Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Traitor Games
Examples:
Battlestar Galactica
,
The Resistance
,
Werewolf
,
Mafia,
,
Sabo-
teur
Adding a potential traitor to a group of cooperative players prevents one
player from dominating the rest, since that player may be a traitor who
leads all of you into disaster! In traitor games, players all get a randomly
dealt role card that tells you whether you're a traitor or not (or the the-
matic equivalent), and that determines your role for the rest of the game.
The only issue with traitor games is that the traitor element tends to
overwhelm the other mechanisms in the game. Then again, there are a
relatively small number of such games, and many of them are light party
games, so that could be the reason for that tendency. I'd like to see a
game that embraces this by basing all its mechanisms on identifying trai-
tors, but one that uses a more dynamic system that keeps the traitor role
in flux throughout the game.
