Faces on Parade: Mascarade

Faces on Parade: Mascarade | NPC Gamer: Not Playing on Casual

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NPC Gamer: Not Playing on Casual It has been said that being a woman, a person of color, a queer person, or a differently-abled person is like playing life on a higher difficulty setting. This blog is both by and for people whose circumstances mean that they aren't playing life on casual. We are all kinds of people and we play all kinds of games. We are NPC Gamers. MAY 27, 2016 by KRISTINB

Faces on Parade: Mascarade

Mascarade is one of those li le games that seems surprisingly simple but almost immediately causes 1 of 3

6/13/2016 1:37 PM

Faces on Parade: Mascarade | NPC Gamer: Not Playing on Casual

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your brain to hurt. The premise is that the players are a set of characters (members of a court) at a masquerade ball. Each character has an ability (the King can take three coins, the Queen two, etc.), but no one knows who anyone else is. The kicker is that a player might not even know who they are, which is where the gameplay happens. The goal of the game is to get to thirteen coins, and each player’s ability helps them to gain coins, either from the bank, the pool, or from other characters.

Each turn, a player announces their identity–“I am the King!”–whether they know this to be true or not. The other players can then confirm or challenge that identity, but the only way to challenge is to declare themselves to be that character–“No, I’m the King!”–whether they are or not. If there is no challenger, the first player takes the action of their role–in the case of the King, taking three coins. If there is a challenger, both players reveal their identity cards. If either of them is not who they said they were, they pay one coin to the bank. If one of them is, they take that role’s action. Instead of declaring, players can also look at their card (to see who they actually are) or swap (or not) identities with another player without looking (they take the cards and put them under the table or behind their back, then pass one of the cards back to the other player). In this way, identities get very mixed up, very quickly (made worse if the Fool is playing, as that role allows the Fool to swap to other characters’ identities). I have a pre y good memory, so I figured this wouldn’t be too hard, since everyone knows who everyone is at the start. It took about two turns for me to already be horribly confused, and more than once I declared myself to be something I really thought I was, but actually wasn’t. Sometimes, it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. One of the things I really liked about this game was that it was very hard to get too irritated at anyone else around the table, even when they stole all your money. The mutual sense of confusion makes everyone a part of the same experience, even if some people are clearly doing be er than others. There’s also a li le it of role-play, since you can announce “I am the King!” in as silly a fashion as you wish.

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Faces on Parade: Mascarade | NPC Gamer: Not Playing on Casual

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In fact, I kind of wish there were more interesting things that one could do with this concept. There’s a certain elegance to the game’s simplicity, but once you realize that you can’t possible know definitively what other people are, you just sort of give up on the thinking part, and that, to me, is something of a flaw. I want there to be more challenge and less luck, or at least more challenge that doesn’t involve calculating probabilities in my head, since I can’t do that (even though I know some people can). I could also say that I find it a wee it sexist that the King gets three coins and the Queen only gets two, although I know from a mechanics standpoint that there need to be “be er” roles just for the sake of competition, but I wish they hadn’t been so obviously sexist as to have the Queen get less than the King and to have the Witch be evil (she swaps her hand with someone else’s, which defaults to thievery). The Fool definitely has the best power (swapping other people’s cards), and most of the rest are variants on taking coins, either from other players or from the penalty bank. But having the King be superior to the Queen (instead of a nice, gender-neutral Monarch) is one of those li le annoyances that doesn’t really mean much in the grand scheme of things, but adds its li le bit to all the other small, seemingly meaningless things that eventually become the social tidal wave of sexism that women face on a daily basis (aka microaggressions). Does it make the game bad? Of course not. But it is one of those things that makes me like it just a li le bit less. This entry was posted in Board Games, Uncategorized and tagged Mascarade. Bookmark the permalink. Leave a comment Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. | The Dusk To Dawn Theme.

6/13/2016 1:37 PM