The Art of Game Creation

[StrikerEZ he/him]

4 hours ago, Karnatheon said:

Ya I know the rp/weakness thing has lots of potential issues. Since everyone will know who the Epics are anyway I was thinking in signups I could ask for volunteers from people who are confident they could meet the rp requirement. And definitely limit it to one needed every 48 hours, so once a cycle. And ya weaknesses would be assigned.

Some potential ways for the Reckoners to get more clues could be a role that can as an action identify which post contained the weakness, or another that could submit multiple guesses and I would eliminate an incorrect one.

The other issue would be distribution. With 4 elims and 9 villagers assuming all vanilla and no Invincibility the village would auto win cause even if they guess wrong they still get the kill one of them just also dies. With 5 elims and 8 villagers under the same conditions villagers could only guess wrong twice or they would auto lose. And 1 Invincibility under any distro could be fatal to the villagers if they can't figure out the weakness. I suppose some element of chance could be added to situations where the weakness was unknown to keep things from being deterministic. So there would be a chance 1 died, the other, both, or neither.

Your suggestions for other styles of game could work too. And making it not rp but instead a tick or writing choice might work.

Okay, your idea has been stuck in my head and I have some ideas.

What if only some of the Epics are known at the start. They're all invincible Epics and have specific mechanical weaknesses that the villagers need to figure out in order to kill them. For example, one Epic could fear conformity and requires every player to vote on them in order to die. And then there are normal epics that are not invincible but have special abilities and their own weaknesses as well that roleblock them if they're affected by the weakness, whatever it is. And all the Epics know each other, but since only 1-3 of them are publicly known, there's this interesting dynamic of the real villagers trying to get the publicly known ones to react to exes on other players to try and see if they're an Epic.

[Karnatheon he/him]

Ya so I think the rp thing would be too hard to do for multiple reasons now. So what if instead of assigning each Epic a weakness they are each assigned a word. This could be balanced in many ways to make it easier or harder for the Reckoners.

Each Epic has the same word(easier), each Epic has a different word but they are either all adjectives, all verbs, or all nouns and Reckoners know which(mediumish), or each Epic has a different word but they are either all adjectives, all verbs, or all nouns and Reckoners don't know which(harder)

The Epics need to use it in exactly 1 post per cycle(harder), exactly 1 post per turn(mediumish), or every post(easier).

I like Striker's idea of some known Invincible Epics, with the rest being unknown and not Invincible. So the Reckoners doc is gone, and the unknown Epics also need to follow the words restriction the known ones do.

Since some Reckoners are undercover Epics the Reckoner kill action is gone, voting is back. Known Epics can't vote. Votes require player and guess at the word. Majority wins for player, and majority wins for word, only counting the ones guessed for that specific player.

Killing an epic with wrong word means one of the players who voted for them dies, either at random or the Epics choice, not sure which is better.

Could also include one or more Villager Epics that are unknown to everyone but themselves and have their own word restriction too.

[Archer he/him]

5 hours ago, Karnatheon said:

Ya so I think the rp thing would be too hard to do for multiple reasons now. So what if instead of assigning each Epic a weakness they are each assigned a word. This could be balanced in many ways to make it easier or harder for the Reckoners.

I did a just for fun version of word sneak in QF51 if you want to read through that to see how it plays out. Everyone had a short sentence or word they had to sneak into their posts three times during the game for a bonus prize. If I recall correctly, about half were guessed by the end of it, but some people snuck them in quite cleverly. The phrases are listed in the GM spreadsheet. 

https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/96341-quick-fix-51-i-love-dragons/?do=findComment&comment=1204787

 

[Mat he/him]

Break Tank #: Blades Clash, Duelists Fall

My BT game concept. The main problem I see is what to do with a player if their opponent dies via mark. I'm leaning towards them continuing in the game, just no longer having opposition, but welcome suggestions on that and anything else.

[Kasimir he/him]

15 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Break Tank #: Blades Clash, Duelists Fall

My BT game concept. The main problem I see is what to do with a player if their opponent dies via mark. I'm leaning towards them continuing in the game, just no longer having opposition, but welcome suggestions on that and anything else.

Oh, fun concept!

