What Are Social Deduction Games?

Social Deduction games are games where you generally have two groups. One group is the “bad” group who are trying to complete some objective. Sabotage missions, kill the deputy, whatever it might be. The “good” group is trying to figure out who the “bad” group is and deal with them.

To expound on my issue, most games give you your rolls and then immediately, before anything else happens, you talk about who is good and bad. There is 0 information to go on, and unless someone is bad at lying. So, you spend a few minutes, do something that gives some information and repeat the process. But let’s stop on the negatives, what do I look for is a better question because I do have some I like.

What Do I Look For in a Social Deduction Game

1. Mechanics
2. Information
3. Theme

Mechanics

This might surprise some people to see the order of the list. When I do make these lists, I try and put the more important ones towards the front. And honestly, for social deduction, mechanics for me are very important. I talk about the blind guessing as a negative in the games. And with good mechanics, you don’t need to start out with that. It gives you some interesting things to think about. Some games give you a bunch to start with, and some games give you nothing, but having more than just guessing at the beginning is key for me.

Information

That first one ties into information. I don’t like games that just give you limited information. If in mafia Tony is killed and I know I’m not part of the mafia, that doesn’t help me narrow it down. It just means that Tony wasn’t. I want the information to be meaningful and to build over time. The longer a game or round goes, the more information I should have available to me. Not always making it easier but to at least make more informed decisions. Too many of these games provide double blind information which isn’t that useful.

Theme

Theme really does matter in these games too. Let’s just use an example for this one, spies trying to infiltrate and sabotage an evil corporation, cool theme. Avalon where some people are bad, way less cool. I love Arthurian legend games, Tainted Grail, but The Resistance Avalon is not nearly as good a theme as the regular Resistance has. Mechanics might be the same, but theme makes a difference.

Are All Criteria Equally Important?

For me, theme is probably the least important. If the game has good mechanics and information the theme matters a little bit less. Like I said, I really want more going on than just sitting around a table accusing people. If you give that to me in a package where it makes sense for mafia, monsters, or whatever it might be, I’m probably going to be fine with the theme.

Let’s Do An Example

So we’re going to go with one that I do like in Deception: Murder in Hong Kong. But let’s see why and how it meets my criteria.

Mechanics

The main mechanic of the game actually is just for one player, the forensic scientist. There has been a murder, as the name would suggest. And one player, the forensic scientist is sending up reports to help the detectives figure out the correct murder weapon and piece of evidence. They, however, are not allowed to speak, they just give out a clue that might be a location from a list of locations or the age of the victim.

Information

The clue giving works because with every new report the players get new information. However, the information isn’t always going to be ideal. The age of the victim, well, if they were killed with a school supply, that might help us. But it also might not be useful. And the forensic scientist doesn’t get to pick out which reports they send up, that is already determined. Plus the murder (and possibly accomplice) will use that information to try and throw all the investigators onto other weapons and evidence as they go. And everyone is doing that as more information comes out.

Theme

Solving a murder is a fun theme. Generally, though, I like that theme in deduction. Here it works well in social deduction because, well, there is an element of deduction worked into this as well. I don’t know that the theme is amazingly tied to the mechanics, but it’s one that sets up a fun scenario.

Maybe what I like is social deduction games that have a bit of deduction to them as well. But this one is really somewhat social as you try and read who might be lying. If people are directing away from a person what that might mean. So the social aspect around the table is important.

Will This Work For You?

Probably not. Why, because most people who really like social deduction games don’t care that the game aspect might be lacking slightly. They are there for the banter around the table. I don’t mind the banter around the table, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong has some amazing banter. I just want the banter to mean something. So, if you are like me where you don’t like most social deduction games, maybe checkout Deception: Murder in Hong Kong or Grimm Masquerade. But for a lot of gamers, things like The Resistance and Werewolf, and One Night Ultimate Vampire are going to be great games.

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Storage

Now this depends a whole lot on your space. There are a lot of good storage solutions out there. The most common one you’ll hear about are the Kallax shelves form Ikea. That is the cubby shelf that I have in the background on my videos and you’ll see them around a lot. But they aren’t the only option. Growing up we had games stored in a trunk. People put them in a closet or in a book shelf.

Another common solution is basically bakery shelving for bread. This works well if you have a lot of games, a hard floor, and maybe a little less room than you’d like. It’d allow you to roll them around. The rolling around means that you could keep them packed up tighter to only have to roll them out at times. Like I said, a good situation if you have less room to keep more games available.

There is a reason why I do like them out of a closet. I have a few of them in the closet, but those are harder to see, that means that they’d get played less. I know I have a few games in my closet right now that I need to get played, and I even have a doors for the closet opened. But really, this article is about sorting, so let’s get to that.

How Do You Sort Your Board Games?

So, this is maybe a bigger question. For people, storage is often set with how your place is set-up, but sorting games is definitely it’s own animal. And there are a lot of different theories as to how to sort. Let’s run through a few of them.

By Color

This one is a little bit silly, but looks really cool. When you sort by color you get kind of a gradient that flows throughout your shelf. However, this is what I’d consider about the least useful way to sort your games. I think to actually use it you’d need to create an index book. So you’d need to create an alphabetical index to find where games are. That seems like unnecessary work.

By Size

This one doesn’t have a cool a look, but works well for some people who have to stack on shelves more. You want to put your larger stuff down lower so it’s both easier to get off the shelf and balance. This way again could use an index, but I remember the size of a game better than the color of the box. But with a Kallax shelf this doesn’t make as much sense. The cubbies allow you to store vertically or horizontally.

By Mechanics

This has been the one that I’ve kind of gone with, well this and the next one. But sorting by mechanic works pretty well because it gives you some flexibility for adding games. If there is room in the deck builder area, you don’t have to place it by a certain color, size, or letter. The downside is that some games use a number of mechanics. Dune: Imperium and Lost Ruins of Arnak are two examples of this. Those two games are deck building and worker placement. So which category do you put it in?

By Theme

Another way that I kind of do is by theme. So all the Lord of the Rings games in one area, all the Lovecraftian games in another. This is similar to the mechanics option, but depending on the type of gamer you are, this might work better. I tend to have a number of games for a given theme. So by theme works pretty well for me.

By Grouping/Expansion

This one is a bit like the previous two. But let’s think about it this way. Tainted Grail is an adventure game with a grim dark fantasy setting. I can fit all of it in a single Kallax cube. I don’t need it to be next to the other adventure games or the other grim dark games. Since it all fits by itself it goes in it’s own cube. Dice Throne doesn’t go next to King of Tokyo though the mechanics can be similar because I have a lot of Dice Throne, put it all together on a shelf. The downside is that you just kind of need to know.

By Alphabet

Finally, we have alphabetical. This one actually has some more issues than it might seem. Mainly that you need spaces around each letter. It ebbs and flows as I add and get rid of games what letter has the most games. So I’d need to keep a fair amount of space by most of the letters.

So What Will I Go With?

That’s the tough question. Probably some combination of, again, by mechanic, theme, and grouping. And even with that I’m going to then inventory where stuff are in terms of cubes. On Board Game Geek you can add in inventory notes, so I’ll make a system for determining which spot they are in. Why do it that way, because it requires the least adjustment over time. I can leave gaps where I want and create gaps as I sell and it doesn’t matter as much.

What is right for you though, that’s a good question that you’ll have to decide. I do think that theme or mechanic are really nice for giving you flexibility in how you leave space for a growing collection. It doesn’t have as much of a specific spot where to put stuff. You just have an area where the game needs to go.

But how do you sort? Are they just generally shoved into a closet or do you have a particular way?

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