The Art of Game Creation

The Unknown Ajah · February 6, 2021

15 minutes ago, Quintessential said:

48 hour Day cycles (I am still unclear on what exactly this means. Typically I think this translates to 48 hour combined cycles? not sure though)

PMs are open, but unless you are using the actions of the specific roles, only two player PMs may exist. (this can just be shortened to "one on one PMs are open", with possibly a note that some roles can open group PMs)

There is a vote minimum of three and ties are decided randomly

If there are ever less than four people, the Hemalurgist wins and if the Dakhor Monk has killed at least five people, they win as well. If the Returned's target is still alive they win as well. (is this dependent on these three roles being alive? Also, is it "if the Dakhor Monk has killed at least five people they win" or is it "if the Dakhor Monk has killed at least five people and there are less than four people left, they win"? I'll probably note this when I get to the alignments section but usually when neutrals win they are immediately removed from the game

Ok, here it goes.

Yes, combined.

Good point.

No, it's there purely for flavor reasons, you're right I should probably get rid of it. It counts as surviving to the end of the game for the Monk, same for the Returned's target, the Hemalurgist wins no matter what for some reason.

34 minutes ago, Quintessential said:

The Crew, standard village faction. Must kill or neutralize (Such as an Awakener after making Nightblood) all Infiltrators without going below four players. (I haven't read the roles that would make it clear what neutralizing someone means so I'll probably come back and add a comment here once I have. However, my question would be, does an elim still count for parity if they're neutralized? That is, if there are three elims left, one of whom is neutralized, and they get the number of Crew down to two, do the elims win or do they have to kill one more? Also, cutting the game short when neither side has technically won is less than satisfying. If there's a mechanical reason for it then you should do it, but otherwise I might just take the part about going below 4 out entirely.)

Yes they would neutralized just means if they are somehow unable to submit the night kill, as I feel it would get boring at that point.

35 minutes ago, Quintessential said:

The Infiltrators, standard Elim faction. Must surpass the number of Crew. The Infiltrators have a doc to conspire in. (Do they not have a factional kill? If not you should specify that, since "standard elim faction" very much implies that they do. Also I guess this is what you mean by Day only cycles, if they don't have a factional kill, but given the number of potential kill roles I'd say that it's still more accurate to call them combined cycles than Day only.)

They have a faction kill, like I said, it means combined, believe it or not, this was once a QF.

38 minutes ago, Quintessential said:

The Hemalurgist, neutral faction, must get at least one Allomantic and one Feruchemical power. They may spike a person once every other turn, killing them, the Hemalurgist will gain their ability. The Hemalurgist also has a doc to write thoughts in. (saying this is a neutral faction implies that there is more than one Hemalurgist, but I gather from the rest of the text that there isn't; you might change the phrasing to "neutral role" instead to make that clear. Some thoughts on this role, other than that: the fact that the Hemalurgist and the Dakhor Monk can kill every other turn should really mean that there aren't any other kill roles in the game at all. In a game with lots of kill roles, even one where the elims don't have a factional kill, you'd see the game depopulated at hyperspeed. Especially if the Hemalurgist spikes a kill role--they can then use that kill on someone else in a turn when they can't Spike, thus causing yet another death. Also, if a Hemalurgist spikes someone with a one-use ability that that person has already used up, does the Hemalurgist still get the ability? And once the Hemalurgist has Spiked one Feruchemist and one Allomancer, do they stick around for the rest of the game? Can they keep Spiking people and killing them and aggregating abilities? If they die after they complete their win-con, does that negate their win or do they still win? What happens if they Spike the Dakhor Monk?)

Actually, I originally had no killing, so I'll remove the no Dakhor kill roles and make this not killing. I don't want to remove this from the game after it completes it's win condition because a role stealer would be fun, if it no longer kills the Hemalurgist will likely be more villagey, which I already wanted, definitely using this fix. Only once, if it doesn't kill, it would steal, which is fine. If the person already used their charge the Hemalurgist can still use the ability, but only once. The neutrals wouldn't be effected I think.

19 minutes ago, Quintessential said:

Let them win after 2 or 3 kills--the alternative is to let them kill every cycle which would just lead to faster depopulation of the pool of players.

Don't give them additional abilities after each kill; a player that can kill once every other cycle is powerful enough as it is.

As with the Hemalurgist, remove them from the game after they complete their win-con. If they want to stay in longer, than C6, they are always free to delay their last kill by a cycle or two at the risk of dying in the meantime--that's happened before.

I see what you mean, and I still want this to be a survival as well, so it would be, get 3 kills and survive, the first kill makes you immune to non-kill actions, the second makes you immune to night kill, except elimination, and the fourth makes you immune to the exe. The last one is if the Monk goes above and beyond, they literally can't lose. After four kill they can't kill anymore I think.

22 minutes ago, Quintessential said:

Since it's not specified, I'll say the way I would do it, but feel free to do differently if you have something in mind alread: I'd give the Returned two cycles to choose whom to protect. If they choose no one, then assign them someone at random. If the Returned or RNG chooses a neutral, then let that happen--it counts as a win for the Returned if the neutral wins and is removed.

Instead of giving the Returned a passive extra life, say that the first attack or exe directed at their target will be blocked, and the Returned will be killed instead. Again, I know it's not totally faithful to the books but it makes more sense for the role. Obviously, this means the Returned can still win even if they are dead.

Given how this works, I'd remove the idea of finding out someone of the opposite alignment entirely--especially since I'm not sure what it accomplishes. The returned doesn't know (as far as I can tell) the alignment of the person they protect. They don't have kill abilities on their own, so they can't just vig that person, and if they announce to the village that "such and such has an alignment opposite that of my ward" and the village exes that person and they flip vil, the person you're protecting is suddenly a mech-confirmed elim and almost certainly dead.

I might remove the Returned and replace it with a different role. I might also make it gave to survive to the end and remove that aspect of the Monk, ya, I'll do that. I'll make it learn the identity of a village and an elim, but not know which is which maybe.

Quintessential · February 6, 2021

8 hours ago, The Unknown Order said:

They have a faction kill, like I said, it means combined, believe it or not, this was once a QF.

I can certainly believe that--a lot of games that I've come up with have ended up nothing like the original idea. Also, probably best to specify that the elims have a kill, just for the sake of clarity (sorry, I know this is super small fine detail stuff : P)

8 hours ago, The Unknown Order said:

Actually, I originally had no killing, so I'll remove the no Dakhor kill roles and make this not killing. I don't want to remove this from the game after it completes it's win condition because a role stealer would be fun, if it no longer kills the Hemalurgist will likely be more villagey, which I already wanted, definitely using this fix. Only once, if it doesn't kill, it would steal, which is fine. If the person already used their charge the Hemalurgist can still use the ability, but only once. The neutrals wouldn't be effected I think.

So, when you say stealing an ability, do you mean that the person the Hemalurgist targets loses the ability? That would certainly be interesting... also, if you're leaving the Hemalurgist in after they win it might help with balancing to decide that they only have the ability for the cycle after they've taken it? But then, they only have one action per cycle (right? I should have asked this earlier) so it wouldn't be too much of a problem.

Also, noting the new scan that they have in the rules doc--is that a passive ability, or do they have to use an action for it? Is it random, or do they choose which player? If you want the Hemalurgist to be able to use all of their new abilities at some point, and if the system is 1-action-per-cycle, I'd suggest you make it passive and random, but feel free to disregard this if you have something else in mind.

8 hours ago, The Unknown Order said:

I see what you mean, and I still want this to be a survival as well, so it would be, get 3 kills and survive, the first kill makes you immune to non-kill actions, the second makes you immune to night kill, except elimination, and the fourth makes you immune to the exe. The last one is if the Monk goes above and beyond, they literally can't lose. After four kill they can't kill anymore I think.

Point with the survival. That makes sense thematically and I don't think it would break anything, so long as they can't keep killing indefinitely.