I think the question that comes to my mind in response to yours is whether you see the wincons as being personal or factional. I notice the training dummies have a factional wincon, but I also notice that your wincons for Sadeas's Slayers and Aladar's Attackers are very much individual - beat your opponent to taking out a training dummy. Feels like this means that as soon as the TDs are all taken out, any surviving players on either faction lose. Which means that while they're psuedo-village, there may not be much of an incentive to work together.

Either way, I feel like given your current wincon set-up, the surviving player as it stands doesn't have opposition but still needs to ID their target and get rid of it to win. (This is not a recommendation: this is me noting what your current rules seem to commit you to.) Losing opposition just theoretically makes it a bit easier for them as their opponent can't kill a Training Dummy before them. But it doesn't make sense to give them a default win either since they could very well be killed before taking out a TD, and indeed, the TDs want this to be the case.

I assume that the Attackers and the Slayers don't know who is in their own faction? Seems implied since only the TDs know.

[Mat he/him]

39 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

Oh, fun concept!

I think the question that comes to my mind in response to yours is whether you see the wincons as being personal or factional. I notice the training dummies have a factional wincon, but I also notice that your wincons for Sadeas's Slayers and Aladar's Attackers are very much individual - beat your opponent to taking out a training dummy. Feels like this means that as soon as the TDs are all taken out, any surviving players on either faction lose. Which means that while they're psuedo-village, there may not be much of an incentive to work together.

Either way, I feel like given your current wincon set-up, the surviving player as it stands doesn't have opposition but still needs to ID their target and get rid of it to win. (This is not a recommendation: this is me noting what your current rules seem to commit you to.) Losing opposition just theoretically makes it a bit easier for them as their opponent can't kill a Training Dummy before them. But it doesn't make sense to give them a default win either since they could very well be killed before taking out a TD, and indeed, the TDs want this to be the case.

I assume that the Attackers and the Slayers don't know who is in their own faction? Seems implied since only the TDs know.

Thanks!

I see the wincons as being personal (For the Attackers and Slayers, anyway.) but I was tentatively thinking of posting a count with each turn, keeping track of how many players have won from their side (Attackers: 2, Slayers: 1, etc) but that wouldn't have any impact on the game and would just be sticking to the setting. I made each faction equal in numbers in the hopes that a situation with no TDs and surviving Slayers/Attackers just wouldn't happen, since I think there's no way for a TD to die without taking 2 others along with them. I haven't thought through if that's actually how that would work though.

Yeah, if an Attacker is marked/killed and the opponent Slayer is left alive, they'd still need to kill a TD to win and just wouldn't have anyone else threatening to do it first. No default win, but I didn't want to do a default lose either since that scenario is different from the one where their opponent wins. I think I'll do that.

They don't know who's in their faction, no.

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

1 hour ago, Matrim's Dice said:

I made each faction equal in numbers in the hopes that a situation with no TDs and surviving Slayers/Attackers just wouldn't happen, since I think there's no way for a TD to die without taking 2 others along with them. I haven't thought through if that's actually how that would work though.

It depends on how many Slayers/Attackers there are and how successful the TDs are at mark kills. If you have a 5/5-3 setup say that ends in three cycles with only two mark kills, you'd still have at least two Slayers/Attackers left alive after all the TDs are dead. Having the survivors lose when all the TDs die seems fair, but you also might want a higher proportion of TDs than normal for an elim team.

What will you do if there's only one Slayer/Attacker left alive? They can't die since they wouldn't attack themself and it could be tedious making them kill a TD with the 50% chance of surviving, so you could have either them or the TDs auto-win at this point.

Having 12 hour cycles could make it difficult for every TD to submit an immunity order, but people who sign up for break tank games are committing to showing up for the shorter cycles.

[Mat he/him]

43 minutes ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

but you also might want a higher proportion of TDs than normal for an elim team.

When I wanted factions equal I was including TDs, so the ideal situation there would be 5–5-5 or 4-4-4 but in a 13 player world the best thing to do would be wait for more players.

I’m not sure if 5-5-5 or 5-5-4 would be better, but at that point it doesn’t matter because it depends on how many players there are. If there’s ever a situation with Slayers/Attackers alive and no TDs alive, I’d have the survivors lose and call it there.

