The Art of Game Creation

[Illwei]

2 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

*Cough*

Yo yo yo you ain't getting 10 upvotes from this post as well good sir smh

[Elandera she/her]

I'm developing a game where the village faction does not have the win-con to get rid of all the elims. Instead, their goal is to survive long enough to reveal a secret to the world. This is in an effort to balance the fact the elims "kill" has a chance to convert the target instead. For context, this is the Firefly game I've been thinking of today and it will be based on the events in Serenity. Elims are Reavers, there's a neutral Alliance faction, and the village is the Crew of Serenity. The secret they're trying to reveal is the secret of Miranda and the creation of the Reavers.

My only problem is coming up with a way to put the power of revealing the secret in the hands of the players rather than with RNG. The easy answer is that every turn, there's a percentage chance of getting one step closer to the reveal. 

One potential is that players can use their action either for their ability (everyone will have a role), or to make progress towards the reveal. Maybe something like fighting the Krell in Steeldancer's Skyward game. I'm open to suggestions.

EDIT: For reference, here are the rules so far.

Edited January 28, 2021 by Elandera

[StrikerEZ he/him]

57 minutes ago, Elandera said:

One potential is that players can use their action either for their ability (everyone will have a role), or to make progress towards the reveal. Maybe something like fighting the Krell in Steeldancer's Skyward game. I'm open to suggestions.

I think a mechanic similar to the Krell from his Skyward game would actually work really well for that. The caveat of this being that I have no idea what this story is though.

[Elandera she/her]

26 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

I think a mechanic similar to the Krell from his Skyward game would actually work really well for that. The caveat of this being that I have no idea what this story is though.

It is a tragedy how many people don't know Firefly. It's a fantastic Space Western that was cancelled too early. Most of this game will be based on the movie, Serenity (which I found is free to watch on Peacock). It's independent enough that you can still enjoy it without having watched the series, but all of it is very, very worth it.

[Alvron]

Firefly is truly wonderful and is something I constantly rewatch.  But Serenity, I'm still not over that death.

[Araris Valerian he/him]

I've written up a draft of the rules for my "PM (un)Safety" game. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[Mat he/him]

4 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

I've written up a draft of the rules for my "PM (un)Safety" game. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Your doc formatting/wording looks an awful lot like my Highprince LG doc hmmmmmmm

The game itself looks mostly good though, but the Carpenter role seems a bit underpowered compared with the Elder.

[Araris Valerian he/him]

4 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Your doc formatting/wording looks an awful lot like my Highprince LG doc hmmmmmmm

Guilty as charged. Take it as a compliment of your nice formatting .

4 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

The game itself looks mostly good though, but the Carpenter role seems a bit underpowered compared with the Elder.

Any thoughts on how to modify the Carpenter? Maybe twice per game? The Elder I think should feel a bit stronger since their role has maximum potential when working with another player.

[Quintessential she/her]

8 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Your doc formatting/wording looks an awful lot like my Highprince LG doc hmmmmmmm

The game itself looks mostly good though, but the Carpenter role seems a bit underpowered compared with the Elder.

Yeah, I noticed that too--maybe the Carpenter can move every other turn? Or every turn?

Does the Elder have the option of guessing the locations of both players, and if one of them is correct then the action goes through? Or do they only guess one?

I also think the Informant is a bit complicated, and probably not very useful since in most cases you can't be certain who your target last targeted. It might be more useful to have Informant learn the role of another player, or who another player's target is, rather than the target's location.

Edited January 28, 2021 by Quinn0928

[Araris Valerian he/him]

2 minutes ago, Quinn0928 said:

Does the Elder have the option of guessing the locations of both players, and if one of them is correct then the action goes through? Or do they only guess one?

The Elder would only guess at one location.

2 minutes ago, Quinn0928 said:

I also think the Informant is a bit complicated, and probably not very useful since in most cases you can't be certain who your target last targeted. It might be more useful to have Informant learn the role of another player, or who another player's target is, rather than the target's location.

I should clarify that. The informant learns both who was targeted and their location.

3 minutes ago, Quinn0928 said:

Yeah, I noticed that too--maybe the Carpenter can move every other turn? Or every turn?

I don't want this, since that would make them basically untargetable.

[Mat he/him]

2 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

Guilty as charged. Take it as a compliment of your nice formatting .

 That I will.

2 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

Any thoughts on how to modify the Carpenter? Maybe twice per game? The Elder I think should feel a bit stronger since their role has maximum potential when working with another player.