I still don't think it's necessary for the Monk to gain abilities as they kill, since they already have an incentive to kill in the form of their win-con. But if you want to include it then I have a couple of suggestions on that point:

I don't think making a player totally immortal--even as a reward for going above and beyond their win-con--is a good idea. Part of the idea of the game is that anyone can die if you try hard enough to get them killed, at any point in time. It just... I guess the thing with game design is that you don't want to make anyone too powerful, even the most powerful roles? Like, I guess the closest example I can think of would be the Stone Shaman in LG72. Ash made that person invincible at the beginning, but he decided that if another role, the Truthless, died, the Stone Shaman would become vulnerable to NKs. And then he gave the Truthless a win-con that involved dying. Basically, even the most powerful players should have a chink in their armor.

I'd say that doesn't require much change to fix, though; just capping kills at 3 and leaving everything else the same would work fine. Roles that are immune to NKs have been done before, as have roles that are immune to the exe, just not both at once. So you can say that they can't kill beyond three players (it's probably a good idea to cap it as low as possible anyway, since the elims have a kill). Also, looking at the distribution of abilities, I'd make it the second kill where they gain non-fatal action immunity and the third kill where they gain NK immunity.

9 hours ago, The Unknown Order said:

I might remove the Returned and replace it with a different role. I might also make it gave to survive to the end and remove that aspect of the Monk, ya, I'll do that. I'll make it learn the identity of a village and an elim, but not know which is which maybe.

: P the problem with doing that is that (unlike in Avalon the Resistance where this exact role works just fine) the village gets to kill people. If the Returned felt like it, they could just announce who the two people were. The village would exe both of them, knowing they were guaranteed to get an elim. And just like that the Returned becomes somewhat useless.

Quote

Returned, neutral role, stay alive to the end of the game. You get a second life and upon death learn the alignment of a random player.

Okay, so as this is, I don't think I'd really want to be Returned. Survival win-cons are easy for GMs but they don't give the player much direction. Do they help the elims? Do they help the village? Do they totally check out of the game and stop caring? It's up to them. Actually, if anything a pure survival win-con encourages inactivity since the unfortunate truth is that the most active players (usually) get exed and NKd first, just because being active draws attention to them.

The main mechanic of this role seems to be the passive second life and the fact that upon "death" (which I assume means "after losing their first life") they learn the alignment of a random player. Right? So, I would try to build in a win-con and/or set of abilities using those two things. You could do something like the Lord Ruler in MR46, where that person chose which side, village or elim, to win with (but didn't count for parity). You could take the idea of learning alignments a step further and make the Returned an alignment scanner (also like the Lord Ruler from MR46, actually). I mean, the other two neutrals have actions every other turn, so why not? You'd have to account for the possibilities of them aligning with the village and accurately reporting their scans--which would lead to confirmed villagers and confirmed elims, something that's hard(er) to balance I think. I'm not quite sure what I'd do with the Returned, in all honesty, especially since I don't know what you want to do with the Returned, but those would be starting points.

I'll post this now and then start looking at the other roles. Those should (hopefully) take me less time lol

Quintessential · February 6, 2021

Okay, here goes (hopefully I don't end up double-posting). Sorry this took me so long... real life interrupted a couple of times, and there was a lot more than I thought there would be

Scadrial:

Spoiler

Allomancy:

Spoiler

Iron: Redirect a person's target, if the person takes no action, the iron user will be told. If the target is using iron or another action redirected, nothing will happen and it will show as no action. (I've never played a game with a redirect in it before, but I think this is fairly standard. I assume the person redirecting would decide who to redirect the action onto. The one thing I'd say is that the way it is now, it can be used as an action scan, almost? I'd suggest you take out the part where they're informed whether their target took an action.)
Steel: Delay a person's action for a turn, they will not be told. (This is an interesting idea--I've never seen it done before. I'd point out that in most cases the target would be able to tell that their action was delayed, so to avoid confusion you might just say that they will be told. One thing I'd point out is that this could be used on purpose, in coordination with other people. For example, if the elims have this role and know that someone (a villgaer) is a Pewter Allomancer, they can delay a kill on that person by a cycle, submit a second kill on them that cycle, and thus double-tap and kill the Pewter Allomancer. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing--the situations where it would be useful are quite limited, and anyway I think that it could be really interesting to have that as an option--but something to keep in mind. Another thing I would point out, though, is that flavor-wise you might make this the Cadmium alloy ability. It fits basically perfectly. If you do that, I'd suggest making Steel be something related to what Iron is, since Allomantic abilities come in pairs, right? For example, it could be "each cycle, you may target someone. All actions that would target that person act on you instead." I know Duralumin has something similar, but then again you could always shift Cadmium's ability to Duralumin. But of course, all of that is flavor, not balance, so entirely up to you what you do with it)
Pewter: One kill protection once per game, this will stop execution, elimination, and player kills. (Since there are several different ways that protection roles work, I guess I'll just ask for more specificity here. Is this a passive extra life? Does it require an action? Can you self-target? Can you target other players? If you use the protection on someone who isn't attacked, can you use it again or is it used up? (that is, can you keep attempting to protect someone each cycle until one of your protects is successful?))
Tin: You can know the identity of one person targeting you. (This one's fine, as far as I can tell. You might make it "all players that target you", since compared to the other action scans this is currently a bit underpowered, I think? But that isn't necessarily a bad thing. You could also allow the Tineye to watch someone else and see one or all of the people targeting them. But again, no need to change anything here if you don't want to. Also (I'm adding this after looking at Tin Feruchemy) you may wanna save that ability for the other tin power)
Brass: Make a person's vote count double. (Can you self-target?)
Zinc: Remove a person's vote. (No comments here)
Bronze: Once per game, know all actions taken and against who, but not who took the actions. Cannot see copper. (I'm forgetting what Bronze does in the books... Oh, wait, sees Allomancy! Okay, this makes sense. I'm not sure what Straw meant with his time-zone comment. What I'd say about this is that it might be more useful to know who took what actions, not what actions targeted which people. Then again, that would also out elims pretty easily so nevermind. Ignore that. Your idea is better )
Copper: Know who took an action, but not what it is or who it was targeting. Cannot see bronze. (I'm a little bit confused as to what this one does. Does the Smoker just receive a list of people who took actions each turn? Does that require an action? This isn't necessarily a bad thing but this use of Copper doesn't fit its abilities in the books--there's actually already quite a well-defined ability for Copper Mistings in SE games, which I think would work well in this game. But you don't have to use it.)
Chromium: Roleblock a person. (This one's fine)
Duralumin: Redirect all actions taken against you on the targeter, this includes positive actions and Elimination. (Okay, so first of all I'm not totally sure what this means. I think it's supposed to be "all actions taken against you on the target" so I'll just proceed as if that's what it says. I think this is fine, except that I would not allow it to work with the exe. Especially if this is an action that the person can take every turn. Actually, I would honestly say this shouldn't work with the elim kill either. That allows this person invincibility all the time, which, like I've said before, is not ideal. If you wanted to make it easier on yourself in terms of phrasing you can just say that burning Duralumin redirects all non-fatal actions onto the target.)
Nicrosil: Make a person's actions effect an extra person of your choice. (I mean, I would have made Nicrosil be "grant the target an extra action in the next cycle" but this is cooler and there may actually be fewer breaks involved XD can you make the person target you or themself? What happens if you make the person target the person they were already targeting? does nothing happen? Does the action double? In order to avoid breaks in the game, you have to make sure there's only one person with an ability like this. If Illwei and I are both Nicrosil burners and we find each other, I can target Illwei and make her action count twice. If she was going to make TJ's action happen on Dannex, and then I make a duplicate of Illwei's action happen on Gears, that means that TJ's action happens twice (once on his target, once on Dannex) and Gears' action happens twice (once on his target, once on Dannex). And if three Nicrosil burners found each other... sorry, I know your game doesn't actually have room for duplicates of roles so this hypothetical isn't relevant, but I enjoyed the thought experiment )
Cadmium: Cancel anyone who takes an action against you's vote. (Would rephrase this as "Cancel the vote of each person who takes an action against you", assuming that's what you mean. Just to make that clearer. Also, is this a passive ability? I keep asking this mostly because I'm not sure whether the elim-kill counts as an action or not. If an elim who submits the elim-kill can burn Cadmium, would submitting the kill (and thus possibly using up their action) negate their Cadmium, or could they do both? I would also point out that it probably shouldn't be passive, since there are times when you might not want to cancel the votes of every person who targets you--like if you're elim and one of your teammates is protecting you that cycle, for example.)
Bendalloy: Stop any actions taken against you from taking effect for a turn (except Elimination). (Can this be used every cycle? If so that's quite broken. I think it would probably be less OP to let you target other people but not yourself with this. It would be "Each cycle, you may target someone. All actions directed at that person will be negated. You may not self-target, and you may not target the same person twice in a row" or something like that. That way nobody becomes invincible : P Also, you don't have to specify "all actions (except elimination)" because the exe is not an action.)
Atium: Know all the people who target you, and once per game, not have them affect you (excluding Elimination). (So, each cycle, you receive a list of everyone who targets you. Do you find out what actions they used? Thematically, I'd say that makes sense, but you would probably have to remove the once-per-game ability if you did that. Also, I'm not sure that I could see myself using that once per game ability anyway. Maybe in specific situations, where I know someone's going to attack me? But usually you have no idea what's going to hit you beforehand. I'd always worry that I'd end up wasting it.)
Malatium: Learn a person's role. (I like it. Simple. Makes sense.)

