The Art of Game Creation

[Ashbringer he/him]

7 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

They could. I don't see where this is game-breaking  

You could find the Master (or one instance of him) and warn the thread, but think about what this costs you:

• You can't scan for another two cycles
• The Village may kill that Master ASAP when he spawns in, but you potentially die because everyone knows you're confirmed Village, and your regeneration could be Evil.

... actually, how can the questions work? Because could you ask "list the entire Elim Team exactly" and either find a villager or get the entire Elim team?

[Kasimir he/him]

11 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

... actually, how can the questions work? Because could you ask "list the entire Elim Team exactly" and either find a villager or get the entire Elim team?

Hmm. So what I was going for was to treat this as was truth indexed to the player's beliefs. There are two ways I could see this going:

-I want to encourage players to give the Doctor exactly what he asks for.

"list the entire Elim Team exactly" -> "Two Lurchers, One Coinshot, one Vote Manip" is a legitimate answer. 

I will intervene if a player is being far too slippery in answering, but the more complex/the more info the Doctor is asking for, the more I am willing to let them give him exact words and go ham on the wordplay. Sort of 'if you want to make it this kind of game, you're welcome to deal with the consequences.'

I would also say that saying they don't know who the Elim team is is not an acceptable answer for a Villager - you give your best guess, based off the current state of your beliefs. The reason is I think we need to avoid a situation where a Villager takes literally any question and states their alignment as part of the answer. "What is your favourite colour?" "I'm a Villager and it's blue!"

-I can also restrict the player to 'Yes/No' answers.

Edited November 6, 2022 by Kasimir

[Ashbringer he/him]

1 minute ago, Kasimir said:

Hmm. So what I was going for was to treat this as was truth indexed to the player's beliefs. There are two ways I could see this going:

-I want to encourage players to give the Doctor exactly what he asks for.

"list the entire Elim Team exactly" -> "Two Lurchers, One Coinshot, one Vote Manip" is a legitimate answer. 

I will intervene if a player is being far too slippery in answering, but the more complex/the more info the Doctor is asking for, the more I am willing to let them give him exact words and go ham on the wordplay. Sort of 'if you want to make it this kind of game, you're welcome to deal with the consequences.'

I would also say that saying they don't know who the Elim team is is not an acceptable answer for a Villager - you give your best guess, based off the current state of your beliefs. The reason is I think we need to avoid a situation where a Villager takes literally any question and states their alignment as part of the answer. "What is your favourite colour?" "I'm a Villager and it's blue!"

-I can also restrict the player to 'Yes/No' answers.

I mean, slippery answers can be locked down by specific wording. "List the player names of all of your current Elim teammates" for one - don't know how you can wiggle out of that one without going a bit too wild with your interpretations. 

I like the idea of asking questions, but I don't know if being able to talk about alignment in any way would work very well. Or just yes/no, or the Master/Elims in general being able to lie.

[Kasimir he/him]

5 hours ago, Ashbringer said:

I mean, slippery answers can be locked down by specific wording. "List the player names of all of your current Elim teammates" for one - don't know how you can wiggle out of that one without going a bit too wild with your interpretations. 

True - but I think the other concern is really just Villagers info-dumping and asserting it's true as an irrelevant answer. I prefer yes/no responses in this case then, I don't think 'any question' works without Aonar as a GM, since this was originally his Free Magic spirit mechanic  

5 hours ago, Ashbringer said:

I like the idea of asking questions, but I don't know if being able to talk about alignment in any way would work very well. Or just yes/no, or the Master/Elims in general being able to lie.

I agree with Aman and Orlok - if Elims can lie, then it defeats the point of the question. Sort of the Archer problem all over again.

I mean, if players really want me to rules lawyer, then - yes or no question with a single clause. The moment you have 'and' in there, for instance, it's not a valid question. If your question can't fit in less than 140 characters, it's not something you can ask.

Edit: @Ashbringer - the other way I think is if you split the roles into Master and Valeyard - so the Valeyard, as the real 'anti-Doctor', will shut the Doctor down for two cycles, and the Master can lie.

