Straw

9 minutes ago, Illwei said:

The Elim team would be whatever the normal ratio is. The goal would be to test the accuracy of D1 reads. By saying this, you imply that you think D1 accuracy is >rand, when a lot of other people think it's very <rand. (see Archer saying "we're not going to kill an Elim today, but-" in every game).

tbh I think it's good to have a game that the village actually has some chance of winning, since there's virtually no chance they'd win based only off of day one guesses. If you want to see if day one reads are better or worse than rand, why not tune the game so if village votes are random it's roughly a tossup? While this would normally just be done by altering the size of the elim team, you could also do other stuff like not giving the elims a kill / giving them limited kills in order to give the village more of an edge.

7 minutes ago, Illwei said:

BT##: Are you tired yet? [working title #1]

There's quite a few people here who can't be in thread a lot, sometimes for days at a time during a game, sometimes for specific days every week. I wanted to try running a longer form game to see if people would be interested in trying that.

Day/Night Lengths are changeable, right now I have them set at 144 hours (6 days) for day turns and 24 hours for night turns. The idea is that a cycle would be about a week in length. People would not be allowed to talk during night cycles (besides the Elims, of course), and this is mostly because after a long day cycle I assume people will start to get burnt out. So the night cycle would mostly be so that they can ignore the game for a whole day if they like and come back later. This could also be extended to 48 hours.

There's nothing much in the doc right now, because if I would be allowed to run this as a BT (which I'm not sure on) I'd want to find a ruleset that would be pretty normal/similar to a lot of things that are run, and could be used with a smaller playercount. Looking at probably a 9 player game.

Based on what I've seen on other sites, I think games with longer cycles like this can be pretty annoying to play since you have to wait so long to get results. Also, I feel like you'd run into significant issues with player burnout or inactivity.

10 minutes ago, Illwei said:

BT##: Only for a night [working title #2]

This one isn't much of a full game, but a test. It was an idea I came up with after talking with some people about D1 accuracy in reads.

It would last exactly 96 hours, split into a 48 hour day turn, a 24 hour night turn, and a 24 hour twilight period. During the day cycle people will play normally like they would in a game. During the night each player would send in a list of who they'd like to Execute, in order. Alongside that, the Elims would send in a list of who they'd like to Night Kill, in order.

After the Night cycle is over, the Night Kill/any other public feedback from that night will be announced. Then a 24 hour twilight period in which no talking is allowed will start, and all players will be given the option to modify their lists one time.

Then once that is all over, the game is over and we'll see what each day's elimination and nightkill would be. There is a little bit more detailed explaination in the doc, if it's not clear, but that's it.

This could be interesting. My main question is whether the twilight period is even necessary, since I'm not sure how much info players would get from the one night kill. Also, the elim team would have to be very small, in order to counterbalance every vote essentially being a day one vote.

On 4/30/2022 at 6:55 PM, Archer said:

I've got a proposal for a new rule/best practice.
-To improve accessibility for the colourblind, all vote retractions are put in brackets.
-To make votes easier to find, all votes are put at the end of posts. Ideally on a separate line from other text.
I know we already (are supposed to) bold votes to improve their visibility, but I think we're less likely to miss votes if they're always in the same spot. For GMs, it means the difference between having to scan entire posts versus just checking the end of them. It might not be a huge time savings, but it'd probably improve their peace of mind once full implementation is achieved.
I actually think putting votes at the start of posts would make them easier to locate, but it's less intuitive for people who decide who they're voting for as they write. This also allows you to continue embedding your votes organically in a paragraph, since precedent says the last vote listed counts, so so long as you repeat the votes at the end of the post, there won't be any confusion.
Thoughts on a more efficient strategy or whether this is worth the effort?
Example (Retraction)

I don't think putting votes at the bottom is necessary as a rule, but I think that it's a decent idea if people want to do it as a visibility thing. Personally, I haven't had any issues spotting votes as long as they're bolded, since bold text is pretty easy to pick out.

On 5/10/2022 at 3:44 PM, Araris Valerian said:

We've had lower activity in the past, and I think at least a part of what's going on now is end-of-semester stuff, which might pick up once we get more into the summer.

Yeah, agreed that most of the inactivity drop has been due to end-of-semester stuff. I know that I've been pretty busy with my final exams.