Okay so that's all of the roles, looked at individually. I'm not sure I have the brainpower or time to think about how they all interact. Being me, a perfectionist who likes symmetry and book-accuracy, I think some of these roles are really cool, but I would also probably swap a few of them around (see Steel : P). I think my instinct with this game, if I were the one in charge of designing it and running it, would be to focus in on the Allomantic powers--to take the set of the 16 Allomantic powers and the three God Metals and turn that into a game, making sure that the abilities of the pairs relate somehow, that all the abilities fit with the ones in the books, and that it comes together in a nice cohesive whole. But I've gotten the sense that you don't want to do that--that you'd rather have an overarching, whole-cosmere game than one that focuses in really tightly on one book. So I won't go into detail about how I'd do that . I may revisit the idea as a game of my own at some point, actually--if you don't mind me borrowing some of the ideas for the different powers?

However, if you want to spend a bunch of time tweaking this section, I'd say that I find the idea of relating the pairs of metals intensely satisfying. I also think that one way to differentiate Feruchemy and Allomancy would be to allow Mistings to Flare their metal once per game. That would be like what you have for Atium right now, but have a special ability like that for every metal? I'm not sure how well that would work, but something to think about. Of course, I haven't read any of the other roles in detail yet so I suspect by the end of this post I'll have changed my mind and I'll think that adding complexity probably isn't the way to go XD

Feruchemy:

Spoiler

Iron: Roleblock someone. (I know that with as many roles as you have in this game, it's probably impossible to avoid some overlap, but I still think it would be cool to differentiate between Feruchemy and Allomancy somehow. Then again, I don't actually have any ideas of how to do that. Whatever, I'll come back to this if I think of something I suppose.)
Steel: Redirect all actions on you to someone else and make all actions on them target you. (I do like this one. Quite a bit. I would specify that you can't target the same person twice in a row, but other than that this is very interesting. You're immune to elim kills directed at you, but if your target is NKd then you die. The one thing is, what happens if your target was roleblocked? That shunts onto you because of your action, at which point your action is blocked... but your action was the reason your action was blocked in the first place? So if your action was blocked then your action's not blocked, but that means your action was blocked... I love paradoxes. You could just say that roleblocks happen first in the order of actions, so Steel Feruchemy can't touch them.)
Pewter: Make a person vote for something, this can change and negate a vote. (so, you can target a person and make them vote for someone or negate their vote. Can you make them vote on themself? Also, you might make it a vote mover only, since you've already got an ability that removes a person's vote. Letting this one do both means that this is just a better version of that one.)
Tin: Know either the identity, alignment, role, or type of action taken against you. (Is it RNGd which of those things you find out, or do you choose? Do you learn all actions taken against you or just one? Also, again, this is just Tin Allomancy but more. I would take out identity, because otherwise Tin Allomancy becomes somewhat redundant. I don't really know what knowing the alignment of a person that targets me would do for me in most cases, so if I had Tin Feruchemy as it is now I would always choose identity or type of action. Role and type of action are (almost always) synonymous, and in cases where they're not, knowing the type is more useful. So, basically what I'm saying is, unless you're RNGing which thing the Tin Ferring learns, it should probably just be "learn the type of action". If you are RNGing which thing the Tin Ferring learns... I mean, I guess that seems a bit odd to me but it works)
Zinc: Once per game, extend a day turn for 24 hours. (This one... idk, I'm not sure about this one. I mean, I assume what would happen is that at some point before the normal rollover time is announced, the Zinc Ferring submits an action to extend the cycle, and then at the normal rollover time the GM checks to make sure nothing's blocking the action and then they extend by 24 hours? But then that gets messy because people can change their actions... Like, let's see you have two roleblockers, me and Connie, and then Ash is the Zinc Ferring. The same cycle that he tries to extend, I decide to roleblock him. However, Connie also roleblocks me, so my roleblock doesn't go through and Ash's action does. But then after the cycle is extended, Connie for some reason changes her mind and blocks someone else. At which point I should be blocking Ash, but his action has already happened... idk, it just seems like it introduces a lot of odd complications. Then again, I'm not totally sure what I'd replace it with or how I'd change it. Normally I'd suggest that it be "skip the next turn" but the cycles in this game are combined so that's not an option...)
Copper: Make a multiple person PM. (So... specifics here. How many times per cycle, per game, can you make a group PM? Is there a maximum number of players that can be in a group PM? Does this take an action, or could an elim using an action to submit the kill also make PMs? Can this person make group PMs that don't include them? Are they allowed to make one-on-one PMs or do the PMs have to include at least 3 players? Do the PMs close after a certain amount of time or do they remain open for the entire game? Not proposing answers to any of these because this one really is up to you and how many group PMs you can stand as the GM it's not a major balancing issue or anything.)
Bronze: Once per game, solidify the lynch at any time. This will reveal your role. (Huh. This is really interesting. Ohhhh wait this is what Straw meant about Bronze being timezone dependent. He meant Bronze Feruchemy. Okay, got it. Alright, so yeah, timezones are an issue here. Apart from that, how would this work? Things can change so fast in the thread that you might submit the action to solidify the exe when Dannex has a 4 vote lead over everyone else and then by the time the GM sees the PM a half hour later the exe has shifted onto someone else. So I guess, you could make it so that if someone wants to freeze the exe, they post in the thread in a specific color text (purple?) that you are a Bronze Ferring and the vote is now over. Of course, then you have to think about whether people can roleblock that person to stop it from happening, whether vote-manips count, etc. etc. This one may just have a few too many problems with it to be able to run... as with Zinc, though, I'm not sure how I'd fix it or what I'd replace it with.
Chromium: Know one action taken against you. (the overlap with other abilities bothers me, but once again I'm aware that that's probably not avoidable in a game like this one...)
Aluminum: Once per game, use another roles action. (I think this one's a little bit underpowered. It fits with Aluminum Feruchemy well, but if you can only do it once per game then it's really not very powerful. Instead, I'd say that A. this person can only use Feruchemical roles and B. each cycle, they are RNGd which role they can use. So, each cycle they gain the ability to act like one of the other Ferrings for that cycle only. Might take some balancing to make that work, but it'd be more useful.)
Duralumin: Open a PM with multiple people. Must contain yourself. (Same questions as with Copper.)
Gold: Protect yourself from one attack every other turn. (Does this mean that on odd cycles you're protected and on even cycles you're vulnerable. Or does it just mean you can't protect twice in a row? Do you want this to protect from the exe? If so, I'd say that the Gold Ferring should lose their abilities after protecting from the exe, having drained all of their Goldminds. Or some such thing, idk. Might do that after a successful protection too, in which case I would honestly just make this a passive extra life. That might make the most sense, and it's simpler.)
Electrum: Make a player immune to roleblock for the rest of the game every other turn. (I'm... idk, this one's very complex. I suppose it works, but there are already a lot of abilities that theoretically would negate roleblocking or shunt it off onto someone else. The problem I'm having with thinking of good actions for these abilities is that a lot of the Feruchemical abilities are more in line with "make your actions unblockable" which... like, doesn't work here because this is the only action you can take. So I guess this one's fine.)

