The Art of Game Creation

[Sparkrunner he/him]

Hmm... Yes I have been rethinking parts of this, I will probably get a final version out in a few days.

[Steeldancer he/him]

I was thinking of tenatively naming my Princess Bride game "An Asian Land War." Bearing no effect on the actual place of the game (which will probably be storming the castle).

[Jondesu he/him]

1 hour ago, The Flash said:

I was thinking of tenatively naming my Princess Bride game "An Asian Land War." Bearing no effect on the actual place of the game (which will probably be storming the castle).

Wouldn't it need to be "A Land War In Asia"?

[Steeldancer he/him]

Ok so I've had another idea brewing for a while. I might have mentioned it at some point. But I think it would be an MR. 

The premise is this: the Skrulls are infilatrating the avengers! Players sign up as a Marvel superhero (only superheros. No villains or cosmic entities). I then give them their actual powerset, which is a secret. Superheros may have particular quirks and interactions with each other. Skrulls have an abduct and replace, an Avenger who is replaced by a Super-Skrull retains their abilities, but gains the outnumber normal avengers win condition, and gains access to the skrull document. 

I really think the public identity thing is fun. Everyone knows who you are, and can guess at your powers, but doesn't actually know them. I've developed some fun sets and quirks for characters I would expect to see. It would be called Secret Invasion. 

[StrikerEZ he/him]

@Flash I think the idea would be pretty cool. I think it might be easier to just make who gets which superhero randomized though. Choosing superheroes could get out of hand, and people might go out of their way to pick obscure heroes to get less-developed powers and possibly broken powers. It'd be a lot easier to balance the game with predetermined superheroes. You could make a list of which heroes are available and have sign-ups for those heroes though.

Also, when did you change your username? It was weird because I couldn't tag you using The Flash lol

Edited July 26, 2017 by StrikerEZ

[Steeldancer he/him]

22 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

@Flash I think the idea would be pretty cool. I think it might be easier to just make who gets which superhero randomized though. Choosing superheroes could get out of hand, and people might go out of their way to pick obscure heroes to get less-developed powers and possibly broken powers. It'd be a lot easier to balance the game with predetermined superheroes. You could make a list of which heroes are available and have sign-ups for those heroes though.

Also, when did you change your username? It was weird because I couldn't tag you using The Flash lol

I did it recently because I thought the the was superficial. Just Flash now. 

There are characters that are not allowed. Any reality bending characters (ahem Franklin Richards). Also I might decide to not allow a character, I'll be the final judge of all characters. But Captain America, Iron Man, Groot, Starlord, Spider-Man, Hulk, Wolverine, and all the classics are go to. Also they are first come first served. I do want to encourage creativity however. You miiiiight say I'm pretty familiar with even the most obscure heros. But if they don't choose wisely, they'll get a bad power set so. 

If the character is really obscure, they'll probably get a really simple power set. Classic characters have more complicated power sets, and some characters have limitations...  

In the end, I would make sure all the powers are balanced. 

[StrikerEZ he/him]

8 minutes ago, Flash said:

I did it recently because I thought the the was superficial. Just Flash now. 

There are characters that are not allowed. Any reality bending characters (ahem Franklin Richards). Also I might decide to not allow a character, I'll be the final judge of all characters. But Captain America, Iron Man, Groot, Starlord, Spider-Man, Hulk, Wolverine, and all the classics are go to. Also they are first come first served. I do want to encourage creativity however. You miiiiight say I'm pretty familiar with even the most obscure heros. But if they don't choose wisely, they'll get a bad power set so. 

If the character is really obscure, they'll probably get a really simple power set. Classic characters have more complicated power sets, and some characters have limitations...  

In the end, I would make sure all the powers are balanced. 

Yeah, I guess if you're able to plan for every character that could be suggested, then that makes sense. I just think it'd be smart to plan out, say, 30 characters and let people who sign up pick out of those 30.

Edited July 26, 2017 by StrikerEZ

[Steeldancer he/him]

1 hour ago, StrikerEZ said:

Yeah, I guess if you're able to plan for every character that could be suggested, then that makes sense. I just think it'd be smart to plan out, say, 30 characters and let people who sign up pick out of those 30.