On 2/10/2022 at 11:10 AM, Matrim's Dice said:

Two more games, my MR and QF slots.

MR: Tyrian, but role madness. It's just the basic Tyrian rules but I don't know if a role madness version or an MR version has been done before. Taking suggestions for the name of the town; if you leave me to come up with the name it won't be good

QF: Threnody with a Shade vengeance mechanic. Yes, I know it makes more sense thematically to have Violation activate for every death, but that seems too hard to balance. Trying out a few percentage based death mechanics, in the inactivity filter and knife.

MR: Role madness Tyrian seems pretty tough to manage, particularly in terms of keeping balance vs keeping to the spirit of role madness. I'd bet that a balanced role madness Tyrian would end up with tons of Smokers and Tineyes as pseudo vanillas, with a good number of Mistborn and vote manipulators, with very few influential roles.

QF: I completely missed the factional kill bit and typed out a huge thing on how to make that balanced but I guess that's out the window now. This ruleset is pretty tough for the village, mainly because lylo is so much easier to hit.

On 1/11/2022 at 9:10 AM, Tani said:

@Amanuensis@STINK@Sart@Fifth Scholar@Straw@Haelbarde@Young Bard

Are you committee peeps willing to look at my game?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IJDFsh_Dz0EF2lSf28D0BJE5qckBv6F3-67ZAQVvxtc/edit?usp=sharing

Comments:

• Lots of roles/mechanics for a QF game. There are three factions and 18 roles, which seems like too many for a QF.
• Deceive seems like it's extremely hard to manage.
• What kinds of win conditions would Ghostbloods have?

On 11/7/2021 at 6:50 AM, |TJ| said:

Next up on the LG list are - 

1. @Fifth Scholar
2. @Ventyl
3. @Straw
4. @Ashbringer
5. Myself

I'll also tag @Orlok Tsubodai if he wants to run the game as he's actually on the top of the list.

I'm rather busy at the moment, so I'll pass for now.

On 10/29/2021 at 11:57 PM, The Unknown Order said:

I'm around seventh on the list for MRs and I'm planning on doing this game.

Comments from anyone would be nice, but I'll @ the committee for approval:

@Amanuensis@STINK@Sart@Fifth Scholar@Straw@Haelbarde@Young Bard@Araris Valerian@Devotary of Spontaneity@Elandera @Elbereth@little wilson

Here's a non-doc form of the rules as well.

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To Kill a Skyeel:

Basics:

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There will be a group execution every day. The chosen player will be removed from the meeting and the game.

More than 50% of the players must vote in order for the execution to succeed. 

Ties will result in no one being removed. 

There will be a 48 hour day turn and a 24 hour night turn. A cycle will consist of a day and a night turn.

Every even night, skyeels will target a random player. Anyone who visits that player will be killed unless they have the field exterminator role, in which case nobody dies.

If you do not vote during the day and make less than five (will adjust for player count) posts, you will be removed. 

During the night, PMs are open, however talking in-thread is not allowed.

During the day, PMs and the Elim doc are closed, but posting is allowed.
 

Factions:

 

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The Exterminators: The village faction for this game. They must eject all Environmentalists from the meeting before they reach majority and eradicate the guild.

The Environmentalists: The elim faction for this game. They must reach majority in order to democratically eliminate the guild. They will have access to a group doc every night and a factional kill, which is flavored as silencing a target

 

Roles:

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Former Detective: You can dig up dirt on anyone in the meeting, allowing you to remove them. You can pick a player every night, and they will be removed the next night.

Skyeel Enthusiast: You love skyeels so much that you keep them as pets, but you're willing to let go of them to save the lives of their species. Once per game, you can pick a player, and anyone who visits them will be killed until a field exterminator visits.

Humane Skyeel Capturer: If you go to the house the skyeels attack, nobody will die, but there will be a 25% chance of the skyeels returning the next night.

Politician: You have strong ties with the Exterminators guild, so you've been allowed in. You also hold a lot of sway with the members of the guild. Your vote counts for double, but you can choose to change a person's vote, if you do, your vote will not be doubled.

Field Exterminator: You are just an exterminator who's made it through the ranks to get into this meeting, but luckily you know how to exterminate skyeels. If you visit the house that the skyeels attack, nobody will die. 20% of players rounded up will be Field Exterminators.

