Category Archives: Assignments

Blood on the Clock Tower

Happy Halloween! In this spooky night, we played Blood on the Clock Tower. There was around 13 players; 4 knew how to play and the rest did not. I was one of the few who did not know how to play, and I also happened to be the town drunk, which did not help me learn what I was doing. In other words, I was the empath (on the good side). I had the ability to know if anyone sitting next to me was evil. However, I was also secretly the drunk so my ability was void throughout the game and I didn’t even know it. So the whole time, I thought my two friends were good, but one was actually the poisoner (awkward).

(hardest part) The game itself was a little confusing because the roles were a little vague and it was a lot. I couldn’t keep up with some of the player’s logic (the one’s who have played before). But I definitely would want to play again. I’m not entirely sure if I like blood on the clock tower over ultimate werewolf. But I do love that it takes more time and you can talk with people separately. I also like the aspect where certain conditions (recluse, drunk, saint, ect.) can be given to good players and they don’t even know it.

Not really sure how this game demonstrates leadership. I could argue it has the mob mentality, like in Ultimate werewolf, but I didn’t really see that in our game. What I did notice was that people who have experience with the game can notice/talk about details. For instance, I was the empath, so someone asked me how many numbers I got (from 0-2) indicating how many next to me are evil. I was expecting them to ask me if there was anyone next to me that was evil, so I was expecting to give them a name not a number (or a yes or no answer). The game was lead by someone who knew the game very well. So I got to witness an experienced leader, and compare it to an inexperienced leader (myself). Hands down, experience wins. They can see and think in ways I could not. But by being around an experienced leader, I slowly started to understand the tricks. Thus, it never hurts to have someone with experience lead. In fact, it’s probably more beneficial for everyone.

Ladies & Gentlemen

In class, we played Ladies & Gentlemen, and I chose to be a gentleman (I brought a fake mustache and everything). The concept of the game was different for the ladies and gentlemen. For the gentlemen, our goal was to earn enough money to purchase lovely items for our wives/the ladies. The ladies role was to purchase as many items and servants as possible so that they can have the best outfit for the ball.

I think the hardest part about the game was roleplaying as a 1850’s British man. It was hard to stay in character, mostly because I have no clue how people acted during that time (I just generalized what I’ve seen in movies). Plus, I am not a man. Another hard part of the game was to keep things secretive from your partner. Because of this hidden element, I didn’t know what my partner needed. I tried to buy whatever they gave me, but there were times when money was low.

This game relates to leadership because it is about understanding different perspectives. Although I only played as a gentleman, I think the goal of the game is to see what it is like to be both the gentleman and lady. By acting like a female and male in the victorian era, we can start to understand their behaviors, feelings, and beliefs a little better. Although not a perfect interpretation, by trying to understand we can find new ways to problem solve and work together with those who are different from us.

Decorum

This week we played decorum, a game about cooperation with interior designing. It was a very fun game. I played with one other person, and we worked together to find the right balance for our rooms. We managed to go through 6 rounds; each round was a set of requirements we each had to fill (and our requirements were different from each other). It was difficult at first because we were trying to navigate how to play, but steadily we got the hang of it.

The most difficult part of the game was when we had to interpret and memorize our requirements. As we move on to each round, the requirements get harder and harder. Stuff like “rooms with warm colors can only have objects with cool colors”. Which sounds easy, but oftentimes you can miss it because you are juggling it with other similar requirements. We messed up two rounds because a requirement was not fulfilled when we thought it was (oops). But even so, we had a lot of fun reading out scenarios and discussing what we liked or hated. I’d say it was a success.

As far as leadership skills, I think this game requires a lot of communication, and management skills. You are trying to juggle a lot of requirements at once, without missing any, and you are trying to communicate with your partner what you need. This kinda showcases how different people with different goals can find compromise while still finding ways to fit their needs. It was very interesting. This game also requires an open-mind because what you need in a certain room may not fit your partner’s requirements. You have to be able to find different ways to meet your needs.

Voices in my Head

This week we played voices in my head. It was a challenging but fun game where we all try to gain control of different parts of the brain. For the game, I was Selfishness. Which means that I wanted there to be equal or more innocent than there were guilty verdicts. Luckily, that is what happened. The guilty and innocents tied, so I ended up winning the game. It was me and another player who won, but two other players lost.

This game really taught me about collaboration. At first, I was in it to get control. We don’t know who’s who, so the beginning rounds are played with the most self-interest. however, at some point, I figured out who was who but didn’t stop trying for complete control. My mindset was so stuck that it was me against everyone, that it was difficult to switch up even though I had a good idea of who everyone was. Eventually, I saw the errors in my ways, and started working with the player who was on my side.