43 minutes ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

What will you do if there's only one Slayer/Attacker left alive? They can't die since they wouldn't attack themself and it could be tedious making them kill a TD with the 50% chance of surviving, so you could have either them or the TDs auto-win at this point.

I think it makes more sense for the Slayer/Attacker to auto-win since the TDs can’t actually win at that point.

43 minutes ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

Having 12 hour cycles could make it difficult for every TD to submit an immunity order, but people who sign up for break tank games are committing to showing up for the shorter cycles.

Yeah, it’s maybe not the ideal length but it’s also a Break Tank so that’s the longest I could go. I don’t necessarily need to run it as a BT but I think the weird mechanics warrant it, and the TD immunity order is just one thing. Plus I just want to run a BT :P.

Edited February 8, 2022 by Matrim's Dice

[Kasimir he/him]

It's been a stressful week and I apparently deal with stress by channelling my energies into creative efforts. Here's another game based off a comment/brief exchange with Araris last year:

On 7/24/2021 at 11:57 AM, Araris Valerian said:

Something that has been brought up in a few different places is the amount that the village depends on alignment scans rather than doing analysis to solve the game. So I thought of an idea for a pseudo alignment scan to kick things off in a game where the GM is worried the village might struggle. Basically, around Cycle 3-4 roughly, if no elims have yet been caught, the elim team has to choose one of their members to be revealed as an elim and removed from the game. However, unlike a regular death, that player does not get access to the dead doc, and is still able to participate in the elim doc.

I think this might work well as a core mechanic in a QF or MR with 15+ players.

MRXX: Helvegen

Årle ell i dagars hell
enn veit ravnen om eg fell

—Helvegen, Wardruna

The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.

The small village of Helgen is sheltered from the Blight by the mountains of Kandor and the swords of the Borderlanders. This is not your war: most of you have grown up in Helgen and will die there as well.

That was until last morning. A grey morning, seemingly unremarkable. Then everything you knew shattered like the thin crust of ice in the horse trough. 

This was where they found the body. Someone had murdered Gamen, and left him in the horse trough, to be discovered by the innkeeper in the morning, a snarled tracery of black thorns growing out through his skin in a macabre display.

“Light shelter us, it’s happening again,” Wyden mutters and then he clams up and refuses to say anything more. He glares daggers at the Dragon’s Fang scrawled on the inn door.

An ill wind blows from the Blight, and the fog creeps in towards Helgen. Last night, one of Tema’s goats sickened and died. The stranger, Kaim, claims to have heard ravens calling at dusk.

The Shadow, it seems, has fallen across even Helgen. Can you find the Darkfriends hidden in your midst before it is too late? Or will even Helgen be claimed by the Shadow?

 

 

 

General Rules:

Spoiler

1. This game is a standard MR, with 48 hour cycles. PMs are open.

2. Voting is to be done in the thread. There is no minimum vote threshold for executions to take place. Ties will result in RNGesus deciding who gets executed. Please colour-code your execution votes as follows: Wyrmhero [red and bold]. Retract your execution votes as follows: Wyrmhero [green and bold].

3. The Darkfriends know who each other are, and will have access to a faction doc to coordinate. Every cycle, they can submit a faction kill.

4. Write-ups will be minimally informative. At this point, the only thing the write-up will announce accurately are the roles and alignment of the deceased. Otherwise, the write-up should not be regarded as an accurate guide to what actually happened. I intend to take full creative liberties and will not be held responsible for any confusion, false assumptions, or damages resulting from treating the write-up like the Holy Word of Wyrm. There may be blademaster duels.

5. There will be an inactivity filter in this game. Players who do not post for two cycles in a row, and do not communicate with the GM will be killed by the Shadow.

6. The Order of Actions is as follows:

-Execution/Darkfriend kill
-Dragon’s Fang

7. Please @ me for clarificatory questions in thread, and bold them so I will pick them out. For clarificatory questions in PM and doc, please bold them. While I will do my best to get to all questions in a timely manner, my priority will be to address rule clarifications asked in the stipulated manner. (This also guarantees I won’t derp and miss them.)

 

 

 

Win Conditions:

Spoiler

• The Villagers are residents of Helgen. They win when they can identify and kill all the Darkfriends among them.
   