Apprentice Exterminator: You aren't allowed to exterminate skyeels yet, but you can protect a person from their attacks. Protect a person from dying to a skyeel attack.

 

 

 

Feedback:

• 48/24 is not standard for a MR. 24/24 or 48 are the standard time formats. I guess 48/24 could maybe work, given the rule about no night cycle discussion? I'm not sure.
• 5 posts per cycle and a voting requirement is quite excessive for an activity filter.
• The elims only having access to their doc during the night could hurt them a lot, since it means that they can't coordinate their voting during the day.
• Why should non-elim exterminators target anyone? The skyeel attacks seem much more likely to hurt the elims. On that note, why should the apprentice exterminator target anyone? Targeting someone opens them up to being attacked by a skyeel.

On 10/28/2021 at 0:02 AM, Danex said:

random idea I literally just had

imagine a game with 3 factions, each with an equal player count

I'll call em A,B,and C

Faction A's wincon is to eliminate all of faction B, and keep at least 50% of faction C alive
Faction B's wincon is to eliminate all of faction C, and keep at least 50% of faction A alive
Faction C's wincon is to eliminate all of Faction A and keep at least 50% of faction B alive

each faction would be roughly the same other than their wincons. 

I can already see so many problems with this, but can you grasp the basic idea? I think this could be quite fun.

That kind of reminds me of QF46, where certain factions had to keep other factions alive.

I think the 50% thing is very very likely to lead to a three way loss, considering the equal player count. For example, QF46 ended with only one player left alive, out of 21 players at the start of the game.

On 8/1/2021 at 0:40 AM, Lotus said:

Does anyone happen to have like, blank GM spreadsheets with places to put what people vote and stuff?

For voting, I use this sheet that I made: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W_rR7TjRRvlvpGKSzvgHmkNVG8aX-kYrgaYnbw1-2V0/edit?usp=sharing

The Vote Seeds column in the Data tab should be filled out using https://bigprimes.org/ with ten numbers and six digits as the settings.

The full sheets I use look more like this: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LKI-T5UG20mWHIxdezwxGQSRC_l6v6KrxUtBJh3gIso/edit?usp=sharing

On 5/22/2021 at 4:19 PM, DrakeMarshall said:

So a random weird game idea I just had:

A Serial Killer type role but with a very nonstandard killing power based on information gathering. Every night they can submit one role+alignment guess for each player. All players whose roles and alignments were both correctly guessed on that night are attacked.

Now, this would be horribly unbalanced in anything but an extreme role madness game, probably one where each player has a unique role or set of roles, and there are some possible configurations of roles that never even appear in the game. But for such a game, it might be balanced. The Serial Killer starts out extremely weak and probably unable to kill anyone on the first cycle, but gets stronger as they accumulate more information, to the point where if the other factions let them live into the late game they are a massive threat who could theoretically end the game in a single night. Serial Killers often have a much harder time hiding in the late game compared to the early game, so this sort of escalation sort of works. Also, it gives the Serial Killer quite a bit more to do than just avoid being caught. Also, it provides a significant mechanical incentive for everyone else to avoid roleclaiming like the plague, which might be desirable in some setups.

Idk how well it would actually work, but I am generally rather fond of unusual SK roles that impact how the village and elims play the game.

I've seen a close variant of this role mentioned other places, mainly as an elim role. As you mentioned, it's good for preventing roleclaiming. I've seen it used in a few games where mass roleclaiming would have broken the game. The main issue with the role is getting people to give up information. With a lot of roles, it's already pretty easy to go through the game without claiming or making your role obvious. This role gives people even more of a reason to avoid claiming. I'm a bit unsure about how well this would work as a Serial Killer role. The ability of the role to win is pretty much dependant on whether villagers choose to claim. This means that the SK can get really screwed over if people just refuse to claim.

