RogerBW's Blog

I've had a certain amount of practice teaching board games, so I'm going to post some of my introductions to them here. These are all put together from multiple sessions, generally at Essen. As a general principle, I have components lying on the table, and point to them and/or pick them up as they are mentioned.

Today I'll introduce One Night Revolution. Anything in square brackets is to be thought about rather than necessarily read aloud.

This is a game of hidden roles, deduction and lying.

We are all rebels fighting against the corrupt government. At least that's what we say. Some of us may be police informants, and the rest of us are trying to work out who those people are. There will be three informants, and [number of players] rebels - we get one ID each, and the other three go to headquarters, face down.

Also, we will each have a Specialist card, which shows what we will do when everyone else has their eyes closed. That can vary depending on which side you're on [show reference card]. So if you are the Rebel Reassignor, you would swap two other IDs; but if you are the Informant Reassignor, you would look through Headquarters for another Informant ID, and swap that with a Rebel's ID. So you can change sides during the game without knowing it. You can look at your Specialist card whenever you like, but you can only look at your ID card at the start of the game - or when the rules tell you to.

To start the game, we'll all shut our eyes, and the informants will open theirs – so they know who is an informant and who is a rebel. Then everyone shuts their eyes again; the first player will open their eyes, do what their Specialist card says, and then close their eyes and say "Task Complete". Then the next player along does the same, and so on.

Once everyone has done that, we open our eyes again, and the first player can look at his ID – because otherwise he has no idea what's going on. Then each player takes one of these tokens [the circular claim tokens], which show what you claim you did. You can take the one that matches your Specialist card, or you can take a different one. You can even [flip over token] claim to have been an Informant, if you think you can convince people that you're now a Rebel. You can take a token from in front of another player if you like; that means you're calling them a liar.

Then we have a discussion about who knows what. Everyone wants to know which side they are now on. The Rebels are trying to work out who's an Informant; the Informants are trying to pretend to be Rebels, and point the finger at a real Rebel. At the end, we all vote: whoever has the most fingers pointed at them is put to death, and if they're an Informant the Rebels win. Otherwise the Informants win.

If there's a tie for most fingers, then all of them are executed, but if there's at least one Informant the Rebels win even if they kill a Rebel too.

If you think that all the Informants are at Headquarters, then you can all agree to point at the person on your left; that way nobody has two fingers pointed at them and nobody dies. But that's only once chance in twenty even in the three-player game. And if there is just one Informant player, they win.

These are your IDs. You can look at them now, but don't look at them again unless a card specifically tells you to. You can look at your Specialist cards whenever you like. Put the IDs near the middle of the table, so that other players can move them around.

Everyone know who you are? OK. Everyone [put fists on the table and] close their eyes.

[Deep Agent only, raise your thumb. Other] Informants, open your eyes and see who else is an informant.

[Lower your thumbs and] hands off the table. Everyone close your eyes.

First player, open your eyes, do your task, then say "Task Complete".

Next player…

Now we all open our eyes. First player only, take a look at your ID. Now take one of these tokens.

Next player…