The Best Game Discussions Are Built on Positive Claims

Table talk does not always improve a party game. Meaningful discussion requires players to make claims supported by evidence. As any improv performer can tell you, when the only response is "no", the conversation goes nowhere. In these cases, it is better to cut the discussion and rely on other kinds of gameplay.

I encountered this problem in a recent playtest of my drawing game, Secret Art Club. The game asks players to draw and then guess whether a secret "club" of players share the same prompt. I added discussion so players could debate whether a club exists but found the incentives worked against my goals. In the version I tested:

1. If there is no club, then players want to convince each other that there is no club.
2. If there is a club, its members want to convince the lone outsider that there is no club.

In both cases, players argue their drawings aren't related. Denying connections isn't fun because there is no real evidence to support their claims.

For a discussion to be fun, players need to make positive claims and back them up with evidence. Word association games show this well. In Codenames, the "spymaster" gives a one-word clue to help their team guess several words on the board. The fun comes from watching players explain why a word matches the clue. People enjoy comparing possible connections more than denying them.

When there is no evidence, discussions in social deduction games can get dull, especially when players must defend themselves. Games without unique roles suffer most. For example, in Mafia, if someone says they are a Cop and claims you are Mafia, all you can do is deny it. Like in Secret Art Club, this gets old quickly. But in games like One Night Ultimate Werewolf or Blood on the Clocktower, where most players have unique roles, you can defend yourself by claiming a role and presenting evidence of your ability. Unique roles let players say who they are, not just who they are not.

Discussion can be the best part of a game, but only if players have evidence and a clear argument. If a game is about hiding patterns instead of revealing them, it is often better to skip table talk. Since Secret Art Club is about hiding patterns, discussion did not fit, so I took it out.