I need some more experienced people's opinions on something. What do people think a 'more powerful' ability for a monster group would be:
1)Protected from 1 attack each night(2 or more still kills them)(Village execution isn't an attack)
2)Seers as an innocent
There is an opposing monster group with multiple kills, as well as a vigilante.
Option (1) makes them rather protected from monsters/vigs, but Option (2) virtually assures they won't be executed late game.
For my game I'm planning on have a small group of bad guys who seer as innocent, and are trying to get connected the main bad guy group. The main bad guy group seer as evil but get 2 kills a night and are bigger, where as the small bad guy group will only have a couple of guys and one kill a night.
Hopefully this, with limited guardians make it harder for a network to be made.
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tuxkamenreally took this picture.Registered Userregular
edited April 2007
2) is a far, far stronger option, though I would be concerned with scaling the power back on 1) as more bad guys die.
It honestly depends on lots of other factors in the game. There's not really an absolute answer. In general, though, I'd say that seering as innocent would be stronger, except that if people know that some monsters seer as innocent, they're going to pay less attention to vision results, and so that vision-twisting power becomes slightly less powerful.
Being protected from an attack each night is only really useful in the early game, when guardian(s) haven't had a chance to hook up with anyone else. If a vigilante targets a monster and he doesn't die, the guardian(s) will know that the guy's a monster, and try to get him whacked the next day through the vote.
Both are good abilities, but which one is stronger depends on the game. In a game with a lot of vigilantes, abilities that make someone look innocent are less powerful because all it takes is one person who thinks you're worth killing, and you're toast. Similarly, self-guarding can be less powerful in certain situations.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Honestly, though, I'm liking the idea of thralls more and more. They make networks less reliable. I think I'm also liking the idea of making bad guys have special powers. Like, say, you have 7 specials. One of them is a thrall, but nobody knows which one. Could be one of the seers, could be one of the guardians, whatever. So yeah, go ahead and make your network in which all the specials are connected. Then watch them all die.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
And also the whole "monsters and specials both seer as the same thing" mechanic.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Honestly, though, I'm liking the idea of thralls more and more. They make networks less reliable. I think I'm also liking the idea of making bad guys have special powers. Like, say, you have 7 specials. One of them is a thrall, but nobody knows which one. Could be one of the seers, could be one of the guardians, whatever. So yeah, go ahead and make your network in which all the specials are connected. Then watch them all die.
I like this one alot, it really ups the paranoia. It was like this in 'The Red Scare'... the CIA and FBI both had moles.
I don't want to say much about an active Phalla, but I think that the current oDaM Phalla was really set up in a way to punish open citizen networks. Giving the monsters two kills and having the blockers die if they don't stop a GS kill combined with the limited timespan of the GS and the open seering really combined well to pretty much nerf the way Ardor handled the Phalliad.
It's a pity Lady Eri tried to pull the same tactic because the rules really punished this way of playing.
Let me know if I've said too much about an open phalla and i'll edit it out. (Though I don't think I've said anything that isn't known by everyone anyway).
I don't want to say much about an active Phalla, but I think that the current oDaM Phalla was really set up in a way to punish open citizen networks. Giving the monsters two kills and having the blockers die if they don't stop a GS kill combined with the limited timespan of the GS and the open seering really combined well to pretty much nerf the way Ardor handled the Phalliad.
It's a pity Lady Eri tried to pull the same tactic because the rules really punished this way of playing.
Let me know if I've said too much about an open phalla and i'll edit it out. (Though I don't think I've said anything that isn't known by everyone anyway).
That's one thing most of us agree on, we need to kill instant networks like we've seen in past games. Those networks skyrocket the chances the innocents have for winning. Really though, minus the staf part of ElJeffe's phallia, it would've been pretty neat because the networks were for the most part, limited i nsmaller numbers against the larger informed spies.
I like the game modifications for the current phalla to be honest, not only did it allow us to use up our quota of soviet jokes, but it's keeping those instant win networks from forming.
Bleh, I gave up on my Fantasy Phalla. The monster group I originally wanted to build the game around ended up being infeasible and the powers I came up to replace them are a pain to balance properly so I'm going back to an idea I started working on a few months ago.
Now heres an open question to everyone. Which do you prefer, as players, more:
1)Completely transparent rules and open suspicion or
2)Opaque rules and paranoia of the unknown
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thorgotthere is special providencein the fall of a sparrowRegistered Userregular
Bleh, I gave up on my Fantasy Phalla. The monster group I originally wanted to build the game around ended up being infeasible and the powers I came up to replace them are a pain to balance properly so I'm going back to an idea I started working on a few months ago.
Now heres an open question to everyone. Which do you prefer, as players, more:
1)Completely transparent rules and open suspicion or
2)Opaque rules and paranoia of the unknown
It depends on the rules. If there are secrets the players need to find out, revealing them right away would ruin the fun. But if your rules work better if everybody knows them, you shouldn't hide anything just to hide it.
Bleh, I gave up on my Fantasy Phalla. The monster group I originally wanted to build the game around ended up being infeasible and the powers I came up to replace them are a pain to balance properly so I'm going back to an idea I started working on a few months ago.