• The Darkfriends have sworn themselves to the Great Lord’s service and are tasked with the destruction of Helgen. They win when they outnumber the surviving Villagers.

 

 

Roles:

Spoiler

Villager: You are an ordinary resident of Helgen, and recent events have given you cause for concern. You are no stranger to fell things occurring in the Blight, but for most of your life, Helgen has been sheltered from such things. No longer, it seems.

Veteran: You have returned to Helgen from serving at the Blightborder, and your years of experience have toughened you. You may survive one attempt to kill you. This is a passive ability.

Elder: You are a respected pillar of the community and are troubled by the recent developments in Helgen. Things used to be different in your day…And you think the village should act aggressively to identify the Darkfriends. While you live, Villagers may use the Dragon’s Fang ability (where appropriate.)

Darkfriend: You have sworn yourself to the Great Lord’s service, and you have been tasked with destroying the village of Helgen and sacrificing your fellow villagers to the Lord of the Evening. 

 

 

Dragon's Fang:

Spoiler

• Dragon’s Fang: As long as no Darkfriend has been identified and executed, players of both alignments may send in an order to scrawl a Dragon’s Fang on a door via their GM PM. If 1/2 of all living players send in the order, one Darkfriend of the Evil team’s choice is selected and automatically removed from the game. However, this Darkfriend may still participate in the Evil doc and will be barred from the dead doc. The team may submit a new choice each cycle, and the most recent submission will apply.

 

 

Thoughts/Comments:

Spoiler

• I think I liked the idea when Araris suggested it last year and it was on my to do list, so whyever not. My concerns with the idea as cited in original form exists - making a Elim get randomly revealed feels a bit like punishing a good Elim team for success. Araris later suggested making it a trigger that a specific Village role can pull, which I am fine with, but in general, I'd like to farm the decision out to multiple players rather than just one. So I can see two main options for how to deal with this:
  
  A. Tie the Fang mechanic to a special role: As long as this role (let's call it the Whitecloak or Elder for the moment) is alive, the Fang mechanic is in operation. As soon as this role is removed from the game, the possibility of a Fanging is removed. This allows the Elim team, if they so wish, to attempt to shut the Fang mechanic down by taking out the Whitecloak as soon as possible. The downside is that this might end up playing as a straight up vanilla game if the Whitecloak is MLed early, or killed early. I'm not sure how I feel about this as I'd ideally like the mechanic to be more robust.
  
  B. Require a consensus to be achieved: As soon as 1/2 of living players agree to use the Fang (via order in GM PM; Darkfriends do not count), the Fang mechanic kicks in.
   
• It's possible to achieve a middle ground where the Fang mechanic is tied to the Whitecloak and requires a Village consensus. But I'm just not too thrilled at the idea of tying the Fang to a player, but am open for thoughts/comments. I certainly agree that having the chance to take out the Whitecloak might make things more fair for the Elim team. Perhaps the solution is to build redundancy in: have multiple (but a small number) of that role. [Edit: On second thoughts, I am going for this compromise. Whether or not there is redundancy built in is a distro problem. I still feel that otherwise allowing the Fang by default sort of ends up with an Elim team getting 'punished' for success.]
   
• The Dragon's Fang should only be usable once in the game and not at all once the first Elim has been discovered. It functions like a one-shot scan in that light. Villagers can keep sending in Fang orders as the Fang mechanic will only trigger once the 1/2 requirement has been reached. I don't want the mechanic to become a way of cleaning up surviving Elims or getting a free 'kill.'
   
• The Fanged Elim will not count towards their faction's wincon.
   
• I worry that the Fang mechanic is a bit too powerful, and also based on player numbers, it may be important to build some padding in. I tend to prefer Thug roles to Lurchers for this, as they also slow down Village informational gains by requiring two cycles to resolve. I think this is an especially important consideration in a game where a struggling Village can agree to remove an Elim just like that.
   
• I don't actually want to build more roles into this apart from the potential Whitecloak/Elder. This is an analysis-centric game and I think anything more just distracts from the fact the Village has to think their way through this.
   
• I will require the Elim team to give me their standing order for who is to be revealed/removed if the Fang kicks in. This can be changed at any point, (per submission alongside kill orders) but I will work from the last set of received orders when determining who is affected by the Fang.