I was thinking I would have suggested characters, and people can choose heroes that aren't on the list, pending my approval. I don't want to exclude lesser known characters just because they're lesser known. They can be fun too. Like Gwenpool or Moonknight (I actually have an interesting quirk for him thought up). 

Sort of like the CR for AG3? 

[StrikerEZ he/him]

37 minutes ago, Flash said:

I was thinking I would have suggested characters, and people can choose heroes that aren't on the list, pending my approval. I don't want to exclude lesser known characters just because they're lesser known. They can be fun too. Like Gwenpool or Moonknight (I actually have an interesting quirk for him thought up). 

Sort of like the CR for AG3? 

Oh, okay, that makes more sense, I guess. 

Also, no, I don't. I'm still relatively new to SE

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

Your super power setup sounds fine, actually. Obviously, you haven't told us any of the powers you are considering, so I can't say if any of those are balanced... But in theory, you could assign each character a unique power load-out, if you are confident that you can balance that.

I highly doubt I could find a hero that you don't know already, heh.

And I think there are some seriously awesome roles you could make for this game.

 

I would say my biggest concern however is the conversion element. Conversion instead of kill is a really massive advantage. Cultist/vampire factions tend to be very hard to balance.

To start with, a convert doesn't result in a death that reveals alignment. But it still takes a villager out of the game. That alone makes the convert kill automatically have a "janitor" setup built into it.

What's more, every conversion increases the numbers of the eliminator faction. If you can make one conversion every cycle, you literally can't lose because the villagers can only kill one of the eliminators per cycle, at best.

Plus, adding more people to the elim doc makes that document exponentially more useful. I had issues with this in the first game I suggested. Having access to a doc is not something to be underestimated.

 

So, basically, if you are going to keep the conversion mechanic, you need to do a lot to balance that.

One possible route would be to give the village certain roles that are, themselves, also quite powerful. For example, a role that can deconvert players, or possibly multiple roles that are flat-out immune to conversion.

The other thing you could do is make the conversion ability an every-other-cycle thing, or impose a similar restriction. However, an every-other-cycle restriction would not be enough on its own to balance the faction, because that would assume that the town is capable of hitting evils on average once every two cycles.

[Steeldancer he/him]

28 minutes ago, Drake Marshall said:

Your super power setup sounds fine, actually. Obviously, you haven't told us any of the powers you are considering, so I can't say if any of those are balanced... But in theory, you could assign each character a unique power load-out, if you are confident that you can balance that.

I highly doubt I could find a hero that you don't know already, heh.

And I think there are some seriously awesome roles you could make for this game.

 

I would say my biggest concern however is the conversion element. Conversion instead of kill is a really massive advantage. Cultist/vampire factions tend to be very hard to balance.

To start with, a convert doesn't result in a death that reveals alignment. But it still takes a villager out of the game. That alone makes the convert kill automatically have a "janitor" setup built into it.

What's more, every conversion increases the numbers of the eliminator faction. If you can make one conversion every cycle, you literally can't lose because the villagers can only kill one of the eliminators per cycle, at best.

Plus, adding more people to the elim doc makes that document exponentially more useful. I had issues with this in the first game I suggested. Having access to a doc is not something to be underestimated.

 

So, basically, if you are going to keep the conversion mechanic, you need to do a lot to balance that.

One possible route would be to give the village certain roles that are, themselves, also quite powerful. For example, a role that can deconvert players, or possibly multiple roles that are flat-out immune to conversion.

The other thing you could do is make the conversion ability an every-other-cycle thing, or impose a similar restriction. However, an every-other-cycle restriction would not be enough on its own to balance the faction, because that would assume that the town is capable of hitting evils on average once every two cycles.

There is... a deconvert. A limited ability, but it can deconvert 1 or two players in a game. 

And I actually hadnt thought that out hrm. 

