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AdamH

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Games with hidden loyalty
« on: August 22, 2013, 12:32:23 pm »
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I like the hidden loyalty mechanic in games. Resistance is one of my favorite games, but is falling out of favor with my IRL gaming group for a few reasons (it's been played SO MUCH, being the main one, but also the number of players required can be a barrier to entry). That same group plays a TONNE of Battlestar Galactica, but that game takes SO LONG!

I'd really like to find some other games that might be played with my IRL group. I'll list the games that include hidden loyalty mechanics that I've played and reasons why I (or my group) liked or disliked them and maybe you all can give me some recommendations?

Resistance: 15 minutes to play, so it's nice and short. Great for playing multiple games in one session, which can add to the metagame in some cases. There are easy variants to add that provide variety of play, and the game is very light on mechanics. Essentially the whole game is about the hidden loyalties. I love this game.

Bad things: other people in my group seem to like what they call a "fuller gaming experience," which probably means there are some mechanics to hide behind. OK I guess I don't mind this, but I would prefer for the hidden loyalties to be as large a part of the game as possible. Unfortunately, the game just doesn't work at all with four or less, and can seem a little less satisfying with only five players. 3-5 player games seem to work best with my IRL group. It's been played so much that certain people in my group will refuse to play it anymore, which has effectively led to it being played anymore :(

Battlestar Galactica: Man, I love that show, and I love Baltar, and I usually love the first 20 or so minutes of the game, even though I don't even understand how half of the mechanics work (Baltar never needs to get in a Viper, does he?). But oh mansies, does this game take way too long! If Battlestar took an hour to play, tops, and maybe wasn't so complicated, I would probably be really into it.

Don't ask me which expansions I'm playing with: probably all of them; my group would have it no other way. They just got "Daybreak" which apparently makes the game take EVEN LONGER! No thank you.

Bang! This game seems to take way too long for what it delivers. I feel like it should never take longer than 30 minutes, but I've never played a game that finished in an hour or less. There's also player elimination which sucks a lot. Also, there seem to only be rare circumstances where keeping your identity a secret is beneficial, which takes focus off of the hidden loyalty aspect of the game.

Panic Station: This game has seen a couple of plays with our group. It wasn't too popular, and I think the reason why is because usually the endgame drags on for quite a bit. There are a few situations very close to a stalemate that seem pretty common (infected people hoarding gas, humans separated from where they need to go by a ton of bugs, just waiting to draw ammo cards to deal with them). Also player elimination here is a minus.

------------------------

Games I've looked at:

Saboteur: I played a half of a game of this once, and none of us really knew the rules. Is this game good?

Room 25: Read a pdf of the rules, read some very mixed reviews, saw a PBF version of the game. Is this game good?
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liopoil

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #1 on: August 22, 2013, 12:44:06 pm »
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well, there's mafia...

I've played Shadows over Camelot a couple times and liked it. Both times the traitor won though :P
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jsh357

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #2 on: August 22, 2013, 12:45:36 pm »
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Saboteur is a lot of fun, but it definitely feels more like a party game than other Mafia type games.  I played a 7 player game once IRL and we all had a blast.  (With the expansion, which balances the game out a lot and adds more roles)  I don't think it's especially deep.
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Watno

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #3 on: August 22, 2013, 01:00:40 pm »
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Did you actually get Panic Station to work? I played it once, and everyone agreed the game is broken. How do you notice the game is actually over?.

Anyway, I think the niche of a hidden-loyality game where you find out loyalities not mainly by discussing, but by the moves people do, but doesn't take 4 hours to play has really high potential
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AdamH

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #4 on: August 22, 2013, 01:10:33 pm »
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First game of Panic Station we played, the infected people had enough gas that it was impossible for the good guys to win. Nobody knew how many gas cards there were, so the one good guy who could still be effective kept on drawing cards and never getting gas. A similar situation can happen with ammunition. In either of these cases, I would assume it's up to the infected people to somehow declare victory, but there's not a mechanic for that (or even something that comes close), so the game just dragged on and on... It seemed that a game coming to a clean end was the exception, not the rule for Panic Station.

If I understand Mafia correctly, it's pretty much the same game as Resistance, right, so that means variants of it will never work with less than 5 people, right? If I'm mistaken, I'd love to know why.

I may have to look into Saboteur (and the expansion) a little more deeply...