Now heres an open question to everyone. Which do you prefer, as players, more:
1)Completely transparent rules and open suspicion or
2)Opaque rules and paranoia of the unknown
I'll be honest, I don't mind having all the rules given because it allos us to better plan for what's out there, but I think I enjoyed the red scare phalla immensely because no role information was given out. They said how many bad guys there were and that was it. I would prefer not knowing all the rules/roles. The mechanics would be something we'd have to figure out per our roles as well.
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GoslingLooking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, ProbablyWatertown, WIRegistered Userregular
2) Players want to win your game, not to play your scenario.
Again, the halfway point of the Mole game was...interesting. I'm sure the host didn't mean it to turn out like it did, but the idea to actually answer the questions based on special roles or the bios of the players got curb-stomped over 'we want our confirmed network in here'. Then, the resolution of it was unsatisfying for most parties involved ('Welcome back, now suicide yourself.'), because it was most efficient.
That actually wasn't my goal. The "correct" answers that I envisioned for those nominations were as follows:
*Person who steals pens- Someone you can't trust. Say, someone you think might be a bad guy.
*Person who returns a lost wallet- Someone you CAN trust. Say, someone you think might be a good guy.
*Person who likes throwing surprise parties- Someone overly curious (the person who wound up eliminated). Is it good, is it bad, I MUST HAVE WHATEVER THIS SURPRISE IS.
I did not envision the network merrily forcing everyone into lock-step. The resolution, though, I think I biffed- 50/50 odds of being a mole was too high, I realize that now. I think had I placed the odds at 20% or so, it might have turned out better as they'd have about the same odds as everyone else.
That said, when setting the game up, I originally wasn't going to do what I did- reassign roles based on what wound up being a coin flip. I was originally going to scramble the roles of the three- and since all three were regular good guys, that's how they all would have stayed in that scenario.
Oh, since I'm here, I'm obviously back-of-the-line on hosting duties, so I'm probably not getting the helm again for a long time. Doesn't stop me from giving suggestions for game mechanics and fishing for comments:
*Decimator- Bad guy that can, at any time, knock out any three good guys. However, using this power will cause the Decimator to be eliminated themselves.
*Interrogator- Good guy seer. Whoever the Interrogator checks out is removed from all action for the rest of the round. Their vote will not count, they can't post again in that round, but they are also immune from elimination.
*Vengeance- The player with the most votes is eliminated. Obviously. The player with the SECOND-most votes (or whoever has the most that survives the day) acquires Vengeance for the next day- the ability to cast one extra vote, separate from their normal vote. That extra vote may only be used against someone that voted for them the previous day. If there is a tie at the relevant level, all tied players get Vengeance.
*Boss- Bad guy, responsible for PM'ing all bad guy kills. If he cannot for some reason, he must delegate the task to another bad guy, who will then be in charge of it for that night. If the Boss dies, the bad guys are thrown into leaderless chaos for one day, rendering them unable to kill a good guy that day. Example:
Day 1- Boss killed. Good guy killed as normal.
Day 2- Bad guys are in chaos, no good guy killed.
*Oddsmaker- Good guy, variant on the seer. The Oddsmaker can check out one player, and they are given odds on how likely that person is to be a bad guy. The odds are random, with this caveat: Each vote cast against a player over the course of the game will make the odds progressively more accurate. (I'm using 2% here, but the number can be adjusted depending on the size of the game.)
Example:
-Good guys start with an odds set of 0%-100%. Every vote cast against the good guy will remove the highest 2% from the odds set- so if 10 votes have been cast against that person, the player's odds set is now 0-80%.
-Bad guy odds sets are the same at the start, 0-100%, but every vote cast against them removes 2% from the low end, so 10 votes against them make for a 20-100% set.
Therefore, 50 votes against a player over the course of the game will render either a 0 or 100, but 25 will assure you a high or low number and anyone paying enough attention will be able to draw the right conclusions. The power is completely useless on Day 1 as there are no votes cast, but as the game progresses and each remaining player accumulates votes, the Oddsmaker's ability becomes stronger and stronger.
Gosling on
I have a new soccer blog The Minnow Tank. Reading it psychically kicks Sepp Blatter in the bean bag.
*Oddsmaker- Good guy, variant on the seer. The Oddsmaker can check out one player, and they are given odds on how likely that person is to be a bad guy. The odds are random, with this caveat: Each vote cast against a player over the course of the game will make the odds progressively more accurate. (I'm using 2% here, but the number can be adjusted depending on the size of the game.)
Example:
-Good guys start with an odds set of 0%-100%. Every vote cast against the good guy will remove the highest 2% from the odds set- so if 10 votes have been cast against that person, the player's odds set is now 0-80%.
-Bad guy odds sets are the same at the start, 0-100%, but every vote cast against them removes 2% from the low end, so 10 votes against them make for a 20-100% set.
Therefore, 50 votes against a player over the course of the game will render either a 0 or 100, but 25 will assure you a high or low number and anyone paying enough attention will be able to draw the right conclusions. The power is completely useless on Day 1 as there are no votes cast, but as the game progresses and each remaining player accumulates votes, the Oddsmaker's ability becomes stronger and stronger.
This needs some adjustment, since the way you've got it now the Oddsmaker is as good as the seer against anyone who has even one vote; good guys would always be 0-98% and bad guys 2-100%.
