This week in Tabletop Games and Leadership, we played Ultimate Werewolf. If you don’t already know this is a classic example of a social deduction game. We were assigned roles, either on the villagers’ side or the werewolves’ side, with many players having some form of special ability. The werewolves are hungry and each night the werewolves choose someone to eat, eliminating them from play for the rest of the game. The villagers are tasked with choosing someone to execute at the end of each day, hoping that they can find the werewolves before it’s too late. Some key roles that we used in our playthrough were the seer who could check if one player is a werewolf each night.

In this game there is a certain level of mandated risk, because everybody votes on somebody to execute each day and in doing so the villagers risk executing teammates. Werewolves also risk eating teammates during the nighttime, but this risk is lower than for the villagers. To minimize these risks players employed various strategies in an attempt to win the game. Some people, such as myself, decided to just be open about our role in an attempt to gain trust, others shared a fabricated role to portray innocence, and the rest refused to share in an attempt to keep their important role hidden. All of these choices employed different styles and amounts of risk. Being open puts a player in danger of being an open target for the opponent, lying leaves you vulnerable to people finding out the truth, and silence garners suspicion.

The hardest part of the game for me was determining how to balance risk and reward when creating a personal gameplan. Because the only way for anyone to truly verify your role you would have to be voted off. There were, obviously, ways that you could be checked that would make your role more trusted, but not truly guaranteed. Every decision you make changes the risk landscape of the game. It changes what’s risky about you and your gameplay as well as affects the rest of your team, especially when there were things like the lovers and Virginia Woolf, which both involved a second death when certain people died. An example would be that I revealed that I was the PI, which comes with the ability to check if a player or either of their neighbors are a werewolf one time. Although I was trying to establish trust, doing this let the werewolves know that I was against them and is likely the reason I was eaten that night.

While playing this game, there were a couple examples of leadership and of my classmates being leaders. Like in the dancing guy video, at the very beginning of the first day there was a split second of silence before anybody spoke, then someone said the first thing, something about how do we want to approach this first day, then someone else said that we could go around saying our roles to try and figure out something suspicious. Followed by me speaking out with my role and a continued cascade of people speaking up, until just about everyone was speaking or at least had spoken. The first person to speak set off this chain reaction that essentially began the game. A similar thing happened for the first vote, people started voting pretty quickly after the first vote went out. Another instance of leadership that occurred was when the seer, which is a very important role for the villagers came out and admitted their role to say who they have cleared. This allowed them to guide the conversation in a way that they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise and lead the villagers to finding the werewolves sooner. In general, this game’s biggest tie to leadership is in the decision-making process, because it allows players to make decisions openly and be affected by the decisions of others. This relates to its next biggest tie to leadership as well. This second tie would be the team strategization aspect, in which members of each team have to try to strategize without knowing each other’s true role or intentions.

The deductive reasoning required for this game is one of my favorite parts. I love to try and untangle the web of truths, lies, and partial truths that the other players are spinning. I also like to try to spin my own little web, but I am not always good at lying and am very risk averse, so I am never sure what lies to go with and when. Although I didn’t get a chance to contribute much to the dialogue, it was still interesting to see how everyone else was slowly unfolding the nightly happenings. Something that I wasn’t a fan of was the night stage. It makes sense for the game, but it feels long and drawn out while you as a player are not doing much, even if you have a role with an ability. However, this is a relatively small drawback that shouldn’t deter new players. This game is one that I think could fit very well with general audiences, because the rules are relatively simple and it’s about interacting with others. It also could do well with people who like to solve puzzles and use reasoning to solve problems. Because of this, I think my roommate Blake would really enjoy this game.

Time stories was my favorite game we played all semester. Due to the many choices and paths possible in the game it ties to leadership very easily. Though group decisions are extremely important like most things generally one or two people stick out as leaders by the end of the game.

The hardest part of the game is how in-depth it is. Notes are very important to remember where things are and what items you need and have. It gets very complicated very quickly. In our play-through, we took lots of notes. Despite this, we made the wrong choice, leading to our character’s demise. Luckily, this is a game where multiple tries are expected.