I think the hardest part about the game was that we were all brawling for control at the beginning. It’s hard to play when it is against everyone, but once teams start working together, things start to feel more progressive. I also think it is hard being on the innocent side because there are two players who fight for guilty and one for a certain amount of indecisive. And it’s really hard going against the prosecutor.

Overall, this game was fun and I recommend anyone else to play it at least once. I am definitely going to try to convince my family to play, if we ever get the game.

Fiasco Week 2

On the fourth week of class, we finished up Fiasco. My group and I zoomed through it. We finished up the game in 45 minutes and spent the rest of the class time watching the other group play theirs. It was a very fun experience, and all our stories were hilarious.

Our story ended with my character shooting my crime partner. But to retaliate, my crime partner shot me back, but only grazed me from two feet away. I couldn’t have him live, but I felt so guilty killing him, so I decided to erase his memory with a device that was hidden in the pile of guns. I failed, but I didn’t know I failed, so I called the ambulance over (even though we are in the Antarctic) to take us out and treat us. Our third player was having a life in another dimension because they got trapped in their owned portal experiment. Because of that, I framed them for blowing up the science building we all worked at (even though I planted the bombs) and for shooting me and my crime partner. For the montage at the end, I ended up being great. Injuries were fully recovered, I made a book about the whole incident and got a lot of money from it. I was rich. Meanwhile my partner was in two comas which lead to him forgetting his memory. But I paid for his medical bills because I felt bad.

This week was a lot easier. Since we had practice from the first week. We all had an easier time creating scenes. I pretty much learned the same things I did last week (improve skill development, teamwork, communication). But I think a new thing I considered was storytelling. I was conscious of how the story was progressing and tried to create twists and turns to make it more interesting (i.e. me shooting my partner…but then I felt bad, so being evil didn’t last long). Although I wasn’t too successful at it, I was conscious of the story progression, which can be a key skill when communicating with other people.

The hardest part about this week was finishing up too quick. We didn’t know what to do with all that free time, so we ended up watching the other group and having a blast. It was a week of fun and laughter.

Fiasco Week 1

During the third week of class, we started playing Fiasco. This roleplaying game was my first time playing a roleplaying game before, so it was all new to me. I struggled a bit during the act, but that was primarily because I forgot to learn how to play 🙁 So I was winging it. But this game really makes you use your creative storytelling, teamwork, and planning abilities. A lot of the time you just have to go with something, and you have no clue how the other players are going to react or even what they will tell in their scenes. It’s a good game to practice improve and skills that make you think on your feet.

The part I struggled with the most was creating the scene and characters. It’s really hard to come up with something on the spot. Not to mention, use all the relationships and items that we chose. One relationship I had was sentimental, and the object we were sentimental about was a stolen can of beans. This pretty much got forgotten in the game, but I tried to implement it towards the end. Didn’t do much though. The start of the game was very much learning how to story tell, since I’ve never done so before. Not to mention Fiasco is a lot more extreme, so this is not your Disney kind of story (I was an ecological extremest who put bombs in the Science building). But I think the chaos is what makes this game fun.

I also want to say that playing with a group of strangers was also a little difficult. I felt timid with my storytelling, and not knowing what I was doing didn’t help. But when watching how they described their scenes, it was very interesting how different people’s stories were. Our scene was in the Antarctic, located in a Science Building. We were all scientists researching portals, however, I quit a week ago once I learned of how dangerous those portals were. I played the role of a suspicious person with a plan. My storytelling was mostly logical, with some random curveballs. One of my members had more of a sci-fi storytelling style. They introduced the portals, xenomorphs, and spaceships. Another player was also more on the logical side, but was very good with the details, and adding some flair with accents. It was, overall, a fun experience.

Ultimate Werewolf

In the first week of class, we played Ultimate Werewolf. I was already familiar with the game, but I have never played the physical version before. I used to play the game in my teen years on my phone with some random strangers. There were less characters, but I definitely remember a seer. No sorceress though. I think the hardest part about the game, online and physical, was that there was no way to hint at who could or could not be a werewolf. So the real massacre was during the voting rounds. One difference between the online version, however, was that you could not vote for anybody (so no one was voted out). Meaning there was a better chance of figuring out who a werewolves were.

