The Art of Game Creation

[Kasimir]

On 2/5/2022 at 9:12 PM, Karnatheon said:

So this is just in the early stages currently but was curious if anything along these lines has been run in the past.

Reckoners game. Elims are Epics, Village is Reckoners. Epic and Reckoner identities are known, public Epic powers are known, secret Epic powers and weaknesses are unknown except to that player. Reckoner roles are known to the Reckoners. Epics and Reckoners each have a doc. Epics get a kill, with possibly more depending on powers. Epics are requires to make 1 rp post per (cycle or turn not sure yet) that subtly leaves a clue as to their weakness, any other rp posts they make that turn/cycle don't need to mention it. Reckoners get a kill action, that requires the submission of a weakness guess. Some Epics may have invulnerability, some or most won't. If the Reckoners correctly guess the weakness, the Epic dies. If they guess wrong but the Epic isn't invulnerable, the Epic and a rng Reckoner die. If they guess wrong and the Epic is invulnerable the Epic lives and a rng Reckoner dies.

Reckoners would have some protection or info gathering roles. 

Apologies for the double-post:

Karn, found something in the LG15 dead doc you might want to check out. I've c/ped here because the doc is insanely long in the fashion of the old school dead rambly players, but Meta had a slightly similar idea that I don't think we ever saw in action:

Quote

I came up with a Reckoner’s game. The Villagers are the Reckoners and the Eliminators are the Epics. Problem is, the Epics can’t be killed without knowing their weakness. As such, every death would be required to also list the player’s supposed weakness in the votes.
To help along these lines, I already plan to have a few different types of scanner roles, but rather than scanning for alignment and such, they scan for possibly Epic names and for back stories that hint towards the possible weaknesses of the targeted player.
Obviously, there would likely be a lot fewer Epics than normal, but that would depend on how many of these types of scanning roles and what each would get I’d have in the game.
I’m at a loss for other roles though and I need to do some hard numbers on how much of an effect the “weakness” mechanic would have on votes and such.
So that’s the idea in a nutshell. I love it from a gameplay aspect, but I don’t really feel like it’s ready to be put into a game.  

You could have it so that the assassin role can find backstories, or make the kill. Also have another idea that would be cool,which is you have a few reckoners and give them a doc, and the same with the Epics, then give everyone else a ‘neutral role’, with the neutrals being able to do some stuff.

[Side note to Wyrm: At around 100 pages, these docs tend to get clunky. I’d suggest we start a new doc, considering we’re at over 150 at this point] 

I thought about that, but that puts it in a similar situation as Joe’s LG10; where the good guys have a base to work from. 

Just give the Reckoners/Epics an option to convert people to their side, instead of killing.

Conversions are messy to begin with and it still give players a base of [blank] number of players that they are likely capable of trusting to some extent.  

Fair enough, i'll play with that idea as well tonight. In the AG doc

Sounds like a plan. It’s just one idea I have for the AG and as I said earlier, I’m likely going to post in the Game Creation thread and see what everyone else would like to see as well.
If that game doesn’t get off the ground for the AG, I’ll likely run it later at some point anyways.

I've got the idea now though, so gotta stick with it

You and everyone else that reads this doc.
But I’m going to get some sleep. I’ll look for your doc on your ideas with the AG tomorrow when I wake up. Night!

Red is Meta, green is STINK.

Edited February 10, 2022 by Kasimir

[Karnatheon]

Thanks!

[Ashbringer]

Great, now I’m getting Reckoners ideas.

What about a game like Clue? Elim team, but one Elim is an immortal Epic until their weakness is found, and it has to be mechanically searched for as a representation of 3 (maybe 4) discrete things. There would be a luck factor, and you’d have to figure out a way to balance around 10+ villagers looking at once instead of half that taking turns… has there been a game like that before?

Also just a general Reckoners idea: motivators. Can be used to mimic an Epic’s power 2-3 times, but whenever you do 1) the source Elim is roleblocked and 3) they learn who used the motivator. Might work better in games with multiple actions but it’s a thought.

[Kasimir]

Just now, Ashbringer said:

Great, now I’m getting Reckoners ideas.