I’d recommend this game to anyone who loves DND. Role-playing adds a lot of fun to this game, and someone who does not appreciate in-depth games wouldn’t enjoy T.I.M.E. Stories. This game was my favorite all semester and I am hoping to get my own copy to play with my friends when I have the money.

Ladies and Gentleman is a game that involves trust and leadership from both ends. The lady must trust the man to take leadership and earn money during the day while the lady has to take leadership when it comes down to deciding what to wear. To win the game the lady must be the best dressed at the ball. In order to be the best dressed the man must make enough money to buy her the clothing she needs.

The hardest part about this game was communicating with your partner. Our play session had randomly selected partners, this complicated things as not every partnership worked well together. My partner didn’t understand how to play the game so he made very little money, this resulted in my lady ending up in a very mixed up outfit. In my attempt to get as many stars as possible I accidentally got a dress made by a different designer. In the end I wasn’t able to attend the ball because due to having too many designers I didn’t have a dress.

I’d recommend this game to people who love roleplay games. While roleplay isn’t necessary for Ladies and Gentleman it adds a lot to the game. In the end, you get as much out of this game as you put into it also I’d recommend reading the instructions very carefully.

Two rooms and a Boom has heavy ties to leadership due to the heavy deception aspects of it. The hardest part generally is trying to remember everyone’s colors and roles. The hardest part for me personally was being a role that could not speak.

During that game I had figured out who the president was, that being said I had trouble communicating it to my teammates. My leadership was therefore stunted due to them not understanding my hand gestures. Eventually I was able to explain it to them but the blue team had already caught on that we knew. Unfortunately they were one step ahead of us and we ended up losing.

I would recommend this game to any large group of friends. It doesn’t matter whether the group is close or just met. While it does get more complicated with more players it adds more characters and aspects to the game. It’s not too hard to understand for those that have trouble picking up directions. Two rooms and a boom is made for competitive and driven groups, therefore the perfect party game.

This week we do not have an assigned game to play, and our table selected CodeNames Game to play. I think the hardest part of this game is understanding the rules. None of the people at our table played this game before so we have no idea what we should do. I think it may be helpful if we read the rulebook before coming to class as we did for all the other games played in this class. Since we didn’t fully understand the rules, we came up with some kinds of house rules of our own, and that was my favorite part of the session. I enjoyed our own rule as it was simple and easy to follow, and surprisingly it didn’t make the game boring.

I think many skills are tied to this game, and two of the most important skills are memorizing and analyzing. It is necessary to remember all the hints that are given to you and analyze them every round to figure out which words are yours. I think my cousin Xun would enjoy playing this game because he is good at remembering the details and relating words to words. When he was learning English, he tried to remember words under the same categories or with similar meanings.

The only thing I disliked about this game was the complexity of the rules as I mentioned above. I think the session went very well after we figured out our own rules and started playing one or two rounds of the game. This game also helped me to learn some new words that I have never seen before, so I think it may be helpful for people who want to learn English or memorize words.

Game name: What Do You Mean
Number of players: 4-7
Time length: 2 to 4 minutes depending on players

How to play:

One person has to think of a word or a phrase without telling it to the group, like homework, or listening to music. All players have to stand in a line, and the first person has to be the person with the word in mind. The method used to pass on the word is by making actions and only the first person behind you is allowed to see your actions, BUT same actions are not allowed, which means players can’t copy the actions from the players they see. All players should start by closing their eyes to prevent any cheating tings, and tap on the person behind you when you are ready to show them your actions. For example, if I am the second person and the first person has shown me the actions, and I am ready to show my actions to the third person I can tap on his/her shoulder and then do whatever I need to do.

When the game starts, no one is allowed to say anything until the last person guesses and says a word, which means the game has ended. And depending on whether the last person guesses correctly or not, the game can be determined as win or lose.

One learning outcome players should gain after playing the game is improving their memorization skills because they need to remember the actions they see, and they are also expected to brainstorm when they see other people’s actions and think about their own. The last learning outcome is practicing critical thinking skills because players have to process the actions they see and catch the most identical things and relate them to one or more objects.

Examples

If the first person wants other players to guess “water”, then drinking water from a water fountain may be a good idea to act out.

