The village should never count on "olol network saves the day" because that's stupid.
It's like saying "Here's a list of 30 eligible players. Now here's the list of the ten of them who play the game!"
No. Under no circumstances, powerful network or not, should any villager EVER rely on the network to do anything. Ever. That's a custom built recipe for village destruction.
The village should never count on "olol network saves the day" because that's stupid.
It's like saying "Here's a list of 30 eligible players. Now here's the list of the ten of them who play the game!"
No. Under no circumstances, powerful network or not, should any villager EVER rely on the network to do anything. Ever. That's a custom built recipe for village destruction.
But in a lot of phalla games the village doesn't have a choice. If the Mafia gets 3 kills, for instance, and the vote is 1, you could end up with a situation where the village could vote out a mafia every night and still lose.
That's why I firmly believe that the vote should always be the main weapon/ability of the "good" side.
Er, no. If it's mathematically impossible for the village to win even if they hit a mafia every night, that's called Inevitable Win and the game is over.
And that's a result of either shitty game design, incompetent vigs and guards, a strawman, or some combination of the above. =p
If you play around with/change the role numbers people expect in order to accomplish limiting epic reveals, MAKE SURE YOUR PLAYERS KNOW THIS AHEAD OF TIME. Seeing someone epic reveal then get vigged because there was no guard is likely to cause a great deal of frustration.
No, they would deserve it for epic revealing. Epic revealing is not meant to be a non-risky tactic.
The village should never count on "olol network saves the day" because that's stupid.
It's like saying "Here's a list of 30 eligible players. Now here's the list of the ten of them who play the game!"
No. Under no circumstances, powerful network or not, should any villager EVER rely on the network to do anything. Ever. That's a custom built recipe for village destruction.
But in a lot of phalla games the village doesn't have a choice. If the Mafia gets 3 kills, for instance, and the vote is 1, you could end up with a situation where the village could vote out a mafia every night and still lose.
That's why I firmly believe that the vote should always be the main weapon/ability of the "good" side.
I agree that the above example is a perfect example of horrifically bad game design.
If the village cannot win with perfect vote accuracy and no outside help, your game needs to be rewritten.
If you play around with/change the role numbers people expect in order to accomplish limiting epic reveals, MAKE SURE YOUR PLAYERS KNOW THIS AHEAD OF TIME. Seeing someone epic reveal then get vigged because there was no guard is likely to cause a great deal of frustration.
No, they would deserve it for epic revealing. Epic revealing is not meant to be a non-risky tactic.
Like have a list of available special powers.... and on day 0 you vote for which power will be voted on the following day.
Day 1 you vote in red
and then vote in magenta for who gets the special power that was voted on from day 0
then in a different color vote on a new special power to be dolled out on Day 2 with a magenta vote again
That way you have voting records for who wants what specific power, then analyze how they use it the following day, when they are voting for a specific person to get it.
edit: and other than a vig, guard, seer, there are no other village specials
The village should never count on "olol network saves the day" because that's stupid.
It's like saying "Here's a list of 30 eligible players. Now here's the list of the ten of them who play the game!"
No. Under no circumstances, powerful network or not, should any villager EVER rely on the network to do anything. Ever. That's a custom built recipe for village destruction.
But in a lot of phalla games the village doesn't have a choice. If the Mafia gets 3 kills, for instance, and the vote is 1, you could end up with a situation where the village could vote out a mafia every night and still lose.
That's why I firmly believe that the vote should always be the main weapon/ability of the "good" side.
I agree that the above example is a perfect example of horrifically bad game design.
If the village cannot win with perfect vote accuracy and no outside help, your game needs to be rewritten.
I think the problem is that, when designing a game, cool specials are always fun to add. You just quickly get to a situation where the vote, and therefor the villagers, are completely trivialized and are good for nothing other than absorbing kills (And it becomes better not to try to kill mafia with the vote, but create situations where the mafia reveal themselves by how they vote so the specials can kill them).
The village should never count on "olol network saves the day" because that's stupid.
It's like saying "Here's a list of 30 eligible players. Now here's the list of the ten of them who play the game!"
No. Under no circumstances, powerful network or not, should any villager EVER rely on the network to do anything. Ever. That's a custom built recipe for village destruction.