What about a game like Clue? Elim team, but one Elim is an immortal Epic until their weakness is found, and it has to be mechanically searched for as a representation of 3 (maybe 4) discrete things. There would be a luck factor, and you’d have to figure out a way to balance around 10+ villagers looking at once instead of half that taking turns… has there been a game like that before?

You're in luck that I seem to be your resident SE Archivist today

Yes and no - Burnt and I have been working on a Scadrial game a bit like Clue in terms of mechanics, based off Murder on the Orient Express, but that's never seen light of day due to our schedules and the fact we got overambitious.

For mechanical search mechanisms with a luck factor, you're primarily looking at LG28 which was a SE version of Betrayal at House on the Hill; I later recycled Wyrm's search mechanic for MR43. In Wyrm's game, you had to keep running the searches to find Omens, and then the ability to locate and destroy the Heart of the House, and kill the Elims (converted each time an Omen was discovered.) Might be forgetting some details, but I co-GMed this with Wyrm.

Should run it again sometime, it was a blast.

[Ashbringer]

10 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

You're in luck that I seem to be your resident SE Archivist today

Yes and no - Burnt and I have been working on a Scadrial game a bit like Clue in terms of mechanics, based off Murder on the Orient Express, but that's never seen light of day due to our schedules and the fact we got overambitious.

For mechanical search mechanisms with a luck factor, you're primarily looking at LG28 which was a SE version of Betrayal at House on the Hill; I later recycled Wyrm's search mechanic for MR43. In Wyrm's game, you had to keep running the searches to find Omens, and then the ability to locate and destroy the Heart of the House, and kill the Elims (converted each time an Omen was discovered.) Might be forgetting some details, but I co-GMed this with Wyrm.

Should run it again sometime, it was a blast.

Cool! I’ll have to take a look at that sometime. In the meantime, I’m happy to help crowd source a Reckoners weakness-finder game.

[Kasimir]

4 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

Cool! I’ll have to take a look at that sometime. In the meantime, I’m happy to help crowd source a Reckoners weakness-finder game.

Tbh I'm kind of down for that by this point, though I do wonder if Meta posted a more complete version in AoGC at any point. Will probably run a post search when I'm not dealing with exams  

[Mat]

Two more games, my MR and QF slots.

MR: Tyrian, but role madness. It's just the basic Tyrian rules but I don't know if a role madness version or an MR version has been done before. Taking suggestions for the name of the town; if you leave me to come up with the name it won't be good

QF: Threnody with a Shade vengeance mechanic. Yes, I know it makes more sense thematically to have Violation activate for every death, but that seems too hard to balance. Trying out a few percentage based death mechanics, in the inactivity filter and knife.

[Araris Valerian]

15 hours ago, Kasimir said:

For mechanical search mechanisms with a luck factor, you're primarily looking at LG28 which was a SE version of Betrayal at House on the Hill; I later recycled Wyrm's search mechanic for MR43. In Wyrm's game, you had to keep running the searches to find Omens, and then the ability to locate and destroy the Heart of the House, and kill the Elims (converted each time an Omen was discovered.) Might be forgetting some details, but I co-GMed this with Wyrm.

Should run it again sometime, it was a blast.

I like mechanical search mechanisms . Was definitely a blast. Sadly, like several of Wyrm's games, it had significant activity problems, but the underlying game was very solid.

The Twinborn games also had a luck-based search factor that wasn't tied to win-conditions or alignment. I think LG 9 might also have had something like that? One of the early Reckoner games definitely did, but like Twinborn, it was searching for items. And the Elantris games also had search mechanics. And the recent Firefly game also had something like this; villagers would search for the Secret, and could win once enough pieces were found,

[Kasimir]

19 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

I like mechanical search mechanisms . Was definitely a blast. Sadly, like several of Wyrm's games, it had significant activity problems, but the underlying game was very solid.

Low key tempted to rerun because that Traitor team was so screwed over in so many ways - and like you said, rampant inactivity (seems to be Wyrm's curse actually) - but I feel that like the OG House game, you kind of need players not to look at the Traitor's Guide which means coming up with new Traitors and Omens and making it a blackout again...

[Karnatheon]

Would a game set entirely within the confines of an Ice Cream parlor need a pass? Or could it be set within the confines of an Ice Cream parlor on Era 3 Scadrial and count even if no roles were related to the setting?