It might be smart to limit the convert though. Hadn't thought about that. However I believe that the role madness might be enough to counter every other cycle... I'll think it over and see if I can come up with a way to balance it. There is immunity (usually limited immunity) and role blocking and stuff. I don't want to share specifics because that would spoil half the fun. But perhaps I could be a little more liberal with the immunity... I'll think it over. Thanks for pointing that out. 

[Elbereth she/her]

4 hours ago, Flash said:

Ok so I've had another idea brewing for a while. I might have mentioned it at some point. But I think it would be an MR. 

The premise is this: the Skrulls are infilatrating the avengers! Players sign up as a Marvel superhero (only superheros. No villains or cosmic entities). I then give them their actual powerset, which is a secret. Superheros may have particular quirks and interactions with each other. Skrulls have an abduct and replace, an Avenger who is replaced by a Super-Skrull retains their abilities, but gains the outnumber normal avengers win condition, and gains access to the skrull document. 

I really think the public identity thing is fun. Everyone knows who you are, and can guess at your powers, but doesn't actually know them. I've developed some fun sets and quirks for characters I would expect to see. It would be called Secret Invasion. 

So...

Drake already covered the conversion issues here. Best way to do it, in my opinion, is limited number of conversion, but if you can find another way that's fine too. 

I agree that a public rough idea of roles could be interesting, certainly. I highly recommend being very creative with what character corresponds to what abilities - if you do the obvious, the eliminators will have an advantage in knowing who to target because of likely kill/protect roles. (On the other hand, the village already has an advantage in knowing more roles and thus having more information, which is usually the eliminator team's thing.)

Two notes, I think. 

One, this is a non-Cosmere game. You'd have to get approval from Scar/Sart/Hero to run it, or win this year's competition for them. 

Secondly, do you have any idea how difficult individual roles are to create/balance? I can tell you from experience that they're really, really annoying. The only game we've done with those to my knowledge is LG26, Nyali's game. And she spent weeks beforehand preparing and creating those roles. To be fair, they also each had individual win conditions (I do not suggest trying this), but even so, it was a broken game and really difficult to handle as a GM. 

Keep in mind that most of these roles you would be creating and balancing against each other in a single week. With conversions thrown into the mix, which makes balancing much harder. And then during the game, it'd be much more difficult than most games - role madness is always harder, and these would all apparently be unique. 

So... think hard about how you want to do this, because as it is it feels like to me it'd be broken and really difficult as a GM to do at all. 

Also, this feels more like a LG to me at this point. Could theoretically be a MR, but I think as is it'd be better as a LG. 

[Steeldancer he/him]

Just now, Elbereth said:

So...

Drake already covered the conversion issues here. Best way to do it, in my opinion, is limited number of conversion, but if you can find another way that's fine too. 

I agree that a public rough idea of roles could be interesting, certainly. I highly recommend being very creative with what character corresponds to what abilities - if you do the obvious, the eliminators will have an advantage in knowing who to target because of likely kill/protect roles. (On the other hand, the village already has an advantage in knowing more roles and thus having more information, which is usually the eliminator team's thing.)

Two notes, I think. 

One, this is a non-Cosmere game. You'd have to get approval from Scar/Sart/Hero to run it, or win this year's competition for them. 

Secondly, do you have any idea how difficult individual roles are to create/balance? I can tell you from experience that they're really, really annoying. The only game we've done with those to my knowledge is LG26, Nyali's game. And she spent weeks beforehand preparing and creating those roles. To be fair, they also each had individual win conditions (I do not suggest trying this), but even so, it was a broken game and really difficult to handle as a GM. 

Keep in mind that most of these roles you would be creating and balancing against each other in a single week. With conversions thrown into the mix, which makes balancing much harder. And then during the game, it'd be much more difficult than most games - role madness is always harder, and these would all apparently be unique. 

So... think hard about how you want to do this, because as it is it feels like to me it'd be broken and really difficult as a GM to do at all. 

Also, this feels more like a LG to me at this point. Could theoretically be a MR, but I think as is it'd be better as a LG. 

I don't even want it on the list yet. I know it's not done yet. 

Also I may have the stupid plan to win the CR contest in the AG with this character I've thought up... 

