Category Archives: Assignments

GOTW: Voices in my Head

I enjoyed Voices in my Head a lot, but this may be because it wasn’t the most complex game for me. During the game, I was able to immediately take control of the planning section, and it wasn’t taken away from me, so I was able to pick up a strategy card every round. Because of this, I knew what every influence token on the board was, and therefore knew which way the jurors were leaning. I also got fairly lucky when controlling different parts of Guy’s brain in that I almost always got to do something with the innocent/guilty tokens or the influence tokens at the end of the round.

However, I think the hardest part of this game was not knowing exactly what everyone wanted to do, even when I knew how the game was playing out. This showed specifically in the very last round of our game where a guilty token was placed on one of the jurors and instead of completely winning the game I tied with another person. I think this ties into leadership really well because even if you know everything that is going on, one person could do something that goes against your goals and completely change what is happening. Likewise, during the game, I had the selfish role and therefore was completely alone in wanting the jury to vote more innocent than guilty. This is what leadership can feel like, everyone else may want to achieve a certain goal or do something completely different than what they are meant to be doing, and you are left alone to try to achieve your goal.

In the end, I really enjoyed this game, possibly because I enjoy social deduction games, but I’m not sure if I would’ve enjoyed it as much if I didn’t know what way each juror was voting the whole time. I think that element of not knowing is a bit scary and the idea that someone else could be doing things to the game that would make you lose, without you knowing, could make you feel helpless. I think this game would be more fun with more people playing, because it would allow for all sides, those wanting a guilty decision and those wanting an innocent decision, to have more people working together to achieve their goal.

GOTW Reflection #3: Fiasco Week 2

Week four, our class continued playing the gm-less roleplay game Fiasco. For game mechanics, please refer to my previous post. This week, my group finished the first act, weaseled our way through the tilt, soared through act 2, and ended with a blast of an aftermath. The tilt is the turning point of the story, where everything starts to go awry. It is probably here that I should note that one of our players was unfortunately unable to make it to this session. Our team collectively decided that their character had been murdered by Edwardo, who proceeded to gain amnesia about his crimes and build a snowman to replace him. During the tilt, secrets were spilt, and Penny the penguin was saved from the iceberg. During act 2, the three remaining characters (Pierro, George, and Edwardo), tried to figure out what happened to the other player’s character. At the same time, it was revealed that George had stolen Pierro’s “Top Pilot” trophy on the day Pierro graduated from flight school. Not only that, but it was revealed that George had a long lost twin! Slowly making our way through Act 2, we try to put together the pieces to what happened to the absent player’s character. Making our way through several more scenes, we each collect more black and white dice that would end up deciding our fate. Going into the aftermath, I had largely accumulated white dice, having only received one black dice throughout the duration of the game. In the aftermath you roll your small pile of dice to determine what outcome your character faces. I ended up scoring pretty high on my white dice with an 11. Sounds pretty good. However, that score really only left Pierro with a neutral ending. This ended up being fairly good compared to the absent player and Edwardo however. The snowman spontaneously burst into flames, while Edwardo tragically died in a helicopter crash after successfully smuggling the penguins off Ross island. Pierro revealed himself to actually be George’s long lost brother, out to get revenge after George stole his idol’s (the real Pierro) trophy. In the end, the two brothers reconcile and live happily ever after.

I believe I struggled less during this week’s game session. I think this is because we already had gotten comfortable with the game in the last session and had a firmer understanding of the mechanics. I’d say the hardest part was wrapping it up in a way everyone found enjoyable. It was hard to predict how the other two players wanted things to pan out, and with one player absent there were some loose ends. For that reason I felt a little bad for Edwardo’s character, who was more firmly connected to the missing player’s character. As I said last week, I would play this game with my friends Roai and Korben. It just seems like a game they would enjoy. Plus, I feel like the flow would be better with people I know and have roleplayed with before.

When it came to leadership, I mostly saw it in how we wrapped up the scenes. We each started taking a firmer role in how we wanted each scene for our character to go. However, there was also an openness to negotiate which was very nice. At the end though, I feel like we all individually got to lead and determine the outcome for our characters, which was nice. I like this game. I would play it again.