But in a lot of phalla games the village doesn't have a choice. If the Mafia gets 3 kills, for instance, and the vote is 1, you could end up with a situation where the village could vote out a mafia every night and still lose.
That's why I firmly believe that the vote should always be the main weapon/ability of the "good" side.
I agree that the above example is a perfect example of horrifically bad game design.
If the village cannot win with perfect vote accuracy and no outside help, your game needs to be rewritten.
I think the problem is that, when designing a game, cool specials are always fun to add. You just quickly get to a situation where the vote, and therefor the villagers, are completely trivialized and are good for nothing other than absorbing kills (And it becomes better not to try to kill mafia with the vote, but create situations where the mafia reveal themselves by how they vote so the specials can kill them).
Indeed- and you've hit the nail on the head. That is precisely why designing a game like a phalla is not a trivial endeavor. You need to be able to put in all the cool specials you want to be in there because they're AWESOME without taking the focus and power away from the vote, or rather, the mafia element in general.
I think when a lot of people design games, the thought process goes like:
"Alright, i want these 10 specials."
"Hmm, gonna need 8 mafia to balance that out."
"18 people? Well better add some villagers for flavor."
"Woo, 30 person miniphalla! It'll last 6-8 days and be awesome."
"Why do my villagers all want to die?"
The village should never count on "olol network saves the day" because that's stupid.
It's like saying "Here's a list of 30 eligible players. Now here's the list of the ten of them who play the game!"
No. Under no circumstances, powerful network or not, should any villager EVER rely on the network to do anything. Ever. That's a custom built recipe for village destruction.
But in a lot of phalla games the village doesn't have a choice. If the Mafia gets 3 kills, for instance, and the vote is 1, you could end up with a situation where the village could vote out a mafia every night and still lose.
That's why I firmly believe that the vote should always be the main weapon/ability of the "good" side.
I agree that the above example is a perfect example of horrifically bad game design.
If the village cannot win with perfect vote accuracy and no outside help, your game needs to be rewritten.
I think the problem is that, when designing a game, cool specials are always fun to add. You just quickly get to a situation where the vote, and therefor the villagers, are completely trivialized and are good for nothing other than absorbing kills (And it becomes better not to try to kill mafia with the vote, but create situations where the mafia reveal themselves by how they vote so the specials can kill them).
My latest mini over-ran for pretty much precisely that reason- all the weird, mechanics-muddling special abilities got popped off towards the end game Still, since mostly everyone was dead by night 7, I suppose it didn't detract from the mains that much. Plus the mafia (well... one of the mafias, because in a sense it was a dual-mafia game) was horribly unlucky with their abilities.
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Dac VinS-s-screw you! I only listen to DOUBLE MUSIC!Registered Userregular
If you play around with/change the role numbers people expect in order to accomplish limiting epic reveals, MAKE SURE YOUR PLAYERS KNOW THIS AHEAD OF TIME. Seeing someone epic reveal then get vigged because there was no guard is likely to cause a great deal of frustration.
No, they would deserve it for epic revealing. Epic revealing is not meant to be a non-risky tactic.
Which is the one point I regret from Scarlet Devil - I really should have given the mafia a one-use unblockable kill as I planned, but alas I just couldn't find out how to put it well in non-confusing words. The worst thing is, it would have been a more striking village victory if Rainfall decided to be active.
Epic revealing and getting killed by something OTHER than what you expect would kill you (As in someone who goes "fuck the plan!" or worse, the vig himself), however, is the epitome of frustration. Even then, that's more a human thing than a mechanic thing.
The village should never count on "olol network saves the day" because that's stupid.
It's like saying "Here's a list of 30 eligible players. Now here's the list of the ten of them who play the game!"
No. Under no circumstances, powerful network or not, should any villager EVER rely on the network to do anything. Ever. That's a custom built recipe for village destruction.
But in a lot of phalla games the village doesn't have a choice. If the Mafia gets 3 kills, for instance, and the vote is 1, you could end up with a situation where the village could vote out a mafia every night and still lose.
That's why I firmly believe that the vote should always be the main weapon/ability of the "good" side.
I agree that the above example is a perfect example of horrifically bad game design.
If the village cannot win with perfect vote accuracy and no outside help, your game needs to be rewritten.