*Oddsmaker- Good guy, variant on the seer. The Oddsmaker can check out one player, and they are given odds on how likely that person is to be a bad guy. The odds are random, with this caveat: Each vote cast against a player over the course of the game will make the odds progressively more accurate. (I'm using 2% here, but the number can be adjusted depending on the size of the game.)
Example:
-Good guys start with an odds set of 0%-100%. Every vote cast against the good guy will remove the highest 2% from the odds set- so if 10 votes have been cast against that person, the player's odds set is now 0-80%.
-Bad guy odds sets are the same at the start, 0-100%, but every vote cast against them removes 2% from the low end, so 10 votes against them make for a 20-100% set.
Therefore, 50 votes against a player over the course of the game will render either a 0 or 100, but 25 will assure you a high or low number and anyone paying enough attention will be able to draw the right conclusions. The power is completely useless on Day 1 as there are no votes cast, but as the game progresses and each remaining player accumulates votes, the Oddsmaker's ability becomes stronger and stronger.
This needs some adjustment, since the way you've got it now the Oddsmaker is as good as the seer against anyone who has even one vote; good guys would always be 0-98% and bad guys 2-100%.
I'm pretty sure that a number will be randomly given between those two numbers. As in, if one vote was cast for an innocent, the oddsmaker would receive a PM with a number between 0 and 98 as them as a monster. I think.
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GoslingLooking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, ProbablyWatertown, WIRegistered Userregular
edited April 2007
No, no, no, no. You read that wrong. Roleplay:
*Day 1. No votes cast against anyone yet. You're a good guy. I check your odds, I get a random number from 0 to 100. For example, I look at you and I'm given the number 45.
*Day 2. You get one throwaway vote cast against you. I check you again. This time I'm given a random number between 0 and 98. I check you and get back 84.
*Day 3. You barely escaped elimination, picking up 12 votes. That's 13 votes total, so when I look at you for the THIRD time (because I am horrible at this game), now I'm given a random number between 0 and 74. I check you and get back 31.
And so on. Of course, if on Day 3 I get back a number from 0-25, and I've been paying attention, I know you're a good guy because those numbers would have been the ones taken out of play if you were a bad guy.
Gosling on
I have a new soccer blog The Minnow Tank. Reading it psychically kicks Sepp Blatter in the bean bag.
*Day 1. No votes cast against anyone yet. You're a good guy. I check your odds, I get a random number from 0 to 100. For example, I look at you and I'm given the number 45.
*Day 2. You get one throwaway vote cast against you. I check you again. This time I'm given a random number between 0 and 98. I check you and get back 84.
*Day 3. You barely escaped elimination, picking up 12 votes. That's 13 votes total, so when I look at you for the THIRD time (because I am horrible at this game), now I'm given a random number between 0 and 74. I check you and get back 31.
And so on. Of course, if on Day 3 I get back a number from 0-25, I know you're a good guy because those numbers would have been the ones taken out of play if you were a bad guy.
Ahhh, that makes much more sense. So it's basically a seer who's only good for checking out failed bandwagons.
FunkyWaltDogg on
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GoslingLooking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, ProbablyWatertown, WIRegistered Userregular
edited April 2007
Sort of. I think it'll force a constant numbers game- does everyone pile on the main target, or do they go after several people at once in order to improve their odds? Essentially, it makes every vote beyond the kill threshold a wasted vote. (But if it gets TOO close, the bad guys are able to swing the vote in their favor, so you have to balance the two.)
Gosling on
I have a new soccer blog The Minnow Tank. Reading it psychically kicks Sepp Blatter in the bean bag.
Since I now grace the back of a milk carton in Communist Phalla, I'm looking at the game mechanics and I think it's awesome that there's no instant network button and no real way to build on it, but it still seems to me that it's probably going to be a close game still, so I think RBB and visiblehowl did a good job setting this up.
Two things if people are interested in opinions or help.
-I'd be willing to help someone run a game if they'd like some help. I'm kind of interested to see how the game works out when you nkow everyone's roles and such, I think it'd be kinda fun.
-I know many folks have put forth their ideas in this thread about games they'd like to run, I apologize about not really commenting much on them specifically and wondered if any one of you would like me to take a look at what you posted in here to offer feedback. I'm asking because I don't know if you've changed much since your last post about it and wondered if you'd want another opinion on your game. Thankfully, this phalla should've killed my reputation so I can be a normal person again?
You know, it just occured to me that someone PMed me a ruleset for a game they were thinking of running, and I think the PM was purged in a post-Phalla clean-up before I could respond. And I can't recall who it was. I feel bad, but if whoever it was would like to PM me again, I promise I'll actually comment on it.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
You know, it just occured to me that someone PMed me a ruleset for a game they were thinking of running, and I think the PM was purged in a post-Phalla clean-up before I could respond. And I can't recall who it was. I feel bad, but if whoever it was would like to PM me again, I promise I'll actually comment on it.
Might have been me.
It was more of a general concept than anything fleshed out.
If you want to resend it, I'll actually respond this time.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
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tuxkamenreally took this picture.Registered Userregular
Thus, the others all die before tuxkamen dies to the vote. Hence, tuxkamen survives, village victory.