Edited to add 2: So my takes on this:

A. One way is to relax GM enforcement if the player is clear they want to powerfully Aonar this. In other words: the more you want to be Aonar and deliberately use the rule to destroy the balance as far as you can, the more I'll allow the Elim team to Aonar you just as strongly, and accept any technically truthful but creative solution that screws with the answer the Doctor wants, creating an armsrace. Since the whole point of the question ability and the truthfulness being enforced is that the GM had to step in 

5 hours ago, Ashbringer said:

I mean, slippery answers can be locked down by specific wording. "List the player names of all of your current Elim teammates"

I will accept all player names listed with RSA or OTP encoding. It sounds fair.

Want to make another specification it should be in plaintext? Alright, plaintext Ancient Chinese homophones sounds fair. Wanna do cuneiform? I'll allow it.

Has to be in English? Okay, hope you enjoy badly handwritten messages, and so on. 

'Current' teammates? But you're dead, you don't have teammates. Or you're not yet in the game, and as such, don't actually currently have teammates. Okay, I'll allow that.

You can argue I'm letting the Elim team get away with breaking the spirit of the rule and abiding by the letter of the rule. At which point I'd raise my eyebrow and ask the Doctor at which point they think they're not breaking the spirit of the rule either. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

B. The other way is if you (general you) prefer me to take the tighter regulatory approach. The Doctor can ask any question, but it has to be GM approved, so closer to MR1 Nightwatcher. There are several simple guidelines to this:

• The more gamebreaking the information you ask for, e.g. the roles and the alignment of the entire Elim team, the more likely it is your question will be rejected. Be sensible.
• If your question cannot be answered with yes/no, or the name of a player, it is highly likely to be rejected.
• If your question is longer than 140 characters, it is highly likely to be rejected, because this means you are trying to Aonar.
• If your question can translate to an ingame action, e.g. rolescan, action scan, action tracker, it is highly likely to be accepted.
• I am happy to tell the player if they ask me in advance whether their question is acceptable or not.
• If your question contains more than one clause, it is likely to be rejected.
• Don't Aonar  

Edited November 6, 2022 by Kasimir

[JNV]

5 hours ago, Kasimir said:

Ooof. One thing in my head I forgot to add explicitly, thank you. All have to be killed. So if it's all-Village but one Villager will die and become a Renegade, then the game still goes on. (That's the thing Ash and I were thinking about.)

So what happens if like theres one person left in the game and that persons a villager but a future regeneration of theris is evil like is that just impossible for the village to win or what I mean this is an edge case 

Oh I had a thought if one lord burns through regenerations faster could you have two doctors or two masters and all of that running around at once

6 hours ago, Kasimir said:

Does this one work better?

Yeah this music is great thanks

Also for the questions you cna have a two step process 'what is your certainty concerning the exact identities of all members of the Renegades' then once you hit perfect certainty you ask 'what arre the player names of every regeneration both past and future of the members of the Renegades' might take you a while but yeah maybe yes no is a better option here 

[Kasimir he/him]

2 minutes ago, JNV said:

So what happens if like theres one person left in the game and that persons a villager but a future regeneration of theris is evil like is that just impossible for the village to win or what I mean this is an edge case 

Yes, basically this is a point where I'd call it in favour of the Elims, because that future Elim has not been killed, and it seems cruel to ask the player to exe themselves, but there is no way the Village wincon in that world is fulfilled, while the Elim wincon has not technically been fulfilled yet but will be if forced to play it out.

7 minutes ago, JNV said:

Oh I had a thought if one lord burns through regenerations faster could you have two doctors or two masters and all of that running around at once

Hmm. Ok, you're right, in that world, yes. But this would also be noted in the Time Vortex doc, because players could actually be receiving questions, so I don't think this is too problematic. The Master would be much harder to detect, and less useful unless he shuts down all actions targeting him that aren't kills.