I read a couple of quick reviews for Shadows over Camelot. I haven't found anything about how big of a role the hidden loyalties play in that game, is it a big deal, or is the game mostly about other things? Also, both reviews mentioned something similar to an issue BSG has, where you're only "sort of" allowed to talk about your cards in hand -- did you notice that was a problem?
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eHalcyon

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #5 on: August 22, 2013, 01:15:16 pm »
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Hidden loyalties are pretty difficult to make meaningful with fewer than 5 players.  The only game that comes to my mind is Gentlemen Thieves.  I don't know much about it though.
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liopoil

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #6 on: August 22, 2013, 01:18:27 pm »
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If I understand Mafia correctly, it's pretty much the same game as Resistance, right, so that means variants of it will never work with less than 5 people, right? If I'm mistaken, I'd love to know why.
It's different from resistance. the whole game, like resistance, revolves around finding the bad guys/good guys. But yeah, you need even more people than resistance. you need at least 5, (not that fun though), 6 can work, but more is better. And it does have player elimination.
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DG

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #7 on: August 22, 2013, 01:23:10 pm »
+1

Shadow Hunters has a hidden allegiance theme. It's a relatively short game where you can wait until you find your enemies or just attack your fellow players from the start and hope for the best.
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Archetype

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #8 on: August 22, 2013, 01:27:08 pm »
+1

Ultimate Werewolf: Inquistion seems like it'd be a good match for your group. It's like a cross between The Resistance and Mafia, but with actual game mechanics. Players are trying to hunt down werewolves in a Town and try to lynch them, but some of the players themselves are werewolves. Players choose an action each round (each matching a specific member of the Town) with no two players choosing the same action. Players then put out vote counters on town members and  whichever has the most is lynched. Everyone then 'goes to sleep' and the werewolves also secretly kill a townsmember.Everyone then opens their eyes and those two killed people and their matching actions are then removed from the game. Rinse and repeat until all Werewolves are eliminated or there are more werewolves than town members. It has a bit more luck than I would like, but I still enjoy it.

Come to think of it, this would work great as a PBF. Hm....
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Tables

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #9 on: August 22, 2013, 07:37:23 pm »
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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?

Anyway I'm a big fan of hidden traitor games. BSG and Resistance are two of my favourites. BSG has been houseruled to death by my gaming group, to the point where even I don't know the standard set of houserules any more. It's a good game but needs a little work.

Panic Station is a nice, quicker traitor game. I dislike that you can easily end up with 3-5 traitors, though, and you can very easily break the game by playing a strategy of 'infect me quickly plz' which if lots of people join in with, becomes silly. We thus play with a 'play for your current wincon' houserule, which is basically just honour system to actually make it work.

Shadows is a nice game, but somewhat counter-intuitive. Don't win most of the quests because that's bad. Win the game by letting the Saxons attack you. Traitor's best option is the be aggressive, and often good guys best option is not to accuse him. All those are kind of awkward honestly.

Resistance is my groups current go-to traitor game. We have some people who are very good at it, one of whom I've not found any way to read whatsoever.

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SirPeebles

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #10 on: August 22, 2013, 07:43:49 pm »
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Samurai Sword is sort of like an improved version of Bang!. In particular, there is no player elimination, which I think is a nice thing.  There is a scoring system that scales which scales inversely with the size of your team, so the person playing as the Ronin (aka the Renegade in Bang!.) is no longer at such a steep disadvantage.
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Grujah

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #11 on: August 23, 2013, 05:19:06 am »
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Samurai Sword is sort of like an improved version of Bang!. In particular, there is no player elimination, which I think is a nice thing.  There is a scoring system that scales which scales inversely with the size of your team, so the person playing as the Ronin (aka the Renegade in Bang!.) is no longer at such a steep disadvantage.

There is a scoring system for Bang! as well.
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AJD

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #12 on: August 23, 2013, 07:02:47 am »
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I highly recommend Castle of the Devil. It's a card game with two teams; you start out not knowing who's on which team; your goal is, through swapping cards and challenging other players to duels and observing who cooperates with who, to figure out who's on which team and get the cards your team need to win. ("You fools! The Order—consisting of myself, Steve, and Cindy—controls the three mystical Goblets and demands the submission of the Brotherhood!") If one team holds the winning cards but hasn't realized it yet, the other team can steal the victory by figuring it out first.
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Ratsia

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #13 on: August 23, 2013, 08:03:42 am »
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I highly recommend Castle of the Devil.
I was about to suggest the same, but didn't manage to spell the original name "Die Kutschfahrt zur Teufelsburg" well enough for google to correct it, and the last time I played was well before the English version was released so did not know about the alternative name... No wonder they didn't go with the German name.

I don't personally like the game that much, both because I don't like the hidden team mechanic but also because the game is otherwise not perfectly balanced, but it indeed sounds like a good match for the OP. It's not bad, just not for me.
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Kuildeous

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #14 on: August 23, 2013, 08:56:56 am »
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I did pick up Room 25 on my own. I started a couple of PBF games to see how it goes. It's funny how the two games I'm modding are different. The first game had four players and happened to not have a traitor (a 20% chance of that happening). The second game has gotten pretty bloody. Tables seized upon a perfect opportunity and eliminated one of the players. Naturally, he revealed his traitor status, which gave him a benefit in the rest of the game.

What's interesting is that even the traitors don't even know who the other one is. So, in a 5- or 6-player game, you could accidentally eliminate a fellow traitor. As it turned out, Tables did eliminate a prisoner, so that second traitor is still out there.