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thorgotthere is special providencein the fall of a sparrowRegistered Userregular
edited April 2007
I've decided that in my game (40 people), everybody will have a minor power for which they will have to declare the target in the thread. That includes the bad guys, seer, etc.
Obviously, none of these minor powers will have effects obvious to everybody in the game.
Does anybody see any obvious flaws with this? It will provide some voting fodder the first day, for sure.
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SmasherStarting to get dizzyRegistered Userregular
edited April 2007
That's a really interesting idea. Specials still use their main powers via PM, right?
I've decided that in my game (40 people), everybody will have a minor power for which they will have to declare the target in the thread. That includes the bad guys, seer, etc.
Obviously, none of these minor powers will have effects obvious to everybody in the game.
Does anybody see any obvious flaws with this? It will provide some voting fodder the first day, for sure.
Um... how many people are going to help you run this game?
Let me see if I'm understanding this... everyone posts "I !target ElJeffe" (or whoever) without any explaination as to what they are actually doing (since everyone's minor power is secret), and then you resolve the effects behind the scenes?
I think you're saying that the bad guys and specials will also get minor powers, not that they post their targest for their primary powers in the thread, right?
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thorgotthere is special providencein the fall of a sparrowRegistered Userregular
That's a really interesting idea. Specials still use their main powers via PM, right?
Exactly.
The reason I was doing this at first was so I wouldn't have to receive 40+ PMs every day, but then I realized it would be a cool idea, despite my selfish intentions.
I've decided that in my game (40 people), everybody will have a minor power for which they will have to declare the target in the thread. That includes the bad guys, seer, etc.
Obviously, none of these minor powers will have effects obvious to everybody in the game.
Does anybody see any obvious flaws with this? It will provide some voting fodder the first day, for sure.
Um... how many people are going to help you run this game?
Let me see if I'm understanding this... everyone posts "I !target ElJeffe" (or whoever) without any explaination as to what they are actually doing (since everyone's minor power is secret), and then you resolve the effects behind the scenes?
Well, they're called minor for a reason. It's not like everybody is a vigilante or something.
I've decided that in my game (40 people), everybody will have a minor power for which they will have to declare the target in the thread. That includes the bad guys, seer, etc.
Obviously, none of these minor powers will have effects obvious to everybody in the game.
Does anybody see any obvious flaws with this? It will provide some voting fodder the first day, for sure.
Well, it does give folks a little more variability with how they spin their cases. If the bad guys target people already being targetted, they could probably get away with stating that they were using a seerish ability or something.
I was thinking about some different mechanics for the bad guys.
Some thoughts, I know I'm a bit scattered with my thoughts, so I do apologize.
Let's say you've got your 40 people and say 5 bad guys. You figure the maximum numbers of days this will play out is ten and the bad guys kill 2 per round. What if you were, instead of saying you guys get 2 kills per round, say that they get 2 kills per day that add up. They can kill 1 person day 1, 3 on day 2, or just wait until day 3 and kill 6 people at once. It throws some variability into play. Plus, if the villagers find a way to make their instant network, the bad guys can let them create a network and then go all out on day attempting to kill every single one of them. If you needed to balance this above, maybe tell them that at any tmie they decide to kill more than X people on a single day, one of them is revealed at random.
I think this may help reduce the effectiveness of the guardians since you can make sure you throw enough kills out there to try and get them as well. It creates a more chaotic balance and gives some more ability to control the game from a bad guy standpoint.
The reason I was doing this at first was so I wouldn't have to receive 40+ PMs every day, but then I realized it would be a cool idea, despite my selfish intentions.
Instead of receiving 40+ PMs per day, you have to pore through 20+ pages of thread per day and make sure that you catch every target, and any changes thereof.
It sounds like an awesome idea, but it sounds like something that you could very easily screw up due to information overload. And if there's one thing I've learned, it's that players can be very unforgiving of screw-ups.
In most cases. I still have no idea why I haven't taken more flack for the Newham game. I incorrectly relayed a vision to a seer, and I ended the game a day earlier than I should've, when the village still had a chance (albeit very small) of winning. And nobody says anything. Visiblehowl and ArrBeeBee fail to completely explain the nuance of a single rule, and they get, like, 10 pages of drama. Is it because I'm a mod and nobody wanted to piss me off, or something?
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I need some more experienced people's opinions on something. What do people think a 'more powerful' ability for a monster group would be:
1)Protected from 1 attack each night(2 or more still kills them)(Village execution isn't an attack)
2)Seers as an innocent
There is an opposing monster group with multiple kills, as well as a vigilante.
Option (1) makes them rather protected from monsters/vigs, but Option (2) virtually assures they won't be executed late game.
For my game I'm planning on have a small group of bad guys who seer as innocent, and are trying to get connected the main bad guy group. The main bad guy group seer as evil but get 2 kills a night and are bigger, where as the small bad guy group will only have a couple of guys and one kill a night.
Hopefully this, with limited guardians make it harder for a network to be made.
Lunch time! I'm going to start responding to some of your posts in the thread since I promised I would try to actually contribute in here.
Have you thought about not making seers finding loyalties anymore (monster/villager) but what role they have? For example, let's say you've got the good specials, vigilantes, seers and guardians. What if you had say 5 monsters, 2 normal monsters, one vigilante monster, one seer monster and one guardian monster, but everyone would only come up as a seer, guardian, vigilante or normal?
