As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Assassins Ball at PAX East 2013! Feedback Requested!
MarsChelios
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
You walk into a massive space filled with people; bright lights and loud sounds grab your attention. Your eyes narrow as you scan the crowd searching for your prey. Suddenly a chilling sensation sweeps up your spine, you are being watched. You duck around a corner sneaking a quick glance over your shoulder and see... nothing. But you can’t shake the feeling that someone is hunting you.
Welcome to Assassins Ball, a social game played during PAX East 2013 in Boston, MA, March 22 - 24.
For anyone wondering, this has been given specific clearance versus the kickstarter ban on the forums from the Administrator. However, any questions related to the kickstarter itself would be best left to PM or on the kickstarter page. Please do not use this thread to discuss the kickstarter (other than if you want to post that you're participating in Assassins). You will also notice that @MarsChelios has been careful to not link to it directly, this is by design.
What is Assassins Ball?
In Assassins Ball you are an assassin allied to a powerful faction surrounded by rival assassins. Your mission is to find specific targets in the crowd and assassinate them. The more precisely you accomplish your mission the more prestige you gain.
Your Kit and How to Play
Players can be identified by the large 3” button they wear. Each button is printed with a brightly colored shape on it that acts as an identifier for that player, a sticker below the symbol shows the emblem of your faction (You'll pick this in your backer survey). An example of the player button is shown below.
The button has both a standard pin-back and a clothing magnet to ensure that it stays on (Note: The example above does not show the clothing magnet). If you require a button without a clothing magnet please let me know. I'll be providing directions on where to wear the button so that players can identify each other easily.
Stay on Target!
Your kit includes a mission that list a large symbol for a primary target, three smaller symbols for secondary targets, and one of five factions. An example of the mission card is shown below.
In addition to your mission, your kit also includes an assassination card and an intel card. Assassination cards are part of how kills are registered, you will receive one from every player you eliminate and will hand yours to the player who kills you.
Gathering Intel
Intel cards are a way to gain prestige even if you're eliminated! Each intel card gives a small amount of prestige to a player when registered. Use it, trade with another player, repeat.
Assassinating Players
When you find a player whose symbol matches your mission walk up, say “Hi”, and kill them. Just kidding, assassinating a player is primarily a verbal exchange. Players are encouraged to be creative but not to use prop weapons, do things that could be considered threatening, and above all don’t ruin someones fun.
Please note that assassinations are not physical! Please do not use weapons or props.
Each kill can be registered online; primary targets are worth 250 points and secondary targets are worth 100. Matching the faction is optional but acts as a multiplier to the kill doubling a primary kill to 500 points and a secondary kill to 200 points.
Factions
Factions are powerful organizations or groups who employ assassins to further their goals. Each faction has a specific theme and you will be able to ally yourself with one of them.
The factions and their emblems are listed below, but to find out more go to the factions page on the games website.
Community Rules
Over the years the community has created some awesome optional rules for the game that adds to the flavor of assassins. Check them out and suggest your own!
What's next?
Don't see something covered here or uncertain about something? Got a suggestion or constructive criticism? Think this is awesome? Let me know below! I'm very excited about this years game and I hope you are too!
Help get the word out!
Assassins Ball grows primarily through word of mouth. With the all or nothing nature of Kickstarter I need your help more than ever to make sure Assassins Ball is at PAX East! Help me get the word out or let me know any suggestions you have on reaching people!
Here's some ways I'm connecting with people:
MarsChelios on
0
Posts
Questions:
* What constitutes a verbal tag? Are we yelling across a room, or tapping a shoulder and saying "tag"?
* What prevents or discourages an assassin from killing every other player he encounters? Is it a choice between kill everyone immediately for 1 point each, or gamble and see if he's worth 10 points later? Is the last player standing the victor, or is victory strictly points based?
* If the mark is highly visible, and there are no weapons to dodge, how do we (legally) avoid being tagged? Do we run away (and what if the assassin is shouting "bang bang")? Are we just trying to spot other assassins and avoid them (or kill them first)?
