LogFAQs > #932366769

119. Mascarade (2013)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Hidden roles, bluffing, memory
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 15-30 minutes
Experience: 7-10 plays across 2-3 sessions (2016), 10-13 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 79/80 (2018)

Summary - Each player is dealt a hidden role card. From there, in clockwise order, you get one action per turn: either check a player's card, swap players' cards without looking (or maybe not! only the swapper knows), or attempt to use the special action associated with your current role. Since you don't necessarily know your own role/you can lie about who you are, players can counter-claim you... but only if they think they have the role themselves. The player who accumulates a certain amount of gold first wins, but must claim victory on their turn.

Design - I love the idea of Mascarade. Hidden roles, not knowing what's going on, slowly gaining information/sowing chaos as players switch roles with one another, inexorably moving the game toward its conclusion. (The total amount of gold in the game always increases, even if it's not always in the players' hands.) While I'm big on teams in hidden role games, there's something nice about Mascarade's bluffing because it's not as inherently confrontational - much less "you're lying!" and more just calling someone's bet, like in poker. It's also less zero-sum than Sheriff of Nottingham in that sense.

The powers associated with each role feel pretty unique, and I love that you can only counter-claim someone if you're willing to bet that you yourself have that person's role. It results in some great moments, a la One Night Ultimate Werewolf, where everyone flips over their cards and laughs as no one who tried to take the King action actually has the King role.

Experience - My problem with Mascarade is that despite its qualities on paper, I've never actually had a great experience with it, despite my highest hopes. It felt turn-order sensitive, and it felt dominated by people who had surprisingly good memory despite the chaos, which meant that bluffing rarely worked out. I also played with a mix of friends and friends-of-friends, and it sucked to be down in both scores and turn order and then to get hit by a take-that effect - it's not a mean game, but you can effectively be eliminated by the whimsy of another player who just needs to pick someone to use their awesome power on.

There's also the notable fact that if someone forgets to swap roles with the player downstream of them, then that player gets a risk-free use of their ability - which you should theoretically try to prevent. But it feels like you need skilled players to discern who has "too good" of an idea what they are. That meta feels like it would be a dozen plays beyond the depth at which I played it.

Future - With years of separation from the last time I played, I'm less able to remember the details and how it worked and whether counterplay could have done something. Is it as imbalanced as it seemed? Was I held back by slow players? Did it just require me to play with personal friends only? While being a bucketful of laughter is hardly guaranteed, what I am fairly confident on is that those measures could have been taken to make it feel less bad. I'd like to try it with fewer players, ones that I trust to play fast, and ones with whom I have a better rapport (and thus can feel less bad about losing to, or about doing something mean to). Really curious to replay if only to solidify my opinions, or if only because the design idea sounded so cool.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness