Greetings, Tagsters!
This week’s 5a7 marks the first entry in the ‘Good Game Series!’ It seemed fitting to start the series with a bang – both literally and figuratively – and as such, we’re going to begin with the successfully kickstarted social deduction hidden role game, Two Rooms and a Boom. Unlike many other hidden role games, this one has no need for a moderator; all participants may engage in the deduction and intrigue of play. Using two physically separated rooms to interrupt flow of information, players are divided into two teams, and then randomly lumped into two groups of equal size. With one such group in each room, players collectively nominate a number of ‘hostages’ from among their number who will be forced to go to the other room at a predetermined time. Over the course of 5 such transfers, it is up to the Blue Team’s players to prevent a special teammate of theirs – ‘The President’ – from finishing the game in the same room as the Red Team’s special player, ‘The Bomber.’ Given that none of the players have any idea who is who, or how they can trust anyone else without revealing too much information, Two Rooms and a Boom presents a wickedly difficult scenario that players must use their wits, intuition, and powers of persuasion to overcome!
The game can support anywhere between 6-30 players, and so we should be able to accommodate everyone who would like to try the game. The tentative schedule for the evening will see us teaching the game to the 5a7 attendees, shortly after which (around 5:45 or so), we’ll start the game. After the smoke has cleared, we’ll reconvene in the TAG lab to have a roundtable discussion about the game based on our experiences with it and in relation to other social deduction games such as Werewolf, The Resistance, Saboteur, or the indispensable Battlestar Galactica.
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Or, at least that’s the plan, anyway. We might find ourselves so morbidly eager to keep playing that all possibility of discussion will go out the window after the first climactic bang!
In either case, a most conflagratory time is sure to be had by all, and I look forward to seeing everyone there!
What: Good Game Series #1: Two Rooms and a Boom
When: Thursday, September 25th, from 5-7pm
Where: Centre for Technoculture, Art, and Games – EV 11.655, 1515 St. Catherine W.
Who: All are Welcome… As long as they can handle a high-stakes game of intrigue, espionage, and explosive assassination attempts!
This player has not learned to appreciate the value of subtlety