- I took verbal tag to mean being in arms reach and telling the person they were dead. My kill consisted of me almost apologetically walking up to the person and informing them that they were dead (I felt bad because it was like 9:30am on Friday, so she had all of an hour of play.. but, no room for a conscience in this game, right! {I still feel bad}). I would ignore someone who was yelling a kill from across a room (and, in fact, would probably start to run away).
- You can only kill assassins that match your target in some way. Either color or shape, I think. You get more points for matching both (and faction), but you can't just kill someone who doesn't match at all - this would be called out when confirming the kill to the person's death card. There is some strategy to deciding whether to kill someone who just matches the color, or waiting for a stronger match, but truthfully, based on my experience last year (I saw a total of 3 people with armbands the entire weekend), I'd say if you find a partial match, go for the kill. Victory is points based.
- If you spot someone playing who's making a bee-line for you, you can try to escape. When I was with friends, they knew that if I pointed someone out, they were to try and distract them if possible (not physically restrain them, but perhaps slow them down by asking them a question or something). Generally, there's so much going on at PAX, I'd be surprised if you were to see the person before they got to you.
Hope that helps, anyone else with more experience, feel free to chime in.
Like some people have guessed cost was a big factor in moving to buttons, the armband badge holders alone cost around 2.65 per unit, which was a huge portion of the kits price. Individually the kit price was pretty low but I had to shell out each time to buy about 150 of them which was pricey. The original idea was that players would reuse the badge holder and just buy new badges but that never seemed to really work out in practice and I began to realize it was a bit of a waste both in resources and environmentally to use them like that.
The other factor was that my card printer decided to give up shortly after Prime last year, so printing the custom cards and missions was no longer an option. I looked into having those cards printed up but really wanted to find a better and cheaper solution, which turned out to be buttons!
Buttons are definitely cheaper, the price for a single kit will be $5 and this includes shipping. Almost all of the kit is now being professionally printed and I plan to use that to make things pop! Since I no longer have to print things out myself I'll have more time for other things like making the site better, adding more to the game, and fostering rivalries between factions.
Great questions N13!
There's no specific way to assassinate someone, but preferably you should be within a reasonable talking distance to them as you will need to get their assassination and current mission cards from them. The basic idea is that you communicate to them you have targeted them and show them your current mission card as proof they've been assassinated. How that is done is up to you. Feel free to let your creativity shine here but be mindful of others around you and don't disrupt someone if they are doing something.
There are some things that are not allowed:
Every player will have a symbol, which specifies that players shape and color trait, and a faction trait on their button. In the upcoming game there will 24 unique symbols made up of 6 shapes and 4 colors. Your mission will identify a specific combination of shape, color traits to look for. This is your primary target and finding a player who matches that (1 out of 24 players) will net you 250 prestige points.
In addition your mission will identify other sets of shape and color traits to find. These your secondary targets, fallback options in case you are not able to find your primary target. Because of the less important nature of these targets finding a player who matches one of these will net you 100 prestige points.
You may have noticed I haven't mentioned faction traits yet as part of primary or secondary targets. Because factions are player selected there is no way to insure that a mission will accurately list an available faction trait at a given time, so requiring the faction to match greatly lowers the odds of finding a target. Instead the faction trait is always optional but matching it with primary or secondary targets doubles the prestige points earned, so for primary kills you receive 500 prestige points and for secondary kills you receive 200 prestige points.
To answer your question you will not be able to assassinate every player you see, and of the targets you do find there will be a choice between taking out secondary targets or waiting to see if you can find your primary target. The winner is the person with the most prestige points at the end of the game, and while unlikely if one person were to emerge as the victor they would probably have the most points.
vttym sums this up rather nicely. (Thanks!) I'm open to starting a dialogue about ways to make a dodge or avoidance mechanic as well as any other way to improve the game. Feel free to brainstorm ideas here.
