The Art of Game Creation

[Ookla de los Cuervos he/him]

@Kasimir soooo helgen. i had an idea for there: pattern degradation every cycle, but people die for real. kinda like the bt you did, but just more permanent in a sense. also, i would love to be able to co-gm a game at some point. (realizes that it shouldve gone back into the other thread) apologies.

[Kasimir he/him]

8 minutes ago, TheRavenHasLanded said:

@Kasimir soooo helgen. i had an idea for there: pattern degradation every cycle, but people die for real. kinda like the bt you did, but just more permanent in a sense. also, i would love to be able to co-gm a game at some point. (realizes that it shouldve gone back into the other thread) apologies.

There's a possible way to do it with a Legion game yeah but there's potentially balance issues wrt the time loop case because here, every Villager who dies is actually a concrete flip. Since the Elims there don't have to outnumber, in a world where more people die for real who haven't been scanned or voted, that's actually even more info the Village has compared to the Elims.

Edited to add:

Maybe some concrete examples- if say, Wiz dies C2 due to Pattern Degradation, now Hael, the Elder, knows that he wasn't Poisoned C1, for instance. If no one ever voted or did much where Aeo was concerned, then an Aeo flip narrows PoE for the Village and is added info. Given there's no outnumbering condition here, perma-death is largely more Village-skewed than E!skewed.

Edited January 10, 2024 by Kasimir

[Ookla de los Cuervos he/him]

9 hours ago, Kasimir said:

There's a possible way to do it with a Legion game yeah but there's potentially balance issues wrt the time loop case because here, every Villager who dies is actually a concrete flip. Since the Elims there don't have to outnumber, in a world where more people die for real who haven't been scanned or voted, that's actually even more info the Village has compared to the Elims.

Edited to add:

Maybe some concrete examples- if say, Wiz dies C2 due to Pattern Degradation, now Hael, the Elder, knows that he wasn't Poisoned C1, for instance. If no one ever voted or did much where Aeo was concerned, then an Aeo flip narrows PoE for the Village and is added info. Given there's no outnumbering condition here, perma-death is largely more Village-skewed than E!skewed.

ooooohhhhh interestnig

[Ookla de los Cuervos he/him]

On 1/9/2024 at 9:07 PM, Kasimir said:

There's a possible way to do it with a Legion game yeah but there's potentially balance issues wrt the time loop case because here, every Villager who dies is actually a concrete flip. Since the Elims there don't have to outnumber, in a world where more people die for real who haven't been scanned or voted, that's actually even more info the Village has compared to the Elims.

Edited to add:

Maybe some concrete examples- if say, Wiz dies C2 due to Pattern Degradation, now Hael, the Elder, knows that he wasn't Poisoned C1, for instance. If no one ever voted or did much where Aeo was concerned, then an Aeo flip narrows PoE for the Village and is added info. Given there's no outnumbering condition here, perma-death is largely more Village-skewed than E!skewed.

imma take some inspiration from Aeo's idea, and i would like to try something: delayed death. basically, they can mark multiple players and then choose when to have them die (ie wait until the end of the game then execute everyone.). but as part of that, elims have to have over parity, and cannot mass NK more than twice (4 or more villagers) each game.

[Aeoryi she/her]

1 hour ago, TheRavenHasLanded said:

imma take some inspiration from Aeo's idea, and i would like to try something: delayed death. basically, they can mark multiple players and then choose when to have them die (ie wait until the end of the game then execute everyone.). but as part of that, elims have to have over parity, and cannot mass NK more than twice (4 or more villagers) each game.

A game that has the Elim kill that marks instead of kills, and then can simultaneously kill all marked players at once, is known as arson. The problem with arson is that NKA and info from a NK is out the window. It's much easier to win with arson than it is with a normal setup. Often, there are counteractive village roles like a lookout (target a player to learn their target) or a stalker (target a player to learn who else targeted them) to try and catch the arsonist. Again, arson is a very different style of Elim kill, and this requires more measures to balance. I once had this insane idea of a game where the elims got to select as many people as they wanted to kill, but it would only work if a certain percentage of them were not protected, but that was also a nightmare to try and balance.