I'm pretty sure I already know the answer.

Here is what I put together. Probably a QF.

[The Unknown Ajah]

The new rules have a non-sanderson every five games, so I don't think anything needs a pass any more.

[Archer]

9 hours ago, Karnatheon said:

Would a game set entirely within the confines of an Ice Cream parlor need a pass? Or could it be set within the confines of an Ice Cream parlor on Era 3 Scadrial and count even if no roles were related to the setting?

I'm pretty sure I already know the answer.

Here is what I put together. Probably a QF.

Hey. Hey Karnatheon. I really like the flavor of this game. 

It's a shame Death by Pizza go reworked, because this might have fit well into it. Brandon has plenty of sentient objects throughout his work though, you could try and shoehorn something in. Or as TUA said, just time it right. 

I feel like this game is vulnerable to game breaking from well timed claims. The elims could lie to confuse things, but they get one shot at that each, so if the village chooses the other person, they can't retract their claim and continue being effective. And if they hammer, it'll be obvious who is on that team. The village wouldn't even need to mass claim all at once, although if they did and there's multiples of roles, they might be able to stay ahead of the NKs. They'd just have to say everyone who is role X, claim and we'll add one of you today. 

I suppose that opens them up to the possibility of the elims crippling them at some point with systematic NKing of key roles, but it feels like people are going to have to claim at some point if they want to be exed anyway, so my gut says it'll be a claimfest so that needs to be hashed out. 

[Straw]

On 2/10/2022 at 11:10 AM, Matrim's Dice said:

Two more games, my MR and QF slots.

MR: Tyrian, but role madness. It's just the basic Tyrian rules but I don't know if a role madness version or an MR version has been done before. Taking suggestions for the name of the town; if you leave me to come up with the name it won't be good

QF: Threnody with a Shade vengeance mechanic. Yes, I know it makes more sense thematically to have Violation activate for every death, but that seems too hard to balance. Trying out a few percentage based death mechanics, in the inactivity filter and knife.

MR: Role madness Tyrian seems pretty tough to manage, particularly in terms of keeping balance vs keeping to the spirit of role madness. I'd bet that a balanced role madness Tyrian would end up with tons of Smokers and Tineyes as pseudo vanillas, with a good number of Mistborn and vote manipulators, with very few influential roles.

QF: I completely missed the factional kill bit and typed out a huge thing on how to make that balanced but I guess that's out the window now. This ruleset is pretty tough for the village, mainly because lylo is so much easier to hit.

[Steeldancer]

Question. Has anyone ever experimented with in-thread actions before? I'm thinking about making a game basically without a traditional exe, and was thinking the flavor of The Abyss would work well for a more interactive thread experience. 

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

1 hour ago, Steeldancer said:

Question. Has anyone ever experimented with in-thread actions before? I'm thinking about making a game basically without a traditional exe, and was thinking the flavor of The Abyss would work well for a more interactive thread experience. 

I think Alvron's Zombie QF 38 had the most in-thread actions. There were some problems with making sure everybody could be around to use those actions for timed events.

and the gun from Jondesu's MR 26 was also in thread.

Probably there are more I don't remember.

[Steeldancer]

We're scrapping the made in abyss game for now, I've kind of belched out some rules for a Choose your own alignment game. It's a faction game based on the Manywar in Nalthis. I haven't figured out the action economy yet, but it'll be based on breath. 

Known Factions are as such

Royalist Hawks: want royals to survive, and join their side for war. 

Royalist Doves: want royals to survive, and join a bid for peace. (I'll flesh out the exact win condition for these two groups later)

Revolutionaries: desire to overthrow the royals. Win if royals die along with foreign spies

Foreign spies: a special role. Can still join any alignment, but win condition is predicated on killing the royals.

Royals: a special role that will be distributed to various people. Will more or less determine how the game goes, depending on what happens to them and what they choose. 

Cowardly elite: a possible role, still debating this one. They'd have the ability to change alignments once after N0, when all alignments are chosen. 

The 5 scholars: might or might not be in the game. 