A few other issues to consider:

• You'd have to make sure that the game would still be balanced if the SK dies. If the SK is the only mechanism preventing roleclaims, then people could freely claim after the SK dies. This would mainly be an issue if you were using the SK as a mechanic to prevent roleclaims.
• This version of the SK would hurt the village much more than the elims. People are much more likely to be village than elim, so unless an SK has a very strong read against a particular player, they'd just put down village for every player's alignment. This means that far more villagers would be killed.
• The SK could decide to play it safe and just guess the same role for everyone each time. The SK also has an incentive to pursue this strategy if there are any roles in the game that could harm it. So in a setup with this role, I think that most high powered village roles would die quickly.

So overall, I could see it working, but it'd have to be a very carefully designed setup. I think it works a bit better as an elim role or elim faction ability.

Current list of nominations, in case anyone is interested:

• Araris Valerian
• Ashbringer
• Gears
• Illwei
• Matrim's Dice
• Quintessential
• STINK

I would strongly recommend that anyone nominated go over to Mafia Universe and check out the Season Seven games. Mafia Championship games are very high post count and it's a good idea to know what you're getting into.

56 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Gears, Elandera, and Straw should have a shot.

Thanks, but I can't do it due to school stuff, so I'll pass.

19 minutes ago, Dannex said:

Speaking of that, should we start with a Day turn? I’ve been starting with a Night since that’s usually how party mafia works, but I guess we don’t have to. 

IMO starting with a day is better since it means that no one gets killed or scanned before they can say anything.

13 minutes ago, Dannex said:

I did a 9 person game earlier. It had 

2 mafia
1 alignment scanner
1 protector
and 6 villagers.

Was the protection limited in some way? It seems really easy for the village to win by having the alignment scanner claim. Then the protection role just saves them while they get off as many scans as possible. If you run that setup again I'd recommend having a mafia roleblocker at least, so the mafia can shut down any alignment scanner that claims (and also so the mafia has a small chance of blocking a scan or protect).

14 minutes ago, Dannex said:

I’m thinking if I can find a way to do irl Vote Manip, but that might be a bit complicated. I could probably implement a Joker/Jester/whatever-you-wanna-call-it role pretty easily, so I think I’ll do that. 

I probably wouldn't recommend doing vote manip in such a small game size. It's annoying to handle and it can be frustrating if it interferes with the vote (since it's kind of undemocratic ). A Jester role seems like it could be fun if your family is into that.

16 minutes ago, Dannex said:

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I think we’ll have about 11 players max. Do y’all think that’s enough for a 3 Elim team?

Three player elim team means that would be 3 vs 8 or roughly 27.27%. So it'd have to be pretty heavily in favor of the elims. For setups, I'd recommend looking at some other sites. For example, the MafiaScum wiki: Lots of smaller setups. Look under the "mini" and "micro" links for setups of the size you're looking for.

7 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

I feel like we need a better rules system. We need to more clearly define what constitutes breaking the rules, and I think adding a rule about what is okay to add into RP in terms of content (no gruesome violence, nothing with mature undertones, etc).

I think that gruesome violence and mature undertones are both allowed under the 17th Shard RPG rules:

To clarify, are you saying that these ratings are too limited for SE, or are you saying that existing stuff is violating these ratings? Also, I'm a bit unsure about the gruesome violence bit specifically. SE is a game that is focused around gruesomely murdering people, so I think gruesome violence is to be expected.  I can kind of see your point about mature undertones though.

7 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

In addition, I feel like, when the rules we do have are broken, there's not often much done about them. At least from what I can see. I've heard of players being warned, but I've not once seen or heard of a player being removed from any games they're in, nonetheless blacklisted. I've seen players banned for things outside of the game, but that came down from the big mods, the mods of the whole site itself.

Mm, I think that's probably a question for the mods. I'm pretty sure that most warning moderation is done privately, so that makes it hard to tell. I think it's valuable to note that being pulled from games only happens on the third instance of a rule being broken, and that blacklisting only happens if the player keeps breaking rules after that. The reason why those aren't seen very often is because most players are going to stop after they've gotten two direct warnings. Also, players who are blatantly violating the rules after two warnings are far more likely to get hit by the site mods. I think you're also assuming more of a distinction between the SE mods and site mods than actually exists.

8 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

Which brings me to another point. I think the mods need to be more proactive about fixing problems. Yes, often no one can know when a player is feeling hurt unless they go to someone and let them know. But at the same time, there are often times where something can seem fishy or off or things get heated and the mods never step in.