I think the problem is that, when designing a game, cool specials are always fun to add. You just quickly get to a situation where the vote, and therefor the villagers, are completely trivialized and are good for nothing other than absorbing kills (And it becomes better not to try to kill mafia with the vote, but create situations where the mafia reveal themselves by how they vote so the specials can kill them).
Indeed- and you've hit the nail on the head. That is precisely why designing a game like a phalla is not a trivial endeavor. You need to be able to put in all the cool specials you want to be in there because they're AWESOME without taking the focus and power away from the vote, or rather, the mafia element in general.
I think when a lot of people design games, the thought process goes like:
"Alright, i want these 10 specials."
"Hmm, gonna need 8 mafia to balance that out."
"18 people? Well better add some villagers for flavor."
"Woo, 30 person miniphalla! It'll last 6-8 days and be awesome."
"Why do my villagers all want to die?"
I don't want to sound like a broken record with vote immunity and all, but the villager element is pretty much THE reason why I hate it that much - in term of trivialisation of the village, it's probably the worst offender of the lot. As you says, with too much/too powerful specials the problem isn'T much as being a villager is boring more than being a villager allows you next to no control on the game flow - all you have is a vote. And when even that is taken away...
I'll run a vanilla ish mini soon testing the above mechanic with votes for new abilities. I have the roles and mechanics worked out, I just need to think of a theme that works with people gaining abilities.
I'm thinking a lite Dollhouse mini where the alignments of people make sense :P
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thorgotthere is special providencein the fall of a sparrowRegistered Userregular
If you play around with/change the role numbers people expect in order to accomplish limiting epic reveals, MAKE SURE YOUR PLAYERS KNOW THIS AHEAD OF TIME. Seeing someone epic reveal then get vigged because there was no guard is likely to cause a great deal of frustration.
I'm not sure if this was supposed to be ironic in how whiny it was but I found it humorous.
As for mini limits, I agree that something should be done. I'll ask Thanatos about it.
How does this sound: A soft limit of 30 players (you can go over but you better have a damn good reason) and telling mini hosts to aim for 4-5 days with an expected maximum of 7 barring an absolutely perfect storm of colliding kills and protections.
How does this sound: A soft limit of 30 players (you can go over but you better have a damn good reason) and telling mini hosts to aim for 4-5 days with an expected maximum of 7 barring an absolutely perfect storm of colliding kills and protections.
Sounds good to me. Maybe the seven day time limit should be hard - if a game looks like it's about to roll over to an eighth day, it just ends.
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SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
How does this sound: A soft limit of 30 players (you can go over but you better have a damn good reason) and telling mini hosts to aim for 4-5 days with an expected maximum of 7 barring an absolutely perfect storm of colliding kills and protections.
Sounds good to me. Maybe the seven day time limit should be hard - if a game looks like it's about to roll over to an eighth day, it just ends.
That is a bit extreme IMO. If it's just a handful of players left, how about a micro day (4-12 hours max, ends early if all votes or actions are in?) instead if it's gone that long? That way you don't take up the slot for any longer than you have to, and activity from the players left shouldn't be an issue.
That is a bit extreme IMO. If it's just a handful of players left, how about a micro day (4-12 hours max, ends early if all votes or actions are in?)
Would a micro-day Phalla work? Two -- even three -- vote closes a day at all times? Knock out a game in a day and a half? Obviously people would need to be warned going in.
If you play around with/change the role numbers people expect in order to accomplish limiting epic reveals, MAKE SURE YOUR PLAYERS KNOW THIS AHEAD OF TIME. Seeing someone epic reveal then get vigged because there was no guard is likely to cause a great deal of frustration.
I'm not sure if this was supposed to be ironic in how whiny it was but I found it humorous.
As for mini limits, I agree that something should be done. I'll ask Thanatos about it.
How does this sound: A soft limit of 30 players (you can go over but you better have a damn good reason) and telling mini hosts to aim for 4-5 days with an expected maximum of 7 barring an absolutely perfect storm of colliding kills and protections.
The problem with a player limit is that, if we stay 30 and under except for select circumstances, there is a vacuum of games where player numbers are EITHER 10-30 OR 60+, meaning there is no room in the system whatsoever for a 45 person phalla, mini or main.