Secret factions are named as such, and win conditions are hidden 

The Cult of Colors

The Adjuncts of the Scholars

The Followers of Edgli

How the selection would work is that roles will be distributed N0, upon which all players will have a turn to discuss things and submit their desired alignments. There will be limits imposed on how many people can join a single faction, to prevent game breaking. As such, you can submit up to your top 3 factions, to allow for maximum player choice. Anyone who doesn't submit anything will be shoved into a random alignment. 

I have various other thoughts, but I figured this is good for now. It's a cool concept, that shouldn't be too broken. Granted, I'll probably spend the next few days trying to mentally break it. 

[JNV]

Hi heres a game idea I have please critique and stuff also if the link share thing doesn't work let me know 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P_rJhza1K6FIZ55r1O1tQ1DWLcSHaV2_q6zMuDp44Z8/edit?usp=sharing

Edit oh by the way its based on The Bifrost Incident by the Mechanisms and it will probably be a mid range game

Edited March 8, 2022 by JNV

[StrikerEZ]

6 minutes ago, JNV said:

Hi heres a game idea I have please critique and stuff also if the link share thing doesn't work let me know 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P_rJhza1K6FIZ55r1O1tQ1DWLcSHaV2_q6zMuDp44Z8/edit?usp=sharing

Edit oh by the way its based on The Bifrost Incident by the Mechanisms and it will probably be a mid range game

I like the roles and the flavor text for them! The only thing I'd worry about is No One's win condition. Just a straight up survival role isn't often very fun to play, unless they have something else to do as well. And what happens if they remember and switch to the elims? That means they only win if the elims do, but they don't count towards parity/outnumbering?

[JNV]

3 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

I like the roles and the flavor text for them! The only thing I'd worry about is No One's win condition. Just a straight up survival role isn't often very fun to play, unless they have something else to do as well. And what happens if they remember and switch to the elims? That means they only win if the elims do, but they don't count towards parity/outnumbering?

Im kinda worried about that too honestly the switchy bit was mostly as a "oh no if you are dying tap out now" but I didn't really consider the interactions. Maybe tell the elims if No One sides with them and who it is possibly? But honestly No One feels kind of useless for both sides cause they dont count for numbers but also I dont relaly want them to count for numbers cause what if they dont die until late game. 

Honestly No One just feels a bit clunky and the only reason I want them in there is because of Loki in The Bifrost Incident as a holdover of my idea to have roles as characters but I scrapped that cause I didnt wnat alignment based roles

You know what would be fun? I could m ake them a serial killer but on the extra life loss they can remember and switch sides if they want but still dont count for numbers and stuff. does that sound like a viable thing?

[Mat]

16 minutes ago, JNV said:

Im kinda worried about that too honestly the switchy bit was mostly as a "oh no if you are dying tap out now" but I didn't really consider the interactions. Maybe tell the elims if No One sides with them and who it is possibly? But honestly No One feels kind of useless for both sides cause they dont count for numbers but also I dont relaly want them to count for numbers cause what if they dont die until late game. 

Honestly No One just feels a bit clunky and the only reason I want them in there is because of Loki in The Bifrost Incident as a holdover of my idea to have roles as characters but I scrapped that cause I didnt wnat alignment based roles

You know what would be fun? I could m ake them a serial killer but on the extra life loss they can remember and switch sides if they want but still dont count for numbers and stuff. does that sound like a viable thing?

Tbh if I rolled No One I'd be tempted to immediately side with one of the factions but my gameplan would probably be to watch and see who looks like they're winning, then go there, mostly ignoring the survival aspect :P.

In the first game I created/ran, I had a neutral whose mechanics was to pick either the village or elims to side with (with a deadline of like C3) and they also didn't count for parity for either faction, and this looks similar to that, just without the stipulation that a side has to be chosen. So I think it works as a role, since it worked for my game.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Matrim's Dice

[StrikerEZ]

34 minutes ago, JNV said:

Im kinda worried about that too honestly the switchy bit was mostly as a "oh no if you are dying tap out now" but I didn't really consider the interactions. Maybe tell the elims if No One sides with them and who it is possibly? But honestly No One feels kind of useless for both sides cause they dont count for numbers but also I dont relaly want them to count for numbers cause what if they dont die until late game. 