I did have this game idea of survivals reveal roles and deaths reveal alignments (and not roles) but that wasn't much fun to balance.

I had this idea for a QF where there was a rotating role-block role and a rotating protect role (and a rb'd NK shows up as a survival) which could be interesting (it was inspired by QF68 with the rotating kill role)

[Ookla de los Cuervos he/him]

1 minute ago, Aeoryi said:

A game that has the Elim kill that marks instead of kills, and then can simultaneously kill all marked players at once, is known as arson. The problem with arson is that NKA and info from a NK is out the window. It's much easier to win with arson than it is with a normal setup. Often, there are counteractive village roles like a lookout (target a player to learn their target) or a stalker (target a player to learn who else targeted them) to try and catch the arsonist. Again, arson is a very different style of Elim kill, and this requires more measures to balance. I once had this insane idea of a game where the elims got to select as many people as they wanted to kill, but it would only work if a certain percentage of them were not protected, but that was also a nightmare to try and balance.

I did have this game idea of survivals reveal roles and deaths reveal alignments (and not roles) but that wasn't much fun to balance.

I had this idea for a QF where there was a rotating role-block role and a rotating protect role (and a rb'd NK shows up as a survival) which could be interesting (it was inspired by QF68 with the rotating kill role)

oh interesting.

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

LG83 did something related to arson

[Kasimir he/him]

7 hours ago, DrakeMarshall said:

LG83 did something related to arson

11 hours ago, TheRavenHasLanded said:

imma take some inspiration from Aeo's idea, and i would like to try something: delayed death. basically, they can mark multiple players and then choose when to have them die (ie wait until the end of the game then execute everyone.). but as part of that, elims have to have over parity, and cannot mass NK more than twice (4 or more villagers) each game.

MR56 and QF49 are also arson games. It's worth looking at them when deciding how to create, run or balance an arson game.

Edited to add:

You can definitely make a game like that, but I probably wouldn't recommend running one as your first game as a GM, simpliciter.

Edited January 13, 2024 by Kasimir

[Ookla de los Cuervos he/him]

6 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

MR56 and QF49 are also arson games. It's worth looking at them when deciding how to create, run or balance an arson game.

Edited to add:

You can definitely make a game like that, but I probably wouldn't recommend running one as your first game as a GM, simpliciter.

fair enough. i was just thinking maybe typical mafia style. also, funny idea, but what if there was a role created that wants to be exed or killed? it would make the elims wary about who they can kill.

[Kasimir he/him]

32 minutes ago, TheRavenHasLanded said:

fair enough. i was just thinking maybe typical mafia style. also, funny idea, but what if there was a role created that wants to be exed or killed? it would make the elims wary about who they can kill.

That's a Fool/Jester role. You can check out MR4, QF25, and LG72 as examples of the role. Depending on how it's implemented, there are different challenges. 

[Aeoryi she/her]

45 minutes ago, TheRavenHasLanded said:

fair enough. i was just thinking maybe typical mafia style. also, funny idea, but what if there was a role created that wants to be exed or killed? it would make the elims wary about who they can kill.

If the elims can mark more than one player a cycle, it might be worth adding firefighter roles which can remove the mark from a player.

45 minutes ago, TheRavenHasLanded said:

fair enough. i was just thinking maybe typical mafia style. also, funny idea, but what if there was a role created that wants to be exed or killed? it would make the elims wary about who they can kill.

Some variations of the jester role have it so the player can make an action upon their death. Generally, that action is pretty powerful.

Additionally, there are some jesters that are neutral factions that win by being Exe'd or NK'd. It normally doesn't end the game, but it makes that player win individually. 

A little note on jesters is that they need a powerful anti-claim, otherwise they'll claim d1 in thread and be exe'd out of sympathy. I had a great idea for a jester role where you can give the person you voted for an extra life (which is worthless if it's known) upon your death, but it's up to you to decide how you want to make this role

[Archer he/him]

Game pitch:

QF comprised of two groups in separate PMs. Each round, the groups vote to steal one person from the other PM. Probably make fresh PMs each time. Probably need a rule about not being able to vote someone twice in a row, otherwise they'll swap the same people indefinitely.  

