The Problem With Social Deduction Board Games

I’m a social gamer. If I am indifferent toward a game, or even if I actively dislike it, but everyone else is having a great time, it’s likely that I am too.

The reverse is true as well. A game that I love, but that lands like a stinky sock on a dinner table with my group, will probably end up being a game I’m not as big a fan of.

This isn’t revelatory stuff. We’re social creatures, and board gaming is a communal hobby (with some exceptions, granted). But there are times when games bring these facts into sharper focus.

“With the Right Group…”

Play enough games and you’ll hear this phrase thrown around a lot. “That’s a great game, but you have to have the right group for it.” Or similar iterations.

If we scrutinize the phrase, it begins to sound tautological. Of course you have to find the right group. That’s true of any game, right?

Well, yes. Sort of. What I’ve found, though, is that this is more true of some games than others.

How Universality Affects Board Game Publishing

Let’s take that idea from the last section and blow it up to an entire hobby.

The rise of the Eurogame genre shouldn’t have surprised anyone. It was a (perhaps unconscious) reaction to the fact that a lot of strategy games at the time either featured player elimination, or functional elimination in the form of being defeated and weak but not technically eliminated.

If everyone is on board with these possibilities, it can still be wildly fun. But other times, it’s a bad experience for someone.

“No one gets eliminated” was a hallmark of early Euro games. Now it’s taken for granted but is still a core tenet of the genre.

But we’ve gone further than that in more recent years. For many games and publishers, it’s not enough that no one be eliminated. Now we have catch up mechanics that allow for comparatively poor early play and still give everyone a chance to win. The goal is similar: keep everyone invested throughout the duration of the game.

It’s not a bad intent. In fact, many games benefit from this trend in design. But it’s also marginalized other types of games that don’t – or can’t – rely on similar structures.

Social Deduction: Making Your Own Fun

I’m a fan of social deduction games, but at a certain point I started to find myself enjoying them less often. Why was this, I asked. So I began to investigate.

An instructive session for me was a game of One Night Ultimate Werewolf, where I was given a bit of a dud role. I knew no information, so my ability to deduce was limited. Or was it? I quickly started talking, saying pretty much anything, and prodding at various players to try to get information. Eventually, some apples started to shake loose from the tree, and by the end of the round, I felt every bit as invested as if I had had a more active role.

Months later, I played it again and the game fell entirely flat with the group. A couple complained that they had been dealt the Villager role and so they had nothing to do.

When people say “with the right group,” this kind of thing is Exhibit A. But I think it goes beyond that.

To be clear, there’s no fault here. Those players weren’t wrong in their indifference to their role (and to the game as a whole). But it showed a stark contrast in play style, and also (to me) highlights a weakness of social deduction games.

Levels of Mastery in Gaming

If you’re just learning a game, you can usually still lurch forward through the game and have a reasonable outcome. You might not win, but you’ll be learning the game’s mechanical interactions and forming strategies.

Social deduction games are generally about the play that happens above the table and outside of the mechanical structure. There’s no guarantee you’ll come away from your first game or two with a better understanding of how to thrive in the game, because it requires the social dynamic to work at all.

So for those who are used to seeing how a game works and slowly unfurling its depths, that won’t work here.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that so many games exist now. Few of us are able to even remember the rules to all the games we own, let alone achieve some level of mastery in them. One friend of mine owns so many games that he frequently has to plan what he’s playing days in advance so that he can relearn a game to be able to teach it to others.

Eventually an initially-silent player would start to figure out a social deduction game and interact more. But they may never get that second or third chance, or it might be months or years after their first time.

The Problem With Social Deduction Games

Some gamers don’t like the yelling and finger-pointing that frequently occurs in social deduction games. Others don’t like being asked to lie, or think they’re bad at it.

These are valid reasons not to like a game. And they already make social deduction a bit less universal in its potential appeal for gamers. This is what is usually being referred to when we talk about social deduction and say “you need the right group.”

I think there’s one more level to it, though, because even if those elements aren’t onerous to a gamer, social deduction requires that players be able to create their own fun. But this usually requires at least a reasonable understanding of both the rules and the strategies those rules imply.

So even a social gamer may struggle to create their own fun due to having not fully absorbed the strategy of the whole thing.

In all, my observations here aren’t even about gamer types so much. Even social deduction fans can flounder in social deduction games. Rather, it’s a mismatch of how to easily enjoy the genre vs. how modern publishing and collecting works in many hobbyist social circles.

I loved One Night Werewolf initially because I got to play it dozens of times with the same core group. We had a metagame beyond the game that deepened the experience immeasurably.

It’s true that this can occur with any game, and some of the best fun you’ll have is after dozens of plays. But I struggle less in other genres with the early sessions of a game.

Problems and Solutions

There’s another type of gamer I haven’t mentioned here, one that doesn’t let silly things like strategic understanding get in the way of creating chaos. It’s possible to have fun in social deduction games by just turning your brain off and creating as much chaos as possible.

It’s fun. I have no issue with this style of play, and find it hilarious. But it also won’t be for everyone.

Also for clarity, I still enjoy social deduction games. But more so than with other styles of games, I’m finding it difficult to get the most out of the experience. This is a shame, but I think it makes sense given the underlying causes I mentioned above.

In terms of how to deal with this: When teaching, I think it’s worth explaining not just the rules but also some basic strategies in the game to first-time players as you’re teaching it to them. They may not have the luxury of discovering those options for themselves. So when I teach social deduction games (and occasionally other games as well) it’s often a low-level strategy primer in addition to a rules explanation. This allows them to be onboarded into the session more smoothly.

It’s not a catch-all, and I still find myself playing social deduction games less than I used to. But when I do get the chance, I want to make the most of my time with the game.