Fewer overall thoughts on this one. I guess the main thing is that the two abilities that would change the end of the cycle or of voting probably should just be replaced--you would run into too many issues with those, especially since the people playing live all over the world, and you may not be on to catch those actions and put them into place when they need to be.

Okay, so hopefully that gives you some idea of where to get started. I tried to consider how all of the roles would interact with each other but there are a lot and this is taking me a long time so if someone else wants to add to what I've said, or contradict me on any of this, please feel free.

Also I'm definitely not mentally planning out a Twinborn game that gives an action-based ability for the Allomantic power and an enhancement of some kind for the Feruchemical power right now. Nope. And if I did that, I definitely wouldn't borrow a lot of the abilities from this setup. Nope. : P

Roshar:

Spoiler

Adhesion: Redirect a person's action to themselves. Base target can be changed by action redirecters. (I'm a little confused by the phrasing of this... I think it's describing the same ability as Iron Allomancy, more or less, but I'm not... positive... it could also be that any actions the target takes are instead directed back at the target--which would be really interesting. You could coordinate with someone who has an ability that they otherwise can't use on themself, you could redirect the elim kill back onto the elim submitting it if you guessed right, you could drive rolescanners and action scanners insane, etc. so if it's the latter idea then I say go for it and if it's the former then I say... maybe consider the latter? XD I just really wanna see this ability in a game.)
Gravitation: Redirect all actions to a single player for a night (except elimination and execution). (Wow. that's. a lot of actions. I assume this would be a once-per-game thing? Also, I hope you're aware how insane it would be for the GM of this game (that is to say, for you) to keep track of. But if you wanna do that, then go for it I guess )
Division: Once per game, make a person's vote carry over a round. (So... if I vote on Connie in C2, and someone uses this on me, my vote would also end up on Connie C3, regardless of where I tried to place it? What if Connie died in C2? Does this still take effect?)
Abrasion: Make all actions targeting you, target someone else. (See my comments on Duralumin)
Progression: Protect a player from attack (doesn't work on yourself). (Can you protect the same player twice in a row? Can you only successfully protect once, or can you do it more than once?)
Illumination: Stop any actions taken against you, once per game, stop Elimination as well. (So, once per game you can essentially put yourself in stasis? That seems fine. Probably. You should probably try to get someone else with more GMing experience to weigh in on everything I've said XD given that I'm relatively new here.)
Transformation: Change any action into a different type of action. (So, you target someone, and you say "okay this person's action will be... <insert action here>". What if the person who ends up with Transformation is chaotic neutral and decides they want to see lots of murderdeath, so every cycle they change someone else's action to a kill action? Basically, is there a limit on Transformation? Are there certain actions that a Transformation user doesn't have access to? Is there a list of actions that they can transform an action into, and they can only use each one once? etc.)
Transportation: Make all actions targeting you target someone else and all actions targeting them target you. (See my comments on Steel Feruchemy)
Cohesion: Make a single, random action targeting you, target someone else. (Do you choose who the new target is?)
Tension: Stop a single, random action targeting you. (No comments here, really.)

Ughhh I'm getting tired can you tell? XD Sorry for the shorter comments. I have some thoughts here but really they're just thoughts about the game as a whole so I'll save them for the end.

Nalthis, Sel, and First of the Sun:

Spoiler

Nalthis:

Spoiler

Awakening: (use one every other turn, they roll over) (to be honest, to save yourself the headache of keeping track of once every other turn, I might just make it once every turn. Some ways to balance that would be to limit the times you can use each item on the list, or tell the Awakener they can choose one role at the beginning and that is their role for the rest of the game--as in, they've created an Awakening and now that's what they have to work with.)

Protect yourself until attacked. (aka give yourself a passive extra life? this would work if you used the second option that I suggested above, but if you're still letting them switch between actions then I'd make this just "self-protect this cycle")

Add a null vote. (Add a null vote? We don't count null votes in SE... the only votes that have any impact are the ones that have been placed. So I guess if you're planning to count null votes in this game you should definitely specify that in the basics section.)

Roleblock a player.

Make a players action target an extra person. (Hmmm as I pointed out in my comments on Nicrosil, having more than one of these floating around could lead to breaks. Or, well, not breaks per se but certainly complex situations that would require some quick thinking from the GM. So just... keep that in mind if you're thinking about putting both of these roles in a game together.

Unblockable kill a player, after taking this action, you can no longer use an action. (Seems fine.)

Sel:

Spoiler

Elantrian: (only one) (can the Elantrian choose one and then use it throughout the game or are each of these one-time uses?)

Protect another player. (same questions about specificity as with other protects)

Make your vote double.

Redirect a player's target. (I assume this means redirect a player's action onto another player?)

Forger: Change a player's role for a turn, including your own. Requires two turns to study them. One turn for yourself. (Okay so you spend your action for two cycles watching someone and then you can grant them one ability for one turn? That seems a bit underpowered. I'd say it should only require one cycle to study the person, and they should keep the role for the rest of the game (whether they want it or not. This way, Forgery can be used to make an enemy less powerful, instead of an ally more powerful). Also, I would limit the roles that the Forger can create to a specific list where adding more of those roles won't break the game. Not sure what that list would be yet... but yeah. Another question would be, can the Forger change the abilities of the neutrals?

First of the Sun:

Spoiler

Aviar: (only one, but can be used multiple times) (What does the Aviar do?)

Death Sense: Passively protect yourself from any form of kill until attacked. (So, passive extra life?)

Mind Protection: Passively roleblock all non-kill actions, once an action is taken against you, this stops. (Mmmm I'm not sure whether making it stop after an action is taken against you, since that directly contradicts the part about passively roleblocking all non-kill actions. Maybe let it keep going unless and until you're hit by a roleblock yourself, at which point it stops?)

Alignment Detection: Learn your targets alignment the next round. The Hemalurgist, the Dakhor Monk and the Returned will be show as alignment unknown. (You may as well just make them show up neutral. Everyone else will be vil or elim, so they'll know anyway. Also, this should definitely be a one-use ability. Otherwise it's... really powerful.)

Action Detection: Learn what type of action your target did. (This one's fine)

Great, my head hurts now lol. My comments got a lot shorter towards the end there... maybe I'd have had more to say about those abilities if I'd started with them, idk. General thoughts: make sure that for each action, you consider not just what it'll do generally, but exactly how it'll do it, whether it's passive or requires an action, who it can and can't target, which other actions it can interact with, how often it can be used, and so on. When writing out an outline of a game, it's fine to just say what you want a role to do, but once you start balancing it you should definitely consider specifics because those can have a big impact on the balance, or otherwise, of the game.

Also, not something you necessarily need to change but I don't see the point of coming up with multiple flavors of role that have the same action, or of coming up with roles that won't appear in the actual game. It does make it somewhat harder for players to understand the game (and harder for people to help you balance it! ) after all. But if you want to do that, then I guess that's up to you.

The Unknown Ajah · February 7, 2021

6 hours ago, Quintessential said:

Okay, here goes (hopefully I don't end up double-posting). Sorry this took me so long... real life interrupted a couple of times, and there was a lot more than I thought there would be

Scadrial:

Reveal hidden contents

Allomancy:

Reveal hidden contents

Iron: Redirect a person's target, if the person takes no action, the iron user will be told. If the target is using iron or another action redirected, nothing will happen and it will show as no action. (I've never played a game with a redirect in it before, but I think this is fairly standard. I assume the person redirecting would decide who to redirect the action onto. The one thing I'd say is that the way it is now, it can be used as an action scan, almost? I'd suggest you take out the part where they're informed whether their target took an action.)

