Trouble in Terrorist Town, or TTT, is a social deduction game from 'way too long ago' that operates as a gamemode within the game Garry's Mod created by Bad King Urgrain.
The objective of the game is to have your team outlast the other by killing all of the members of the opposing team however possible.
I know what you're thinking, 'I've definitely already played that game,' but bear with me.
What differentiates TTT from the traditional team-based shooter is that only one of the teams, the far smaller one, knows who belongs to which team and, using this knowledge, must try to mitigate their disadvantage in numbers by using deceit, manipulation, and planning.
The larger team is known as the 'Innocent' team, they'll skew from blithely ignorant to hyper-anxious and paranoid; until a murder has happened, or unless they see something exceptionally suspicious, they likely won't act against the Traitor team due to the innate uncertainty of the game.
The smaller team are called the 'Traitors', as previously stated they will try to pick people that (hopefully) aren't their teammates off quietly and have access to a built-in shop that allows them to buy useful tools to achieve this goal, being rewarded with currency to buy more items from it as they succeed in their mission.
The Innocent team may have a guaranteed member that is free of suspicion called a 'Detective', that has their own, friendlier, shop to buy helpful goodies from.
If it sounds like I'm describing a social deduction game, that's because I am.
The appeal of TTT, in large part, is that the game must be played actively. The perspective of it as a strange Counter-Strike parody provides it decent gunplay, firefights can break out, bullet holes from guns that players have actually fired can be important evidence, you can craft an approach and attempt to execute on it as a Traitor, or as an Innocent, you can pick apart the information left from the messier parts of that event to draw valuable conclusions.
Wow, that actually sounds kind of fun!
I know, right?
The game takes place over a series of rounds that can be very quick if the Traitor team decides to play aggressively, or can take longer if they deliberate over their planning or choices more carefully; if the time in a round runs out, the Innocent team will win by default.
Each round will take about 10 minutes to play; 'Haste Mode' is a setting that makes the game take 5 minutes but each innocent that dies will add 30 seconds to the clock (to encourage proactive/faster play).
At the start of the round, players will be given a grace period of around 30 seconds without fighting to explore the area that they have spawned in, grab weapons from the floor, and prepare.
Following this, players will be assigned roles. This is when they will discover which team they are on.
For the Traitor team, this will also mean that they know which players are their teammates, if any, and if they were alone with someone during the grace period, they may try to kill them now.
Following this assignment, and opening risk, players will explore the map in an attempt to either:
Once all members of one team are dead, the other wins, and the round resets!
Innocent players will want to have their hands on a decent gun as they'll often have to fight reactively, or defend from unexpected attacks.
Figuring out what tells in the game give away a Traitor is vital to improving. You will improve at this with time.
For now, familiarise yourself with which items are non-standard, or 'Traitor' items, so that you can identify when someone shouldn't have something and treat that as suspicious.
If you watch a murder take place without any reasoning or justification, that should raise alarm bells, too.
Traitors may feel even more anxious than Innocent players, given that a ticking clock towards a loss and being outnumbered can be quite anxiety-inducing.
Fortunately, by pressing the Context Menu button (default: C), they'll be able to open a shop that has some great tools to even the playing field.
The most important aspects of playing the Traitor role is to act natural (read: 'don't act hyper-innocent, it's weird'). Do bother to craft alibis, however.
In games with enough players, roughly five or more, one player may spawn in as a Detective, giving the Innocent team a response to the Traitors having a kooky shop full of random gimmicky items to use on them.
This role is openly visible to all players, making them effectively cleared of suspicion by default; the Detective has access to their own shop, too.
The credits they use in their shop are the same as those used by the Traitors and, as such, they may be looted from the body by the Traitors, or vice versa.
They tend to be a priority target for the Traitor team, to throw the enemy team into disarray and shut down concerted efforts to catch the Traitors. Protect your Detective.
A vital part of not losing as the Innocent team is putting together the pieces left behind after a killing has occured. Succeeding at TTT means applying logic and information you're aware of to create reasonable, or concrete, conclusions.
When players die, they leave behind a body that can be interacted with to gain access to a variety of useful information. You can see what kind of gun killed them, if it was a headshot, the last thing they saw, and more. Use this, apply it, pull in other information, testimony, ask to see people's guns if you'd like, they might not agree, but that's suspicious, surely?
Deciding when to pull the trigger on someone for being reasonably suspicious of being a Traitor is hard and, with time, you'll develop those skills; you can never be sure, so you may want to take the risk if you're really stuck on a piece of incongruent evidence and learn from it!
For Traitors, however, just consider the inverse, it's that simple.
Playing TTT on the Shub-Piggurath server features additional roles and customised item shops, you can learn more about them by clicking the relevent links!