I'm not trying to be contrary here, just think that's something to think about.
Sounds sensible to me. I've never run a mini with more than 30, and all of them ended on Day 6 or before (IIRC). 10 day minis are crazy talk - if your mechanics lea to that, then you need to rethink your mechanics.
To hump on Bremen's rules about who can sign up, I'm with OS - it's madness in my opinion.
That is a bit extreme IMO. If it's just a handful of players left, how about a micro day (4-12 hours max, ends early if all votes or actions are in?)
Would a micro-day Phalla work? Two -- even three -- vote closes a day at all times? Knock out a game in a day and a half? Obviously people would need to be warned going in.
It's been tried a couple of times, but I don't think it's ever had much success.
If you really want to go wild with the "extra vote" thing, picture this:
You are standing in a room with your fellow players. Around the walls are buttons of nearly every color imaginable. The red and yellow buttons have already been pressed.
Each day, vote in red to remove one player from your midst.
Each day, vote in yellow to push one button of a specific color.
You notice the following buttons in particular as you look around the room: Black Blue Cyan Grey Lime Magenta Maroon Orange Plum White
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Dac VinS-s-screw you! I only listen to DOUBLE MUSIC!Registered Userregular
How does this sound: A soft limit of 30 players (you can go over but you better have a damn good reason) and telling mini hosts to aim for 4-5 days with an expected maximum of 7 barring an absolutely perfect storm of colliding kills and protections.
Sounds good to me. Maybe the seven day time limit should be hard - if a game looks like it's about to roll over to an eighth day, it just ends.
First, thorgot this is exactly what I said in my post why are you such a thief
Second, a hard limit would just be too harsh - as [strike]thorgot[/strike] I said, either it means there was something wrong with your phalla, or you got EXTREMELY unlucky. Spec's suggestion would be a good compromise though - at Day 8 of a mini I don't exactly expect it needing a complete day to do everything.
If you really want to go wild with the "extra vote" thing, picture this:
You are standing in a room with your fellow players. Around the walls are buttons of nearly every color imaginable. The red and yellow buttons have already been pressed.
Each day, vote in red to remove one player from your midst.
Each day, vote in yellow to push one button of a specific color.
You notice the following buttons in particular as you look around the room: Black Blue Cyan Grey Lime Magenta Maroon Orange Plum White
How does this sound: A soft limit of 30 players (you can go over but you better have a damn good reason) and telling mini hosts to aim for 4-5 days with an expected maximum of 7 barring an absolutely perfect storm of colliding kills and protections.
Sounds good to me. Maybe the seven day time limit should be hard - if a game looks like it's about to roll over to an eighth day, it just ends.
First, thorgot this is exactly what I said in my post why are you such a thief
Second, a hard limit would just be too harsh - as [strike]thorgot[/strike] I said, either it means there was something wrong with your phalla, or you got EXTREMELY unlucky. Spec's suggestion would be a good compromise though - at Day 8 of a mini I don't exactly expect it needing a complete day to do everything.
I don't see why having a hard limit is necessarily too harsh. It's pretty simple to add a bit to the mafia role PM saying that if they survive until the end of day X, they win. Half- or quarter-days just fuck over people in different time zones. Also, if a mini's dragging on till day eight there's a good chance everyone involved is going to be fed up and just want it to be over.
If you play around with/change the role numbers people expect in order to accomplish limiting epic reveals, MAKE SURE YOUR PLAYERS KNOW THIS AHEAD OF TIME. Seeing someone epic reveal then get vigged because there was no guard is likely to cause a great deal of frustration.
I'm not sure if this was supposed to be ironic in how whiny it was but I found it humorous.
As for mini limits, I agree that something should be done. I'll ask Thanatos about it.
How does this sound: A soft limit of 30 players (you can go over but you better have a damn good reason) and telling mini hosts to aim for 4-5 days with an expected maximum of 7 barring an absolutely perfect storm of colliding kills and protections.
That's pretty good, except 25 is probably the recommended and 30 is more of a harder limit.
Because if you have over 30 for a mini that is geared to end in 4 or 5 days, that's just too random of a game to actually get anything out of it and much much much more likely to have "what are the odds" events that drag play out because of everything in play.
