If Seafarers' gold mines gave actual gold that can be traded in place of any one resource, it would be more thematic to why gold gives you any resource and reduce its power. It would still be super useful because if you had say, a lumber port, you could always take advantage of that port when lumber is low by exchanging gold instead! Or you could trade it with players which might be super useful/friendly. As a wild card it would also be tempting to hoard putting you over the robber hand size.
One thing I've found is that these games can also become very 'clique' oriented and feelings can get hurt for more sensitive players vs players who get a little too into it when accusing people. It's even worse when that results in an innocent person getting kicked or otherwise punished as a traitor. It can be hard for players who aren't as close to each other as other players and easy for a single player to get isolated even if they aren't the traitor.
There's a social deduction game called Snollygoster that I really enjoy because rather than there being a standard many humans/few traitors split, personal scoring criteria cards either belong to a collaborative or selfish play-style What's nice about this is that even the collaborative players still will want to take actions in a way that might be sub-optimal because it advances their own personal score and doesn't technically harm the group at large (similar to Dead of Winter) There's also not a prescribed split of one vs the other as the agenda cards are dealt randomly (though there are more collaborative agenda cards overall), so you might have a situation where multiple "traitors" are not just sabotaging the collaborative players but each other as well I find that this structure solves the typical issues around quarterbacking, being bad at lying (since you can lean on your personal objective as a built in excuse), and disincentivizing long term cooperation from the traitors (they don't even know who is or isn't a traitor to start)
House on the haunted hill is good because for the entire first phase, you don't know who the traitor will be (even the traitor) so you're incentivised to help everyone prepare so that the survivors have the best chance of winning in phase 2, and even when phase 2 starts, you don't know the traitors win conditions and have to deduce them from their turn choices.
I once played Chameleon (shown at 6:25) with my in-laws. We played a total of 7 games, and my cousin-in-law was chameleon for 6 of them. By the end, he would just say "I don't know" followed by a completely random word. Also, the game can be 100x harder for the chameleon depending on the turn order. If you go last, you not only can get clues from other people's words, but you also have an excuse to take longer with the classic "I was just about to say that! Now I need to think of a new word....." Meanwhile, going first, you're FORCED to say something incredibly vague, which instantly looks suspicious. That was the first time we played Chameleon and we have not played it since because he refuses to touch that game.
sleeved them immediately but good to know they were shit. yes that time frame and pure randomness makes me not like it while i love the spinning component even though they dont happen often enough, 3-5 times a game
I've always hated these because I feel I'm a good liar. But often times I'm the one that has to be the liar so people catch my tells. Meaning I can't lie as effectively. It gets boring really quickly. My family likes them hut I tire over them quickly as I know everyone's tells.
Yeha unfortunately the core set does a terrible job at selling the game. Also, one handed is not fun. I solo two-hand and truly started to love it when I played the dunwich expansion. I found the core set scenarios were pretty brutal and if I didn't take a chance and bought an expansion, I probably wouldn't have liked it either.
Very helpful, especially the explanation that Root takes asymmetry further than Twighlight Imperium does do (which means it's not for everybody). You just saved me going through the same learning curve (and probably the same end-conclusion, especially when I tend to lean toward cooperative games).