Honestly No One just feels a bit clunky and the only reason I want them in there is because of Loki in The Bifrost Incident as a holdover of my idea to have roles as characters but I scrapped that cause I didnt wnat alignment based roles

You know what would be fun? I could m ake them a serial killer but on the extra life loss they can remember and switch sides if they want but still dont count for numbers and stuff. does that sound like a viable thing?

I think a serial killer would be an interesting way to do that.

Also, I listened to the Bifrost Incident this morning. Really interesting! That was a fun way to experience a story!

Also also, in other news, I finished the rules for that Stormlight Archive themed Mafia/Avalon/Secret Hitler game I signed up for last night. I want people's thoughts on it.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rj7Z9_9_O1uyNWQjnOCU0NKuLFMejxJnCaFebVbsGWI/edit?usp=sharing

[JNV]

1 hour ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Tbh if I rolled No One I'd be tempted to immediately side with one of the factions but my gameplan would probably be to watch and see who looks like they're winning, then go there, mostly ignoring the survival aspect :P.

In the first game I created/ran, I had a neutral whose mechanics was to pick either the village or elims to side with (with a deadline of like C3) and they also didn't count for parity for either faction, and this looks similar to that, just without the stipulation that a side has to be chosen. So I think it works as a role, since it worked for my game.

Which game was this? Sounds neat. How was that players engagement in the game? I wanna make sure the neutral palyer ends up happy with it

34 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

I think a serial killer would be an interesting way to do that.

Also, I listened to the Bifrost Incident this morning. Really interesting! That was a fun way to experience a story!

Also also, in other news, I finished the rules for that Stormlight Archive themed Mafia/Avalon/Secret Hitler game I signed up for last night. I want people's thoughts on it.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rj7Z9_9_O1uyNWQjnOCU0NKuLFMejxJnCaFebVbsGWI/edit?usp=sharing

Yeah I changed it to serial killer for now. Fun fact youre the first Mechs fan Ive found without intentionally looking for Mechs fan discords and stuff. Gold star!

 Also in the place where you talk about the Informat and Lightweaver roles I think you mixed up the "if so and so group wins the main phase" bit cause right now you have it as Lightweaver needs to not die if the village wins and Informat needs to not die if the elims win but I think its supposed to be the other way around. Or you got it mixed up in the Basics section but rihgt now its contradicting

[Mat]

19 minutes ago, JNV said:

Which game was this? Sounds neat. How was that players engagement in the game? I wanna make sure the neutral palyer ends up happy with it

Pretty sure it was MR46. TJ was the neutral, and his engagement was pretty good- but keep in mind that he immediately aligned himself with the village.

[StrikerEZ]

1 hour ago, JNV said:

Also in the place where you talk about the Informat and Lightweaver roles I think you mixed up the "if so and so group wins the main phase" bit cause right now you have it as Lightweaver needs to not die if the village wins and Informat needs to not die if the elims win but I think its supposed to be the other way around. Or you got it mixed up in the Basics section but rihgt now its contradicting

I’m not sure I see the contradiction. The Lightweaver and Informant both don’t want to die during the main phase. If they survive the main phase and their team wins, the other team gets a shot at them.

[JNV]

3 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

I’m not sure I see the contradiction. The Lightweaver and Informant both don’t want to die during the main phase. If they survive the main phase and their team wins, the other team gets a shot at them.

Yeah. In the role bits for Lightweaver and Informat you said the round bit happens if the other team wins.

Quote

• Lightweaver: You are the lynchpin of the Unseen Court’s operation here. You are the best spy they have, and the best Radiant in the Court. You need to infiltrate the Council of Honor and get close to Ialai to figure out what she knows. You and your team need to get you in at any cost. Good luck soldier.
  • You do not know the identity of any of your teammates.
  • If you die, the game ends for the Unseen Court.
  • Your team wins the game if you are elected during the main phase of the game. If the Sons of Honor win the main phase of the game, your goal is to not be killed during the Investigation Round.

But up top it says this

Quote

• If the Sons of Honor win the main phase, after the last election there will be an Assassination Round, in which the Unseen Court will vote on who they believe the Informant is. If they vote for the Informant, then they truly win the game. Every player, including previously elected players or an executed player, can comment in the thread during this round.

And it does the same but flipped thing for the Informat