Steel: Delay a person's action for a turn, they will not be told. (This is an interesting idea--I've never seen it done before. I'd point out that in most cases the target would be able to tell that their action was delayed, so to avoid confusion you might just say that they will be told. One thing I'd point out is that this could be used on purpose, in coordination with other people. For example, if the elims have this role and know that someone (a villgaer) is a Pewter Allomancer, they can delay a kill on that person by a cycle, submit a second kill on them that cycle, and thus double-tap and kill the Pewter Allomancer. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing--the situations where it would be useful are quite limited, and anyway I think that it could be really interesting to have that as an option--but something to keep in mind. Another thing I would point out, though, is that flavor-wise you might make this the Cadmium alloy ability. It fits basically perfectly. If you do that, I'd suggest making Steel be something related to what Iron is, since Allomantic abilities come in pairs, right? For example, it could be "each cycle, you may target someone. All actions that would target that person act on you instead." I know Duralumin has something similar, but then again you could always shift Cadmium's ability to Duralumin. But of course, all of that is flavor, not balance, so entirely up to you what you do with it)

Pewter: One kill protection once per game, this will stop execution, elimination, and player kills. (Since there are several different ways that protection roles work, I guess I'll just ask for more specificity here. Is this a passive extra life? Does it require an action? Can you self-target? Can you target other players? If you use the protection on someone who isn't attacked, can you use it again or is it used up? (that is, can you keep attempting to protect someone each cycle until one of your protects is successful?))

Tin: You can know the identity of one person targeting you. (This one's fine, as far as I can tell. You might make it "all players that target you", since compared to the other action scans this is currently a bit underpowered, I think? But that isn't necessarily a bad thing. You could also allow the Tineye to watch someone else and see one or all of the people targeting them. But again, no need to change anything here if you don't want to. Also (I'm adding this after looking at Tin Feruchemy) you may wanna save that ability for the other tin power)

Brass: Make a person's vote count double. (Can you self-target?)

Zinc: Remove a person's vote. (No comments here)

Bronze: Once per game, know all actions taken and against who, but not who took the actions. Cannot see copper. (I'm forgetting what Bronze does in the books... Oh, wait, sees Allomancy! Okay, this makes sense. I'm not sure what Straw meant with his time-zone comment. What I'd say about this is that it might be more useful to know who took what actions, not what actions targeted which people. Then again, that would also out elims pretty easily so nevermind. Ignore that. Your idea is better )

Copper: Know who took an action, but not what it is or who it was targeting. Cannot see bronze. (I'm a little bit confused as to what this one does. Does the Smoker just receive a list of people who took actions each turn? Does that require an action? This isn't necessarily a bad thing but this use of Copper doesn't fit its abilities in the books--there's actually already quite a well-defined ability for Copper Mistings in SE games, which I think would work well in this game. But you don't have to use it.)

Chromium: Roleblock a person. (This one's fine)

Duralumin: Redirect all actions taken against you on the targeter, this includes positive actions and Elimination. (Okay, so first of all I'm not totally sure what this means. I think it's supposed to be "all actions taken against you on the target" so I'll just proceed as if that's what it says. I think this is fine, except that I would not allow it to work with the exe. Especially if this is an action that the person can take every turn. Actually, I would honestly say this shouldn't work with the elim kill either. That allows this person invincibility all the time, which, like I've said before, is not ideal. If you wanted to make it easier on yourself in terms of phrasing you can just say that burning Duralumin redirects all non-fatal actions onto the target.)

Nicrosil: Make a person's actions effect an extra person of your choice. (I mean, I would have made Nicrosil be "grant the target an extra action in the next cycle" but this is cooler and there may actually be fewer breaks involved XD can you make the person target you or themself? What happens if you make the person target the person they were already targeting? does nothing happen? Does the action double? In order to avoid breaks in the game, you have to make sure there's only one person with an ability like this. If Illwei and I are both Nicrosil burners and we find each other, I can target Illwei and make her action count twice. If she was going to make TJ's action happen on Dannex, and then I make a duplicate of Illwei's action happen on Gears, that means that TJ's action happens twice (once on his target, once on Dannex) and Gears' action happens twice (once on his target, once on Dannex). And if three Nicrosil burners found each other... sorry, I know your game doesn't actually have room for duplicates of roles so this hypothetical isn't relevant, but I enjoyed the thought experiment )

Cadmium: Cancel anyone who takes an action against you's vote. (Would rephrase this as "Cancel the vote of each person who takes an action against you", assuming that's what you mean. Just to make that clearer. Also, is this a passive ability? I keep asking this mostly because I'm not sure whether the elim-kill counts as an action or not. If an elim who submits the elim-kill can burn Cadmium, would submitting the kill (and thus possibly using up their action) negate their Cadmium, or could they do both? I would also point out that it probably shouldn't be passive, since there are times when you might not want to cancel the votes of every person who targets you--like if you're elim and one of your teammates is protecting you that cycle, for example.)

Bendalloy: Stop any actions taken against you from taking effect for a turn (except Elimination). (Can this be used every cycle? If so that's quite broken. I think it would probably be less OP to let you target other people but not yourself with this. It would be "Each cycle, you may target someone. All actions directed at that person will be negated. You may not self-target, and you may not target the same person twice in a row" or something like that. That way nobody becomes invincible : P Also, you don't have to specify "all actions (except elimination)" because the exe is not an action.)

Atium: Know all the people who target you, and once per game, not have them affect you (excluding Elimination). (So, each cycle, you receive a list of everyone who targets you. Do you find out what actions they used? Thematically, I'd say that makes sense, but you would probably have to remove the once-per-game ability if you did that. Also, I'm not sure that I could see myself using that once per game ability anyway. Maybe in specific situations, where I know someone's going to attack me? But usually you have no idea what's going to hit you beforehand. I'd always worry that I'd end up wasting it.)

Malatium: Learn a person's role. (I like it. Simple. Makes sense.)

Okay so that's all of the roles, looked at individually. I'm not sure I have the brainpower or time to think about how they all interact. Being me, a perfectionist who likes symmetry and book-accuracy, I think some of these roles are really cool, but I would also probably swap a few of them around (see Steel : P). I think my instinct with this game, if I were the one in charge of designing it and running it, would be to focus in on the Allomantic powers--to take the set of the 16 Allomantic powers and the three God Metals and turn that into a game, making sure that the abilities of the pairs relate somehow, that all the abilities fit with the ones in the books, and that it comes together in a nice cohesive whole. But I've gotten the sense that you don't want to do that--that you'd rather have an overarching, whole-cosmere game than one that focuses in really tightly on one book. So I won't go into detail about how I'd do that . I may revisit the idea as a game of my own at some point, actually--if you don't mind me borrowing some of the ideas for the different powers?

However, if you want to spend a bunch of time tweaking this section, I'd say that I find the idea of relating the pairs of metals intensely satisfying. I also think that one way to differentiate Feruchemy and Allomancy would be to allow Mistings to Flare their metal once per game. That would be like what you have for Atium right now, but have a special ability like that for every metal? I'm not sure how well that would work, but something to think about. Of course, I haven't read any of the other roles in detail yet so I suspect by the end of this post I'll have changed my mind and I'll think that adding complexity probably isn't the way to go XD

Feruchemy:

Reveal hidden contents

Iron: Roleblock someone. (I know that with as many roles as you have in this game, it's probably impossible to avoid some overlap, but I still think it would be cool to differentiate between Feruchemy and Allomancy somehow. Then again, I don't actually have any ideas of how to do that. Whatever, I'll come back to this if I think of something I suppose.)

