[nmkn]

The Resistance is a great bluffing and lying game. I don't think it's enough to lose friends because each game doesn't last very long (roughly 20 min.), so it gives other people a chance to exact revenge or screw other people over in future rounds. However, the length of each game can go up dramatically with arguing and bickering, thus the possibility of ruined friendships.

[jboggan]

I introduced this to my friends and it proved very popular at first and then . . . very controversial. If you've played with 9-10 players several times you know how insanely difficult it is for the Resistance to actually win. But one round the Resistance won, and the Spies were immediately yelling and screaming. It turned out that one of the chosen Spies (not his first game but his first as a Spy) had decided that working for a totalitarian regime was immoral and that it was unethical to "spy" even though that was his assigned role in the game. Thus he passed the mission for the Resistance every time, not out of a spirit of trolling but out of sincere moral belief - and he indicated that he would always cooperate with the "good guys" no matter what card he drew. The rest of the players were angry, Godwin's Law was invoked in record time, and we never invited him back for game night.

[Jtsummers]

Egads. Sounds like one of the guys I've played tabletop RPGs with in the past. He'll have a character, clearly a minion of someone of questionable morality, and then when the time comes to complete his character's part of the bargain, his real world morality gets in the way. Very frustrating, especially since he's not consistent with it so you can't anticipate what game events will trigger a game-breaking response.

He's still in a couple of groups, but if the game dies for reasons other thna scheduling conflicts, it's probably his doing or a TPK.

[teddyh]

Sound like a good reason to punish and ostracize the most religiously ethical people. I hope this was your goal.

[Anderkent]

Sounds like a good reason to not play with people who don't want to play the game for their team.

Seriously, if you can't tell the difference between spying in real life, and spying in a game, you're not the most 'ethical' person, you're the most confused person.

[ShardPhoenix]

In Resistance you're essentially forced to lie if you're one of the spies, so people are less likely to take it personally.

[threepoint14159]

There's a fairly small but active community playing it online here: http://www.theresistanceonline.com/

[opendais]

Ya, I love the Resistance. The only problem is, 3 of us that play are too good at lying that none of us ever trust them which makes the game really, really hard to win. Everyone usually ends up losing as much as they win because of it.

There are only 7 of us so its virtually impossible for the bad liars to all end up on the "honest" team.

[wahnfrieden]

There's a new shorter one in that universe, Coup: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/131357/coup

[barbs]

I've played that. It still involves bluffing etc but is much less about forming alliances. Still a pretty decent game, though.

[chillericed]

Resistance is great. Our group made a google spreadsheet to play the game on, which adds an interesting element because there is more data to reference instead of relying on memory of past votes.