GOTW Reflection #3: Fiasco Week 1

Week three, we began playing the gm-less roleplay game Fiasco. For this game, you have no game board. All you need to play the game Fiasco is the main rulebook, some note cards, some dice, and an imagination. You and your friends (or anyone you decide to play with) will start the game with four six-sided black dice and four six-sided white dice. These dice determine the outcomes of a scene that you create. The goal of the game is to create a story that usually involves some sort of crime or dastardly deeds. With little guidance, the players must establish who they are, what they want, and how each of them is associated with each other. The game is split into two main acts, the tilt events, and the aftermath. By the end of a game of Fiasco, individuals gather eight fateful dice that determine whether they are victorious or if they go out in a burst of flames. 

            Our class played the game Fiasco over the course of two weeks. The first week we played it, we were tasked with attempting to finish the first act. I played in a group of four. At first, it was a struggle to get started. Due to there being few rules for how to start, we needed a bit of guidance. After choosing our setting, The Ice, we began to create our characters. My character was Pierro. He started off as a pilot who had crashed on Ross Island after running out of gas. He was bitter enemies with another character, George. On the other hand, he was indebted to another character, Edwardo, for saving him from the crash. We only made it through four scenes, but they were all quite amusing. Pierro was convinced to help Edwardo and his partner in crime to go save a penguin who had floated off on an iceberg. They help him fix his helicopter, and plan to find the penguin once they can get some gas into it. Little did Pierro know, they only wanted to save the penguin in order to smuggle it off the island. By the end of the class session, we were starting to get the feel of how the game worked. 

            The hardest part of the game was definitely getting started. Getting used to the mechanics was not easy. I am far more used to games with a firmer structure, so this was new. Even so, once we had our characters made, we all seemed to flow easily between each other. I believe we did a pretty good job, and we all had a bit of fun with it. I think I definitely needed to watch myself though, as I did find myself trying to guide people so that the story would make sense cohesively. Considering the lack of rules, it made it hard to know exactly what might happen. That was both thrilling and scary in a way. I think it opened up for a lot of laughs for our group. So far, I definitely think I like this game. Though, I think it would be more enjoyable if I played it with people, I know a bit better. For that reason, I would recommend this game to my friends Roai and Korben. We have all played roleplay games together before and have great chemistry when it comes to those types of games. I will certainly have to try it out with them sometimes. Especially Korben, he would love the chaos this game could foster. 

            As I implied before, I like games with more structure. The lack of rules made me feel a bit more anxious. Even so it did not ruin the experience for me, as I really do love the roleplay aspect of it. I am really excited to see how the story progresses next week. 

            When it came to leadership, I could see it lightly in each scenario. One could choose to set up the scene or give that power to the other players. For those taking on the role of creating the scene, they were taking on a leadership role. They would choose who and what was going on in a scene, like a director would. However, I also saw leadership in other ways. My group would usually vote for how a scene would end. Usually, when one person proposes a certain outcome (decided by giving the directing player a black or white die) the other voting players would agree. For myself, I often found myself leading in small ways, by guiding towards a more cohesive timeline for the story. At times, I felt bad for doing so, as I did not want to limit the other players’ creativity. Though I know this simply comes from my desire to create a storyline that can be followed. I do believe that this personal value of mine had an effect on how the game progressed. I also think it had an effect on how I played my character as well. Overall, it was a good time, and I definitely would like to play it again.

GOTW Week 3: Fiasco Reflection

This week we started playing Fiasco. I really enjoyed this game, even though it was a bit confusing at first. The most confusing part for me was setting up the game. I think this was because although the video and book tried to explain it well, the general categories being their own dice and each detail within those categories being another was hard to understand. Once we were set up however, I thought starting the scenes was the hardest part. This was difficult for me mainly because it required me to both think on the spot and instruct other people what to do without knowing if they were comfortable in the scene; we did tend to just place ourselves in the scene and either ask if people wanted to join us or clarify beforehand that this scene was something that needed to happen. I also think ending the scenes is a bit difficult, just because there may have been a certain way you wanted the scene to go but upon receiving the dice decision you would have to pivot and make something completely new up.