As for having games in the 45 range, what are we missing out on that is not covered by the mains? Because I don't think you can argue that 45 somehow has some special "small game feeling" over the mains. Which is also why the minis need to be kept small and short, because that's a different feel for a game that some people prefer.
Small games are beautiful too.
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AriviaI Like A ChallengeEarth-1Registered Userregular
That is a bit extreme IMO. If it's just a handful of players left, how about a micro day (4-12 hours max, ends early if all votes or actions are in?)
Would a micro-day Phalla work? Two -- even three -- vote closes a day at all times? Knock out a game in a day and a half? Obviously people would need to be warned going in.
It's been tried a couple of times, but I don't think it's ever had much success.
The problem with that is people do occasionally work sleep not play phalla. The day system gives everyone a chance to get on and vote. Multiple closes a day would require people to actually schedule around phalla and vote closes.
And regarding the eight day mini. Unless you absolutely fail at phalla design we're talking about around five players. Given that they are still alive and none of them have won yet these aren't players who won't sign up for your main because they're playing a mini. Let the sign up for every phalla on a fucking forum club finish their game.
Now if a GM was an idiot and didn't give the mafia kills/every kill in the game was color dependent(hit a neutral and you lose it!) and there were four or five vote immune players so half the player base is still alive a week into the game you should probably just call it a draw.
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SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
If you play around with/change the role numbers people expect in order to accomplish limiting epic reveals, MAKE SURE YOUR PLAYERS KNOW THIS AHEAD OF TIME. Seeing someone epic reveal then get vigged because there was no guard is likely to cause a great deal of frustration.
I'm not sure if this was supposed to be ironic in how whiny it was but I found it humorous.
If you want to be unnecessarily cruel to your players, that's your prerogative. Given that recent games have had anti-revealing warnings, it may be a natural, if unwise, assumption that a game without such a warning might be safer for revealing when this may be hilariously untrue.
How does this sound: A soft limit of 30 players (you can go over but you better have a damn good reason) and telling mini hosts to aim for 4-5 days with an expected maximum of 7 barring an absolutely perfect storm of colliding kills and protections.
Sounds good to me. Maybe the seven day time limit should be hard - if a game looks like it's about to roll over to an eighth day, it just ends.
First, thorgot this is exactly what I said in my post why are you such a thief
Second, a hard limit would just be too harsh - as [strike]thorgot[/strike] I said, either it means there was something wrong with your phalla, or you got EXTREMELY unlucky. Spec's suggestion would be a good compromise though - at Day 8 of a mini I don't exactly expect it needing a complete day to do everything.
I don't see why having a hard limit is necessarily too harsh. It's pretty simple to add a bit to the mafia role PM saying that if they survive until the end of day X, they win. Half- or quarter-days just fuck over people in different time zones.
Faction games. Down to 1v1+a neutral who will decide the game, who's the automatic winner then? =p
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AriviaI Like A ChallengeEarth-1Registered Userregular
Now if a GM was an idiot and didn't give the mafia kills/every kill in the game was color dependent(hit a neutral and you lose it!) and there were four or five vote immune players so half the player base is still alive a week into the game you should probably just call it a draw.
This sounds like a hypothetical. No, wait, I think that happens in a dentist's office. Maybe I get it from my insurance agent? State Farm, are you there?
How does this sound: A soft limit of 30 players (you can go over but you better have a damn good reason) and telling mini hosts to aim for 4-5 days with an expected maximum of 7 barring an absolutely perfect storm of colliding kills and protections.
Sounds good to me. Maybe the seven day time limit should be hard - if a game looks like it's about to roll over to an eighth day, it just ends.
First, thorgot this is exactly what I said in my post why are you such a thief
Second, a hard limit would just be too harsh - as [strike]thorgot[/strike] I said, either it means there was something wrong with your phalla, or you got EXTREMELY unlucky. Spec's suggestion would be a good compromise though - at Day 8 of a mini I don't exactly expect it needing a complete day to do everything.
I don't see why having a hard limit is necessarily too harsh. It's pretty simple to add a bit to the mafia role PM saying that if they survive until the end of day X, they win. Half- or quarter-days just fuck over people in different time zones.
