Who are you in Mascarade? Whoever you want to be... at least until someone else calls you out on it!
Each character receives a face-down role card at the start of the game, and in a game with 4–5 players, some role cards are placed in the center of the table. On a turn, you take one of three actions:
Announce your character: Claim the power of a certain character and take the associated action. You don't have to have that character card in front of you to take this action, but if someone else says that they're that character and reveals the card to prove it, that player takes the action instead while you lose one coin to the tribunal.
Swap cards or not: Take another player's character card along with yours, place them under the table, shuffle them around a bit, then give one card back to the other player while keeping one for yourself. You (presumably) know whether you changed characters and can have some idea of who you are now, but that other player might be in the dark.
Secretly look at your character: Look at your character card to make sure of who you are.
Play continues until one player has collected 13 coins and wins – or until a player has lost all of their coins, in which case the player with the most coins wins.
Mascarade includes more character cards than the number of players, so not all characters will be used in each game. The rules suggest that you use certain characters in your first games, but once you know the game and its roles, you can try many other configurations.
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- hey everybody welcome to watch it played
- with 12 days left I probably will talk about it a little bit more
- if you don't want to read the rule book don't worry you can go watch a video
- this is one of those games where we're just doing the instructional video
- watchitplayed.com unfortunately which would be the ideal address has already been registered by somebody else
- if I don't get one of these packages every week from him I'm going to start getting worried
- I think destroy Rodney destroy Rodney Pete you're not looking too intimidating in that outfit but I wouldn't mind one of those Burgers you're serving up
- oh my goodness whoa
- I thought it was going to be just King of Tokyo in New York but it's actually changed quite a bit
- it's monsterrific
- Matthew has his own YouTube channel for reviewing games doing unboxings that sort of thing and let me tell you look out because Matthew's amazing
References (from this video)
- It's so terrible that they vowed not to sell it and have had to hold onto it for a long time.
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- Oh my goodness oh my goodness oh gosh oh God I have so many
- It's my roommates so it's less my shelf a shame and more his shelf of Shame it's shared shame
- Well it's actually head to the by itself now
- I have a lot of Legacy games on my shelf of opportunity because you need the right combination of people just it's so difficult to get to the table it's a big overhead and figuring it out is a lot once you start if somebody decides they don't like it you've got problems just takes hours
- I'm talking to somebody who's in game nine of charterstone with no hope in finishing
- It's so terrible that they vowed me not to sell it and I've had it for so long they can basically make him make me hold on to it
- I don't buy board games I hate to break it to you but there are yarn shells of Shame and there are bookshelves and I I have subscribed I'm at the top of the list for both of those but I'm not I can only be on so many shelves of shade the shame is gone now
References (from this video)
- Delivers satisfying deception moments consistently.
- Metagaming adds layers of meanness over multiple plays.
- Improved components in the second edition.
- Not the deepest game mechanically.
- Secret roles and bluffing
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Action Claiming — on your turn, you claim an action while everyone else decides whether they believe you or not.
- bluffing — once people get comfortable with the bluffing, they start metagaming each other's tells from previous rounds.
- Secret roles — Everyone gets a secret character with a power.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- We're going through the list from the more accessible and chaotic ones up to the heaviest hitters, and we're going to be pretty direct about which ones are worth your money and which ones you can safely skip.
- The deduction here blends careful clue interpretation with social deception rather than pure voting.
- What we loved is how mean the discussion can become without anyone raising their voice.
- It rewards subtle, clever lying and reading people more than loud accusations.
- The traitor can be incredibly patient.
- The social deduction is deep because of the shared board state and multiple crisis phases.
- The Resistance: Avalon is still the one we recommend most often when people ask for a classic that's actually available and holds up.
- Every quest vote is a minefield of lies, half-truths, and careful observation.
- The Thing: The Board Game is the one that feels the most like actual horror.
- Every test and every shared resource carries real tension because you really don't know who's still human.
- Feed the Kraken is one of the best modern takes on the three-faction hidden role style.
- Blood currently sitting at number one for us.
- Dead players continue participating fully, which creates this incredibly rich information economy that most other social deduction games simply don't have.
- It requires a good storyteller, but when it clicks, it's the meanest, most satisfying social deduction experience we have right now.
- Roma XLI is the newest game on the list and it fits right into the facade game style we've come to enjoy.
- Being able to politically remove someone from the game through clever maneuvering is deeply satisfying in a way that feels very Roman.
References (from this video)
- Light, social, highly interactive
- Fast and scalable to many players
- Penalties are light, which keeps things chaotic but less tense
- social deduction and bluffing with light penalties
- A masquerade-filled social gathering with shifting identities.
- Array
- Coup
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- The theme and the mechanics are completely disconnected.
- Yes, Terrammystica.
- Masquerade looks silly at first. You're given a character card.
- Descent solved the overhead problem by integrating a free companion app that handles almost everything Gloom Haven makes you do manually.
- Station Fall is making your own story.
- Aons is exceptional for people who want depth without the homework.
References (from this video)
- chaotic but fun
- great with the right group
- replayability depends on players
- role swapping and social deduction
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- role confusion / social deduction — players assume roles and try to deduce others' identities
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- the production is incredible
- this is a long one there's a few games of my collection
- I'm keeping this one forever
- it's a great family game
- it's basically a social deduction game and it's really clever