Although, I do think the setup of the scenes is how the game relates to leadership. Not only does it require you to make on the spot decisions, but you need to direct others on what to do at the beginning of the scene. I also think the entire game is a good indication of how leadership needs to be collaborative; if only one person was telling everyone else how to play the game it would continue to go in circles and the plot wouldn’t go anywhere. We also had a lot of input during the scenes by people both in and out of the scenes. For example, we were doing a flashback scene and realized the outcome wouldn’t have matched up with what we had previously acted out, so we each shared how we would direct the scene to account for the timeline. Likewise, the decision that needed to be made after the black or white dice was chosen also could relate to leadership. Many times when you’re in leadership positions something might not go exactly as you had planned and you need to change what you’re doing quickly and make up something completely different.

As previously mentioned, I really enjoyed this game, even though I was quite nervous at first. I’ve never played any roleplaying games before, so I was anxious about what would happen. I think the first thing that eased my nerves was the paper we filled out for what we did or didn’t want to happen. It made me feel much better that no one was going to do something I wouldn’t be comfortable within the game and that we were all on the same page. I think what I liked most about the game was that our group focused much more on having fun than anything else. Our game so far has taken place in a penguin colony in Antarctica which I think helped to set a moderately unserious tone in the game, as I know the gameplay could turn very serious quickly, and heard it doing so in other groups around us. For example, I think the most serious thing that happened during our entire game was that one of our favorite penguins started floating away into the sea. I also liked that the connections you have with people were predetermined and you didn’t have to try to make something up. One of my connections is that my character is a smuggler with another character, and being in a penguin colony kind of helped to determine what was going to happen with that. Another connection I have is the soul connection with someone who has a crashed helicopter, so it was pretty simple to figure out that my character was somehow going to rescue theirs from the helicopter. Overall I’ve really enjoyed where the game has gone so far and can’t wait to continue next week!

Ultimate Werewolf Reflection

Last week we played the game Ultimate Werewolf. To play this game each person in the group is given a card that assigns them a certain role that they will be playing. Each of these characters has a special ability, except for the townspeople who don’t have an ability. There are two groups that people can be a part of, the evil team (werewolves and the sorceress in our case) or the good team (everyone else). Both teams are trying to win; the evil team is trying to keep the werewolves alive long enough to have equal numbers with the good team, and the good team is trying to kill the werewolves.

One of the hardest parts of this game for me was the town meetings. I think this was because we had to kill someone each night, but we had little evidence of anyone. Due to this lack of evidence, I often didn’t know what to say or felt a little bad killing anyone for random reasons. I think another generally difficult part of this game is remembering what each role does. During the meetings I often found myself forgetting what roles were even in the game and what each of the roles did.

In terms of leadership, I think this game is a good example of leadership because each day someone had to take charge to begin accusations. It also shows the importance of the first follower, as we discussed in the video we watched. Without that first follower the leader could’ve looked a little crazy, but as soon as someone else joined in more and more people would follow the leader, which eventually led to a decision.

I did enjoy this game, and I know my sister would enjoy it as well because she likes the game Mafia, which is very similar. However, I was a little nervous at first because I was the werewolf. When the game was being described I really wanted to be a townsperson because I wouldn’t have to make random decisions. I often let the other werewolves take charge because I didn’t always know who to kill. I do think this game would be way more fun with people I’m more comfortable with, because I wouldn’t feel as bad taking people I knew out of the game compared to people I had never spoken to.

Compare/Contrast: Werewolf and Blood on the Clocktower

The games Werewolf and Blood on the Clocktower are both excellent social deception games, though they both offer unique upsides and downsides to prospective gamers who may be considering playing them. Werewolf, at its core, is a game that does not need unique materials to be played, and I have played it on some occasions using a deck of cards to assign roles, as well as having the moderator choose roles secretly on other occasions. I learned the game of Werewolf around the time I began middle school, and this lack of any barrier to entry was very beneficial, as it made the game easy to set up and play. It was also quite easy to bring new players into this game and teach it.

