The 13th “People Who Read People” episode is an interview with Polina Vorozheykina, a software engineer based in Portland, Oregon, who also is a skilled player of so-called social deduction games. Social deduction games typically involve trying to figure out the secret roles and motivations of your opponents based on their actions and behaviors. Examples of social deduction games are Werewolf, Mafia, Avalon, and Resistance.
Links to the episode:
In this podcast, we discuss Secret Hitler, a popular social deduction game from the makers of Cards Against Humanity. Polina and I discuss topics including:
- A quick review of rules of Secret Hitler
- Common behavioral tells, such as:
- Length of time looking at cards
- Consistency of claims
- Talkativeness
- Body language, posture
- Use of language
- Some thoughts on strategy
I’ve only played Secret Hitler a few times, so I’m far from experienced, but I did write a blog post about behaviors/tells I noticed from beginner-level players.
If you like that, you might also like this piece about behavior in Cards Against Humanity and Apples To Apples.
If you like playing poker but aren’t familiar with my poker tells books/videos, you might like this blog post about verbal poker tells in the movie Rounders. Sign up for a free verbal poker tells email course here, which will help you better understand language in poker and other competitive games.