Faction games. Down to 1v1+a neutral who will decide the game, who's the automatic winner then? =p
That would be what we call a "draw", a "neutral win", or a "rocks fall everyone dies" scenario. I can't say I'm a fan of 24 hours dedicated to three players when the game's already been running for a week, nor am I a fan of shortened days. If you absolutely cannot bring yourself to have a draw game, ask the players to submit actions and/or votes on day seven for the next day as well.
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SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
How does this sound: A soft limit of 30 players (you can go over but you better have a damn good reason) and telling mini hosts to aim for 4-5 days with an expected maximum of 7 barring an absolutely perfect storm of colliding kills and protections.
Sounds good to me. Maybe the seven day time limit should be hard - if a game looks like it's about to roll over to an eighth day, it just ends.
First, thorgot this is exactly what I said in my post why are you such a thief
Second, a hard limit would just be too harsh - as [strike]thorgot[/strike] I said, either it means there was something wrong with your phalla, or you got EXTREMELY unlucky. Spec's suggestion would be a good compromise though - at Day 8 of a mini I don't exactly expect it needing a complete day to do everything.
I don't see why having a hard limit is necessarily too harsh. It's pretty simple to add a bit to the mafia role PM saying that if they survive until the end of day X, they win. Half- or quarter-days just fuck over people in different time zones.
Faction games. Down to 1v1+a neutral who will decide the game, who's the automatic winner then? =p
That would be what we call a "draw", a "neutral win", or a "rocks fall everyone dies" scenario. I can't say I'm a fan of 24 hours dedicated to three players when the game's already been running for a week, nor am I a fan of shortened days. If you absolutely cannot bring yourself to have a draw game, ask the players to submit actions and/or votes on day seven for the next day as well.
*shrug* I'm fine with a 12 hour day, especially if there is some advance warning, perhaps as Day 7 is coming close to the end. A quick check on the game right before one goes to bed or wakes up to put a single vote+action in is probably not too much to ask. =p
On the subject of a How To: How exactly do you crunch the numbers to see about how long a phalla should last anyway?
There's no way to actually predict it, because of how random people are, but you can get a rough count by comparing the number of kills to the number of players, subtracting slightly for guards/double kills.
If you've got, say, 30 players, 5 mafia, 2 mafia kills, a vig, and a vote, with a guard, you can estimate:
The game could possibly end on day 4 if 5/6 village kills land correctly, but this is incredibly unlikely. Using a ballpark 50% villager kill success, the game could reasonably end as early as day 6.
Assuming the guard is 50% effective, on average (which is probably pretty high), there's 3.5 kills a night, so by day 9 there'd only be 2 players left, which would make the game effectively over. It could go longer if the vig dies early, but it's a good ballpark figure.
So, with those numbers, I would guess the game would last somewhere between 5-8 days.
Though I do think over the last few pages some people are going a bit crazy with the "Well in my day minis had 8 people and everyone had to share an ability because that's all mom and pop could afford for us!"
It's phalla, it's an adaptation of a game with a million adaptations. Things change, and I'm pretty sure most people find lots of special abilities fun. Also larger minis overall make more people happy.
It's not so much talking about the back in my day stuff, we've got rules to follow. When we start breaking those rules and attempting to make our own, bad things happen.
If things are organized and kept under control while we follow rules and such laid out by the moderator(s) who allow us to hold these games, we can still play them. We've already run into an issue once where all phalla games were shut down for a few days.
Please don't make us go through that again, there might not be a next time.
I have no problem with following the rules of a moderator. Could we be reminded of them?
I disagree with a non-mod saying games should be of a certain size, length, or ruleset. Let's face it, the fun of Phallas is the cool stuff that happens. That's why, while I agree with Rend that too many specials makes being a villager boring, I'm trying to find other ways to spice up villager play other than reducing the number of specials and running a traditional game.
I know there are rules to follow in order to keep phalla games going on, but as long as things are still organized, which I'd say they very much are right now, I don't see the problem.
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Bad recent villages are bad.
EDIT: Er, no. If it's mathematically impossible for the village to win even if they hit a mafia every night, that's called Inevitable Win and the game is over.
And that's a result of either shitty game design, incompetent vigs and guards, a strawman, or some combination of the above. =p
No, they would deserve it for epic revealing. Epic revealing is not meant to be a non-risky tactic.