Blood on the Clocktower is similarly easy to teach, though it definitely does take more time for a newcomer to really understand and get a handle on it. It does have a high price for obtaining the game, but its increased complexity and modularity makes it valuable for those who want more of these things in a social deception game. It can still be played simply at its base scripts as well though, these are still well balanced. One major benefit to playing BOTC over Werewolf is player interaction. In Werewolf, there is often decreased player interaction due to two major differences between the games. Once a player is eliminated from Werewolf, they do not impact the game, and, in Werewolf, players can not speak privately to others in the game who are not their neighbors, making interactions with these players less likely.

Although Werewolf does not require complexity to function, there are variants which add many additional roles that add more depth to the game, and there does exist a Legacy version of the game, which does not exist for BOTC. If players enjoy this campaign style of playing where choices in one game impact the next, they would have to make their own custom rules for BOTC, where there already is a premade version available for Werewolf. In more complex variants of Werewolf, there are additions of roles that would be similar to BOTC’s minions and outsiders, though BOTC never has additional demons like Werewolf has multiple werewolves, except in certain custom scripts.

I would definitely recommend Werewolf as something a person new to social deception games should try, as I would recommend that they also try playing BOTC afterwards. From this experience, a person could choose which style they prefer. If they are interested in more party games or word games, there are many variants of Werewolf that have these elements added. The spin off games people have made of it scratch entirely different niches from BOTC, Werewords and One Night Werewolf are both great games that are not currently replicated with a connection to BOTC.

Personally, I still enjoy both games, though I do not know so many people who hold this opinion once they play BOTC, I find many gamers will move on to what they perceive as the superior game. For a person who plays many games, the increased complexity of BOTC will certainly make it superior for replay value, but the simplicity of Werewolf will always make it valuable to me when the materials for BOTC are not available. And in the end, these games are more similar than different, they both are social deception games with unique player information that rely on team cooperation and leadership to dominate a voting phase which ultimately determines the outcome of the game. The game I ultimately prefer would have to be BOTC though when it is available, primarily for the reasons of player engagement, increased complexity, and the opportunity for a more deterministic solve as compared to Werewolf. This better chance of a solve is the result of another benefit of BOTC, that being, more information is given to individual players through each player always having unique roles. All of this adds up to a greater feeling of player agency which I have not seen surpassed in a social deception game of this kind.

Week one reflection: Ultimate Wolf

This game was a fun introduction game to the class. This game is similar to among us where there are 3 imposters, and the rest are villagers. The session we played in class was really fun and filled with people laughing with one another. While this was happening people was being called out for them being suspicious. This one moment in the session one of the wolfs was cursed where they were not able to speak that round. While this happened everyone was saying speak if you are not suspicious. So he was voted to be eliminated because of not speaking.

These are the time’s where the game can be unfair and funny at the same time, which makes it more interesting. For the game though that makes it more difficult is the fact of its nearly impossible to say that one person is a wolf or villager. Because their are no actions on the part of the wolves and no action of the villagers you cant be certain of who’s who. I would say this would be a big flaw because it would be very easy for the wolves to kill the villagers and get away from being voted by just agreeing with the majority and not speak up for anyone.

This has some ties to leadership in the fact of each time the “day” cycle would happen their was one person that would be kind of the voice for the group. This person would take on the role of the leader for that day. It would change some from day to day and everyone would listen. I know for me and two others what we did was listen to someone that said the first person that votes someone out was the guilty one so we would all go by this role. This person took on a leadership method and few others thought this sounded reasonable and joined him in it. But in all fairness this was a fun game that I believed everyone in class had a great time with and would recommend playing with a group of friends. Because it would be chaotic and people yelling at one another.

