Fake Reveals

[Barkeep49]

A player recently PM'ed me with the question of why there aren't fake role reveals anymore and how could we promote them. I've been thinking about it all day and think it would be good to through it open to anyone.

My answer is that I think it's the GMs fault. I think the structure of the games has made it such that any sort of fake reveal is almost always accurately seen for what it is. Having read games on another board I don't think our players are just that much smarter and so I think it has to be our design of games. I'm not sure I have a solution but that's my thought.

What do others think?

[Alan T]

I agree, I try my best to make things open in my games to allow for fake reveals, but I think in games where there are so many ways to get caught, its not worth it usually as a wolf to make a fake reveal.

The other side to that is when you have a game much more condusive to fake reveals its often pretty sided to the wolves though without other balances in the game that could help even that out more.

[hoopsguy]

I refuse to take any blame for this. I will fake a reveal anytime, anyplace, anywhere - structure be damned! :)

[st.cronin]

ping: dubb

[Blade6119]

I refuse to take any blame for this. I will fake a reveal anytime, anyplace, anywhere - structure be damned! :)

Im right with ya hoops...a game isnt fun until ive pulled every trick in the book, good or evil

[st.cronin]

For the record, I was the one that asked BK, and it's a question that I've been thinking about since the last time I ran a game, particularly with a view to my NEXT game. I'd be interested to hear what anybody has to say.

[Barkeep49]

I refuse to take any blame for this. I will fake a reveal anytime, anyplace, anywhere - structure be damned! :)
Yeah I think you're the best out there. What could you suggest to perhaps make it easier for others do?

[hoopsguy]

I do them a ton more as a bad guy than as a good guy - ask Blade about doing good guy fake reveals as he has much more practice.

As a bad guy, I start looking at the rules right away to see what kind of flexibility exists. I'm looking for areas that are not covered explicitly. Hidden roles games are obviously excellent for this - no one knows if the seer is dead. Ditto rule sets that include a note that not all roles are defined. I'll try to play every game that has what I consider an open ruleset if at all possible.

From there, I'm looking for opportunities to play against players. I try not to get too tricky with new players - they are much more likely to take the
rules literally. So I'm generally trying to exploit more experienced players. Kind of like the "don't bluff a calling station" rule in poker.

It is pretty context based, so hard to give "top ten" type info here. But when I do a fake role reveal I try to:
1. have an element of weakness to it. Making claims as an all-powerful role don't seem believable to me, so they probably won't to others either. For example, in the Star Wars game I said that my vote was compelled and stuck with that story the entire day even though it put me in a bad spot.
2. Try to let other people help you fill in the details - I did some of this in Anxiety's game Magic! game when I was busted early
3. Try to lay the groundwork for your fake reveals early in the game. There is nothing quite like pulling up a four-day old post as proof of your BS role.
4. Have a backup plan, because in the open games your ideas might get trampled on by a real role. That definitely happened to me in Tombstone, where the fake reveal I made was about my fourth choice
5. Talk with your teammates about it, but don't be too rehearsed. You don't want to totally ambush them but you don't want their answers to be scripted either

[Poli]

A player recently PM'ed me with the question of why there aren't fake role reveals anymore and how could we promote them. I've been thinking about it all day and think it would be good to through it open to anyone.

My answer is that I think it's the GMs fault. I think the structure of the games has made it such that any sort of fake reveal is almost always accurately seen for what it is. Having read games on another board I don't think our players are just that much smarter and so I think it has to be our design of games. I'm not sure I have a solution but that's my thought.

What do others think?
I love doing fake reveals. :)

[Lathum]

I NEVER fake reveal.

causes more harm then good

[Lathum]

dola-

anyone wanna buy a piece of the Brooklyn Bridge?

[path12]

I love them also, but I don't think I'm that good at them. Though, maybe I'm so good at them that it looks like I've got to be bad and that's why it hasn't worked so well. Yeah, that's it........

I think that almost always the first player to claim has the edge though. Especially with newer players.

Not to sidetrack the original point, but that raises a question: What kinds of reveals do you believe? When two people claim the same role, what do you look for to decide which way to go?

For me, I will always give a pass to a seer hint early, even if I'm not convinced of it. That is something that can be checked and it's worth going another direction early than risk losing a seer.

If two people claim the same role, I want to know who they've interacted with to that point and why in order to pick who I believe.

[SnDvls]

I did a fake in the last game I was in and it kinda worked as no one really questioned it.

I agree the GMs are at falut as well....when a good guy is given a "job" but a bad guy isn't it makes this much harder...even a general generic job should be PM'ed in the wolf role to aid them a bit. Also with roles revield upon death and all roles listed to start the game make it that much harder...one of these days a GM is going to list a bunch of roles and not have a single one in there game to really throw off the villagers.

[Alan T]

I love them also, but I don't think I'm that good at them. Though, maybe I'm so good at them that it looks like I've got to be bad and that's why it hasn't worked so well. Yeah, that's it........

I think that almost always the first player to claim has the edge though. Especially with newer players.

Not to sidetrack the original point, but that raises a question: What kinds of reveals do you believe? When two people claim the same role, what do you look for to decide which way to go?

For me, I will always give a pass to a seer hint early, even if I'm not convinced of it. That is something that can be checked and it's worth going another direction early than risk losing a seer.

