the state of lying

so at the start of the month, I posted a game design without having played it at all. i was happy with this state of affairs, and had no burning desire to make sure it "worked" or was "playable". and then to my surprise i found myself wanting to try it out. so here's some sketchy notes on how it has evolved (note this post might not make sense unless you go back and look at the previous one):

played at Now Play This, as written

it works! as in, it functions, one can play it end to end. it does drag on, though, getting through an entire deck of cards feels like too much. in the original design, i was mitigating against this by suggesting that you could play it in among other activities, do some social upping of the stakes mid-way. this didn't seem to happen, though.

after one game against Arlo that was more or less tied, i was worried that it was essentially random (not that there's anything wrong with that!). but then i played against Seb (me lying, him deciding) and got way in the lead, so i'm less worried about that now.

played at Now Play This, sudden death

so to make games shorter and add some more tension into it, we decided it would be better to play where getting three right in a row (either deceiving or deciding) won you the game. getting one happens all the time, getting two in a row is normal... and then suddenly the game is at stake! exciting.

it seems to work, but there's some essential messiness about where the cards go. how do you keep track? there's some essential confusion going on, the idea of looking at a card and having to look up what you say (this is at least symmetric across lies and truth - but it's a headfuck to internalise), the idea of points coming not from lies successfully carried but from the decider being wrong (so: them accusing you of a lie when you were telling the truth counts just as much). and then to add to that, you now have four piles in front of you, and you have to remember to shuffle cards across when your opponent takes the card? something about the asymmetry leading straight into symmetry.

played at boardgames at mine last night, corrupted by gambling

we played the sudden death a bit and people liked it okay. and then i got the idea to make it even more complicated and add gambling.

ten chips each.
one chip in each round, as table stakes.
after the liar has announced, and the decider has also announced, either player can then raise (but probably actually only the liar will?). and only to the level of chips the other player can match, obv
if you fold your forfeit your chips to the other player
if it's revealed, the decider takes the chips if they got it right, otherwise the liar does.

if you get three in a row right as the decider, then you become the liar.

which also works, except for us working out the rules as we go and it being a bit complicated.

the moment i wanted was the moment where the liar states something, the decider makes a guess and the liar says "are you sure about that?" in an infuriating way. that's something i was scratching after in the original design, but i didn't really reach it - the game got too mechanical for it. but last night, with the gambling, it happened a few times. a little, maybe, still not there and probably it won't ever be. but fun to scratch away on.

things it still doesn't do i'd like it to / future work

i want it to adapt to more than 2 players. there's no doubt something here, but tricky because only one player can take the card. a binary choice... i have a design for this, i'll put it below.

i want it to be less of a headfuck. maybe the answer is just to play it with something other than playing cards. put the complexity of the lookup table into the cards rather than on the table. yes, i think i'll try that.

also we had jokers in, and the idea of jokers as a card where you can make a free choice as to whether to lie or not - that's appealing. i mean, a lot of the point of the game is to see whether detecting lies can be enough to hold up a game, even if the player lying has no choice about whether to lie. just the pure tell. but it's always fun when a small part of the game cuts against the main thrust. adds texture. anyway, custom cards allow more play in that space.

a more than 2 player variant

take turns as the liar, single turn, clockwise around the table. (maybe single turns at a time means it's harder to pick up on tells? but balance reasons suggest you want to rotate continuously)
everyone has to pay table stakes - before the lie is said. can also opt out of a round (does this break things?)
everyone submits their guess (is there some marker for this? thumbs up/thumbs down? maybe a bit of a hand strain. maybe there's something about where the chips are placed. with custom cards...)
liar can then raise
can stay in or not, change your guess or not.
if it's revealed & multiple people got it right, the money goes into a central pot, and only people who were in that round play for the next mini round. til only one person got it right, who gets all the contents of the pot.

sure, that seems like it might be more exciting. and seems like it's not broken, too.

god i love designing games. even if they're not going to go anywhere... glad i chose the job i did.