 

 

Edited March 17, 2022 by Kasimir
v 2.1

[Experience he/him]

4 hours ago, Kasimir said:

It's been a stressful week and I apparently deal with stress by channelling my energies into creative efforts. Here's another game based off a comment/brief exchange with Araris last year:

MRXX: Helvegen

Årle ell i dagars hell
enn veit ravnen om eg fell

—Helvegen, Wardruna

The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.

The small village of Helgen is sheltered from the Blight by the mountains of Kandor and the swords of the Borderlanders. This is not your war: most of you have grown up in Helgen and will die there as well.

That was until last morning. A grey morning, seemingly unremarkable. Then everything you knew shattered like the thin crust of ice in the horse trough. 

This was where they found the body. Someone had murdered Gamen, and left him in the horse trough, to be discovered by the innkeeper in the morning, a snarled tracery of black thorns growing out through his skin in a macabre display.

“Light shelter us, it’s happening again,” Wyden mutters and then he clams up and refuses to say anything more. He glares daggers at the Dragon’s Fang scrawled on the inn door.

An ill wind blows from the Blight, and the fog creeps in towards Helgen. Last night, one of Tema’s goats sickened and died. The stranger, Kaim, claims to have heard ravens calling at dusk.

The Shadow, it seems, has fallen across even Helgen. Can you find the Darkfriends hidden in your midst before it is too late? Or will even Helgen be claimed by the Shadow?

 

 

 

General Rules:

  Hide contents

1. This game is a standard MR, with 48 hour cycles. PMs are open.

2. Voting is to be done in the thread. There is no minimum vote threshold for executions to take place. Ties will result in RNGesus deciding who gets executed. Please colour-code your execution votes as follows: Wyrmhero [red and bold]. Retract your execution votes as follows: Wyrmhero [green and bold].

3. The Darkfriends know who each other are, and will have access to a faction doc to coordinate. Every cycle, they can submit a faction kill.

4. Write-ups will be minimally informative. At this point, the only thing the write-up will announce accurately are the roles and alignment of the deceased. Otherwise, the write-up should not be regarded as an accurate guide to what actually happened. I intend to take full creative liberties and will not be held responsible for any confusion, false assumptions, or damages resulting from treating the write-up like the Holy Word of Wyrm. There may be blademaster duels.

5. There will be an inactivity filter in this game. Players who do not post for two cycles in a row, and do not communicate with the GM will be killed by the Shadow.

6. The Order of Actions is as follows:

-Execution/Darkfriend kill
-Dragon’s Fang

7. Please @ me for clarificatory questions in thread, and bold them so I will pick them out. For clarificatory questions in PM and doc, please bold them. While I will do my best to get to all questions in a timely manner, my priority will be to address rule clarifications asked in the stipulated manner. (This also guarantees I won’t derp and miss them.)

 

 

 

Win Conditions:

  Hide contents

• The Villagers are residents of Helgen. They win when they can identify and kill all the Darkfriends among them.
   
• The Darkfriends have sworn themselves to the Great Lord’s service and are tasked with the destruction of Helgen. They win when they outnumber the surviving Villagers.

 

 

Roles:

  Hide contents

Villager: You are an ordinary resident of Helgen, and recent events have given you cause for concern. You are no stranger to fell things occurring in the Blight, but for most of your life, Helgen has been sheltered from such things. No longer, it seems.

• Dragon’s Fang: As long as no Darkfriend has been identified and executed, Villagers may send in an order to scrawl a Dragon’s Fang on a door via their GM PM. If 2/3 of all living Villagers send in the order, one Darkfriend of the team’s choice is selected and automatically removed from the game. However, this Darkfriend may still participate in the Evil doc and will be barred from the dead doc.

Veteran: You have returned to Helgen from serving at the Blightborder, and your years of experience have toughened you. You may survive one attempt to kill you. This is a passive ability.

Darkfriend: You have sworn yourself to the Great Lord’s service, and you have been tasked with destroying the village of Helgen and sacrificing your fellow villagers to the Lord of the Evening. 