Other idea. What if to get what role the person is (monster/villager) you had to use another vision on them the next night? This would slow down the ability to create networks because even the normal people you find might be a normal monster with no special abilities?
The reason I was doing this at first was so I wouldn't have to receive 40+ PMs every day, but then I realized it would be a cool idea, despite my selfish intentions.
Instead of receiving 40+ PMs per day, you have to pore through 20+ pages of thread per day and make sure that you catch every target, and any changes thereof.
It sounds like an awesome idea, but it sounds like something that you could very easily screw up due to information overload. And if there's one thing I've learned, it's that players can be very unforgiving of screw-ups.
In most cases. I still have no idea why I haven't taken more flack for the Newham game. I incorrectly relayed a vision to a seer, and I ended the game a day earlier than I should've, when the village still had a chance (albeit very small) of winning. And nobody says anything. Visiblehowl and ArrBeeBee fail to completely explain the nuance of a single rule, and they get, like, 10 pages of drama. Is it because I'm a mod and nobody wanted to piss me off, or something?
I think it mostly depends on the players. I'll be honest, having fun in these games is first and foremost for me, I don't play with the intent to win. That's why I try to be helpful in these games regardless of my role because it allows me to try to strategize from either perspective available. That's why I asked people about givnig away names in Hades and trying to keep the masses informed in soviet phalla. It helps other people have some fun too.
I think bad timing and pure frustration forced the soviet phalla drama. After all, we all want to win or at least not lose too badly right?
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tuxkamenreally took this picture.Registered Userregular
In most cases. I still have no idea why I haven't taken more flack for the Newham game. I incorrectly relayed a vision to a seer, and I ended the game a day earlier than I should've, when the village still had a chance (albeit very small) of winning. And nobody says anything. Visiblehowl and ArrBeeBee fail to completely explain the nuance of a single rule, and they get, like, 10 pages of drama. Is it because I'm a mod and nobody wanted to piss me off, or something?
Yeah, it sounds obvious. Don't mess up. But it's not.
I'm not talking about vagueness of rules or clarifications necessary to focus the players in this case. I mean simply that you double- and triple-check every bit of information you send out (seering results, kill orders, guardianships) and ensure that your narration posts put precisely (and correctly) the information that the players need to move along.
We didn't find out about it until after the game was over, so what could we do?
Yeah, it would have changed the game somewhat because we were nailing cultists left and right, but then again we still wouldn't have had a network. I can't remember if our one vig would have been around to whack the first cultist we found.
I've decided that in my game (40 people), everybody will have a minor power for which they will have to declare the target in the thread. That includes the bad guys, seer, etc.
Obviously, none of these minor powers will have effects obvious to everybody in the game.
Does anybody see any obvious flaws with this? It will provide some voting fodder the first day, for sure.
Well, it does give folks a little more variability with how they spin their cases. If the bad guys target people already being targetted, they could probably get away with stating that they were using a seerish ability or something.
I was thinking about some different mechanics for the bad guys.
Some thoughts, I know I'm a bit scattered with my thoughts, so I do apologize.
Let's say you've got your 40 people and say 5 bad guys. You figure the maximum numbers of days this will play out is ten and the bad guys kill 2 per round. What if you were, instead of saying you guys get 2 kills per round, say that they get 2 kills per day that add up. They can kill 1 person day 1, 3 on day 2, or just wait until day 3 and kill 6 people at once. It throws some variability into play. Plus, if the villagers find a way to make their instant network, the bad guys can let them create a network and then go all out on day attempting to kill every single one of them. If you needed to balance this above, maybe tell them that at any tmie they decide to kill more than X people on a single day, one of them is revealed at random.
I think this may help reduce the effectiveness of the guardians since you can make sure you throw enough kills out there to try and get them as well. It creates a more chaotic balance and gives some more ability to control the game from a bad guy standpoint.
It's a nice idea, but I can see a lot of potential for abuse. While people don't like getting killed, it does help the village to an extent by reducing the number of suspicious people. So the best strategy for the monsters is to just sit back and kill no one, until they have enough kills stored up to instantly win. They'll have to let the seer live and build up a network, but that's a small price to pay.
I've decided that in my game (40 people), everybody will have a minor power for which they will have to declare the target in the thread. That includes the bad guys, seer, etc.
Obviously, none of these minor powers will have effects obvious to everybody in the game.
Does anybody see any obvious flaws with this? It will provide some voting fodder the first day, for sure.
Well, it does give folks a little more variability with how they spin their cases. If the bad guys target people already being targetted, they could probably get away with stating that they were using a seerish ability or something.
I was thinking about some different mechanics for the bad guys.
Some thoughts, I know I'm a bit scattered with my thoughts, so I do apologize.
Let's say you've got your 40 people and say 5 bad guys. You figure the maximum numbers of days this will play out is ten and the bad guys kill 2 per round. What if you were, instead of saying you guys get 2 kills per round, say that they get 2 kills per day that add up. They can kill 1 person day 1, 3 on day 2, or just wait until day 3 and kill 6 people at once. It throws some variability into play. Plus, if the villagers find a way to make their instant network, the bad guys can let them create a network and then go all out on day attempting to kill every single one of them. If you needed to balance this above, maybe tell them that at any tmie they decide to kill more than X people on a single day, one of them is revealed at random.