To what degree do you think heated discussions should be moderated, considering that arguments and debates are a pretty big part of SE? Also, are you saying that the current rules aren't being enforced, or are you saying that new rules need to be added?

28 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

Double-posting like I don't care and like no one cares to bring you a MR2 meme, which is itself an audacious choice  

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Hi Wyrm. I remember  

Edit: Since it's Wyrm-shaming day, have an AG2 meme:

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And this MR1 meme:

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And thanks @Wyrmhero for this deep cut but also no thanks >>

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BTW if you don't want to have the white border, here's Wyrm's full pfp:

21 hours ago, Wyrmhero said:

An idea I had in the spec/dead doc was to scrap our current ideas of LG/MR/QF, as they're really old and probably not fit for purpose as descriptions anymore? It would probably be better to redesign these games in terms of both complexity and expected level of activity needed to keep up, though that's hard to enforce.

IMO, cycle length is a pretty good way to split up games compared to complexity and activity level. Activity level is very difficult to enforce, as you said. Complexity is easier to enforce but seems less helpful than dividing by cycle length. For example, if you divided by complexity and had both current games be QF speed, that could lock out a lot of players.

On 3/16/2021 at 7:15 PM, Kasimir said:

Smoking - by this point, I'm just going to say it's a done deal. No amount of cajoling is going to get players to Smoke despite how badly the Village needed an active Smoker in the endgame (Dannex came back one Turn too late.) GMs need to find a completely different niche/thing for Smokers to do, for the role to be viable/attractive. If the GM really wants to run a proper Tyrian ruleset, you may want to factor in low player willingness to Smoke into the bargain - do not balance it on the assumption some of the players will Smoke.

Ideas for alternative Tyrian ruleset:

• Coinshots -> one shot kill (alt: even night kills) (alt2: X shot kills)
  Coinshots are a bit too swingy as is in my opinion (one player has lots of power, and can seriously change the game balance on their own). I think that the best way to solve this is to just limit the number of kills that can happen. One shot kills are best IMO, but even night kills could also be good if you want to make the role a bit stronger. You could also up the number of shots, so that they'd have a limit on how many kills they can shoot off.
• Seekers -> always have role scan, one shot alignment scan
  Seekers are definitely too swingy without enough Smokers, and alignment scanners aren't very popular regardless. One alignment scan seems reasonable enough to keep the role powerful while not making it too swingy. Having no alignment scans would mean there'd be too many non-impactful roles IMO.
• Smokers -> X shot universal vote manipulation block (blocks all vote manip that day)
  Honestly not super sure what to do here. Since I nerfed Seekers I'm just dropping the Seeker block bit entirely. Blocking vote manip on yourself and one other seems too weak and is also a bit random. Being able to stop all vote manip a few times could help stop gambits that are very reliant on vote manip (ex: second elim hammer this game). It's also a decent enough ability for both teams, since you can make sure a vote goes the predicted way.
  Smoker as a roleblocker could also maybe work, but it'd be going outside of proper flavor from Mistborn.
• Mistborn -> ???
  With the above changes I feel like Mistborn would need changes, but not sure how. Current way would be reasonable enough but would also make Mistborn arguably the strongest role. Having the normal random rotation between the non-one-shot abilities could also work, but would make Mistborn a bit weak. A decent middle ground might be to have the Mistborn rotate as it is currently but using any one shot ability makes all the one shot abilities unusable (so they'd have a 3/8 chance of getting nothing).

Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Some things I drew about spiked!Illwei:

Funnily enough I made this one before I had even seen the Gears one

This one was made after talking to Illwei about TJ's meme from the thread:

1 hour ago, _Stick_ said:

hiii I would like to sign up as...Sunny

Sunny the Dolphin is a worldhopper (but that's a secret) visiting Scadrial because she'd heard of the ashfalls and they sounded wonderful

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She likes to bake as an anger management strategy; it's extremely effective.

Despite common belief, she is not a mistborn however she has a very particular sense of fashion (yes that's a hastily drawn mistcloak (I decided to go all out :P)).

I've obviously come up with my own cosmetic role  Each cycle Sunny will bake y'all a cake. SEcret ingredients used maybe probably.

Your MSPaint(?) drawing is quite nice.