It’s a fun but sometimes frustrating game. If you like logic, then this game might make you rage because no one has a good reason for voting you out. You talk to much, you get voted out. You breath too much, you get voted out. You kinda just have to except it. I also think this game is best played with a lot of players. Although it can get pretty boring for those who are dead or voted out early on. You can only watch until one side wins. But an interesting thing I learned about leadership is mob mentality. I thought it was interesting how a leader is not a leader until one person joins them, then the rest follow suit. In reality, it’s the second follower that holds the power (although if that’s the case then would you say the leader is in the second follower?).

I found the game pretty hard since I am no risk-taker. I couldn’t vote anyone out unless I knew they had something to be voted out for. So most of the game I just watched as other people voted. But by doing this I realized something very interesting. Humans in the game are kind of bad. The story of the game is that werewolves enter the town and start murdering villagers and to protect the town, the villagers kill? banish? 1 person from the town. But ya’ll couldn’t do a buddy buddy system or something? You couldn’t be each other’s witnesses, you just go back to your home alone and wait to see who is killed the next day then banish someone for being too quiet? I don’t know, it just seemed like the villagers just wanted an excuse to get rid of their least favorite neighbors. I guess fear can beat the best in us.

TIME Stories Week 2

This week was the second week of TIME Stories and I don’t think I enjoyed it more than last week. To start the game we had a player who wasn’t in class the previous week, so we had to try to catch him up with what we’ve done, what we are currently doing, and what we’re planning to do; I’m not sure we did that good of a job on that. We then reset our time almost immediately after starting the game and started a new round. We were able to get a lot of what we wanted to do accomplished, but we kept running into dead ends or doing things we definitely didn’t need to be doing, like unlocking certain locations twice because we thought it might lead us somewhere else. I also died this round, because I flipped a card that made me immediately lose one health point which was all I had. I think this game would be much more fun if it was played in one sitting (which is obviously almost impossible for our class) because once we forgot what we had done previously and why the game became a little frustrating.

I think there were two equally difficult things we ran into while playing the game this week, deciding we needed to go to every place to finish the story, and not seeing each other’s items. Starting with going to every place, every time a new place was revealed we decided that we needed to go there to solve the puzzle even though at one point we had all the items we needed to solve it. This leads to the problem of not seeing each other’s items. It turns out one of the pieces we needed to solve the puzzle was slightly hidden within another item in the game. This wouldn’t have been so much of a problem except that the person who had the item didn’t notice the puzzle piece, and because we weren’t looking at each other’s items neither did anyone else. Once we were told to look at that item so we could solve the puzzle we still had an issue, or at least I believe it was an issue. The problem was that because there was only one of each puzzle piece and they needed to be examined really closely, the rest of us not solving it (especially me since I was the furthest away from the items) didn’t entirely know what was going on and how to help. For example, there was one phrase we really needed to know to solve the puzzle, and while I remembered it and considered it might help, I didn’t announce it because from my viewpoint it didn’t look like it would help with the puzzle.

While the leadership topic I discussed last week still applies, I think the fact that we had someone who hadn’t been there the week prior allowed for a unique leadership experience; making sure everyone feels included even if it is their first time coming to a club meeting. This idea is somehting that is sometimes really hard to do since people usually have distinct groups already established. But, I feel that to be an effective leader it is something that needs to be done because without it that person may be confused and less likely to attend future meetings. Unfortunately, I think we did a fairly bad job at this, so it is definitely something I’ll need to improve on in the future. However, doing a bad job allowed me to see how that person was a bit confused and flustered, which led to my noticing that this is something I need to improve on. (I do think this was harder in the game than it would be in other settings because the people that were there last week didn’t completely remember what we had done either).

GOTW: TIME Stories

At first, I didn’t understand why someone wanted to change their entire final project because of this game, but now I definitely do. I really enjoyed this game and can’t wait to play it next week. I think the mechanics are super fun as well as the content. I do think the hardest part is working against the clock, which I assume is the point, specifically when you go to areas and can’t unlock certain cards. For example, my group went to the Dormitory too early and couldn’t unlock one of the cards. So, we had planned to go back but ultimately wasted our time on something that ended up not helping us in the slightest. Otherwise, I think our team is doing really well in the game. We’ve been able to unlock a lot of things and had the right items to do so, and were even able to solve a fairly difficult puzzle (like a legit puzzle where you have to put pieces next to each other, not the entire puzzle of the game) in one try at the very very end of class.

I think leadership is fairly obvious in this game, as you’re acting as a team. It tends to be that one person decides where to go and then the rest of the team either agrees or disagrees and the game goes on. I think it’s also important to note that the leadership in this game feels a lot more like a club’s exec team than it has in other games we’ve played. For most of the other games, even if you’re on a team, you end up working alone to achieve the goal. However, this game has a team of four people (ironically the size of a typical exec team in the clubs I attend) working together to meet one goal. Also, it’s pretty representative of each person having their own strengths that need to be drawn on to help the team.

