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[Phalla] Haggle Phalla - Game cancelled.

MrBlarneyMrBlarney Registered User regular
edited January 2019 in Critical Failures
Haggle Phalla
Set Phalla Vol. 5

Haggle Phalla is an abstract strategic mini-Phalla game focused around the social trading party game Haggle. As with all other Set Phalla games, that's about all there is to say.

Genre: Multi-Dimensional Factional, Trading Mechanics, Unknown Rules


Player Roles

Each player is assigned their role with a card, each of which has a picture containing a set of three features:

- Number (one, two, or three)
- Color (red, blue, or green)
- Shape (triangle, square, or circle)

Each card is unique, and all possible combinations are represented; therefore, there will be twenty-seven cards and a twenty-seven player limit:
1rt.gif1rs.gif1rc.gif1bt.gif1bs.gif1bc.gif1gt.gif1gs.gif1gc.gif
2rt.gif2rs.gif2rc.gif2bt.gif2bs.gif2bc.gif2gt.gif2gs.gif2gc.gif
3rt.gif3rs.gif3rc.gif3bt.gif3bs.gif3bc.gif3gt.gif3gs.gif3gc.gif


Haggle Cards

Each player also starts the game with a hand of six Haggle cards, which include one rule card and five standard cards. Each of the standard cards have two features:

- Number (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
- Color (red, blue, green, yellow, orange, purple)

Each of the rule cards specifies an ability or a scoring mechanic. At the end of the game, every player's hand will be scored based on all of the rule cards in the game, regardless of where they are.


Card Trading

The core of the game is based around the ability to trade cards between players in order to change their hands' values. Each game day, each player may submit private orders to give cards to other players. Up to three cards may be specified each day, and each card may be given to a different other player if desired. Rule cards and standard cards can both be traded. There is no upper limit to the number of cards that can be in hand.

By default, all card transfers will be accepted by the receiving player. However, players may also include with their daily orders a list of players for whom they will refuse to accept cards. Up to three players may be blocked each day.


Daily Vote and Elimination

Each game day, all players also get a public vote on who to eliminate from the game directly, indicating that player's name in bold red, using the phrase "!vote for <player name>" or similar. Votes may be retracted by posting "!retract vote for <player name>" or other similar phrase in bold limegreen, or by changing the vote to a new target in bold red. Do not, under any circumstance, edit a post that has a vote. If an edit is necessary, make a new post instead. At the end of each game day, the player receiving the most votes will be eliminated; in the case of a tie between two or more players, the player who reached the tied value first will be eliminated.

Voting will normally close each day at 9PM PST / 12AM EST / 5AM UTC; any actions before the hour (x:59) will count, any actions on the hour and later (x:00) will not. However, if a player votes within five minutes of the vote close, the close time will extend to five minutes after that player votes. All votes and actions will count up to the new, revised close time. Each player may make only one vote and one action after the normal vote close: any further revisions will not count. The close time can be extended multiple times if different players make revisions during the bonus period.

Example: If I vote at x:58, then the vote close will be extended such that actions made at x:03 of the next hour or earlier will count; actions made at x:04 or later will not. If someone makes a vote before x:03, the vote close will be extended to five minutes after their vote; I can make only one change in vote and action during the whole extended period.

Eliminated players will have their hand compositions locked for the remainder of the game. These players will also be unable to post, vote, or participate in any game discussions. However, the eliminated player's hand will still count towards the victory conditions at the end of the game. Player elimination always happens last in each day's resolution, which means that if there are card transfers involving that player, they will be carried out before the player's state is locked.


Daily Information

At the start of each day, the players who were eliminated in the previous day's actions will be revealed. Unlike previous Set Phalla games, the role aspects for eliminated players will not be revealed. Instead, the role aspects with the highest total points in each role dimension (number, color, shape) across all eliminated players will be revealed.

In addition, each player will receive a summary of the cards that were added and removed from their hands, as well as the net hand composition. No information will be provided in the summary as to which players received or contributed the cards exchanged.


Win Conditions

After six game days, each player's hand will have their final score tabulated. Nine faction scores will be computed, one for each role aspect (three each for the different possible numbers, colors, and shapes). The winning team will be the faction that has the highest average score across the players that share each aspect. Note that victory is assessed across all players, regardless of if they were eliminated or not at the end of the game.


Signing Up

Sign up with the phrase "I !sign up" or similar in bold limegreen or other bright, easily visible color to ensure that your intent to play is acknowledged. This game has a maximum player limit of 27.


Inactivity

It is expected that players vote in the thread and privately submit their action choices each day to be considered sufficiently active. Action choices must be sent, even if no transfers or blocking orders are desired. A warning will be sent on the first day that this requirement is not met, and a replacement will be made on the second consecutive day of inactivity or third day of inactivity overall. If there are no replacements available, then the player will be eliminated from the game.


Clarifications

Any questions about the general game rules may be made by highlighting the question in bold darkorange text. Answers will be posted in the thread and collected below. Player-specific inquiries that are not addressed in the general rules may be asked via PM. Please note that there may be mechanics or details which will not be answered and kept hidden until the end of the game.


Other Rules

Standard Phalla rules apply: no sharing of host-provided PMs via screenshots and direct quotation. However, information may be shared indirectly, such as through rephrasing. No anonymous contact is allowed. All messages must be traceable to a player in the game.