9 minutes ago, JNV said:

Also for the questions you cna have a two step process 'what is your certainty concerning the exact identities of all members of the Renegades' then once you hit perfect certainty you ask 'what arre the player names of every regeneration both past and future of the members of the Renegades' might take you a while but yeah maybe yes no is a better option here 

I mean, the thing about that taking you quite a while is also that it actually makes the info less game-breaking. Discovering who all the Elims are C2 is gamebreaking. It's passé on C9. Asking for certainty is also tricky because certainty is a doxastic state, meaning people can report uncertain or irrational doxastic states, e.g. because they are subjectively more confident/have higher credences in claims like '2+2=4' than Renegade identities. Basically, once you start asking them about what their belief states are or ascribed degrees of confidence are, it's harder to defensibly enforce truthfulness since people can fail to be perfectly rational or to reflect on their credences appropriately. Conversely, very confident players will also throw this off.

Again, my reflex to the second question would be to allow any screwball but technically true answer from the Elims, because the point of the question is both thematic and to allow the Doctor to reliably occupy several roles, e.g. rolescan, target scan, action scan, alignment scan, depending. The other way instead of yes/no is to potentially add in The Valeyard and allow him to lie since he's iconic anyway, and/or also go with what I suggested in B. - I'd realistically have to intervene as a GM no matter what, given the questions mechanic, since at least one player is going to mess with the question. B codifies it and makes it formal and makes it clear then that if the question passed GM checks and has been handed on to the player, then it has to be answered honestly.

6 hours ago, Kasimir said:

B. The other way is if you (general you) prefer me to take the tighter regulatory approach. The Doctor can ask any question, but it has to be GM approved, so closer to MR1 Nightwatcher. There are several simple guidelines to this:

• The more gamebreaking the information you ask for, e.g. the roles and the alignment of the entire Elim team, the more likely it is your question will be rejected. Be sensible.
• If your question cannot be answered with yes/no, or the name of a player, it is highly likely to be rejected.
• If your question is longer than 140 characters, it is highly likely to be rejected, because this means you are trying to Aonar.
• If your question can translate to an ingame action, e.g. rolescan, action scan, action tracker, it is highly likely to be accepted.
• I am happy to tell the player if they ask me in advance whether their question is acceptable or not.
• If your question contains more than one clause, it is likely to be rejected.
• Don't Aonar  

 

[The Unknown Medallion he/him]

Something to note, most of the "questions" that have been listed aren't actually questions. Can you list the entire is team is a question, but the simple answer is yes I can or no I can't or probably. List the entire elim team is an order/imperative, therefore the doctor can't ask that. Who are all the members of the elim team presents a problem though.

Edit: A good way to do that if you you're a Who fan is to list actual characters. 

Edited November 7, 2022 by The Unknown Novel

[Illwei]

Just a few things I'm wanting imput on. #3 is an old game Fura made a bit ago that I've updated a little. none of them are fully finished. 

Shorter cycle game with postcount restrictions. 
Click

Shorter cycle game without a majority or plurality elimination. 
Click

LG format, Roshar setting, Role Madness, Flipless. 
Click

Spoiler

Click

 

[Kasimir he/him]

On 11/8/2022 at 7:09 AM, The Unknown Novel said:

Something to note, most of the "questions" that have been listed aren't actually questions. Can you list the entire is team is a question, but the simple answer is yes I can or no I can't or probably. List the entire elim team is an order/imperative, therefore the doctor can't ask that. Who are all the members of the elim team presents a problem though.

Edit: A good way to do that if you you're a Who fan is to list actual characters. 

I missed this, my bad.

It's a fair point, and FWIW, if a player were to ask 'Can you list the entire Elim team', I would absolutely not step in if the Elim said 'Yes, I can.' Though to be fair, they'd then get asked to do so, but as you said, it's then an order/imperative.

Listing actual characters would work too, but then the player name dodge would cause an issue.

In general, I feel that as a GM, if you know the players are just going to abuse the hell out of a rule, you're better off changing their incentives rather than just waiting for them to break it and then punish them for it. So I lean towards the restrictions on the type of question that can be asked.

[Araris Valerian he/him]

Here's a faction MR that I cooked up last night. It still needs a theme, but the main ideas are limited GM feedback and very delayed deaths.

Spoiler

Anon game?
48 hour cycles
~4 players per faction, with a shared doc
Majority exe, player(s) with the most votes are Marked (this is not announced)
PMs are open
When all players in a faction are Marked, they are simultaneously removed from the game.