Twice per game seems good, though with the specificness of the actions I probably wouldn't do more than that.

2 minutes ago, Quinn0928 said:

I also think the Informant is a bit complicated, and probably not very useful since in most cases you can't be certain who your target last targeted. It might be more useful to have Informant learn the role of another player, or who another player's target is, rather than the target's location.

Again with the specific action requirement, I think leaving it as the target's location makes sense. Though I must admit the wording of 'the last player targeted by your target' sorta flies over my head  

[Quintessential she/her]

2 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

I should clarify that. The informant learns both who was targeted and their location.

Ah, that makes more sense.

I also think that if it's a role madness game it might make sense to add a couple of roles... maybe a role that knows who started in their tenement (the Landlord) or one that can deflect someone's action back onto them (the Misting? I mean, the Obligators are hunting for Mistings, amirite?). Obviously I'm not the expert on game balancing or anything though XD so maybe I'm wrong about that...

[Araris Valerian he/him]

Just now, Quinn0928 said:

I also think that if it's a role madness game it might make sense to add a couple of roles... maybe a role that knows who started in their tenement (the Landlord) or one that can deflect someone's action back onto them (the Misting? I mean, the Obligators are hunting for Mistings, amirite?). Obviously I'm not the expert on game balancing or anything though XD so maybe I'm wrong about that...

It is "role madness", sort of (I clarified that). There would probably be a lot of Workers, since I want to incentivize everyone to be involved in the information game. I also wanted to keep the mechanics pretty simple to see how the location idea actually works. I did think about some way to have starting information like the Landlord idea, but I'm not sure that helps with the concept.

[Quintessential she/her]

Just now, Araris Valerian said:

It is "role madness", sort of (I clarified that). There would probably be a lot of Workers, since I want to incentivize everyone to be involved in the information game. I also wanted to keep the mechanics pretty simple to see how the location idea actually works. I did think about some way to have starting information like the Landlord idea, but I'm not sure that helps with the concept.

Ah, that makes sense. 

Another thought... wouldn't it be fun if the elims had to submit the correct location for their kill to go through? They could even start off with a list of where everyone is, so that during C1 they basically are where they're at right now, but then moving around actually can protect you? (This is a terrible idea don't listen to me XD)

[Araris Valerian he/him]

Just now, Quinn0928 said:

Another thought... wouldn't it be fun if the elims had to submit the correct location for their kill to go through? They could even start off with a list of where everyone is, so that during C1 they basically are where they're at right now, but then moving around actually can protect you? (This is a terrible idea don't listen to me XD)

I think an inconsistent elim kill is one of the easiest ways to imbalance a game. What you suggest is what I thought of when writing the rules, but I think the elims will be highly motivated to seek out correct locations if they have a couple of roles on their team (or even if they just have Workers, since the vote manip is pretty strong).

[Illwei]

28 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

I should clarify that. The informant learns both who was targeted and their location.

Ohhhhh I for some reason didn't associate "name" with "player" and thought that you would have to figure out who they targeted instead of just learning it :P.

[dannnex male]

I had an idea for an alternate voting system last night, what do you guys think about this? The way the village votes seems to be the one constant throughout most games, and I was thinking of how it could be varied.

I thought up a 'Poison-Antidote' system. Each player has 2 votes, represented as a dose of poison, and a dose of the antidote. The poison is essentially the same as a normal vote. An antidote vote is like a vote removal. So every player has vote manip kinda. One dose of antidote cancels out one dose of poison. If a player has even a single dose of poison not canceled out, they die. A Poison vote would be in Red, like normal, and an Antidote vote would be in Yellow. All votes would be public in the thread.

Does this seem like it would be fun? Is it needlessly complicated? Any game-breaking flaws I'm not seeing?

[Gears]

6 minutes ago, Dannex said:

Does this seem like it would be fun? Is it needlessly complicated? Any game-breaking flaws I'm not seeing?

It takes away the "majority vote" feel of a standard X. Recommendation: Have 3 doses of poison be fatal (or whatever number you want for balance), but doses stack over the game (and antidotes can cure doses from previous rounds). Antidotes cannot put a person into the negatives. Have some downside to being poisoned, but nothing too bad. 

EDIT: Does this belong in the Game Creation thread? I don't know where to put it, but this isn't really a game per se.

