Dupery - Lies, Damned Lies, And Accountants

Overview

John plays Dupery, a detective deduction game in which the player investigates a neighborhood by knocking on doors and questioning its residents. Each character provides information or has an ability that can help identify the villains—but some characters lie, disguise themselves, or mislead the investigator for reasons that don’t necessarily make them villains.

There is no single ongoing story. Instead, the game progresses through increasingly difficult cases, adding more characters, threats, and complications.

Gameplay Highlights

• Deduce who is telling the truth. Residents may reveal where someone lives, how close they are to a villain, or which roles are present. Compare their claims with the known role list and other clues.
• Distinguish villains from meddlers. Yellow “meddler” roles can lie or interfere with investigations without being criminals, so a suspicious statement alone isn’t proof of guilt.
• Manage the clock. Knocking on doors takes time, and some characters act after a set number of hours. Serial killers can kill nearby good characters, while other roles may kill, taint, or delay the investigation.
• Use abilities strategically. The vigilante can test a suspected villain by shooting; the mathematician gives a total based on villain addresses; the tailor checks whether two roles share an alignment; and the bloodhound points toward nearby evil. These abilities can provide strong evidence, but some threats can disrupt or shift their effects.
• Adapt to new complications. Later cases introduce disguises, tainted innocents who start lying, characters who generate drunkards, and special threats such as the accountant, who shifts ability targets.
• Choose perks between cases. Perks can remove an annoying role, guarantee a helpful character’s appearance, or restore reputation for certain arrests.

Case Highlights

• In the tutorial, John learns to combine role claims and neighbor counts to catch a disguised villain and a liar.
• In an early case, he uses the vigilante’s ability to eliminate suspected villains, while acknowledging that this is closer to letting others do the killing than solving everything himself.
• Later cases test deduction under greater time pressure. John uses clues from the mathematician, tailor, and other residents to find villains while trying to limit deaths.
• The final case adds a powerful special threat. John pieces together clues from the romantic, bloodhound, and other roles to identify the major danger and finish the investigation.

Tips and Strategies

• Cross-check claims instead of trusting a single resident. A statement can be false because the speaker is a villain, a meddler, or an innocent who has been tainted or misled.
• Keep the role count in mind. If the suspect list allows only one of a role but two residents claim it, at least one claim is false or disguised.
• Prioritize time-sensitive threats. Investigate or use abilities before killers remove potential sources of information.
• Account for deaths when interpreting clues. A missing role may have been killed rather than absent from the case.
• Use low-risk verification where possible. Some clues, such as a clockmaker’s announced time or a mathematician’s address total, can be checked against the board.
• Don’t arrest every liar. Drunkards, tainted innocents, and other meddling roles may lie without being villains.
• Be cautious with ability users. An ability may be corrupted, misdirected, or affected by another character, so consider how the result fits the rest of the evidence.

Featured gamer/source: John of Many A True Nerd.