Steel: Redirect all actions on you to someone else and make all actions on them target you. (I do like this one. Quite a bit. I would specify that you can't target the same person twice in a row, but other than that this is very interesting. You're immune to elim kills directed at you, but if your target is NKd then you die. The one thing is, what happens if your target was roleblocked? That shunts onto you because of your action, at which point your action is blocked... but your action was the reason your action was blocked in the first place? So if your action was blocked then your action's not blocked, but that means your action was blocked... I love paradoxes. You could just say that roleblocks happen first in the order of actions, so Steel Feruchemy can't touch them.)

Pewter: Make a person vote for something, this can change and negate a vote. (so, you can target a person and make them vote for someone or negate their vote. Can you make them vote on themself? Also, you might make it a vote mover only, since you've already got an ability that removes a person's vote. Letting this one do both means that this is just a better version of that one.)

Tin: Know either the identity, alignment, role, or type of action taken against you. (Is it RNGd which of those things you find out, or do you choose? Do you learn all actions taken against you or just one? Also, again, this is just Tin Allomancy but more. I would take out identity, because otherwise Tin Allomancy becomes somewhat redundant. I don't really know what knowing the alignment of a person that targets me would do for me in most cases, so if I had Tin Feruchemy as it is now I would always choose identity or type of action. Role and type of action are (almost always) synonymous, and in cases where they're not, knowing the type is more useful. So, basically what I'm saying is, unless you're RNGing which thing the Tin Ferring learns, it should probably just be "learn the type of action". If you are RNGing which thing the Tin Ferring learns... I mean, I guess that seems a bit odd to me but it works)

Zinc: Once per game, extend a day turn for 24 hours. (This one... idk, I'm not sure about this one. I mean, I assume what would happen is that at some point before the normal rollover time is announced, the Zinc Ferring submits an action to extend the cycle, and then at the normal rollover time the GM checks to make sure nothing's blocking the action and then they extend by 24 hours? But then that gets messy because people can change their actions... Like, let's see you have two roleblockers, me and Connie, and then Ash is the Zinc Ferring. The same cycle that he tries to extend, I decide to roleblock him. However, Connie also roleblocks me, so my roleblock doesn't go through and Ash's action does. But then after the cycle is extended, Connie for some reason changes her mind and blocks someone else. At which point I should be blocking Ash, but his action has already happened... idk, it just seems like it introduces a lot of odd complications. Then again, I'm not totally sure what I'd replace it with or how I'd change it. Normally I'd suggest that it be "skip the next turn" but the cycles in this game are combined so that's not an option...)

Copper: Make a multiple person PM. (So... specifics here. How many times per cycle, per game, can you make a group PM? Is there a maximum number of players that can be in a group PM? Does this take an action, or could an elim using an action to submit the kill also make PMs? Can this person make group PMs that don't include them? Are they allowed to make one-on-one PMs or do the PMs have to include at least 3 players? Do the PMs close after a certain amount of time or do they remain open for the entire game? Not proposing answers to any of these because this one really is up to you and how many group PMs you can stand as the GM it's not a major balancing issue or anything.)

Bronze: Once per game, solidify the lynch at any time. This will reveal your role. (Huh. This is really interesting. Ohhhh wait this is what Straw meant about Bronze being timezone dependent. He meant Bronze Feruchemy. Okay, got it. Alright, so yeah, timezones are an issue here. Apart from that, how would this work? Things can change so fast in the thread that you might submit the action to solidify the exe when Dannex has a 4 vote lead over everyone else and then by the time the GM sees the PM a half hour later the exe has shifted onto someone else. So I guess, you could make it so that if someone wants to freeze the exe, they post in the thread in a specific color text (purple?) that you are a Bronze Ferring and the vote is now over. Of course, then you have to think about whether people can roleblock that person to stop it from happening, whether vote-manips count, etc. etc. This one may just have a few too many problems with it to be able to run... as with Zinc, though, I'm not sure how I'd fix it or what I'd replace it with.

Chromium: Know one action taken against you. (the overlap with other abilities bothers me, but once again I'm aware that that's probably not avoidable in a game like this one...)

Aluminum: Once per game, use another roles action. (I think this one's a little bit underpowered. It fits with Aluminum Feruchemy well, but if you can only do it once per game then it's really not very powerful. Instead, I'd say that A. this person can only use Feruchemical roles and B. each cycle, they are RNGd which role they can use. So, each cycle they gain the ability to act like one of the other Ferrings for that cycle only. Might take some balancing to make that work, but it'd be more useful.)

Duralumin: Open a PM with multiple people. Must contain yourself. (Same questions as with Copper.)

Gold: Protect yourself from one attack every other turn. (Does this mean that on odd cycles you're protected and on even cycles you're vulnerable. Or does it just mean you can't protect twice in a row? Do you want this to protect from the exe? If so, I'd say that the Gold Ferring should lose their abilities after protecting from the exe, having drained all of their Goldminds. Or some such thing, idk. Might do that after a successful protection too, in which case I would honestly just make this a passive extra life. That might make the most sense, and it's simpler.)

Electrum: Make a player immune to roleblock for the rest of the game every other turn. (I'm... idk, this one's very complex. I suppose it works, but there are already a lot of abilities that theoretically would negate roleblocking or shunt it off onto someone else. The problem I'm having with thinking of good actions for these abilities is that a lot of the Feruchemical abilities are more in line with "make your actions unblockable" which... like, doesn't work here because this is the only action you can take. So I guess this one's fine.)

Fewer overall thoughts on this one. I guess the main thing is that the two abilities that would change the end of the cycle or of voting probably should just be replaced--you would run into too many issues with those, especially since the people playing live all over the world, and you may not be on to catch those actions and put them into place when they need to be.

Okay, so hopefully that gives you some idea of where to get started. I tried to consider how all of the roles would interact with each other but there are a lot and this is taking me a long time so if someone else wants to add to what I've said, or contradict me on any of this, please feel free.

Also I'm definitely not mentally planning out a Twinborn game that gives an action-based ability for the Allomantic power and an enhancement of some kind for the Feruchemical power right now. Nope. And if I did that, I definitely wouldn't borrow a lot of the abilities from this setup. Nope. : P

Roshar:

Reveal hidden contents

Adhesion: Redirect a person's action to themselves. Base target can be changed by action redirecters. (I'm a little confused by the phrasing of this... I think it's describing the same ability as Iron Allomancy, more or less, but I'm not... positive... it could also be that any actions the target takes are instead directed back at the target--which would be really interesting. You could coordinate with someone who has an ability that they otherwise can't use on themself, you could redirect the elim kill back onto the elim submitting it if you guessed right, you could drive rolescanners and action scanners insane, etc. so if it's the latter idea then I say go for it and if it's the former then I say... maybe consider the latter? XD I just really wanna see this ability in a game.)

Gravitation: Redirect all actions to a single player for a night (except elimination and execution). (Wow. that's. a lot of actions. I assume this would be a once-per-game thing? Also, I hope you're aware how insane it would be for the GM of this game (that is to say, for you) to keep track of. But if you wanna do that, then go for it I guess )

Division: Once per game, make a person's vote carry over a round. (So... if I vote on Connie in C2, and someone uses this on me, my vote would also end up on Connie C3, regardless of where I tried to place it? What if Connie died in C2? Does this still take effect?)

Abrasion: Make all actions targeting you, target someone else. (See my comments on Duralumin)

Progression: Protect a player from attack (doesn't work on yourself). (Can you protect the same player twice in a row? Can you only successfully protect once, or can you do it more than once?)

Illumination: Stop any actions taken against you, once per game, stop Elimination as well. (So, once per game you can essentially put yourself in stasis? That seems fine. Probably. You should probably try to get someone else with more GMing experience to weigh in on everything I've said XD given that I'm relatively new here.)

Transformation: Change any action into a different type of action. (So, you target someone, and you say "okay this person's action will be... <insert action here>". What if the person who ends up with Transformation is chaotic neutral and decides they want to see lots of murderdeath, so every cycle they change someone else's action to a kill action? Basically, is there a limit on Transformation? Are there certain actions that a Transformation user doesn't have access to? Is there a list of actions that they can transform an action into, and they can only use each one once? etc.)

