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[AdamH]

Update: I got Room 25 and have played it many times. It gets played at least once whenever I'm there for the past few weeks and it's not uncommon for it to come out twice in one night (which is unusual for our group). I still think we're all getting a feel for the game at this point.

One guy we played with liked it enough that he painted those grey figures for me, which really helps when you're trying to tell them apart.

I also have changed the name of the game (at least for our group) to "Room 55" because 55 is my favorite number. I Sharpie™-ed all of the numbers in the game to reflect this. I believe this makes the game significantly better.

We've tried experimenting with play style and with what we say. The game seems difficult for the prisoners to win at this point because it's not uncommon for prisoners to try new things out that turn out to be terrible ideas.

I think we really like this game. The main thing about Resistance is that there are very few mechanics to "hide behind" when one is a spy. The game itself doesn't give you enough information to say for certain who is the spy, so you have to read people. In essence, the game is the metagame. While I like this, it's become a point of contention in our group because some people don't like it. I want a hidden loyalty game that will not cause some people (people I like playing games with) to say "I'll just play the other thing." Room 55 has mechanics to hide behind and these people are happy. Nobody has played it and said they wouldn't play it again.

Another nice thing about Room 55 is that it plays 6 well. Six is an awkward number for our group because a lot of games we have will play six people, but they aren't very good at that number. It's a very easy thing to do to bring this game out and have six people play it for 45 minutes or so.

We're trying to get a hold of Shadows Over Camelot -- we know of someone who owns the game but can't get a hold of him, and nobody wants to buy the game without having played it at least once before hand. Maybe something will change, but for now at least we have Room 55.

I have now gained a reputation in my group as the guy who really likes hidden loyalty games. I could go off on a completely unrelated discussion pertaining to this.

[Qvist]

I'm confused. I guess you mean Room 53?

[AdamH]

I'm confused. I guess you mean Room 53?

It was Room 53 for about a week, then something wonderful happened.

[AdamH]

So when my IRL friend won third place in the tournament in Michigan a few months ago, his prize was store credit at a game store they had there. He decided to get a copy of Shadows Over Camelot and now our group has played several games.

I'd say the group as a whole has figured out basic strategy for how to not just lose at the game: don't actually ever complete the Excalibur quest, try to get Lancelot's armor early (preferably someone near and to the left of the guy who can look at the top card of the bad-things deck). Other than that, doing quests quickly with multiple people is more rewarding than splitting up.

This game feels like a purely cooperative game to me, it really doesn't feel like there is a traitor mechanic at all, since most of the incentive is for the traitor to stay hidden until the end of the game. Granted, I haven't been the traitor in quite some time (it seems the odds of having a traitor present are pretty low) but what can the traitor actually -do- in this game besides fail quests and pretend it was because of their own incompetence instead of being a traitor? The more I play this game the more it seems like the hidden loyalty aspect of Shadows isn't really a main component and it plays more like a fully cooperative game.

[Davio]

I've yet to play my copy of A Study in Emerald.

It adds some funny twists to the genre.

Basically there are two teams and players don't know to which team the other players belong. There will only be one winner in the end, but there will be many losers. All players who belong to the same team as the player in last place are eliminated! So you might be in front on the VP track, but if you think the guy in last is on your team, it might be worth it to stall a bit and let him catch up.

Don't know how this plays out in a real game, but it seems like it could make for a tense game.

[eHalcyon]

So when my IRL friend won third place in the tournament in Michigan a few months ago, his prize was store credit at a game store they had there. He decided to get a copy of Shadows Over Camelot and now our group has played several games.

I'd say the group as a whole has figured out basic strategy for how to not just lose at the game: don't actually ever complete the Excalibur quest, try to get Lancelot's armor early (preferably someone near and to the left of the guy who can look at the top card of the bad-things deck). Other than that, doing quests quickly with multiple people is more rewarding than splitting up.

This game feels like a purely cooperative game to me, it really doesn't feel like there is a traitor mechanic at all, since most of the incentive is for the traitor to stay hidden until the end of the game. Granted, I haven't been the traitor in quite some time (it seems the odds of having a traitor present are pretty low) but what can the traitor actually -do- in this game besides fail quests and pretend it was because of their own incompetence instead of being a traitor? The more I play this game the more it seems like the hidden loyalty aspect of Shadows isn't really a main component and it plays more like a fully cooperative game.