Each cycle, factions have access to the following actions (limit one each per faction per cycle):

• Roleblock a player
• Move a vote (works on no-votes)
• Mark a player
• Protect a player from the Mark action (but not the exe)
• Redirect a player’s action
• Scan if a player is Marked

OOA is Redirect (determined randomly if conflicting, multiples on one target are all negated), Roleblock, Protect, Mark, Vote Manip, Exe, Scan, removal of Marked factions

No GM feedback about success/failure of actions, except the Mark scan which will not reveal whether it was redirected; feedback will be "Your target is/isn't Marked," or, "You were roleblocked."

 

Edited November 18, 2022 by Araris Valerian

[Archer he/him]

5 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

 main ideas are limited GM feedback

you mean, less GM work :P. 

This is a generally cool idea. I feel like this would play better as a QF. The payoff being so delayed might be frustrating if it takes a week IRL. There's not as much traditional analysis to be done, especially if players develop confidence in their trust circles, so it could get stale. 

Is the movement of a vote declared by the GM? 

To confirm, players don't know who else is in their faction?

[Araris Valerian he/him]

39 minutes ago, Archer said:

you mean, less GM work :P. 

This is a generally cool idea. I feel like this would play better as a QF. The payoff being so delayed might be frustrating if it takes a week IRL. There's not as much traditional analysis to be done, especially if players develop confidence in their trust circles, so it could get stale. 

Is the movement of a vote declared by the GM? 

To confirm, players don't know who else is in their faction?

Oh, there will be faction docs. Which I think lends to a longer game format.

I'm leaning toward no final VC at all each cycle, and just letting players work that out.

Hmm, I think this would fit decently in the Reckonerverse, with players as Epics and the Mark representing that their weakness is known.

Edited November 18, 2022 by Araris Valerian

[Kasimir he/him]

7 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

Oh, there will be faction docs. Which I think lends to a longer game format.

This would be my view, yeah.

To confirm: no roles, so the faction has to make a strategic choice?

7 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

Hmm, I think this would fit decently in the Reckonerverse, with players as Epics and the Mark representing that their weakness is known.

Sounds good!

Edited to add: I do like how straightforward this is for a faction game - the faction element will likely add complexity enough!

Edited November 19, 2022 by Kasimir

[Ashbringer he/him]

I like the idea of the delayed factions a lot, but I wonder whether some of the abilities would be worth using. Redirects (especially redirect a target back onto the target) or Protects/Marks are very key, while Scans and Roleblocks can be less so. Still useful, but Scans especially turning up worthless if redirected could hurt.

There's also the question of how a Redirect moving an action to Player C would hit a vote manip when it's moving Player A's vote to Player B. (A's vote on C, or C's vote on B? Guessing the first but idk.)

[Kasimir he/him]

9 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

I'm leaning toward no final VC at all each cycle, and just letting players work that out.

One thing I'm thinking about between this and what Ash said:

1 hour ago, Ashbringer said:

while Scans and Roleblocks can be less so. Still useful, but Scans especially turning up worthless if redirected could hurt.

I feel like the open PMs are going to be critical here. This was the problem with MR1 where there was just no action confirmation or VC confirmation, we just knew who was exed and killed each cycle. This is exacerbated here by the lack of flips until the very end.

I imagine that if players value other actions more than scans or roleblocks, they might end up info-trading in PMs to try to establish a better picture of the gamestate and work from there. In which case, scans might really take on secondary importance. Dead doc collaboration really came in clutch for us in MR1. The Seventeenth Sharders just weren't sharing any info they had, so the only way to do it was dead doc mass info-sharing and then piecing it together to try to advise on gamestate.

[Araris Valerian he/him]

14 hours ago, Ashbringer said:

I like the idea of the delayed factions a lot, but I wonder whether some of the abilities would be worth using. Redirects (especially redirect a target back onto the target) or Protects/Marks are very key, while Scans and Roleblocks can be less so. Still useful, but Scans especially turning up worthless if redirected could hurt.

There's also the question of how a Redirect moving an action to Player C would hit a vote manip when it's moving Player A's vote to Player B. (A's vote on C, or C's vote on B? Guessing the first but idk.)

