The Art of Game Creation

[dannnex male]

Horrible idea I just had

a game where you aren’t allowed to lie

the GMs know and see everything, if you say anything that isn’t true, at all, anywhere, you die.

how could this be made into a viable game?

could it even?

not a good game mind you, just a viable one. It’s a thought experiment, not a real proposal.

[Mat he/him]

5 minutes ago, Danex said:

Horrible idea I just had

a game where you aren’t allowed to lie

the GMs know and see everything, if you say anything that isn’t true, at all, anywhere, you die.

how could this be made into a viable game?

could it even?

not a good game mind you, just a viable one. It’s a thought experiment, not a real proposal.

I mean 

“I am village” would break this pretty good :P. And putting restrictions on what you can/can’t say isn’t really fun.

[dannnex male]

1 hour ago, Matrim's Dice said:

I am village” would break this pretty good

That’s the first thing I thought of

Solution: there is no village, different sort of faction game

or all factions are all ready known

1 hour ago, Matrim's Dice said:

And putting restrictions on what you can/can’t say isn’t really fun.

Well duh

obv not gonna actually run or play a game like this, just tryi to figure out how it could even happen

Edited July 14, 2021 by Danex

[+Lotus she/her]

I think I have a rule like that in one of my MR. it’s a particular tule who has a ‘tell’ every time they say a direct lie

[Ashbringer he/him]

From what I vaguely remember, the KKC games have a mechanic where certain roles (or maybe everyone) can scan a specific post to see if the writer lied in it, which took up an action which made it more... usable?

Not sure what they did about "I am Village" posts, but making a specific exception for lying about Alignment doesn't really damage much.

[Kasimir he/him]

1 hour ago, Ashbringer said:

From what I vaguely remember, the KKC games have a mechanic where certain roles (or maybe everyone) can scan a specific post to see if the writer lied in it, which took up an action which made it more... usable?

Yeah. Linguistic Analysis. I don't remember what the balances were but it's worth asking @Elbereth, @little wilson, or @Burnt Spaghetti - I remember at one point the Village was trying to get an Evil Burnt to make an alignment statement in the thread in order to scan her with Linguistic Analysis.

Not really certain roles, per se. You had to go into the Linguistic Analysis field, but anyone could do that as you're all students at the University, even if some of you are, apparently, ethically-challenged.

Edited July 14, 2021 by Kasimir

[Araris Valerian he/him]

5 hours ago, Kasimir said:

even if some of you are, apparently, ethically-challenged.

What!? Ethically challenged? All I did was suicide bomb all the school's Masters. It was for the greater good!

[Kasimir he/him]

1 hour ago, Araris Valerian said:

What!? Ethically challenged? All I did was suicide bomb all the school's Masters. It was for the greater good!

Why am I not surprised you were a Skindancer at least once?  

[Araris Valerian he/him]

34 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

Why am I not surprised you were a Skindancer at least once?  

I actually wasn't a Skindancer in this situation. All the other Masters were . Or at least most of them.

Edited July 14, 2021 by Araris Valerian

[Kasimir he/him]

28 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

I actually wasn't a Skindancer in this situation. All the other Masters were . Or at least most of them.

Truly a Ciridae

Ivare enim euge.

[+Lotus she/her]

Oh man I so want to play a KKC game

[dannnex male]

Idea: A QF with 12 hour cycles. A real time game. 

The RP possibilities increase so much. Whatever time it is irl is the time in game. 

[StrikerEZ he/him]

12 minutes ago, Danex said:

Idea: A QF with 12 hour cycles. A real time game. 

The RP possibilities increase so much. Whatever time it is irl is the time in game. 

I mean…that just depends on the timezone you’re in. You’d have some people awake during the night turn and asleep during the day turn. 

[dannnex male]

8 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

I mean…that just depends on the timezone you’re in. You’d have some people awake during the night turn and asleep during the day turn. 

Only if some people are literally on the exact opposite side of the world

there’d be some discrepancies, but if we chose the right times, we could make sure people would be able to be on at the right times 

[Araris Valerian he/him]

21 minutes ago, Danex said:

Only if some people are literally on the exact opposite side of the world

I would say that @Kasimir is an example of why this might not work, but he never goes to sleep, so he wouldn't cause any issues.

[Illwei]

12 hour cycles are very hard on the people who fall out of line with it. Especially with our site meta of people getting on every so often and checking up, it wouldn't really work imo. usually they'd run something like 8am-8pm for the GM so that their sleep schedule isn't wack and they don't actually miss rollovers

Was honestly thinking of if a 12/12 would work for an idea I had tbh. Still also want to run a 36/12 :P.

[Kasimir he/him]

4 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

I mean…that just depends on the timezone you’re in. You’d have some people awake during the night turn and asleep during the day turn. 

Yeah. Work, school, etcetera. Twelve hours is just going to be way too tight.

3 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

I would say that @Kasimir is an example of why this might not work, but he never goes to sleep, so he wouldn't cause any issues.

Justice never sleeps 

[Araris Valerian he/him]

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.

[Kasimir he/him]

20 hours ago, 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.