I know PAX is busy. I'm trying to understand how this game balances avoidance/self-preservation with active target seeking. Along those same lines, are there any "safe zones"? Am I going to be constantly distracted from gaming by having to look over my shoulder? How do I enjoy and immerse myself in the game without missing out on PAX, itself?
This is for the 2012 Ball, so some stuff probably will change (I already see scoring is slightly different)
However, you can only register a kill and complete a mission once for points however. Trying to complete the same mission again will result in an error. As far as I know the only time anyone has done something like this is by accident and I've never had any reports of outright cheating come to my attention.
This is a great question but not one that I can really answer. Every person plays the game a little differently and it's up to you to determine the amount of time you want to devote to the game. That being said I never intended this game to overtake the activities occurring during PAX, just to be something that adds a little more awesome to the experience.
Returning players, how did you handle playing the game and staying on top of PAX activities?
Yes there are! We will have a list of official safe zones in the rules, but here's a quick rundown:
Also, I remember from the Prime thread there was some confusion about what counted as a legal target. I'd want to know the rules for sure to make sure there's no dispute this time around
Did these safe zones exist last year? I was assassinated while in line for a panel. I'm not complaining, I'm just curious.
Mainly because it was me that assassinated you :O
Uh oh. I would watch my back, vttym.
Steam, PSN, XBL, Xfire and everything else JamesDM
Just to clarify, the choice is between a button with both pin and magnet, or a button with only a magnet?
- Does this require mobile Internet?
- Is there any downside to registering the kills at the end of the day?
- Is there a mechanic to allow two friends to play together? If not, is there any rule against truces?
Oops! That should be "If you require a button without a clothing magnet please let me know". I've updated the OP to reflect that. Love the Moonrise Kingdom avatar, btw.The only thing required to play is a kit. There is a scoring system and a leaderboard but it's not required that you register your kit or kills.
The game is designed so that you can enter your kills as you make them, at then end of the day, or the after PAX is over. The kill registration page will be shutdown at some point though and I will announce when so make sure you get them registered before that happens.
There's nothing preventing you and a friend working together or having truces. There's also nothing preventing them from stabbing you in the back when you're not looking either!
I choose to attend Pax, sorry.
Relevant info: #PAX East: 3 Coin Lunch organizer. 2012 Trading card available. Pokecrawl Assistant 2012. Pokecrawl attendee 2011. Cult of the Leaf attendee 2012.
Sorry to hear that you're not liking the new system. I would like to hear on the possible issues people see with buttons so please feel free to elaborate more here or through PM. Thanks!
I also like the idea of buttons. Wearing an armband all weekend doesn't sound too appealing to me, so I'd rather just slap a button on my shirt or scarf.
Question- I have a death code from PAX 2012 that hasn't been registered. Do these expire or can I redeem it for an easy point :P.
(also i hope shipping is going to be much more solid this year!)
PAX East 2018 4-Day Pass [X] BYOC Pass [X] Hotel Reservation [X]
See y'all at PAX East 2018!
Unfortunately that card won't work in this game but if you bring it to the show I'll give you a faction button!
The comments on being able to find players make some good points. I'm going to be putting together some more detailed instructions on how and where the badge should be worn for easy identification. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts!
Ahhhhh! Hai!
I was thinking, "I love PAX! Easy random conversations with strang--nope, he just wants to kill me."
Speaking of safe zones, what about hotels, the T, restaurants or anywhere else outside the BCEC?
You guys said it yourselves, we all spend a lot of time in lines at pax. If we cant play the game while in line, when can we play it? The fact is that pax is a lot of things crammed into one weekend, and i think we all know by now that, even if pax fell on groundhog day, we would never be able to do everything.
Tabletop isnt a safe zone because it is a free access area. All the other safe zones, BYOC, PC freeplay, panels, and concerts all have restrictions on who can get in at what time. As for outside of pax, this is assassins ball at pax east, so i would say the game does not exist outside of pax east.
One other point I would like others to keep in mind is that the game doesnt end after a player has been assassinated. You can still get points for gathering intel. Case in point, I would have gotten first place once through intel alone if I had not been too busy to register it until a week after pax.