Elim goal: get all their members to the same PM. Don't have a shared doc or kill. 

Village goal: survive X rounds. 

Distro would be something like  A 4v;2e : B 4v;2e.   A 3;2 ratio is too easy for the elims to hammer. 

 

[Experience he/him]

5 minutes ago, Archer said:

Game pitch:

QF comprised of two groups in separate PMs. Each round, the groups vote to steal one person from the other PM. Probably make fresh PMs each time. Probably need a rule about not being able to vote someone twice in a row, otherwise they'll swap the same people indefinitely.  

Elim goal: get all their members to the same PM. Don't have a shared doc or kill. 

Village goal: survive X rounds. 

Distro would be something like  A 4v;2e : B 4v;2e.   A 3;2 ratio is too easy for the elims to hammer. 

 

Red rover but SE this needs to exist :P.

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

The balance of that is trippy because on the one hand bigger elim team = more voting power and on the other hand bigger elim team = more work required to move them all. Which... Hypothetically makes it a little bit self-balancing?

This is definitely an interesting idea.

One thing of note with the breakdown for example A: 4v;2e : B 4v;2e is that once the ratio progresses to A: 3v;3e : B 5v;1e or beyond, then group A is functionally elim controlled meanwhile group B is basically in a LyLo situation where they will probably lose if they don't steal an elim from group A. So you have a neat sort of inflection point there.

...Also, if there are no flips, then for the village to feel like they have at least some idea of what's going on there should probably be a somewhat generous allotment of informational abilities. And if there is a somewhat generous allotment of informational abilities, then for the elims to feel like they have options to work against them there should probably be disinformational abilities and/or mechanics that manufacture plausible deniability and/or roleclaims should generally be quite hard to confirm.

...of course, another route would be to actually have flips, or at least, some kind of public information that fulfills a similarish role in the context of this. Like, idk, maybe something along the approximate lines of "the absolute difference in # of elims between the 2 PMs is revealed in the writeup each cycle." This gives the village something decentish to go off for discussion but probably doesn't reveal too much? So you theoretically could do something like that and then not have to worry about giving people info and counterinfo abilities.

I dunno there are Implications but anyways I might be interested in seeing something like this run

edit: tbh I'd almost just say that once somebody has moved over they can't be voted for again for the rest of the game it's permanent but idk I'm not sure that might have unwanted side effects

Edited January 18, 2024 by DrakeMarshall

[Ookla de los Cuervos he/him]

I would love to try a most simple version of SE: Elim, CS, Lurcher. Lurcher can lurch themselves up to two times, and not in a row. CS gets 1 shot, and if they miss, they die. Elims get a random fakeclaim. 

@Kasimir Thoughts?

[Araris Valerian he/him]

On 1/23/2024 at 8:49 AM, TheRavenHasLanded said:

I would love to try a most simple version of SE: Elim, CS, Lurcher. Lurcher can lurch themselves up to two times, and not in a row. CS gets 1 shot, and if they miss, they die. Elims get a random fakeclaim. 

@Kasimir Thoughts?

I think rulesets like these are great for QF games.

I will say I'm not sure what you mean by "elims get a random fakeclaim", since the elims don't need to have a role to be able to fake having it. At the same time, they can't really bluff CS, and to some extent claiming Lurcher is pointless (a villager wouldn't want to do this, so by extension neither would an elim).

In general this seems a little lopsided in favor of the village, but not a lot. A slightly higher ratio of elim players would make it work fine, I suspect.

[Ookla de los Cuervos he/him]

Just now, Araris Valerian said:

I think rulesets like these are great for QF games.

I will say I'm not sure what you mean by "elims get a random fakeclaim", since the elims don't need to have a role to be able to fake having it. At the same time, they can't really bluff CS, and to some extent claiming Lurcher is pointless (a villager wouldn't want to do this, so by extension neither would an elim).

In general this seems a little lopsided in favor of the village, but not a lot. A slightly higher ratio of elim players would make it work fine, I suspect.

good point. another idea i had is that there is a role in which they can have the deceased send 1 word, and it cant be a response to a question.

[Araris Valerian he/him]

13 minutes ago, TheRavenHasLanded said:

good point. another idea i had is that there is a role in which they can have the deceased send 1 word, and it cant be a response to a question.