I like this idea and it seems interesting to me for the mindgames it could foster. My question would be if you expect Elim teams to game this by appointing a fall guy beforehand and then just refusing to interact or interacting minimally? (I know, it's still data and zero interaction is sus, but just thinking aloud I suppose.) 

[Araris Valerian he/him]

2 hours ago, Kasimir said:

I like this idea and it seems interesting to me for the mindgames it could foster. My question would be if you expect Elim teams to game this by appointing a fall guy beforehand and then just refusing to interact or interacting minimally? (I know, it's still data and zero interaction is sus, but just thinking aloud I suppose.) 

That”s a good thought. One way to deal with that would be for this to be a random event. Say it has a 10% chance during C1, 20% during C2, etc until either the event happens or an elim dies by other means. The elims could still play around it, but it would be quite a bit more risky to sacrifice a player for potentially no gain. I’m not exactly sure what the best way to randomize this would be.

[Kasimir he/him]

8 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

That”s a good thought. One way to deal with that would be for this to be a random event. Say it has a 10% chance during C1, 20% during C2, etc until either the event happens or an elim dies by other means. The elims could still play around it, but it would be quite a bit more risky to sacrifice a player for potentially no gain. I’m not exactly sure what the best way to randomize this would be.

Off the top of my head, I'm guessing the best way to work the randomisation would be to build it into a game simulation and then keep running the simulations until you reach a balance of probabilities you're comfortable with. The one scenario the GM'd want to avoid would be the one where that one compulsory Elim reveal just snowballs into a Village victory. It shouldn't, because teams should distance, ideally, but we do know ideal things don't always happen.

Randomising which Elim is revealed could be an option but I'm not really keen on that as I feel it takes away agency from the Elim team, making it a bit of a punch to the face for an Elim team that has otherwise been faring relatively well in the game. The team shouldn't feel punished for success I guess is what I'm saying.

[Araris Valerian he/him]

4 hours ago, Kasimir said:

Off the top of my head, I'm guessing the best way to work the randomisation would be to build it into a game simulation and then keep running the simulations until you reach a balance of probabilities you're comfortable with. The one scenario the GM'd want to avoid would be the one where that one compulsory Elim reveal just snowballs into a Village victory. It shouldn't, because teams should distance, ideally, but we do know ideal things don't always happen.

Hmm. Maybe another way to do this is to make it a village role. Same effect, but a villager gets to choose when it goes off. It would be useless to do it right away, and that would give the elims the chance to kill off the player before it happens.

[Kasimir he/him]

10 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

Hmm. Maybe another way to do this is to make it a village role. Same effect, but a villager gets to choose when it goes off. It would be useless to do it right away, and that would give the elims the chance to kill off the player before it happens.

I think this would work better. If so, the reveal of the Elim as well would more or less be an Elim 'penalty' rather than punishment for them doing well. It's a little stronger than a one-shot Seeker because it guarantees an Elim reveal - but the Elims also get a say in who gets outed by it.

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

I know this is a little late to the discussion but I’d like to point out that this mechanic would potentially create a fairly significant incentive for the eliminators to be much more agressive about bussing each other. If you are losing a teammate either way, you might as well do it on your own terms and get something out of it. The tradeoff here is that the bus victim likely does not get to keep participating in the elim doc, but arguably the benefits justify the cost.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just a thing. People could adapt to it. At a guess, it would mean that voting up an eliminator early in the game doesn’t necessarily clear you as strongly as it otherwise would. Which could be interesting.

It’s an interesting mechanic. I like it when games have some measures to still give the other team a fighting chance even if one side has a stronger start. If this can be done in a way that doesn’t feel overly manufactured then that is generally great.

Edited July 31, 2021 by DrakeMarshall

[Araris Valerian he/him]

12 hours ago, DrakeMarshall said:

I know this is a little late to the discussion but I’d like to point out that this mechanic would potentially create a fairly significant incentive for the eliminators to be much more agressive about bussing each other. If you are losing a teammate either way, you might as well do it on your own terms and get something out of it. The tradeoff here is that the bus victim likely does not get to keep participating in the elim doc, but arguably the benefits justify the cost.

I agree with this. I've been on the elim team a lot recently, and often the village has had a hard time figuring things out, so I advocate for total avoidance of bussing in the hopes of denying the village any footholds. This mechanic is intended to force the issue in the other direction, one way or another.

On an unrelated note, I'm on the search for 2 new mechanics. One is a way for villagers and/or eliminators to be able to kill inactive players without hindering themselves. Sort of like a player enforced activity filter that would replace what we currently use. Something simple would be a kill role that can only target a player that hasn't voted. But more nuance would likely be better here. Maybe once per game a player could ask to be granted immunity against this kill during the current or next cycle.

The second is a way to reward villagers (mechanically or otherwise) for finding elims through analysis. The game already does this by default, but I think we as a community can step up our game here, and a good mechanic might help with that. A rough idea would be that during each night turn, players have to submit a guess at the elim team (whose size would be revealed at the game start). Then over the course of the game, the players who have the most accurate guesses get something at the end. So something similar to what I proposed for the locations in my LG ruleset.