In my view, the point of the scan is to slightly mitigate the info black hole. The number of redirects is relatively small (at most 1/4 of the number of players), so a successful scan would be accurate more than 3/4 of the time, especially considering PM collaboration between factions.

But, having an unmarked player get scanned as Marked could be a huge boon for a team, and something that they could strategize around.

It may be the case that some abilities aren’t used a ton, but since they are symmetric between factions, that gives a bit of leeway for some experimentation.

And I’m having quote issues since I’m on mobile, but @Kasimir, note that I changed it from what I originally pitched to you so that a fulled Marked faction is removed. I didn’t really want players that have already lost being able to meddle in things. I could revert that change, but maybe that would be for a rerun if people like the base concept.

[Kasimir he/him]

1 minute ago, Araris Valerian said:

And I’m having quote issues since I’m on mobile, but @Kasimir, note that I changed it from what I originally pitched to you so that a fulled Marked faction is removed. I didn’t really want players that have already lost being able to meddle in things. I could revert that change, but maybe that would be for a rerun if people like the base concept.

Fair - missed that, but I'd still say that the PMs could significantly make up for it as an info-gathering tool, so it's just as well the PMs are open. The info black hole problem is still something players are going to be thinking about how to work with, IMO, because you can't effectively strategise without at least something to go on.

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

so I was looking through my google docs and had a chuckle when I remembered this brief game description for

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OqNlQZYXwDxdJMfNirqxAKZfkGSrpOecLEye340VNPY/edit?usp=sharing

[Kasimir he/him]

15 hours ago, DrakeMarshall said:

Absolutely everyone is a Smoker.

Spoiler

 

Edited November 28, 2022 by Kasimir

[Turtle they/them]

On 11/28/2022 at 7:45 AM, Kasimir said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

blackout game where it’s actually oops all mistborn but you’re told it’s all smokers

idk if that’s blackout or just a bastard game

[Mat he/him]

27 minutes ago, ookla the POKE VOTE said:

blackout game where it’s actually oops all mistborn but you’re told it’s all smokers

idk if that’s blackout or just a bastard game

I once ran a blackout game where all the villagers were Thugs with a one-shot kill and all the elims had a % chance of surviving every kill :P.

[The Unknown Medallion he/him]

42 minutes ago, Ookla the Tall said:

I once ran a blackout game where all the villagers were Thugs with a one-shot kill and all the elims had a % chance of surviving every kill :P.

I remember that game. Or at least, I remember Kas going crazy during that game. Don't actually remember playing though.

Edit: Apparently I didn't. But Kas definitely still went insane. 

Edited November 30, 2022 by Ookla the Unknown

[Turtle they/them]

10 minutes ago, Ookla the Tall said:

I once ran a blackout game where all the villagers were Thugs with a one-shot kill and all the elims had a % chance of surviving every kill :P.

somebody who actually plays in mashes (*cough*illwei*cough*) correct me if i’m wrong but isn’t this literally just MU ITA shots in mashes? i’m gonna check this

edit: yeah ITA is vig shots with a 15% chance of accuracy i think

but like in a 50 player game so

Edited November 29, 2022 by ookla the POKE VOTE

[Szeth Pancakes he/they]

3 hours ago, Ookla the Tall said:

I once ran a blackout game where all the villagers were Thugs with a one-shot kill and all the elims had a % chance of surviving every kill :P.

I think I remember that one

[Kasimir he/him]

5 hours ago, ookla the POKE VOTE said:

blackout game where it’s actually oops all mistborn but you’re told it’s all smokers

We had a normal game that was all Mistborn. It's called AG6. I set a new pinch-hitting record by getting vigkilled less than twelve hours after I subbed in.

4 hours ago, Ookla the Unknown said:

I remember that game. Or at least, I remember Kas going crazy during that game. Don't actually remember playing though.

Edit: Apparently I didn't. But Kas definitely still went insane. 

Nope, that was MR56. This one was more me half-heartedly trying to solve because I had exams, and Szeth continuing to tunnel on me even after I flipped Village >>

You know it was bad when I was actively considering E!Szeth at endgame even though Szeth had pasted his GM PM in thread.

Edited November 30, 2022 by Kasimir