There have been games with limited communication between the dead and the living, but you have to be careful with what information the dead players have access to in their doc, and with dead players having alignments confirmed by the GM. It all comes down to the details of the rules. Too much information guaranteed to be true goes against the premise of the game; mistrust.

[Ookla de los Cuervos he/him]

Just now, Araris Valerian said:

There have been games with limited communication between the dead and the living, but you have to be careful with what information the dead players have access to in their doc, and with dead players having alignments confirmed by the GM. It all comes down to the details of the rules. Too much information guaranteed to be true goes against the premise of the game; mistrust.

ah, makes sense. thats why i said one word.

[Araris Valerian he/him]

15 minutes ago, TheRavenHasLanded said:

ah, makes sense. thats why i said one word.

Yeah, but even just 1 word can be too much, if the dead doc is spoiled and the dead player is confirmed as a villager.

The underlying game design question is, "What's the point of dead players being able to communicate?", and relatedly, "Why can't dead players communicate normally?"

In my opinion, the answer to #2 is twofold; elims kill players to stop them from communicating, and dead players, by virtue of doc access, have access to much more accurate information than living players, which would be game-breaking if the village had it as well.

So it follows that allowing dead players to communicate should probably be serving the purpose of either 1) weakening the effect of the NK on a player, or 2) providing very accurate information to living players.

And in the latter case I think there's a very fine line between a mechanic that is so restricted as to being pointless, and one that is gamebreakingly powerful for the village.

[Ookla de los Cuervos he/him]

2 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

Yeah, but even just 1 word can be too much, if the dead doc is spoiled and the dead player is confirmed as a villager.

The underlying game design question is, "What's the point of dead players being able to communicate?", and relatedly, "Why can't dead players communicate normally?"

In my opinion, the answer to #2 is twofold; elims kill players to stop them from communicating, and dead players, by virtue of doc access, have access to much more accurate information than living players, which would be game-breaking if the village had it as well.

So it follows that allowing dead players to communicate should probably be serving the purpose of either 1) weakening the effect of the NK on a player, or 2) providing very accurate information to living players.

And in the latter case I think there's a very fine line between a mechanic that is so restricted as to being pointless, and one that is gamebreakingly powerful for the village.

oh, interesting. what if the village doesnt know who said the word? It could have been an elim, just randomizing who gets the word.

[Araris Valerian he/him]

I guess I'm trying to ask you what the game design purpose of this communication is. How do you envision this 1-word communication creating interesting decisions for players?

Once you've pinned that down then figuring out specific details to reach that outcome is a lot easier.

[Ookla de los Cuervos he/him]

1 minute ago, Araris Valerian said:

I guess I'm trying to ask you what the game design purpose of this communication is. How do you envision this 1-word communication creating interesting decisions for players?

Once you've pinned that down then figuring out specific details to reach that outcome is a lot easier.

im mostly just yapping ideas. i havent thought them through.

[Ookla de los Cuervos he/him]

i got a small idea for something: its more tech-like, so bear with me.

 

Cybercivilians: your goal is to take out the new cyber-gang, Haxers.

Haxers: Take out the cyber civilians. at any cost.

Hacker: learn the identity of one player, including alignment and role.

Wild Hacker: same thing, but it's at random.

Virus Hunter: Protect one player of your choice

Hunter: take down one player of your choice. 

Chaos Being: tank one hit. just for funsies.

@Kasimir

[Araris Valerian he/him]

2 hours ago, TheRavenHasLanded said:

i got a small idea for something: its more tech-like, so bear with me.

 

Cybercivilians: your goal is to take out the new cyber-gang, Haxers.

Haxers: Take out the cyber civilians. at any cost.

Hacker: learn the identity of one player, including alignment and role.

Wild Hacker: same thing, but it's at random.

Virus Hunter: Protect one player of your choice

Hunter: take down one player of your choice. 

Chaos Being: tank one hit. just for funsies.

@Kasimir

I think era 4 Scadrial would be an appropriate setting for this, if you wanted to Sanderfy these rules. We've had a few cyberpunk themed games run already, and that's the route they've taken mostly.