Transportation: Make all actions targeting you target someone else and all actions targeting them target you. (See my comments on Steel Feruchemy)

Cohesion: Make a single, random action targeting you, target someone else. (Do you choose who the new target is?)

Tension: Stop a single, random action targeting you. (No comments here, really.)

Ughhh I'm getting tired can you tell? XD Sorry for the shorter comments. I have some thoughts here but really they're just thoughts about the game as a whole so I'll save them for the end.

Nalthis, Sel, and First of the Sun:

Reveal hidden contents

Nalthis:

Reveal hidden contents

Awakening: (use one every other turn, they roll over) (to be honest, to save yourself the headache of keeping track of once every other turn, I might just make it once every turn. Some ways to balance that would be to limit the times you can use each item on the list, or tell the Awakener they can choose one role at the beginning and that is their role for the rest of the game--as in, they've created an Awakening and now that's what they have to work with.)

Protect yourself until attacked. (aka give yourself a passive extra life? this would work if you used the second option that I suggested above, but if you're still letting them switch between actions then I'd make this just "self-protect this cycle")

Add a null vote. (Add a null vote? We don't count null votes in SE... the only votes that have any impact are the ones that have been placed. So I guess if you're planning to count null votes in this game you should definitely specify that in the basics section.)

Roleblock a player.

Make a players action target an extra person. (Hmmm as I pointed out in my comments on Nicrosil, having more than one of these floating around could lead to breaks. Or, well, not breaks per se but certainly complex situations that would require some quick thinking from the GM. So just... keep that in mind if you're thinking about putting both of these roles in a game together.

Unblockable kill a player, after taking this action, you can no longer use an action. (Seems fine.)

Sel:

Reveal hidden contents

Elantrian: (only one) (can the Elantrian choose one and then use it throughout the game or are each of these one-time uses?)

Protect another player. (same questions about specificity as with other protects)

Make your vote double.

Redirect a player's target. (I assume this means redirect a player's action onto another player?)

Forger: Change a player's role for a turn, including your own. Requires two turns to study them. One turn for yourself. (Okay so you spend your action for two cycles watching someone and then you can grant them one ability for one turn? That seems a bit underpowered. I'd say it should only require one cycle to study the person, and they should keep the role for the rest of the game (whether they want it or not. This way, Forgery can be used to make an enemy less powerful, instead of an ally more powerful). Also, I would limit the roles that the Forger can create to a specific list where adding more of those roles won't break the game. Not sure what that list would be yet... but yeah. Another question would be, can the Forger change the abilities of the neutrals?

First of the Sun:

Reveal hidden contents

Aviar: (only one, but can be used multiple times) (What does the Aviar do?)

Death Sense: Passively protect yourself from any form of kill until attacked. (So, passive extra life?)

Mind Protection: Passively roleblock all non-kill actions, once an action is taken against you, this stops. (Mmmm I'm not sure whether making it stop after an action is taken against you, since that directly contradicts the part about passively roleblocking all non-kill actions. Maybe let it keep going unless and until you're hit by a roleblock yourself, at which point it stops?)

Alignment Detection: Learn your targets alignment the next round. The Hemalurgist, the Dakhor Monk and the Returned will be show as alignment unknown. (You may as well just make them show up neutral. Everyone else will be vil or elim, so they'll know anyway. Also, this should definitely be a one-use ability. Otherwise it's... really powerful.)

Action Detection: Learn what type of action your target did. (This one's fine)

Great, my head hurts now lol. My comments got a lot shorter towards the end there... maybe I'd have had more to say about those abilities if I'd started with them, idk. General thoughts: make sure that for each action, you consider not just what it'll do generally, but exactly how it'll do it, whether it's passive or requires an action, who it can and can't target, which other actions it can interact with, how often it can be used, and so on. When writing out an outline of a game, it's fine to just say what you want a role to do, but once you start balancing it you should definitely consider specifics because those can have a big impact on the balance, or otherwise, of the game.

Also, not something you necessarily need to change but I don't see the point of coming up with multiple flavors of role that have the same action, or of coming up with roles that won't appear in the actual game. It does make it somewhat harder for players to understand the game (and harder for people to help you balance it! ) after all. But if you want to do that, then I guess that's up to you.

Sorry I took so long, I implemented the changes, but did have time to respond.

Changed that, thanks.

Switched those.

This is an action. It only works on yourself.

I missed this one, I know how I should change it.

Changed this.

Did this.

This now has steel's power.

You can use it every cycle, but it's not as broken as you think. Let's do an example. I'm a bendalloy misting and use my power the day you, a malatium misting, and Connie, a tineye, both target me, neither of your actions will take effect until the next turn. Let's say I also use my power the next turn, and Gears, the Returned using his alignment scan, and TJ, an Elantrian making my vote double, target me as well. You and Connie's actions will then take effect, you will learn my role is malatium misting and Connie will learn you targeted me. Gears and TJ's actions will only take effect the next day. So not over powered, it just delays stuff, make sense?

Did this.

They choose, with the modification of tin this should be fine, the type of action would be effect, like kill, roleblock, etc.

You would post in thread, likely in yellow that you are extending the cycle.

This would also be in thread, you can't be roleblocked with these because they essentially during the cycle rather than during rollover.

I think I'll change this to learn who and what.

I changed this a little.

I specified that there are no other limitations.

The former, but you could skip an even cycle and make it on odd instead.

Feel free to do that, it sounds fun, and feel free to use these ideas. They're not exactly unique either.

I know, it's interesting, essentially a action redirecter could change who's action is changed unto themselves.

Yes, I'll specify this.

Since you can't vote for a dead person, no.

You can target the same person as much as you want, but if they get attacked you can no longer protect.

Then a lot of people are going to die, fun!

Yes.

I'm using TJ's terminology, I clarified.

I think I removed this.

Oh yes, completely and utterly murdering a person is fine.

One use.

As it's one use I don't think it matters, it just protects them that turn.

You can give someone the zinc role and get an extra 24 hours every third round. You have to be creative but this can be powerful. They couldn't change the neutrals, but they could give others the abilities of the neutrals.

That's what I meant, I clarified.

Changed that.

My opinion is different because I've played a game where the alignment scanner is considered the weakest and easiest to fake role. And I made they show as neutrals. It's also delayed because Straw also thought it was overpowered.

You didn't need to do it all until your head hurt, but thanks.

I know what you mean, I'm just not very good at fitting thoughts into words.

Mat · February 13, 2021

I wrote up a QF ruleset that I'm planning to run with the slot I just signed up for. Looking for feedback on the balancing of the key mechanic.

Rules doc link: QF##: Battle of Traitors

The Unknown Ajah · February 14, 2021

On 1-10, how broken is this:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zUnk22HkEMAm4Zd-K8X8pQkivDCvKdy6JYw7VThqBqU/edit?usp=drivesdk

The main problems is the amount of alignment detection going around, but with some careful balancing of the role numbers it should be pretty rare to get a result.

Now on to Matrim.

The main problem I see with the key is how likely it is throughout the game, in the beginning the chances are relatively low, but in the late game the chances are pretty high. Not sure how to balance that, maybe have the number start as three until the third or fourth turn when it would turn to two, but that comes with its own problems.

Otherwise I don't see any real problems.

Ashbringer · February 14, 2021

35 minutes ago, The Unknown Order said:

On 1-10, how broken is this:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zUnk22HkEMAm4Zd-K8X8pQkivDCvKdy6JYw7VThqBqU/edit?usp=drivesdk

The main problems is the amount of alignment detection going around, but with some careful balancing of the role numbers it should be pretty rare to get a result.

It's telling me "access denied"... I can't see the doc.

Straw · February 14, 2021

15 hours ago, Matrim's Dice said:

I wrote up a QF ruleset that I'm planning to run with the slot I just signed up for. Looking for feedback on the balancing of the key mechanic.

