. Incidents are preprogrammed problems that is caused by the same person. That only happens when the Paranoia level is high, so the Mastermind can trigger it (possibly leading to the defeat of the Protagonists), or the Protagonists can increase Paranoia to force the Incident to happen and learn more about it.
If the day goes by without the Protagonists lose, then they play on to the next day until enough days pass that they win (or they end up losing).
It's a deductive game. The Mastermind wants to cause a loss, but if he reveals his roles too early, then the Protagonists can thwart him in future Loops. If someone dies in a room full of people, then who killed him? The Mastermind would do well to obfuscate the clues. The Protagonists, knowing that there's a murderer, might try to isolate people so that the victim is alone with the murderer (or Killer; yes, the two terms are separate here). This doesn't necessarily result in a loss, as the person who was killed might not be key to the scenario.
This leads to my conclusion that time travelers are dicks. In one game, we ended up getting two people killed on purpose for the express purpose of hoping that one of their deaths will give us a clue in a future Loop. It was horrifying and funny.
Fun game, though I know some people for whom this is not their cup of tea. But I also like Mystery of the Abbey, and I feel this game requires more deductive reasoning than Mystery.