 

 

Thoughts/Comments:

  Hide contents

• I think I liked the idea when Araris suggested it last year and it was on my to do list, so whyever not. My concerns with the idea as cited in original form exists - making a Elim get randomly revealed feels a bit like punishing a good Elim team for success. Araris later suggested making it a trigger that a specific Village role can pull, which I am fine with, but in general, I'd like to farm the decision out to multiple players rather than just one. So I can see two main options for how to deal with this:
  
  A. Tie the Fang mechanic to a special role: As long as this role (let's call it the Whitecloak or Elder for the moment) is alive, the Fang mechanic is in operation. As soon as this role is removed from the game, the possibility of a Fanging is removed. This allows the Elim team, if they so wish, to attempt to shut the Fang mechanic down by taking out the Whitecloak as soon as possible. The downside is that this might end up playing as a straight up vanilla game if the Whitecloak is MLed early, or killed early. I'm not sure how I feel about this as I'd ideally like the mechanic to be more robust.
  
  B. Require a Village consensus to be achieved: As soon as the 2/3rds of living Villagers agree to use the Fang (via order in GM PM; Darkfriends do not count), the Fang mechanic kicks in.
   
• It's possible to achieve a middle ground where the Fang mechanic is tied to the Whitecloak and requires a Village consensus. But I'm just not too thrilled at the idea of tying the Fang to a player, but am open for thoughts/comments. I certainly agree that having the chance to take out the Whitecloak might make things more fair for the Elim team. Perhaps the solution is to build redundancy in: have multiple (but a small number) of that role.
   
• The Dragon's Fang should only be usable once in the game and not at all once the first Elim has been discovered. It functions like a one-shot scan in that light. Villagers can keep sending in Fang orders as the Fang mechanic will only trigger once the 2/3 requirement has been reached. I don't want the mechanic to become a way of cleaning up surviving Elims or getting a free 'kill.'
   
• The Fanged Elim will not count towards their faction's wincon.
   
• I worry that the Fang mechanic is a bit too powerful, and also based on player numbers, it may be important to build some padding in. I tend to prefer Thug roles to Lurchers for this, as they also slow down Village informational gains by requiring two cycles to resolve. I think this is an especially important consideration in a game where a struggling Village can agree to remove an Elim just like that.
   
• I don't actually want to build more roles into this apart from the potential Whitecloak/Elder. This is an analysis-centric game and I think anything more just distracts from the fact the Village has to think their way through this.
   
• I will require the Elim team to give me their standing order for who is to be revealed/removed if the Fang kicks in. This can be changed at any point, (per submission alongside kill orders) but I will work from the last set of received orders when determining who is affected by the Fang.

 

 

Could the village not use this to find players? As in they have only two thirds of players vote to use the fang on a certain turn. Then, if an elim isn't killed, they know that at least one of those 2/3 are elim, and they can narrow it down, and if they coordinate it so that only 2/3 of players try to use it, they could hard clear 2/3 of the village when it is successful. Not very likely for the village to put all the effort into doing it, but it was just something I thought of. Unless elims are able to vote for the fang to happen? If so, that would get rid of the problem. 

[Araris Valerian he/him]

1 hour ago, Experience said:

Could the village not use this to find players? As in they have only two thirds of players vote to use the fang on a certain turn. Then, if an elim isn't killed, they know that at least one of those 2/3 are elim, and they can narrow it down, and if they coordinate it so that only 2/3 of players try to use it, they could hard clear 2/3 of the village when it is successful. Not very likely for the village to put all the effort into doing it, but it was just something I thought of. Unless elims are able to vote for the fang to happen? If so, that would get rid of the problem. 

Yeah, there is also an issue of the village gaining a massive advantage if they go after this and the Fang actually goes through, since they narrow the POE to 1/3 on C1. And this has a 5-10% chance of happening depending on the elim team size.

Perhaps a fix is to allow each elim to be able to use the Fang at most once per game. That way any sort of village plan would just burn the Fang C1, netting them nothing. Yeah, the elims could trigger Fang early, but only if some villagers were pushing for it anyway.

[Kasimir he/him]

4 hours ago, Experience said:

Could the village not use this to find players? As in they have only two thirds of players vote to use the fang on a certain turn. Then, if an elim isn't killed, they know that at least one of those 2/3 are elim, and they can narrow it down, and if they coordinate it so that only 2/3 of players try to use it, they could hard clear 2/3 of the village when it is successful. Not very likely for the village to put all the effort into doing it, but it was just something I thought of. Unless elims are able to vote for the fang to happen? If so, that would get rid of the problem. 