I think I also was able to find a good team that meshed together well, which is also an important part of finding an exec team in clubs. No one necessarily is attempting to take charge (unless they have information that they can’t tell others) and instead, everyone is working together. There have also been no disagreements or fighting among the team members, which works really well for achieving the goal. We also work together super well. I said earlier that we were able to solve a puzzle on the first try and the only way we did that was by listening to each other’s input, working towards the same goal, and using each of our strengths.

Compare and Contrast: Ultimate Werewolf and Blood on the Clocktower

Ultimate Werewolf and Blood on the Clocktower (BOTC) are two social deduction games that we have played over the last semester that share quite a bit in common mechanically. However, both have distinct differences that set them apart in many ways. Both games utilize a day and night cycle in which two teams attempt to meet the necessary criteria to bring their team to victory. For Ultimate Werewolf, the townsfolk try to catch and kill the werewolves before they can kill the whole town. Similarly, BOTC has the town attempting to catch a demon and its minions before they can murder the whole town. During the day, the town votes to execute one person in an attempt to kill a member of the evil team. During the night cycle of both games, the werewolf/demon faction chooses one townsperson to kill. Each game utilizes unique hidden roles to give players an edge for their team.

            While these two games are both similar, each presents itself differently and provides unique experiences for its players. For example, while both Ultimate Werewolf and BOTC use hidden roles, BOTC makes sure that each role is unique and has an ability of its own. In Ultimate Werewolf, many of the players are simply townspeople with no addition abilites. I see this as both a positive and a negative. For one, I believe the lack of an ability could make the game less exciting for players. However, I also think this requires players to then utilize other skills in the game to make up for that. On the flip side, everyone having an ability makes things very interesting in BOTC. This is especially the case because of how BOTC works. What roles are in play is unknown, unlike in Werewolf. It is harder to tell if someone is lying about their role. Not even to mention that the demon gets to see what roles are not in use. Another difference between Ultimate Werewolf and Blood on the Clocktower is that BOTC relies on private conversations before each day’s execution. This feature I really enjoyed. It allowed you to secretly communicate and construct alliances way better than you could in Ultimate Werewolf. For Werewolf, you are largely limited to communicating with those near you, if not to the entire group at large. Another difference that I was particularly fond of in BOTC was how death was handled in the game. Unlike in Ultimate Werewolf, you don’t just sit around once you die. You can still communicate and participate just as you had when you were alive. The only caveat was that you could no longer use your ability. Additionally, you were allowed to vote one more time during the course of the game. A vote beyond the grave. One thing that I also felt made a distinct difference between these two games was the hidden special mechanics that BOTC had (the red herring and the drunk). Both added some nuance and intrigue to roles, making it harder for the townsfolk to win. Ultimate Werewolf does not have special conditions like this. Finally, the biggest difference I noticed in the games was the role of the Gamemaster. While Ultimate Werewolf largely only had the gamemaster playing a passive role, the gamemaster of BOTC was an active participant in the story of the game. They’re role is to make the game as interesting as possible and to try to get it to come down to the wire in the last few rounds. I really liked this, as it made the game feel more alive.

            Overall, I really like both games. The social deduction genre has been a favorite of mine for years, and while my experience with these specific iterations has been limited, I found myself enjoying them both while playing with the class. I like the differing roles, especially those of BOTC. Each time you play will result in a vastly different experience from the last. I feel like this game is good for large groups of people. I did find Werewolf easier to pick up, but that is largely because there are some more complex mechanics in BOTC. From what I have seen, the the game is evenly balanced from round to round, with one side never really being too far above the opposing team just by default. Additionally, I really enjoy games where I can act both cooperatively and competitively. Working as a team in a game is just so satisfying.

I didn’t find many negatives in either game, though I did feel that BOTC had more replayability compared to Ultimate Werewolf. It expanded on and filled in any of the gaps that I felt Werewolf had. Not only did every player get a unique ability with their role, but the game felt a lot more secretive and strategic. Every person had a role to play. I also really liked the role of the GM and dead players. The GM felt more like an active participant who had an effect on the outcome of the game as opposed  to just a neutral party who facilitated it. Additionally, players were still important throughout the game, even after dying. This meant that unlike Ultimate Werewolf, there was still an incentive to remain tuned in to the game. While this didn’t have much of an effect on our gameplay, I also thought I should add that BOTC has additional role sheets to spice things up if it began to feel stale. Overall, both games were a lot of fun – but for me BOTC simply did it better.