T.I.M.E Stories Reflection – Week 2

On April 20th our class had a choice to either dive deeper into the adventures of T.I.M.E Stories or to participate in free play. Although my group and I encountered many struggles during our first session the week before, we chose to challenge ourselves and continue playing T.I.M.E Stories. The scenario we played was the Asylum, and at the beginning of the round we had the opportunity to choose which character we would be playing with. None of us were able to see each character’s conditions and characteristics before choosing them, but after failing our mission once we were able to choose a different character to play with if we weren’t satisfied with our current conditions. The characters we used for the second round were: Madeleine – Anxiety attacks (me), Marie – Erotomania, Edith – Cannibalism, and Felix – Paranoia. I found this to be a very good combination of characters, especially during combat. During this game our party explored multiple rooms and fought some monsters while trying to find hints and leads on how to complete our mission. During the second round we only visited the rooms where we knew there would be items and passages that we needed to get in order to access other areas. Since we took a lot of notes on the previous round, this was not an issue. 

The hardest part about playing this game was to use all the information we gathered to solve the pentacles puzzle. Even though we took notes on what we deemed important, our group had a hard time figuring out what was missing. This might have happened because while we took notes on a lot of things, we failed to notice the smaller details that ended up being the key to solving the puzzle. This was definitely the longest and most complex game that we have played so far, however it was also the most fun and challenging. Being able to explore on our own accord and slowly putting the pieces of the story together was great. We had a good dynamic and we had fun trying to take different paths than the ones we had used before. 

This game ties into leadership in ways that the other games we played didn’t as much. Because there are many different mechanics and rules in T.I.M.E stories, we needed everyone to be attentive and for communication to be clear and effective. Because of that, each of us took on a leadership role and made sure that the aspect of the game that we were focusing on was taken care of. Note taking, collecting items, choosing the best paths for our group, strategizing which characters would be better together were some of the aspects that were divided between us, and this helped us work together as a well organized team. After playing this game I believe that my family would enjoy playing together because it takes a while and it is very engaging. I think that it could definitely become a regular part of game nights since there are many different scenarios. 

Ladies & Gentlemen Reflection

Last week (March 30th, 2023) our class traveled back in time to the Victorian era with the game Ladies and Gentlemen. There were two roles from which we could pick from – along with an extra role that was only used due to our uneven number of players. The first role was the Gentleman: By playing this role you commit to going to work everyday and making money by fulfilling contracts and selling items. The gentlemen should make as much money as they can to then satisfy their ladies’ wishes at the end of the day. The next role is the Lady: By playing this role you are given a number of shopping choices throughout the day. Your objective is to strategically find the best items and choose the dress and accessories that will make you look the best at the ball (at the end of the game – after six rounds). Once your choices have been made you are to showcase them to your husband (with little to no communication) in the hopes that he will use the money he earned to gift them to you. The extra role is the Courtesan: By playing this role you are a Lady who does not have a husband. Your objective is the same as the other ladies, but you must ask any of the gentlemen for gifts. If you are the best dressed of the ball, the gentleman that gave you the most elegance points (included in the item cards) wins with you. If you are the worst dressed, the gentleman that gave you the least amount of elegance points and his lady lose the game with you. 

The hardest part about playing this game (especially as one of the ladies) was the restriction of communication between partners. Even though the Ladies and the Gentlemen had to work together to win, it was not possible to share our individual strategies, and it seemed like we were playing two completely different games at the same time. In my case, I was looking to buy cheaper items, but to gain elegance points through my servant cards – since I didn’t want to miss the chance of getting items in case my gentleman wasn’t making enough money. Meanwhile, my gentleman was trying to accumulate as much money as he could to spend on the very last round, which I did not know about. Although it was a complex game to play, it was really interesting and fun to figure out. The satirical reference to the Victorian era was clever and done in a way that exposed many gender roles and expectations that have shaped our society. This game can definitely teach some lessons about gender disparity and gender roles, which are important topics to be aware of, especially when it comes to leadership. A good leader can be inclusive and empathetic, and putting yourself in a position that you are normally not in can help you understand someone’s context better. Being able to look at things from different perspectives and adapt accordingly can go a long way. 

In my opinion, I believe that my classmates from WGS courses would enjoy playing this game and discussing its context afterwards. This game can be a good conversation starter about gender roles then and now, and about gender inequality.