I think this may help reduce the effectiveness of the guardians since you can make sure you throw enough kills out there to try and get them as well. It creates a more chaotic balance and gives some more ability to control the game from a bad guy standpoint.
It's a nice idea, but I can see a lot of potential for abuse. While people don't like getting killed, it does help the village to an extent by reducing the number of suspicious people. So the best strategy for the monsters is to just sit back and kill no one, until they have enough kills stored up to instantly win. They'll have to let the seer live and build up a network, but that's a small price to pay.
This is true, but perhaps you also tell the players that the game ends after the usual conditions are met OR if the the game finishes day 10. So technically, on Day 10, there's 9 people out from staking (assuming no vigilante kills) and the monsters kill all 20 people that night. However, that means there are 10 people left. If the villagers hit even 1 monster the whole game (12.5% chance per night) then this wouldn't work, provided the game ends after day 10.
However, it's also a huge risk to the monsters. Say they decide to do just that, but on night 5 they lose a monster. Now they have to make a decision as to how to use their kills. It's possible that they might not be able to use all their allotted kills at this point without revealing someone in their network? It's a gamble, but might also gives them some more ability to plan ahead and use strategy to win the game.
It's a nice idea, but I can see a lot of potential for abuse. While people don't like getting killed, it does help the village to an extent by reducing the number of suspicious people. So the best strategy for the monsters is to just sit back and kill no one, until they have enough kills stored up to instantly win. They'll have to let the seer live and build up a network, but that's a small price to pay.
This could easily be countered by placing a cap on the number of kills that can be stockpiled. Say, you can't have more than 6 kills in your reserve at once. If you already have 6, any additional kills you would accrue are lost. This could create a situation in which you just wind up with 6 kills every 3rd day and none in between, but I'm not convinced this is game-breaking.
ElJeffe on
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It's a nice idea, but I can see a lot of potential for abuse. While people don't like getting killed, it does help the village to an extent by reducing the number of suspicious people. So the best strategy for the monsters is to just sit back and kill no one, until they have enough kills stored up to instantly win. They'll have to let the seer live and build up a network, but that's a small price to pay.
This could easily be countered by placing a cap on the number of kills that can be stockpiled. Say, you can't have more than 6 kills in your reserve at once. If you already have 6, any additional kills you would accrue are lost. This could create a situation in which you just wind up with 6 kills every 3rd day and none in between, but I'm not convinced this is game-breaking.
A maximum is a good idea. I'd recommend 2X, where X is the number of monsters still alive. They can still have some good massacres in the early game, but once it gets down a handful of people, the last monsters can't just save up for a few days and then kill everyone.
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thorgotthere is special providencein the fall of a sparrowRegistered Userregular
edited April 2007
The problem is that the monsters would just wait as long as they could, and then kill off the most active people, stopping most discussion.
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For my game I'm planning on have a small group of bad guys who seer as innocent, and are trying to get connected the main bad guy group. The main bad guy group seer as evil but get 2 kills a night and are bigger, where as the small bad guy group will only have a couple of guys and one kill a night.
Hopefully this, with limited guardians make it harder for a network to be made.
3DS: 2852-6809-9411
Games: Ad Astra Per Phalla | Choose Your Own Phalla
So...what's the point of having a seer?
Being protected from an attack each night is only really useful in the early game, when guardian(s) haven't had a chance to hook up with anyone else. If a vigilante targets a monster and he doesn't die, the guardian(s) will know that the guy's a monster, and try to get him whacked the next day through the vote.
Both are good abilities, but which one is stronger depends on the game. In a game with a lot of vigilantes, abilities that make someone look innocent are less powerful because all it takes is one person who thinks you're worth killing, and you're toast. Similarly, self-guarding can be less powerful in certain situations.
Multiple monster groups. The one that seered as innocent would be far smaller than the other.
1) Can make themselves seer as innocent.
2) Can make someone else seer as guilty.
3) Can alter the narration to make an innocent person show up as guilty or vice versa.
Obviously, they'll probably only get one or two uses of each of these powers, but the inclusion means that players can never completely trust anyone.
I like this one alot, it really ups the paranoia. It was like this in 'The Red Scare'... the CIA and FBI both had moles.
It's a pity Lady Eri tried to pull the same tactic because the rules really punished this way of playing.
Let me know if I've said too much about an open phalla and i'll edit it out. (Though I don't think I've said anything that isn't known by everyone anyway).
That's one thing most of us agree on, we need to kill instant networks like we've seen in past games. Those networks skyrocket the chances the innocents have for winning. Really though, minus the staf part of ElJeffe's phallia, it would've been pretty neat because the networks were for the most part, limited i nsmaller numbers against the larger informed spies.
I like the game modifications for the current phalla to be honest, not only did it allow us to use up our quota of soviet jokes, but it's keeping those instant win networks from forming.
Now heres an open question to everyone. Which do you prefer, as players, more:
1)Completely transparent rules and open suspicion or
2)Opaque rules and paranoia of the unknown
It depends on the rules. If there are secrets the players need to find out, revealing them right away would ruin the fun. But if your rules work better if everybody knows them, you shouldn't hide anything just to hide it.