6 hours ago, Quintessential said:

Hmmm as a general question (and I suspect the answer is no) are there enough people on this forum who've read the Broken Earth trilogy that I could run a game based on it at some point and get other reactions than just faint confusion?  this is, of course, assuming I could get my hands on a game pass. 

I've read the Broken Earth trilogy. I know that Elbereth and Frozen Mint have both read at least part of it. Orlok might have read it as well. I think that if you're going to run a game based on it, at least do it just based on the first book rather than anything past it.

9 hours ago, The Unknown Order said:

Yes, that number is very flexible. 

The alignment scanners are pretty much useless and I might replace them with something else. 

That was my attempt to valance the number of scanners. 

Yes, that is the Lord Mastrell Elect. They are immune for this reason. It's one player out of four, who can lie about their scans. I might make the Elects the only scanners if they get removed.

Do Lord Mastrell Elects have to be the people who are voted on during cycle five? If so, can the Lord Mastrell Elects be killed? If they can, then the elims can kill three of them and force a win.

3 hours ago, The Unknown Order said:

Could I get some opinions on this game?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zUnk22HkEMAm4Zd-K8X8pQkivDCvKdy6JYw7VThqBqU/edit?usp=drivesdk

First of all, I'm a bit confused about this. So, if I'm understanding correctly, there are four cycles of normal play and then a special vote on the fifth cycle? And if a member of the High Council is elected in the vote on the fifth cycle, the elims win?

The number of alignment scanners here is way way overboard. The village will be able to clear a massive number of players and then win easily.

I also don't like the randomness with the alignment scanners. Finding out someone's alignment versus finding out nothing at all seems like a massive difference in effect.

EDIT: Reread the rules and I'm still a bit confused. Is it that there's one elim who's immune to alignment scans and must be elected? The elims having one player survive four rounds of voting and then getting them elected on cycle five seems quite difficult, especially since the elims have to deal with alignment scans.

3 hours ago, Kasimir said:

2. Yes and no - I'm not really comfortable with introducing too much subjective GM judgement. As a GM, I feel like the most important thing is for me to make consistent judgements. If players don't see consistency, they can feel I'm being unfair, and I wouldn't think that's wrong either. Some games did have this and were fun - MR1's Nightwatcher mechanic basically was the GM's judgement on the player's submitted RP. It was broken for many, many reasons, but the moment your subjective judgement can give - or concretely, ends up giving one faction an advantage over another, you're going to get avoidable drama.

I'm usually very against GM judgement/intervention, but I think this is a case where it's not bad. I don't think it's very hard to tell if a post is just dodging the filter. If it says pretty much anything other than "I exist" or "posting to dodge the filter" or something like that, then it counts.

19 minutes ago, Quintessential said:

In the aftermath of MR48, someone suggested having a vote-based inactivity filter? Which could obviously result in people just hopping on to randomly vote, but also elims probably aren't going to vote for their teammates unless they can be around to remove that vote later, so that does give us information. It's the idea that I've personally liked most of the ones suggested so far. 

It would need some tweaking, though, because some very active players don't like to vote in the first couple of cycles--so I guess the way it would work would be: either you must post at least x number of times (and the GM may choose to announce that they will not count posts that do nothing more than demonstrate existence) or you must have a vote in the final count. If you don't meet either of those criteria for two consecutive cycles then you're replaced. Or something like that? 

The big issue with vote based inactivity counts is that you end up with a lot of vote noise so to speak. Basically, people voting just because they have to vote. Also, there's often a lot of bandwagoning, since people who need to place a vote will just vote on the current vote train. I know QF45, MR29, and QF30 all had vote based inactivity filters, if you want to look at how it's gone in the past. I only remember playing QF45, so I can only speak about my experience from there.

5 minutes ago, The Unknown Order said:

So, what's everyone's opinions of a action based inactivity filter? Like, if you don't do an action every other cycle, you will be warned, if you don't do one for four consecutive cycles in a row, you will be replaced with a pinch-hitter, unless the inactivity is planned?

Four consecutive cycles is far too long. If someone hasn't done anything for two cycles in a row then they deserve to be replaced.

I personally think an action based inactivity filter is worse than a post based one, since IMO thread participation is more important for fun. A game isn't interesting if someone can just put in actions and refuse to talk in the thread.