I'll admit, not all of them are super unique. But at the same time... it just sounds fun. That's half the reason I like the idea. 

Suffice it to say I do not want to start off my GM career with this. I have the princess bride one that should work great (apart from some win condition stuff I was trying to figure it out- which I solved the issue today!). Maybe ill come up with a sanderson game at some point. But yeah. Don't expect to see this one any time soon. If I ever feel like I've gotten it to a place where it can be balanced, then I'll ask for it to be on the signups list. 

[Elbereth she/her]

Well, if you ever want to run it, put it on the list earlier rather than later because games take a while to get to the top. ~15 months give or take, depending on the format. But I'd agree it's certainly not ready yet. 

Princess Bride also isn't Sanderson.  You'd have to pick in that case, or just not run this one and hope for another CR later on, or for one to pick your game. 

Anyway. That isn't anything to do with the game itself.  I'm just saying be really careful with unique roles because they're irritating as a GM. 

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

I'm pretty sure Flash's Princess Bride game has actually already been approved as a non-sanderson game that will be run.

 

On an unrelated topic, is there any general advice people have for a setup where players gain abilities over the course of the game? I've seen this done in a lot of successful SE games (LG30 and LG33 come to mind)... But is there anything in particular I should watch out for, if I were to use such a mechanic?

For example, does the inclusion of such a feature make a game more swingy, or less swingy?

On one hand, it automatically makes it that any role that dies can be replaced, with some effort. Which seems like it would make a game less swingy, because it means backup roles are a built in feature.

But on the other hand, it means that the balance of the game is dependent upon who ends up getting what ability. Which might make it more swingy, depending on how exactly abilities are gained.

Edited July 27, 2017 by Drake Marshall

[Sparkrunner he/him]

Spoiler

There are two teams, the Drakeface Villagers and the Dawnface Sorcerers. The sorcerers have infiltrated the town, but the hardy villagers have struck a deal with the dragons to rid themselves of the Sorcerers. The sorcerers can communicate telepathically (Faction Doc) and can use their magic to "Get rid of" a villager each night turn. The day turn is 24 hours and the night is 12. (For now) Rollover TBD. During the day turn, everyone votes on who to throw to the dragons. Pm's are allowed, but only during the night turn and only one per turn. PM's last for three more night turns.

 

Now for the interesting part (number 1)

Instead of pre-determined roles, you make up your own role or knack! Knacks are basically watered down roles. For example, instead of PM spying, you could have the knack to hear gossip about yourself. Then, the GM will decide exact mechanics and give you an ability like- know who has talked about you in a PM, etc. You recieve one good knack and one bad knack. (Add an apostrophe in every other word, etc.)

 

Now for the interesting part (number 2)

In keeping with the spirit of the short story, and because I am evil and have power Everyone must write in DIALOGUE! MWA HA HA HA!!! (At least for RP, and bonus points if you do it in-thread.)

 

The sorcerers have a kill every night, or they can choose to forsake the next night's kill and, during the day, manipulate one vote and roleblock one person.

 

I may or may not choose to add secret items.

@little wilson

Edited July 27, 2017 by Roadwalker

[Steeldancer he/him]

15 hours ago, Elbereth said:

Well, if you ever want to run it, put it on the list earlier rather than later because games take a while to get to the top. ~15 months give or take, depending on the format. But I'd agree it's certainly not ready yet. 

Princess Bride also isn't Sanderson.  You'd have to pick in that case, or just not run this one and hope for another CR later on, or for one to pick your game. 

Anyway. That isn't anything to do with the game itself.  I'm just saying be really careful with unique roles because they're irritating as a GM. 

It already got approved. 

[Steeldancer he/him]

Ok i just had a series of weird ideas that I'll have to think over more. First, a White Sand game, Sand mages + villagers vs religious zealots. Second, a game taking place on Aether, now that that is more available to everyone. Then there is the weird one: ant colony vs ant-shaped spiders (it's a real thing). 

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

52 minutes ago, Flash said:

Then there is the weird one: ant colony vs ant-shaped spiders (it's a real thing). 

