How to play a Traitors-style game at work: the office edition
Head count: 16 to 30 colleagues, one person hosting, about 50 minutes. A meeting room with the chairs pulled into a circle is the whole set.
The office is the best room for a Traitors-style game, because everyone already has a reason to suspect everyone else. This is the office edition of Treachery!, our own Traitors-style game: how to run it on a lunch hour or at the start of an away day, the rules that keep it kind, and the point at which it is worth having it hosted. The full rules, round by round, are in how to play a Traitors-style game: Treachery! in an hour.
Before you start: three office rules
- Nobody has to play. Ask who's in, and give the people who'd rather not a job: scorekeeper, timekeeper, the one who announces the murders with relish.
- Accusations are about the game, not the person. "You went quiet when I asked" is fair. Anything about work, last week's meeting or who got the promotion is not. Say it out loud before you deal the roles.
- The boss plays as a player. No special powers, no deciding votes. The game is better when the intern can get the director voted out, and it always does.
Setting up in a meeting room
- Chairs in a circle or a horseshoe. Tables in the way slow the arguing down. Push them back.
- Roles on folded slips. About a quarter to a third of the group are traitors: for 20 people, five or six. Fold them, shuffle, hand them out, and tell people to keep their faces still.
- A whiteboard for names. Write everyone up, cross them out as they go. The office is the one place a whiteboard is always to hand.
- A host who doesn't play. They call the nights and the days, keep the time, and keep the tone. Pick someone who likes an audience.
The round, in a lunch hour
Every round is the same loop, and the host calls each step:
- Night. Eyes closed. The host wakes the traitors, who silently agree on a victim, then close their eyes again.
- Morning. Eyes open. The host announces who was "murdered" overnight. The first victim comes back as the Leader, with the deciding vote in a tie, and passes it on after each round.
- Day. Two minutes in pairs, two in groups of four or five, then a spokesperson each. Traitors must lie if asked directly.
- The vote. Peace or execution. Peace with a traitor still in ends the game in the traitors' favour; execution eliminates whoever the room picks, with a parting shot.
- Repeat until the traitors are out or peace is called. For 30 people that is five or six rounds in under an hour, so an hour's slot works with ten minutes for the rules and the reveal.
What it does for a team
A quiz tells you who knows things. This tells you how people listen, persuade and read a room, which is the useful kind of self-knowledge, and it mixes people who never sit together. Give it five minutes at the end: who did you trust, and why? Who did you get wrong? The debrief is where the team-building happens. There's more on that in Traitors-style team building: how to run it, and when to hire a host.
When to have it hosted
Running it yourself works for a team of up to about 16 who know each other. Past that, or when the organiser wants to play, or when it's the Christmas party and nobody should be working, a host is what makes it work: they hit the time, stay neutral, and carry the room. Treachery! is from £20 a person with a minimum of £600 a session, about 50 minutes, repeated through the day for a bigger company; we come to your office or venue, any room with chairs. For a company of more than 30, see a Traitors-style game for a large group.