I'll probably start another game of Room 25 when this one concludes.

The trick with Shadows is that you have to play suboptimally but not get called out on it. You need a pretty good poker face in some instances ("Man, I wish I had Fight 5 cards!"). For some reason, I'm not that big of a fan of playing Shadows with a traitor, but everyone else is, so I go along with it.

Red November does not have a hidden traitor mechanic, but it does have a "flee for your life" option. Toward the end of the game, a player can choose to use the aqualung and abandon ship. I'm not a fan of that because there are only two aqualungs in the game, and that causes weird hoarding issues. This could be fixed with hidden inventory, which I'm also not a fan of, since the game can be difficult enough as it is.
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AdamH

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #15 on: August 23, 2013, 09:03:09 am »
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Castle of the Devil and Room 25 look like games I want to try. They have a high enough chance of being awesome that it certainly justifies their low cost. I'm encouraged by the idea the Castle of the Devil might work well with 4 players since reviews seem to suggest that even numbers are better.
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Tables

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #16 on: August 23, 2013, 10:51:14 am »
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The trick with Shadows is that you have to play suboptimally but not get called out on it. You need a pretty good poker face in some instances ("Man, I wish I had Fight 5 cards!"). For some reason, I'm not that big of a fan of playing Shadows with a traitor, but everyone else is, so I go along with it.

Is this a good time to point out that making such a statement would be breaking the secrecy rules :P?
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SirPeebles

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #17 on: August 23, 2013, 11:19:01 am »
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Samurai Sword is sort of like an improved version of Bang!. In particular, there is no player elimination, which I think is a nice thing.  There is a scoring system that scales which scales inversely with the size of your team, so the person playing as the Ronin (aka the Renegade in Bang!.) is no longer at such a steep disadvantage.

There is a scoring system for Bang! as well.

Not within a single game of Bang!.
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gman314

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #18 on: August 23, 2013, 11:20:51 am »
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I haven't tried it, but someone recently told me that the trick to making Saboteur work well without the expansion is to play with a group of cutthroat players, and then play to something like 10 or 15 gold. Then, everyone wants to play somewhat sub-optimally when they're a good dwarf, so that when they're a Saboteur people don't notice when they play somewhat less sub-optimally.
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Kuildeous

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #19 on: August 23, 2013, 02:22:33 pm »
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The trick with Shadows is that you have to play suboptimally but not get called out on it. You need a pretty good poker face in some instances ("Man, I wish I had Fight 5 cards!"). For some reason, I'm not that big of a fan of playing Shadows with a traitor, but everyone else is, so I go along with it.

Is this a good time to point out that making such a statement would be breaking the secrecy rules :P?

Well, true, not that exact statement, but the general point is that when you're staring at a full house of 4s and 5s, you have to pretend you got nothing. But then again, that allows you to get Lancelot's armor. Bad example.

A handful of Merlins or something.

Or, you know, shut up.
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liopoil

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #20 on: August 23, 2013, 02:29:45 pm »
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I was once the traitor, and I think I ended up being too helpful. I got a lot of credit for that, but it didn't help me much.  I ended up winning anyway because they let too many siege engines accumulate. I think it could be a good idea to give yourself away pretty early.
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jsh357

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #21 on: August 23, 2013, 02:35:47 pm »
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I haven't tried it, but someone recently told me that the trick to making Saboteur work well without the expansion is to play with a group of cutthroat players, and then play to something like 10 or 15 gold. Then, everyone wants to play somewhat sub-optimally when they're a good dwarf, so that when they're a Saboteur people don't notice when they play somewhat less sub-optimally.

Without the expansion, one way to improve the game is to just switch to the expansion's scoring system.  That way you can at least win by playing correctly.  (The original's was all down to chance pretty much)
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Tables

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #22 on: August 26, 2013, 12:10:10 pm »
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The trick with Shadows is that you have to play suboptimally but not get called out on it. You need a pretty good poker face in some instances ("Man, I wish I had Fight 5 cards!"). For some reason, I'm not that big of a fan of playing Shadows with a traitor, but everyone else is, so I go along with it.

Is this a good time to point out that making such a statement would be breaking the secrecy rules :P?

Well, true, not that exact statement, but the general point is that when you're staring at a full house of 4s and 5s, you have to pretend you got nothing. But then again, that allows you to get Lancelot's armor. Bad example.

A handful of Merlins or something.

Or, you know, shut up.

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:P
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Kuildeous

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #23 on: August 26, 2013, 01:37:25 pm »
+1

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eHalcyon

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Re: Games with hidden loyalty
« Reply #24 on: August 26, 2013, 07:53:49 pm »
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I just saw Granny Wars in the BGG news.  Probably not quite the kind of hidden loyalty you are looking for, but man - that theme.



Also, just realized that this thread is in General Discussion instead of Other Board Games.  Doesn't really matter, I guess.
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