I agree that the above example is a perfect example of horrifically bad game design.
If the village cannot win with perfect vote accuracy and no outside help, your game needs to be rewritten.
Day 1 you vote in red
and then vote in magenta for who gets the special power that was voted on from day 0
then in a different color vote on a new special power to be dolled out on Day 2 with a magenta vote again
That way you have voting records for who wants what specific power, then analyze how they use it the following day, when they are voting for a specific person to get it.
edit: and other than a vig, guard, seer, there are no other village specials
I think the problem is that, when designing a game, cool specials are always fun to add. You just quickly get to a situation where the vote, and therefor the villagers, are completely trivialized and are good for nothing other than absorbing kills (And it becomes better not to try to kill mafia with the vote, but create situations where the mafia reveal themselves by how they vote so the specials can kill them).
Indeed- and you've hit the nail on the head. That is precisely why designing a game like a phalla is not a trivial endeavor. You need to be able to put in all the cool specials you want to be in there because they're AWESOME without taking the focus and power away from the vote, or rather, the mafia element in general.
I think when a lot of people design games, the thought process goes like:
"Alright, i want these 10 specials."
"Hmm, gonna need 8 mafia to balance that out."
"18 people? Well better add some villagers for flavor."
"Woo, 30 person miniphalla! It'll last 6-8 days and be awesome."
"Why do my villagers all want to die?"
My latest mini over-ran for pretty much precisely that reason- all the weird, mechanics-muddling special abilities got popped off towards the end game
Which is the one point I regret from Scarlet Devil - I really should have given the mafia a one-use unblockable kill as I planned, but alas I just couldn't find out how to put it well in non-confusing words. The worst thing is, it would have been a more striking village victory if Rainfall decided to be active.
Epic revealing and getting killed by something OTHER than what you expect would kill you (As in someone who goes "fuck the plan!" or worse, the vig himself), however, is the epitome of frustration. Even then, that's more a human thing than a mechanic thing.
I don't want to sound like a broken record with vote immunity and all, but the villager element is pretty much THE reason why I hate it that much - in term of trivialisation of the village, it's probably the worst offender of the lot. As you says, with too much/too powerful specials the problem isn'T much as being a villager is boring more than being a villager allows you next to no control on the game flow - all you have is a vote. And when even that is taken away...
Some people need to know what it's like to play in my first phalla where we had 50 players and only two had active abilities. The mafia.
I'm thinking a lite Dollhouse mini where the alignments of people make sense :P
I'm not sure if this was supposed to be ironic in how whiny it was but I found it humorous.
As for mini limits, I agree that something should be done. I'll ask Thanatos about it.
How does this sound: A soft limit of 30 players (you can go over but you better have a damn good reason) and telling mini hosts to aim for 4-5 days with an expected maximum of 7 barring an absolutely perfect storm of colliding kills and protections.
Sounds good to me. Maybe the seven day time limit should be hard - if a game looks like it's about to roll over to an eighth day, it just ends.
Would a micro-day Phalla work? Two -- even three -- vote closes a day at all times? Knock out a game in a day and a half? Obviously people would need to be warned going in.
The problem with a player limit is that, if we stay 30 and under except for select circumstances, there is a vacuum of games where player numbers are EITHER 10-30 OR 60+, meaning there is no room in the system whatsoever for a 45 person phalla, mini or main.
I'm not trying to be contrary here, just think that's something to think about.
To hump on Bremen's rules about who can sign up, I'm with OS - it's madness in my opinion.
It's been tried a couple of times, but I don't think it's ever had much success.
You are standing in a room with your fellow players. Around the walls are buttons of nearly every color imaginable. The red and yellow buttons have already been pressed.
Each day, vote in red to remove one player from your midst.
Each day, vote in yellow to push one button of a specific color.
You notice the following buttons in particular as you look around the room:
Black
Blue
Cyan
Grey
Lime
Magenta
Maroon
Orange
Plum
White
First, thorgot this is exactly what I said in my post why are you such a thief
Second, a hard limit would just be too harsh - as [strike]thorgot[/strike] I said, either it means there was something wrong with your phalla, or you got EXTREMELY unlucky. Spec's suggestion would be a good compromise though - at Day 8 of a mini I don't exactly expect it needing a complete day to do everything.
you are diabolical
I don't see why having a hard limit is necessarily too harsh. It's pretty simple to add a bit to the mafia role PM saying that if they survive until the end of day X, they win. Half- or quarter-days just fuck over people in different time zones. Also, if a mini's dragging on till day eight there's a good chance everyone involved is going to be fed up and just want it to be over.