I'll be honest, I don't mind having all the rules given because it allos us to better plan for what's out there, but I think I enjoyed the red scare phalla immensely because no role information was given out. They said how many bad guys there were and that was it. I would prefer not knowing all the rules/roles. The mechanics would be something we'd have to figure out per our roles as well.
*Person who steals pens- Someone you can't trust. Say, someone you think might be a bad guy.
*Person who returns a lost wallet- Someone you CAN trust. Say, someone you think might be a good guy.
*Person who likes throwing surprise parties- Someone overly curious (the person who wound up eliminated). Is it good, is it bad, I MUST HAVE WHATEVER THIS SURPRISE IS.
I did not envision the network merrily forcing everyone into lock-step. The resolution, though, I think I biffed- 50/50 odds of being a mole was too high, I realize that now. I think had I placed the odds at 20% or so, it might have turned out better as they'd have about the same odds as everyone else.
That said, when setting the game up, I originally wasn't going to do what I did- reassign roles based on what wound up being a coin flip. I was originally going to scramble the roles of the three- and since all three were regular good guys, that's how they all would have stayed in that scenario.
Oh, since I'm here, I'm obviously back-of-the-line on hosting duties, so I'm probably not getting the helm again for a long time. Doesn't stop me from giving suggestions for game mechanics and fishing for comments:
*Decimator- Bad guy that can, at any time, knock out any three good guys. However, using this power will cause the Decimator to be eliminated themselves.
*Interrogator- Good guy seer. Whoever the Interrogator checks out is removed from all action for the rest of the round. Their vote will not count, they can't post again in that round, but they are also immune from elimination.
*Vengeance- The player with the most votes is eliminated. Obviously. The player with the SECOND-most votes (or whoever has the most that survives the day) acquires Vengeance for the next day- the ability to cast one extra vote, separate from their normal vote. That extra vote may only be used against someone that voted for them the previous day. If there is a tie at the relevant level, all tied players get Vengeance.
*Boss- Bad guy, responsible for PM'ing all bad guy kills. If he cannot for some reason, he must delegate the task to another bad guy, who will then be in charge of it for that night. If the Boss dies, the bad guys are thrown into leaderless chaos for one day, rendering them unable to kill a good guy that day. Example:
Day 1- Boss killed. Good guy killed as normal.
Day 2- Bad guys are in chaos, no good guy killed.
*Oddsmaker- Good guy, variant on the seer. The Oddsmaker can check out one player, and they are given odds on how likely that person is to be a bad guy. The odds are random, with this caveat: Each vote cast against a player over the course of the game will make the odds progressively more accurate. (I'm using 2% here, but the number can be adjusted depending on the size of the game.)
Example:
-Good guys start with an odds set of 0%-100%. Every vote cast against the good guy will remove the highest 2% from the odds set- so if 10 votes have been cast against that person, the player's odds set is now 0-80%.
-Bad guy odds sets are the same at the start, 0-100%, but every vote cast against them removes 2% from the low end, so 10 votes against them make for a 20-100% set.
Therefore, 50 votes against a player over the course of the game will render either a 0 or 100, but 25 will assure you a high or low number and anyone paying enough attention will be able to draw the right conclusions. The power is completely useless on Day 1 as there are no votes cast, but as the game progresses and each remaining player accumulates votes, the Oddsmaker's ability becomes stronger and stronger.
This needs some adjustment, since the way you've got it now the Oddsmaker is as good as the seer against anyone who has even one vote; good guys would always be 0-98% and bad guys 2-100%.
I'm pretty sure that a number will be randomly given between those two numbers. As in, if one vote was cast for an innocent, the oddsmaker would receive a PM with a number between 0 and 98 as them as a monster. I think.
*Day 1. No votes cast against anyone yet. You're a good guy. I check your odds, I get a random number from 0 to 100. For example, I look at you and I'm given the number 45.
*Day 2. You get one throwaway vote cast against you. I check you again. This time I'm given a random number between 0 and 98. I check you and get back 84.
*Day 3. You barely escaped elimination, picking up 12 votes. That's 13 votes total, so when I look at you for the THIRD time (because I am horrible at this game), now I'm given a random number between 0 and 74. I check you and get back 31.
And so on. Of course, if on Day 3 I get back a number from 0-25, and I've been paying attention, I know you're a good guy because those numbers would have been the ones taken out of play if you were a bad guy.
Ahhh, that makes much more sense. So it's basically a seer who's only good for checking out failed bandwagons.
Two things if people are interested in opinions or help.
-I'd be willing to help someone run a game if they'd like some help. I'm kind of interested to see how the game works out when you nkow everyone's roles and such, I think it'd be kinda fun.
-I know many folks have put forth their ideas in this thread about games they'd like to run, I apologize about not really commenting much on them specifically and wondered if any one of you would like me to take a look at what you posted in here to offer feedback. I'm asking because I don't know if you've changed much since your last post about it and wondered if you'd want another opinion on your game. Thankfully, this phalla should've killed my reputation so I can be a normal person again?
It was more of a general concept than anything fleshed out.
Games: Ad Astra Per Phalla | Choose Your Own Phalla
Obviously, none of these minor powers will have effects obvious to everybody in the game.
Does anybody see any obvious flaws with this? It will provide some voting fodder the first day, for sure.
