By 4:00 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, most Community High School students have left school and have headed home to start their weekend. But on the afternoon of Friday, October 12 in Room 122, the students inside don’t seem to notice the time. Clustered about three groups of tables, they talk, argue and laugh over the board games before them.

On Friday, Board Games Club held its third gathering of the year. Meeting after school every Friday from 3:30-4:30, the brand-new club provides a place for board gaming enthusiasts to gather and play board games together. The games are provided by staff advisor Robert Morgan, and rotate every month to provide the students with a diverse selection of games, while still allowing some time for people to experience every one of the month’s featured games.

While the first two meetings featured “light strategy” or  “gateway games” as Morgan called them, the latest meeting moved on to a new subset of board games: social deduction games.

“These are games that are primarily about players having some sort of secret information that they keep from each other, and you using clues from conversation or clues from in game information to try to deduce whether someone is good or bad, or trying to screw you over — sometimes all of the above,” Morgan said.

Morgan chose to run these games this month for a few reasons: One is that they’re generally easy to learn and play, with a limited number of interactions and decisions to make in the game. He also thinks people really tend to enjoy them.

“You know, this is not meant to be a condemnation, but people love to lie and trick people,” Morgan said. “It’s fun or enjoyable… so I think there is something kind of visceral and fun about playing social deduction games and I really hope I can get more people involved in the club who maybe wouldn’t normally come.”