Edited February 1, 2021 by Gears

[dannnex male]

10 minutes ago, Gears said:

It takes away the "majority vote" feel of a standard X. Recommendation: Have 3 doses of poison be fatal (or whatever number you want for balance), but doses stack over the game (and antidotes can cure doses from previous rounds). Antidotes cannot put a person into the negatives. Have some downside to being poisoned, but nothing too bad. 

oooooh that's a good idea. I wonder what a good downside would be. Would probably have to actually create the whole game in order to find a good one, but maybe something with PMs. Like if you have a single dose of poison, you can receive PMs but not send any. If you have 2 doses you can't even receive them, and the GM would remove you from all existing ones. 

11 minutes ago, Gears said:

EDIT: Does this belong in the Game Creation thread? I don't know where to put it, but this isn't really a game per se.

I have absolutely no idea, but I think this is probably fine. It's an aspect of a game, albeit not an entire one. 

[Mat he/him]

10 minutes ago, Dannex said:

oooooh that's a good idea. I wonder what a good downside would be. Would probably have to actually create the whole game in order to find a good one, but maybe something with PMs. Like if you have a single dose of poison, you can receive PMs but not send any. If you have 2 doses you can't even receive them, and the GM would remove you from all existing ones. 

I have absolutely no idea, but I think this is probably fine. It's an aspect of a game, albeit not an entire one. 

I was just thinking the exe would be exactly the same as normal, like whoever has the most Poison at the end of the cycle dies. But idk.

Yeah I think this thread is fine for this.

[Kasimir he/him]

13 hours ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Yeah I think this thread is fine for this.

We've had isolated game aspects/role ideas in here before, like Cultist of the Stick. This shouldn't be a big deal  

Edited to add: I'm thinking of refining my Star Wars Haruun Kal game or eventually running a Mandalorian/Republic Commando game. Issue is that this would make most of the players part of a clone commando squad or Mandalorian auxiliary squad, which might limit RP a bit. Would there be any appetite for it?

Edited February 2, 2021 by Kasimir

[The Unknown Medallion he/him]

I have an idea for a vote mechanic that I am considering putting in my current game, pasting for easy reference https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R7D2IG2_L9LXaQ6bajQQwt4y_TYU8GNWC9Wsogpwvw4/edit?usp=drivesdk 

The vote mechanic is essentially the vote minimum is at least one Village, at least one Elim, and the neutral, called the Hemalurgist in this game. Can I have your opinions on this?

[Illwei]

2 hours ago, The Unknown Order said:

The vote mechanic is essentially the vote minimum is at least one Village, at least one Elim, and the neutral, called the Hemalurgist in this game. Can I have your opinions on this?

wouldn't this make it so that the Elims would me able to just...not die to the vote? because if at least one Elim is needed, all they would need to do is not vote on them and bada bing bada boom lynchproof Elims.

[Mist she/her]

12 hours ago, The Unknown Order said:

I have an idea for a vote mechanic that I am considering putting in my current game, pasting for easy reference https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R7D2IG2_L9LXaQ6bajQQwt4y_TYU8GNWC9Wsogpwvw4/edit?usp=drivesdk 

The vote mechanic is essentially the vote minimum is at least one Village, at least one Elim, and the neutral, called the Hemalurgist in this game. Can I have your opinions on this?

Hmmmm. It's an interesting idea. I'm concerned that it'd be hard to balance, since there's a few ways it could go.

1. What Illwei said. Elims don't vote on themselves, they don't die. 

2. On the flip side, it could also be used as an alignment scanner to some degree, if someone didn't get exed when they should have, then one of the three factions is missing.

Hemalurgist refuses to cooperate, no exes occur. What if they go inactive? What if they die?

This is a really interesting idea that I like and will be thinking about for feasibility. 

[The Unknown Medallion he/him]

3 minutes ago, Mist said:

Hmmmm. It's an interesting idea. I'm concerned that it'd be hard to balance, since there's a few ways it could go.

1. What Illwei said. Elims don't vote on themselves, they don't die. 

2. On the flip side, it could also be used as an alignment scanner to some degree, if someone didn't get exed when they should have, then one of the three factions is missing.

Hemalurgist refuses to cooperate, no exes occur. What if they go inactive? What if they die?

This is a really interesting idea that I like and will be thinking about for feasibility. 

Now that I think about it, it could be a vote minimum of the Hemalurgist, then they're forced to vote and anyone who votes is suspect if the exe goes through. I'm sticking with the three vote minimum though.