Um... how many people are going to help you run this game?
Let me see if I'm understanding this... everyone posts "I !target ElJeffe" (or whoever) without any explaination as to what they are actually doing (since everyone's minor power is secret), and then you resolve the effects behind the scenes?
I think you're saying that the bad guys and specials will also get minor powers, not that they post their targest for their primary powers in the thread, right?
Exactly.
The reason I was doing this at first was so I wouldn't have to receive 40+ PMs every day, but then I realized it would be a cool idea, despite my selfish intentions.
Well, they're called minor for a reason. It's not like everybody is a vigilante or something.
Well, it does give folks a little more variability with how they spin their cases. If the bad guys target people already being targetted, they could probably get away with stating that they were using a seerish ability or something.
I was thinking about some different mechanics for the bad guys.
Some thoughts, I know I'm a bit scattered with my thoughts, so I do apologize.
Let's say you've got your 40 people and say 5 bad guys. You figure the maximum numbers of days this will play out is ten and the bad guys kill 2 per round. What if you were, instead of saying you guys get 2 kills per round, say that they get 2 kills per day that add up. They can kill 1 person day 1, 3 on day 2, or just wait until day 3 and kill 6 people at once. It throws some variability into play. Plus, if the villagers find a way to make their instant network, the bad guys can let them create a network and then go all out on day attempting to kill every single one of them. If you needed to balance this above, maybe tell them that at any tmie they decide to kill more than X people on a single day, one of them is revealed at random.
I think this may help reduce the effectiveness of the guardians since you can make sure you throw enough kills out there to try and get them as well. It creates a more chaotic balance and gives some more ability to control the game from a bad guy standpoint.
Instead of receiving 40+ PMs per day, you have to pore through 20+ pages of thread per day and make sure that you catch every target, and any changes thereof.
It sounds like an awesome idea, but it sounds like something that you could very easily screw up due to information overload. And if there's one thing I've learned, it's that players can be very unforgiving of screw-ups.
In most cases. I still have no idea why I haven't taken more flack for the Newham game. I incorrectly relayed a vision to a seer, and I ended the game a day earlier than I should've, when the village still had a chance (albeit very small) of winning. And nobody says anything. Visiblehowl and ArrBeeBee fail to completely explain the nuance of a single rule, and they get, like, 10 pages of drama. Is it because I'm a mod and nobody wanted to piss me off, or something?
Lunch time! I'm going to start responding to some of your posts in the thread since I promised I would try to actually contribute in here.
Have you thought about not making seers finding loyalties anymore (monster/villager) but what role they have? For example, let's say you've got the good specials, vigilantes, seers and guardians. What if you had say 5 monsters, 2 normal monsters, one vigilante monster, one seer monster and one guardian monster, but everyone would only come up as a seer, guardian, vigilante or normal?
Other idea. What if to get what role the person is (monster/villager) you had to use another vision on them the next night? This would slow down the ability to create networks because even the normal people you find might be a normal monster with no special abilities?
I think it mostly depends on the players. I'll be honest, having fun in these games is first and foremost for me, I don't play with the intent to win. That's why I try to be helpful in these games regardless of my role because it allows me to try to strategize from either perspective available. That's why I asked people about givnig away names in Hades and trying to keep the masses informed in soviet phalla. It helps other people have some fun too.
I think bad timing and pure frustration forced the soviet phalla drama. After all, we all want to win or at least not lose too badly right?
We didn't find out about it until after the game was over, so what could we do?
Yeah, it would have changed the game somewhat because we were nailing cultists left and right, but then again we still wouldn't have had a network. I can't remember if our one vig would have been around to whack the first cultist we found.
Games: Ad Astra Per Phalla | Choose Your Own Phalla
Man, I am so tempted to actually use my placeholder Phalla scenario.
It's a nice idea, but I can see a lot of potential for abuse. While people don't like getting killed, it does help the village to an extent by reducing the number of suspicious people. So the best strategy for the monsters is to just sit back and kill no one, until they have enough kills stored up to instantly win. They'll have to let the seer live and build up a network, but that's a small price to pay.
This is true, but perhaps you also tell the players that the game ends after the usual conditions are met OR if the the game finishes day 10. So technically, on Day 10, there's 9 people out from staking (assuming no vigilante kills) and the monsters kill all 20 people that night. However, that means there are 10 people left. If the villagers hit even 1 monster the whole game (12.5% chance per night) then this wouldn't work, provided the game ends after day 10.
However, it's also a huge risk to the monsters. Say they decide to do just that, but on night 5 they lose a monster. Now they have to make a decision as to how to use their kills. It's possible that they might not be able to use all their allotted kills at this point without revealing someone in their network? It's a gamble, but might also gives them some more ability to plan ahead and use strategy to win the game.
This could easily be countered by placing a cap on the number of kills that can be stockpiled. Say, you can't have more than 6 kills in your reserve at once. If you already have 6, any additional kills you would accrue are lost. This could create a situation in which you just wind up with 6 kills every 3rd day and none in between, but I'm not convinced this is game-breaking.
A maximum is a good idea. I'd recommend 2X, where X is the number of monsters still alive. They can still have some good massacres in the early game, but once it gets down a handful of people, the last monsters can't just save up for a few days and then kill everyone.