Observations of the Fox

One of the key things about playtesting is seeing people do things that you hadn't necessarily expected, and seeing how those actions might impact the systems that have been put in place. Over the last week, I've seen a few of these types of actions... One of the characters who was infected by the zombie toxin was killed. They started trying to spread the infection, but the first couple of bites infected the same people that the original zombie had already infected. It didn't really make a disruption to the systems in place, but it was something I hadn't necessarily accounted for in the timing of the game. I had just assumed that a second zombie would double the rate of infection, but this chance of re-infecting someone who was already infected actually means that the acceleration isn't quite that extreme. A few of the players still just don't get it. I've explained that all they really need to do to remain active in the game is to write a name on their turn...

The premise is simple... I have a group with a total of about 25 kids, 10 minutes a day, 5 days a week.  On any given day, most of them will be there and some of them won't. It can be pretty random which kids are there on each day, but there is almost never all of them present at the same time. Some of the kids don't want to play a game, and a couple may actively resent being forced to play (in the situation I've been working through, two students are actively trying the sabotage the game).  The game is played out over several days, weeks even. So rather than a 20-30 minute turnaround on each cycle, the game has a drawn out melodrama... which also means that it can feel particularly unfair for those players who get eliminated in the earliest rounds. So I need to accommodate for all these things... above and beyond the regular requirements of a social deduction game. I'm going with the basic framework of "Werewolf/Mafia". One quarter to a third of the players w...

I have a class of academically gifted young high school students. Here in Australia, they are year 7, which makes them on average around 13 years old. It would be fair to say that since these kids are targeted as "gifted and talented" many are socially awkward, and more than a few share traits that they're probably on the Autistic spectrum at some level. I've already posted a few times about the high school gaming club I ran a few years ago, and since I'm currently unable to run this (for ongoing reasons that have now been a concern for 2.5 years), I've decided to experiments with a social deduction game using this class of students. The reasons are basically two-fold... A lot of the kids are smart, they work things out really quickly, and understand how connected systems can impact on one another. There has been a lack of social cohesion among them and I've wanted to get a sense of fun and community back into the class as we wind down toward the end of th...