If the word is “smart phone”, the action of calling someone or playing mobile games may be some good ideas to use.

The game we played this week is called Two Rooms & A Boom, and as many people mentioned during class, this game is very similar to the Werewolf. The hardest part of this game was to understand and remember what the roles are and what they can do. There was one thing that makes this game even harder: this game was about hiding or lying about the roles. Therefore, it is difficult to ask other players what the roles can do. For example, I forgot what “Hot Potato” can do when we were playing, so I struggled a little and then decided to ask someone what it was.

Many leadership skills were applied in this game, but the most important one was how to communicate with other people to get useful information. Players had to know how to exchange information so that they could receive the most benefits, but at the same time, they needed to keep their secrets as well. For example, the “boom” had to consider whether revealing the role to the other red teammates is a good idea because the blue spy is also on the red team. Since this game is very similar to the Werewolf, I think my friend named Kath would enjoy playing this, as I mentioned in the game reflection for the Werewolf, Kath was on the team for the Debate Competition and she likes to argue with people with logic.

We started the session with some explanations of the rules and the roles. I think it would be helpful to have a list of the roles and what they can do, so we can take a look before class and even during the game. I like to play this game because we can play a couple of rounds with different roles as the time of playing this game is not very long. The part that I dislike about this game is I have to talk to other people individually sometimes to exchange information but I may not know these people. However, I think this is one of the most interesting sessions in this class because we can play different roles in one class period.

The game we played this week was Ladies & Gentlemen, and according to the title, we know this game usually has two types of roles: ladies and gentlemen. There are different tasks to do depending on the roles, and the rules for each role are different depending on whether you choose to be a lady or a gentleman. This game is separated into three time spots: morning, afternoon, and evening. In the mornings, the ladies decide which stores they want to go to, and the gentlemen need to grab the goods they need from the market. In the afternoons, the ladies start shopping in the store they selected in the morning and decide what they want to buy, and the gentlemen need to either sell their goods or complete contracts for money. When the evenings come, everyone goes home and the ladies show the things they picked, and the gentlemen need to decide whether they want to buy them or if they have enough money to buy them.

As for leadership, some people acted as leaders on both sides and even they may not have noticed that. This game requires both sides to do actions at the same time so it is necessary to communicate during the game. Moreover, the leader can also push other people to move forward as sometimes the ladies may need a long time to decide what things they want to buy, like me in this game. I think my friend named Lily would enjoy this game when playing as a lady because she loves shopping, but she may make the whole process very slow because it can take her forever to decide what she wants.

I think the session went very well, and this is a game that can help people to ice break a little bit because the table is so long, so you have to talk to the people beside you if you need something from the other side of the table. I like being a lady and I feel very chill because all I need to do is shopping. I don’t really like how the gentlemen play because that is a little aggressive for me and I may end up with nothing valuable every day.

The game we played this week was Survive Escape From Atlantis, and the hardest part for me was to escape from the monsters, especially the Sea Serpent. The Sea Serpent can destroy the ship and kill everyone on the ship when it is on the same sea space with an occupied ship. The rules for this game were easy to understand, but I was a little confused on how to use the back of the tiles because some of them had to be used immediately, in your own turn, or outside your turn. Everyone in the group also had trouble remembering what all the cards meant, so each one of us had to take a look at the instructions every time when we flipped one tile. 

This game is tied to leadership because it teaches people how to negotiate with other people and how to change your enemies to friends. It is very important for leaders to negotiate with other people, maybe not their enemies, but they probably need to negotiate with people who do not agree with them or don’t want to listen to them. 

I think everyone would enjoy playing this game, especially if they are playing it with someone they know of. I think this game can be very intense or very relaxing depending on the players. For example, when I played it in my group my goal was not to win after three of my people were out of the game on the same ship. Therefore, I was only going after the person who took my three people out of the game for revenge, and I even helped some other players. 

This game is one of my favorite games from this class, and one of the best playing experiences from this class too. I really like how people can play this game in a very fun and chill way even though this game should be a little intense. I also like the idea that the back of the tile is also useful and it has different meanings to the game, but at the same time, these meanings are difficult to remember and to understand when I started to play.