If two people claim the same role, I want to know who they've interacted with to that point and why in order to pick who I believe.

I think it really depends on my mood that game. I often will say in a game that I "always" believe X or I "always" believe Y, when in fact I usually just change my mind up from game to game. I usually lie more as a good guy than as a bad guy, and I always try to make discussion from a villager standpoint regardless of my role.

I'm actually quite suprised that no one has ever gone back to previous games for me and said "This game you felt this, but now you feel something different?" As I know I am never consistant.

I guess my main rule of thumb as a bad guy is to be patient and let the villagers make the mistakes and my main rule of thumb as a villager is to try to make moves that make the least risk of a horrible loss (ie: death of a seer). I had one game where I argued to keep a fake seer alive for days even though I highly doubted they were good just to keep the real seer alive that long too, and force the bad guys into making the move at night.

[st.cronin]

I usually lie more as a good guy than as a bad guy

same

Also what I was thinking about was not the "fake reveal" that everybody does when they are on the block - I'm talking about what I've seen dubb do a couple of times, which is come out of nowhere with a fake reveal that wreaks havoc on everybody's assumptions. It seems to me (and I could be wrong) that this used to be a fairly common strategy for the bad guys, but it seems to have fallen out of favor.

My main dissatisfaction with the games right now is that they reward quiet play for a wolf - I've just seen too many games lately where the way to win was to basically just not post anything at all. Its not every game, certainly, but its often enough to be discouraging. What I'm looking for is suggestions on how, as gms, we can change this.

[Narcizo]

Well it seems to me that the way to do that is not to reveal roles on death and/or to make the initial roles a bit more hazy and ill-defined but to stack the numerical odds a bit more in favour of the villagers. Surely the problem with fake reveals (to actually achieve anything other than their own survival) by the wolves at the moment is that it's pretty easy to check them out.

As you've pointed out the best strategy for a wolf under those circumstances is to avoid the limelight as much as possible. People are always saying that "we should be voting for the people who aren't saying anything" but in the end it's always easier to vote for somebody who is saying something because you're always going to be able to read something suspicious into a lot of talk. People don't like to vote based on no information. I think the villagers have to take a stand in a couple of games and just vote out people who don't say anything relevent, no matter what the excuse. If you force everyone to talk then the wolves will have to be a bit more creative.

[Alan T]

I also think the best way to not reward under the radar wolf play is to punish non participation early. Its something that alot of people say they want to do, but usually what ends up happening is people just jump on someone day 1, then day 2 without much proof people usually go after one of the noisy player and there really is never a time that under the radar play is discouraged.

The last game is an example of what I mean, I didn't want to vote for either St.Cronin or Ntndeacon, but in the end of the day when it was tied up, I chose to vote ntndeacon solely because St.Cronin was participating more. It ended up being a poor decision because Cronin was a wolf, but we took care of that soon enough. I likely would do that every time and am not upset with myself for choosing the way I did there on a day 1 vote.

I try to give players who are participating more a little more rope to hang themselves or clear themselves the first day or two of a game. I know alot of people don't agree with it, but the thing i enjoy the most in these games is when at the end of the game you have a bunch of active players strategizing. The last game it felt sluggish because no one was talking, and that is less fun for me.

[st.cronin]

I agree that villagers have a responsibility in this area, as well. What I'm more interested in talking about are ways that gms can encourage good play, as well.

[Alan T]

I agree that villagers have a responsibility in this area, as well. What I'm more interested in talking about are ways that gms can encourage good play, as well.

Well, I guess as a GM thats one reason I try to give as many people stuff to do as possible. I think some people have a tendency to tune out of a game a little when their role is just vanilla. Other people (like myself) don't mind vanilla roles at all though. I think generally when someone has a cool role they like or something to keep them involved, they will participate more. An example of that I think would be in Hoops' last game Schmidty I think participated more than he normally did because he had a fun role and I honestly had alot of fun watching him act like the Hulk.

[path12]

One problem as a GM is that sometimes the role that you think is going to be a blast ends up played totally differently than you imagined and that throws a wrench into how the game mechanics go.

I'm thinking offhand about my propagandist role in the Animal Farm game and the Master Assassin role in the Warhammer game.

I do think it helps to give everyone a generic role regardless of whether they are good or bad. If you can get people into playing their role or invested in the scenario early I think it helps encourage participation.

So a couple of ways we could do this as GM's: Teams. The initial team concept in the Survivor game was really cool and I got to know some people much better than I did before. That was fun.

Another idea is to have lots of night actions, like in the JTR game. When everyone, including villagers have a choice to make as to whether to go out at night or not than participation is encouraged.

[Abe Sargent]

I remember my first fake role reavela when I claimed to be the Werewitch. I remember that the peopel would have bought it if I had added one detail - so in the future, I looked for those details.

[Chief Rum]

My only fake reveal so far came in the zombie game. It effectively extended that game another two days or so. So I was pretty happy with that, although eventually numbers and mechanics bore out and I was figured for the wolf.

It was tough, though. I only did it because I knew the person I was "faking" myself as would have it in his interest to allow me my reveal and not disputeit (multiple faction game).

[bulletsponge]

i suck too much to ever try a fake role reveal. hell i dont even do real role reveals even when im about to die! i take everything to the grave!

[Abe Sargent]

Well Imthecrew just tried to fake reveal twice in the small WW game, so they aren't dead!