Huge missed opportunity that they didn't invest heavily (or at all) in including an official modified ruleset that's more clearly defined, really well balanced, and adds more ways for the heroes to progress (power up ) such as earning more spells and ability cards. If they want to also appeal to the nostalgia crowd that's fine, they could literally just include two separate rulebooks and quest books. I don't mind wandering monsters. Except the wandering monster cards encourage an optimized player to wait until the end of the quest to search all the rooms which is kludge. So maybe they should ditch them. Or add some benefit to searching as you go instead of at the end. I think treasure cards should stay in the player's hand until they use the card, then put it back in the deck immediately or at the end of the current quest. Otherwise you end up hoarding an unreasonable number of healing potions (for example). Players should only be allowed to search a room for treasure once per quest. Balance how fast the heroes can get gold relative to available equipment and monster difficulty. Balance the game overall for normal mode, and add additional difficulty modes like easy, hard, insane. Yes they should probably just make fast travel explicit - assuming no monsters on the board and you searched for traps. Ask Zargon first because there are a few quests with exceptions (basically trap or trigger squares that aren't visible when searching traps). Yes they should combine search for traps and secret doors into one action. Yes the turn order system is kludge. Letting the hero's go in any order is probably a reasonable simple fix. The other obvious idea would be an initiative system but that might be overkill. Yes the chokepoint trick gets lame. One potential fix is to not let the heroes use ranged weapons through doors. And assume it's the player's goal to move the quest forward (Zargon wins if the players camp). That way they can't camp at a door entrance with a crossbow - they have to go in the room to progress. The Elf spells would be cooler if you add them as additional spells as a way for the Elf to level up, and maybe let the Elf cast two spells as one action (or one spell and one attack even) after a certain point. Similarly, they could give the Wizard additional spells (or slots) as a way to level up gradually instead of one time use artifact spells e.g. in Kellar's Keep and Witch Lord expansions. Of course this would be part of a major rebalance overhaul of the maps. And maybe more ways for the Dwarf and Barbarian to gradually level up too such as giving them some special ability cards (similar to spells). Unlock ability cards and spell cards as you progress through quests or as you get more gold to unlock them - that enables more ways to power up without literal experience and hero levels. Maybe some monster abilities too. Maybe allow monsters to do ranged attacks even. Maybe allow ranged attacks (or at least spells) to work on anyone in the room or hallway (no line of sight blocking).
三国杀 is the perfect game for my group, cause at least if the social deduction side starts to fail, you can just let it transition into a team game. Only problem is eliminations and game length as some parts of the game can drag out unnecessarily. However, the less casual game mechanics (not to mention a potential language barrier) makes it a hard sell to anyone outside that group of friends. So in the end i take out competition games instead, as it is just easier to teach someone to play and not need them to understand the mechanics and figure out how to lie on top of it.
Very late to the discussion, but Blood on the Clocktower having a game master honestly makes the game quite resistant to poor players, since the GM can boost the losing team,, or sabotage them if theyre annoying. It's so popular in my boardgame group that people have made their own variations (as a joke example, a fnaf variant). But some others include Sheriff of Nottingham (not,, entirely social deduction but it does involve lying) which I'm not personally fond of because I'm bad at it. Then Bank Heist is a pretty good one,, although heinously unbalanced if you're the police,, and if you can get over the racism, the dice version of Bang!, is pretty good since it combines "oo what side am i on" with "oopsie, rolled this thing, guess we gotta do it", and theres actual motivation for opposing teams to start by working together, and then changing tack
Hi, really thank you for this video! In my personal opinion it is a great way to play in fighting games and have a lot of fun. Sure, we do not have here skill issue, but still it is still game easy to learn hard to master, which I really love! This game gives us the opportunity to play a brawl, without knowing combos and, above all, does not require such reflexes or skills. And yet, it is further important to get to know the characters in depth and use their weaknesses as well as their strengths. I am aware of coins of this game, but still it is really fun to play! And I still waiting for more character from Blaz Blue too :)
This game looks ugly, but in the same way as the video game. Which I am not familiar with. Gameplay looks complicated. I feel good not backing this. I don't think I could get this to the table.
Our friend game played a kinda fun social deduction game called "when I dream" where the player whose turn it is wears a blindfold and the other players take turns giving them hints or misdirects about the card theyre trying to guess. As you play, you find that it's better for the traitor characters to give hints that are closeish to what previous people said to just nudge them off the right path instead of giving complete outlier answers and revealing who they are.
Nothing is wrong with social deduction, you just need to play right games with the right people, of course easier said than done. Avalon is the sweet spot for me with some hard data available to some of the players (role-based), some hard data available to all players publicly (quests and votes), so that the entire game has depths to it, doesn't have too much randomness and still has a lot of "social" of "social deduction". Blood on the Clocktower is almost a pure puzzle where you talk to people to get their information, rather than to run fun convoluted schemes.
Blaming the equipment ^___^ Really fun gameplay! This is one of the few boardgames where I get more and more excited to play it towards its delivery date.