I've only played it once and I don't fully remember it... but there are a fair few places, I think, where cards are played face down.  A traitor can pop poor cards in there and hopefully nobody will trace it back to them when those cards are revealed.  Another thing is to sow discord.  Cast suspicion on people to try to get others to accuse them... then when the accusation is proven incorrect, use that to raise suspicion on the accuser.  You can also start accusing others directly.  I'm not sure, but I think you can continue to accuse people even after you're exposed?  So there's that.

[liopoil]

The one time I was the traitor in Shadows Over Camelot I just sat at the excalibur quest, not helping at all. I also added more siege engines than I would have as a good guy, and that's how I ended up winning. I never got discovered (I did other things so it wasn't obvious), but just playing poorly for a good guy worked well. I suspect it may be sometimes worth it to go all out against the players from the start, or to reveal yourself in the middle of the game at least.

[Tables]

So when my IRL friend won third place in the tournament in Michigan a few months ago, his prize was store credit at a game store they had there. He decided to get a copy of Shadows Over Camelot and now our group has played several games.

I'd say the group as a whole has figured out basic strategy for how to not just lose at the game: don't actually ever complete the Excalibur quest, try to get Lancelot's armor early (preferably someone near and to the left of the guy who can look at the top card of the bad-things deck). Other than that, doing quests quickly with multiple people is more rewarding than splitting up.

This game feels like a purely cooperative game to me, it really doesn't feel like there is a traitor mechanic at all, since most of the incentive is for the traitor to stay hidden until the end of the game. Granted, I haven't been the traitor in quite some time (it seems the odds of having a traitor present are pretty low) but what can the traitor actually -do- in this game besides fail quests and pretend it was because of their own incompetence instead of being a traitor? The more I play this game the more it seems like the hidden loyalty aspect of Shadows isn't really a main component and it plays more like a fully cooperative game.

Shadows isn't great at doing the whole hidden loyalty thing, in my opinion. It's a good game, just... not at doing the hidden loyalty thing. The issue is that in smaller games (3-5 players) the Traitor generally is best off just being obviously evil, placing siege engines and causing trouble, and often the good guys won't be able to keep up. In larger games, there opportunities to do evil things are largely random (e.g. you draw a specific black/white card), or just hoping you can stay hidden until game end. And because of the very random way the game progresses, often it feels like the Traitor just rides along with the game and hopes to win at the end as a result. My group tends to say that the Traitor doesn't win, but the game wins and the Traitor also claims victory alongside it.

It also doesn't help that the traitor tends to be able to do more damage while unrevealed than revealed (not always true, some heroic action plays can be very damaging, but on average and in the long run, discarding a card from a target person hurts more), which means even when you know who the traitor is, it's often best to just not accuse them.

[tolenmar]

Resistance: 15 minutes to play, so it's nice and short.

O_O I haven't had a Resistance game take less than 30 minutes for a long time. Most go on for over an hour. How do your game go that quickly?

I gotta ask you how you make it last that long?

[Tables]

I don't really know how to respond to that. We once had about 15 minutes so we played speed Resistance, where you're only allowed 30 seconds of discussion before missions, and 30 seconds for all voting stuff, and we still barely finished in time and spies won really easily because, we couldn't talk about what was going on. You need time between proposals, and especially before important proposals like the 5th one, or when a mission might be game ending, in order to try and work out what sides people might be on, question decisions people made, think about why people voted the way they did and discuss it. I'd say that on average, from M3 onwards there's about 3-5 minutes of discussion between each mission proposal, with that estimate probably increasing a bit if it's a potential game ending mission. For M1 and M2 it's a lot faster, M1 probably takes 5 minutes total or something small like that, while M2 is probably more like 5-10 minutes. An M3 end is a pretty quick game and clocks in likely close to 40 minutes (If the spies at 2-0 up on M3, at least. If it's the Resistance, you're probably getting a very quick game instead. But this is rare). M4 end is likely around an hour, while M5 end is probably closer to 75 minutes.

Now my group likes to talk and discuss what's going on a lot, but even if you were fairly brief with your discussion periods, I'd think something around 30 minutes or so would be average.

[tolenmar]

That's gotta be it. I can't get my group to get "in character" and talk. It's not unusual for us to spend an hour and play four or five games.

It's to the point where no one gives any thought to mission 1 because (with our group of 5), you get so little information. By mission 3 or 4, we usually have people making random accusations, and getting outvoted because they either a) seem to end up as a spy all the time or b) always throw those accusations out anyway.

I would love to have a game take some time, and be more fun as a result, and less of a filler.