IMPOSTER SYNDROME
ROLE
Designer
TYPE
Metagame
DESCRIPTION
Want to play games while out and about for a party but don't want to lug around things to do? If the spaces you are going have games already, Imposter Syndrome is a simple metagame around drinking and playing games that involves obtaining a role with a mission. While trying to accomplish your own mission, you also want to guess what other peoples' roles are as they accomplish their own missions. But keep an eye out for the Imposters. Their goal is to get you to guess them wrong so they can skate by.
Participants
18
Game Design Elements
Meta Game System
Missions and Roles
Duration
7 Hours
Location
Breweries in Los Angeles
Resources
BACKGROUND
After Shoot Your Shot I needed to make another sort of Metagame event where we could play games and also just sort of hang out. I knew I didn’t want it to be in my apartment again (no cleanup or prep work), I knew I wanted it to be easy to play, I knew I wanted any number of people to be able to play, and I knew I didn’t want to be a Game Master by watching over everything; I want to make something that I could just let people go and do without help from me so I also could enjoy and participate. This also was for my birthday so I wanted to make something I could have fun for myself as well as my audience.
Design Challenges
Unknown Attendance and Participation
I sent out many invitations and gave a start time of where and when we would be at certain locations, but without knowing how people would be there, when they might arrive, or whether or not they would want to participate, I needed a game that could scale without affecting already started gameplay.
Gameplay in a Public Space
With the event taking place in a not necessarily controlled environment I needed to take into consideration where we would be and what the materials available to us would be. I knew breweries were great, big open spaces with lots of activity options on top of allowing for non-specific group plans. Similar to Shoot Your Shot, I needed gameplay to design something that involved games but even more so utilized the space. Additionally, I wanted to make it a social game so everyone could just sort of hang out and play a game if they wanted to.
Low Material Needs
With going to a location where alcohol consumption would be involved and I didn’t want to be responsible for keeping track of items, I needed the game to involve as few materials as possible. A simple “pencil and paper” game came to mind; something I could just print out and we could just throw away at the end of the day. It wouldn’t take up much space, weigh very much, and it would only lessen the more people participated.
OVERALL DESIGN
This has been the most challenging game I have made specifically because of the constraints I gave myself. Taking all of the challenges into consideration I settled on coming up with a pen and paper social deduction game. Players would be given a Role which, in turn, comes with a Mission. Complete your Mission, score a point; simple as that. Additionally, you could score points by guessing (correctly) who had which Role. At the end you would score bonus points for every person that guessed correctly adding to the points you scored from successfully completing your mission. Now the part that makes completing your mission more difficult, you lose a point for every person who guesses your Role successfully. To add a level of complexity as most Social Deduction games contain, there are Imposters amongst the crowd that earn double points just by fooling everyone in their guesses. The only mission for them is to get people to guess them incorrectly. So everyone must sniff out who the Imposters were.
I needed to design 8 roles besides the Imposter with Missions that were somewhat related to the point that people could be performing similar things and you would really need to pay attention to figure out everyone’s roles. I made sure that while you knew your mission, the other roles and their missions were also visible; but needed to stay hidden. The bifold paper I ended up with looked the same on the outside for everyone, so your role and mission could stay hidden on the inside.
With the game needing to be scalable and allow for some decision so people could be excited about their role, I printed 3 of each role. I mixed up all of the papers and allowed each person to randomly pick 3 from the pile and after looking at them, pick which of the 3 they would like for their role. This also added a level of insight to what roles were still in the pile.
Learnings
Social Deduction games are complex designs. Revolving gameplay around player behavior and decision-making without set rules and options to select from really is difficult to balance and write rules for; especially when you need the rules to fit on a single, small sheet of 8.5” x 3 â…”” paper that involves no further explanation. I enjoyed the challenge of creating it, but I think I would rather work on an in-home, tabletop version where I can limit materials and players.