My take would be that this is the point of requiring it as a GM PM order rather than in thread, since requiring it in thread means that players would essentially be forced to out themselves. 

I could see people doing it like what happens with anon voting but given that defection is possible, that feels overly optimistic. 

3 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

Yeah, there is also an issue of the village gaining a massive advantage if they go after this and the Fang actually goes through, since they narrow the POE to 1/3 on C1. And this has a 5-10% chance of happening depending on the elim team size.

Perhaps a fix is to allow each elim to be able to use the Fang at most once per game. That way any sort of village plan would just burn the Fang C1, netting them nothing. Yeah, the elims could trigger Fang early, but only if some villagers were pushing for it anyway.

Why not just let the Elims send in Fang orders too and change it to 2/3 living players? Since the Elim population would start at 1/5 anyway, I don't see them substantially killing the Fang and the original point/thought from you was to let it go through at C3/4 anyway which seems a reasonable break glass point. 

Edited February 8, 2022 by Kasimir

[Araris Valerian he/him]

34 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

Why not just let the Elims send in Fang orders too and change it to 2/3 living players? Since the Elim population would start at 1/5 anyway, I don't see them substantially killing the Fang and the original point/thought from you was to let it go through at C3/4 anyway which seems a reasonable break glass point. 

Yeah that works. I think the village trying to use the Fang as Experience described is definitely an edge case, but I definitely think there are members of our community that would try something like that, so it's worth planning around.

[Kasimir he/him]

28 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

Yeah that works. I think the village trying to use the Fang as Experience described is definitely an edge case, but I definitely think there are members of our community that would try something like that, so it's worth planning around.

You can just say Archer you know. I don't think he cares

[|TJ| he/him]

9 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

You can just say Archer you know. I don't think he cares

This is more Dannex I feel

[Kasimir he/him]

1 hour ago, Araris Valerian said:

Yeah that works. I think the village trying to use the Fang as Experience described is definitely an edge case, but I definitely think there are members of our community that would try something like that, so it's worth planning around.

Thoughts on making it 1/2 instead? For one, it'd be more permissive. I ran the simulations in the 2/3rd case and it does come out to around C4 or so, but making it 1/2 would allow Village to also trigger it at lylo. I don't think that'd be the optimal strat because you don't want to be guessing the Elims' strategy at lylo but it does allow them that level of desperation, and to be less screwed over by inactives who haven't yet died to the filter.

@Experience @|TJ| since I will just assume you guys are mildly invested now :eyes:

Edited to add:

Also, interested in thoughts on Fifth Seekers:

Quote

Smoker: The Smoker is undetectable and he can extend this power to one other person each night. If scanned by a Seeker, the smoker or the person encompassed within his coppercloud will show up as a regular Villager. Alternatively, the Smoker can turn his coppercloud off. In addition to being undetectable by the Seeker, the Smoker and his target are unaffected by emotional Allomancy. As long as the Smoker is using their coppercloud, the Soother and Rioter cannot change their votes.

Seeker: Once per Night, the Seeker can target someone to learn their alignment. However, doing so turns the player into a regular unless they have been Smoked.

Feels like the trade-off between losing a role and gaining alignment might incentivise Seekers to be more careful and Smokers to be more profligate with Smoking trusts. At the same time, I cannot count how many Tyrian GMs have died trying to incentivise Smoking.

Edited February 8, 2022 by Kasimir

[Ashbringer he/him]

… maybe I’m missing something, but what’s the downside of the Village triggering the Fang D1? 

[Kasimir he/him]

6 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

… maybe I’m missing something, but what’s the downside of the Village triggering the Fang D1? 

Nothing. It's not a downside, it's just an opportunity cost, i.e. saving it would help the Village more later on after there's more discussion and results. You get the free Elim D1, but the Elim still helps their team strategise, and you don't have robust connections to run analysis with. So if the Elims distance well or stay under the radar, you've burned the Hail Mary pass.

[Kasimir he/him]

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 he/him]

Thanks!

[Ashbringer he/him]

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 he/him]

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 he/him]

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 he/him]

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 he/him]

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.