That's pretty good, except 25 is probably the recommended and 30 is more of a harder limit.
Because if you have over 30 for a mini that is geared to end in 4 or 5 days, that's just too random of a game to actually get anything out of it and much much much more likely to have "what are the odds" events that drag play out because of everything in play.
As for having games in the 45 range, what are we missing out on that is not covered by the mains? Because I don't think you can argue that 45 somehow has some special "small game feeling" over the mains. Which is also why the minis need to be kept small and short, because that's a different feel for a game that some people prefer.
Small games are beautiful too.
coming to a forum near you: Little Goths: The TLC/Marilyn Manson crossover phalla.
The problem with that is people do occasionally work sleep not play phalla. The day system gives everyone a chance to get on and vote. Multiple closes a day would require people to actually schedule around phalla and vote closes.
And regarding the eight day mini. Unless you absolutely fail at phalla design we're talking about around five players. Given that they are still alive and none of them have won yet these aren't players who won't sign up for your main because they're playing a mini. Let the sign up for every phalla on a fucking forum club finish their game.
Now if a GM was an idiot and didn't give the mafia kills/every kill in the game was color dependent(hit a neutral and you lose it!) and there were four or five vote immune players so half the player base is still alive a week into the game you should probably just call it a draw.
Faction games. Down to 1v1+a neutral who will decide the game, who's the automatic winner then? =p
This sounds like a hypothetical. No, wait, I think that happens in a dentist's office. Maybe I get it from my insurance agent? State Farm, are you there?
That would be what we call a "draw", a "neutral win", or a "rocks fall everyone dies" scenario. I can't say I'm a fan of 24 hours dedicated to three players when the game's already been running for a week, nor am I a fan of shortened days. If you absolutely cannot bring yourself to have a draw game, ask the players to submit actions and/or votes on day seven for the next day as well.
And if there actually is someone here that doesn't well then they have a lot more annoyances than keeping up with a phalla.
if I have 34 players and all the kills happen, how many people die?
if I have 34 players and none of the kills happen, how many people die?
include losing kills for losing people and then just work it through.
thanks Ardor for showing me this.
There's no way to actually predict it, because of how random people are, but you can get a rough count by comparing the number of kills to the number of players, subtracting slightly for guards/double kills.
If you've got, say, 30 players, 5 mafia, 2 mafia kills, a vig, and a vote, with a guard, you can estimate:
The game could possibly end on day 4 if 5/6 village kills land correctly, but this is incredibly unlikely. Using a ballpark 50% villager kill success, the game could reasonably end as early as day 6.
Assuming the guard is 50% effective, on average (which is probably pretty high), there's 3.5 kills a night, so by day 9 there'd only be 2 players left, which would make the game effectively over. It could go longer if the vig dies early, but it's a good ballpark figure.
So, with those numbers, I would guess the game would last somewhere between 5-8 days.
Though I do think over the last few pages some people are going a bit crazy with the "Well in my day minis had 8 people and everyone had to share an ability because that's all mom and pop could afford for us!"
It's phalla, it's an adaptation of a game with a million adaptations. Things change, and I'm pretty sure most people find lots of special abilities fun. Also larger minis overall make more people happy.
It has to do with we're trying to keep things organized instead of fucking shut down.
If things are organized and kept under control while we follow rules and such laid out by the moderator(s) who allow us to hold these games, we can still play them. We've already run into an issue once where all phalla games were shut down for a few days.
Please don't make us go through that again, there might not be a next time.
I disagree with a non-mod saying games should be of a certain size, length, or ruleset. Let's face it, the fun of Phallas is the cool stuff that happens. That's why, while I agree with Rend that too many specials makes being a villager boring, I'm trying to find other ways to spice up villager play other than reducing the number of specials and running a traditional game.
I know there are rules to follow in order to keep phalla games going on, but as long as things are still organized, which I'd say they very much are right now, I don't see the problem.