Rules doc link: QF##: Battle of Traitors

The whole no elim communication thing will be very rough, but I suppose you can balance around that. Just be very very careful when balancing. For the elim kill, to what degree do you intend to have the elims be going for ties as much as possible? Since I pretty much see the elim team just focusing on kill ties so they can get two kills per cycle. It seems a bit swingy to me since if they can figure out how to consistently get ties, they'd have a massive advantage compared to if they didn't figure it out.

Mat · February 14, 2021

2 hours ago, Straw said:

The whole no elim communication thing will be very rough, but I suppose you can balance around that. Just be very very careful when balancing. For the elim kill, to what degree do you intend to have the elims be going for ties as much as possible? Since I pretty much see the elim team just focusing on kill ties so they can get two kills per cycle. It seems a bit swingy to me since if they can figure out how to consistently get ties, they'd have a massive advantage compared to if they didn't figure it out.

I wasn't intending them to go for ties, mainly because I don't see how they could without the village being able to catch on fairly easily. That was my way of buffing them, because the lack of communication weakens their team quite a bit. It's largely supposed to be luck. I'd also probably buff them a bit with roles, but you're right that I'd have to be pretty careful.

Straw · February 14, 2021

42 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

I wasn't intending them to go for ties, mainly because I don't see how they could without the village being able to catch on fairly easily. That was my way of buffing them, because the lack of communication weakens their team quite a bit. It's largely supposed to be luck. I'd also probably buff them a bit with roles, but you're right that I'd have to be pretty careful.

If you're not meaning for them to go for ties, then I'd advise just changing it to random on a tie. As it is it seems like it either just randomly gives them a buff, or they manage to get it working consistently and break the game. Maybe buff them with something that helps with their lack of information instead? For example, giving them the vote count from their kill votes would be a minor buff that could help them avoid not having any kill. Letting them know which roles the others have could also help them out a bit.

Mat · February 14, 2021

1 hour ago, Straw said:

If you're not meaning for them to go for ties, then I'd advise just changing it to random on a tie. As it is it seems like it either just randomly gives them a buff, or they manage to get it working consistently and break the game. Maybe buff them with something that helps with their lack of information instead? For example, giving them the vote count from their kill votes would be a minor buff that could help them avoid not having any kill. Letting them know which roles the others have could also help them out a bit.

I was already planning on letting them know their teammates’ roles, but I guess I should clarify that in the rules. When would the vote count be given? The C1 count at the start of C2?

I’ll change the random thing too.

Straw · February 14, 2021

26 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

I was already planning on letting them know their teammates’ roles, but I guess I should clarify that in the rules. When would the vote count be given? The C1 count at the start of C2?

Yeah, the cycle after, just like the normal vote count (except not in the writeup). The intent is that elims can get some idea of who their teammates think is dangerous. It's not much of a boost to them, but it helps them a bit.

Quintessential · February 14, 2021

I just put this together in the last hour or so: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RFGvMNhazbccEZJY-U5Y4egsCQw-Z8xhXVVR9n_G69A/edit?usp=sharing. Thoughts?

The Unknown Ajah · February 14, 2021

12 hours ago, Ashbringer said:

It's telling me "access denied"... I can't see the doc.

Sorry, I just fixed it.

Now, Quin.

Is this the game you were talking about? It looks really cool.

Quintessential · February 14, 2021

10 minutes ago, The Unknown Order said:

Is this the game you were talking about? It looks really cool.

Thank you but it isn't exactly the game I was talking about. This is more "I want to do an LG1 rerun but also I don't want to do an LG1 rerun" XD I've been trying to figure out how to put together a Twinborn game with all the Allomantic and Feruchemic abilities, or a Mistborn game with all 16 metals, but it always just ends up really... messy. So I decided something like this would work better.

--- · February 14, 2021

@Quintessential

Quote

Instead, a random member of the team will be supplied with a vial of steel (by the team’s thieving crew benefactors) at the beginning of each cycle

I assume this was intentional, but this allows for kills to be stored up, right? My question here is about the OOO, and if the grinch comes before or after passing vials?

Quintessential · February 14, 2021

Just now, Illwei said:

I assume this was intentional, but this allows for kills to be stored up, right? My question here is about the OOO, and if the grinch comes before or after passing vials?

Yes, they can intentionally store up vials. However, I will probably make Iron quite common, so storing up the vials of steel instead of using them would come at the risk of them being stolen.

Passing vials comes before the execution, I think. I haven't decided what will happen to vials held by a dead player. I might just say that the Ministry confiscates them. Or I could say the Ministry confiscates vials that executed players had but if a player is coinshotted, the vials go to the killer. Not sure yet.

The Unknown Ajah · February 14, 2021

19 minutes ago, Quintessential said:

Thank you but it isn't exactly the game I was talking about. This is more "I want to do an LG1 rerun but also I don't want to do an LG1 rerun" XD I've been trying to figure out how to put together a Twinborn game with all the Allomantic and Feruchemic abilities, or a Mistborn game with all 16 metals, but it always just ends up really... messy. So I decided something like this would work better.

Do you want some help working on the game, because it sounds awesome and I could probably get a PM/doc set up to talk in.

Quintessential · February 14, 2021

Just now, The Unknown Order said:

Do you want some help working on the game, because it sounds awesome and I could probably get a PM/doc set up to talk in.

I think I might just set it on the back burner for now and come back to it once I've GMd a simpler game or two... for the moment I'm somewhat frustrated with it : P but I'll let you know if I need help once I start working on it again.

--- · February 14, 2021

6 minutes ago, Quintessential said:

Yes, they can intentionally store up vials. However, I will probably make Iron quite common, so storing up the vials of steel instead of using them would come at the risk of them being stolen.

Passing vials comes before the execution, I think. I haven't decided what will happen to vials held by a dead player. I might just say that the Ministry confiscates them. Or I could say the Ministry confiscates vials that executed players had but if a player is coinshotted, the vials go to the killer. Not sure yet.

Ok, my thought was- well not sure about iron playing in- but it feels potentially broken with passing coming before- could end up being able to keep all shots in cycle- like arson, but not having to worry about tagged people being killed because there are no tags

Quintessential · February 14, 2021

Just now, Illwei said:

Ok, my thought was- well not sure about iron playing in- but it feels potentially broken with passing coming before- could end up being able to keep all shots in cycle- like arson, but not having to worry about tagged people being killed because there are no tags

Ohhh okay that's a good point. I could make the execution happen before passing, I don't think that would break anything... I should probably write up a full order of actions at some point lol

The Unknown Ajah · February 14, 2021

12 minutes ago, Quintessential said:

I think I might just set it on the back burner for now and come back to it once I've GMd a simpler game or two... for the moment I'm somewhat frustrated with it : P but I'll let you know if I need help once I start working on it again.

Ok, thank you.

+Lotus · February 14, 2021

Made some edits to my LG game idea

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RbmFDO9KFonreDcBV8vD3bTnhyfaC4o5EaW8iAk-LMo/edit?usp=sharing

Edited February 14, 2021 by Lotus

The Unknown Ajah · February 17, 2021

So, what's everyone's opinions of a action based inactivity filter? Like, if you don't do an action every other cycle, you will be warned, if you don't do one for four consecutive cycles in a row, you will be replaced with a pinch-hitter, unless the inactivity is planned?

Straw · February 17, 2021

5 minutes ago, The Unknown Order said:

So, what's everyone's opinions of a action based inactivity filter? Like, if you don't do an action every other cycle, you will be warned, if you don't do one for four consecutive cycles in a row, you will be replaced with a pinch-hitter, unless the inactivity is planned?

Four consecutive cycles is far too long. If someone hasn't done anything for two cycles in a row then they deserve to be replaced.

I personally think an action based inactivity filter is worse than a post based one, since IMO thread participation is more important for fun. A game isn't interesting if someone can just put in actions and refuse to talk in the thread.

The Art of Game Creation

Recommended Posts

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Popular Posts

little wilson

little wilson

Adamir

Posted Images

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Join the conversation

Recently Browsing 0 members