You know you're thought process has been wired to elimination games when you start seeing parallels in the natural world. 

That is actually a fairly common tactic for certain kinds of spider. When they wait in their webs, some spiders will try to pair up their lower legs, so from a distance (and/or to a bug with poor eyesight) it looks like they only have six legs.

Ants and the like have a fascinating means of coordination, coordinating so well that the colony as a whole can react intelligently to most issues that it encounters... But as individuals, they aren't terribly intelligent, so they tend to fall for those sorts of tricks.

In some way, I wonder if ants are like the opposite of humans. Humans can be quite clever as individuals, but in groups it often seems like we are less clever as a whole.

[Sparkrunner he/him]

I could work on an Aether game...

Spoiler

Vo-Dari traitors among the rest of the Aether bonded?

 

Edited August 2, 2017 by Roadwalker

[Steeldancer he/him]

23 hours ago, Roadwalker said:

I could work on an Aether game...

Spoiler

Vo-Dari traitors among the rest of the Aether bonded?

 

I was thinking it would either be a faction game or something like that yes. 

As for what the various abilities the aethers would have... I have no idea. 

Edited August 2, 2017 by Flash

[Ecthelion III he/him]

This should probably have a spoiler tag.

@Flash

Edited August 2, 2017 by Ecthelion III

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

So, yesterday I had an idea.

When we want to balance a game, often one of the things we do is simulate in our minds how a game might play out.

And I figured, a computer might do a good job at simulating an elimination game, actually.

I know elimination is a complicated game... And I don't think I've ever heard of somebody making such a simulation.

But with a few reasonable assumptions, and some application of RNG... It wasn't that difficult, actually.

Some of those assumptions include:

• players will submit votes in a random order each cycle
• a certain percentage of the time, players don't vote
• if there are already 2 or more lynch candidates in a cycle, players will more often then not vote on somebody who already has a vote on them
• a certain percentage of the time, villagers will vote based on accurate analysis and hit an eliminator
• the rest of the time, villagers will vote randomly
• eliminators will not cast the first vote on their team mates, although they are still susceptible to bandwagonning on team mates
• usually, eliminators will vote on random villagers
• eliminators will submit a kill every night
• usually, it targets a random villager
• the exception is if somebody claimed an investigative role, in which case the eliminators are somewhat more likely to target that player
• doctors are also somewhat more likely to target investigative claims; otherwise they heal randomly
• cops will scan randomly, although they will never scan the same person twice
• if a cop finds an eliminator, most of the time they will immediately claim, but occasionally they won't claim

 

So yesterday and today I spent a couple hours writing a python script to simulate an elimination game.

Then I plugged in a classic elimination setup. 5 vanilla town, 1 town cop, 1 town doctor, 2 vanilla eliminators. From what I hear, this setup is supposed to be very balanced, so I used it to calibrate my algorithm. Ideally, the algorithm should correctly recognize that this game setup has close to 50/50 odds for village/eliminators.

I tweaked some constants to match that game (specifically, I altered the exact percentage of the time villagers can guess an eliminator correctly without the help of an investigative role), changing numbers until that setup resulted in something very close to 50/50 odds for either faction winning (the eliminators had a 49.38% of winning, to be exact, calculated with a sample size of 10,000 simulated games).

 

This is still very much work-in-progress, but I think it could be quite a useful tool. Does anybody have a game setup that they would be interested in seeing simulated?

[Steeldancer he/him]

14 hours ago, Ecthelion III said:

This should probably have a spoiler tag.

@Flash

Aethers are canon. 

Spoiler

The types (verdant, the crystal one, the light one, the dark one, and the animal one, and the stone one. Yeah. Those aren't canon.

 

[Elenion he/him]

2 hours ago, Flash said:

Aethers are canon. 

  Reveal hidden contents

The types (verdant, the crystal one, the light one, the dark one, and the animal one, and the stone one. Yeah. Those aren't canon.

 

Spoiler

Verdant, Amberite, Bestarin, Ferrous, Illuminous, Night.