Player List
  1. kime
  2. Bluecyan
  3. Bedlam
  4. JaysonFour
  5. 38thDoe
  6. MamaWolf
  7. premium
  8. Wildcat




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MrBlarney on

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    kimekime Queen of Blades Registered User regular
    Blarney Phalla!!

    Battle.net ID: kime#1822
    3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
    Steam profile
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    BluecyanBluecyan Buzz.. Buzz Buzz? BUZZ! Buzz buzz BuzzRegistered User regular
    Ha! Fool, you have just activated my trap card. I play I !signup which summons a bluecyan eyed white dragon into the game.

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    BedlamBedlam Registered User regular
    Im going to make up my own game so you dont know
    which turn of the phase and we're in and when to go
    how to lay down cards and when its time up
    Ima have creatures like enchanted signup

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    JaysonFourJaysonFour Classy Monster Kitteh Registered User regular
    I'll tap three forests and a plains and cast !Signup, targeting your phalla, allowing me to take part in target phalla.

    steam_sig.png
    I can has cheezburger, yes?
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    BedlamBedlam Registered User regular
    I'll tap three forests and a plains and cast !Signup, targeting your phalla, allowing me to take part in target phalla.
    I cast shahrazad. You have to play an entire other game of phalla to sign up for this phalla :twisted:

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    MrBlarneyMrBlarney Registered User regular
    Two days in and four signups. Maybe still a slow season, maybe an abstract and high interaction game just doesn't appeal to folks. I was planning on leaving signups open through the weekend in any case, but we'll see how things continue to roll out. I might just stick to running other, non-Phalla game threads for the time being if this type of game isn't what people want right now.

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    AustinP0027AustinP0027 Registered User regular
    I would normally be signing up, but I'm about to leave mid-week on a week long vacation that will leave me without internet.

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    BedlamBedlam Registered User regular
    I saw it :|

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    LucedesLucedes might be real Registered User regular
    the goal is to make MrBlarney cry by extending vote close indefinitely, right?

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    MamaWolfMamaWolf The wolf pack guides all to safetyRegistered User regular
    I know not much of this game, but have been itching for Phalla. Thanks for the shout out @38thDoe

    "May the moon watch over you and keep you safe through the night, 'till the morning comes and MamaWolf can protect you through the day"
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    premiumpremium Registered User regular
    sign up

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    WildcatWildcat Registered User regular
    To be honest the mechanics were a bit daunting, but !sign me up please.

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    chamberlainchamberlain Registered User regular
    I appreciate the invite and would love to do this but my internet time is severely limit as of late.

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    MrBlarneyMrBlarney Registered User regular
    Thanks to 38thDoe's influence, it looks like we've doubled the player signup count. Still quite a ways before things are in a reasonable state for playability. I'll keep things open for another two days and see what happens once we hit one week of signups to figure out what to do next.

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    Romantic UndeadRomantic Undead Registered User regular
    Thanks for the shoutout @38thDoe !

    @MrBlarney , you're a treasure and I love your games! I still think back fondly on the battle royale games to this day! I have to be honest with you though, the main appeal of Phalla for me lies in the opportunity to goof around with everyone within a given theme. I feel daunted by mechanics heavy games as I feel I can't give them the amount of attention they deserve. I know how hard you work on these, and I really appreciate it, but I don't feel like I can do this particular game justice right now.

    3DS FC: 1547-5210-6531
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    MrBlarneyMrBlarney Registered User regular
    @Romantic Undead: Haha, no problem. Time is valuable, so you gotta pick your spots carefully to make the most of what you think will be worth it. But yeah, this abstract quickie is more for me to relearn how to do hosting, and less about scenario and story like how most games are.

    Though I am intrigued by folks feeling like the mechanics of the game look heavy or daunting. The base mechanics of just trading and collecting cards isn't that complex. I suppose it's the potential of the Haggle rule cards that's doing it, since there hasn't been any insight into what they entail.

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    BedlamBedlam Registered User regular
    Im definitely interested if there is a resource for running a haggle game IRL. This is the first time ive heard of it, and I think it might be a cool activity for meetups.

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    Sir FabulousSir Fabulous Malevolent Squid God Registered User regular
    Well well well who'da thunk that a new Phalla game would get up and running these days?

    pickup-sig.php?name=Orthanc

    Switch Friend Code: SW-1406-1275-7906
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    MrBlarneyMrBlarney Registered User regular
    Bedlam wrote: Β»
    Im definitely interested if there is a resource for running a haggle game IRL. This is the first time ive heard of it, and I think it might be a cool activity for meetups.
    I don't know if there's a central resource for this kind of thing, as Haggle is pretty niche. The BoardGameGeek entry for the game is as small as you'd expect, though it does have a few scattered insights. One of the images comes from the 2010 MIT Mystery Hunt where I heard about the game. More information about that event can be found here.

    Since the game is pretty niche, you'd probably need to just craft your own solutions to running the game. There's all the freedom in the world for creating rulesets and card attributes surrounding them. You could probably just create cards in a spreadsheet program or a simple graphics program like Inkscape or GIMP, then print them out on cardstock at a print shop (unless you have a sturdy printer and your own cardstock that you know won't jam up in it). Then you can stuff them into envelopes and hand them out to your players. When it comes to scoring hands, you'll want to consider some kind of automation to assist in the task just to minimize the chances of mistakes. A conventional approach might be to create a spreadsheet with various formulas for each rule, with a section for entering cards to be scored. For this game, I've taken a programmatic approach and have been writing things up in Python.

    I guess one other thing to note about real life games is that players don't necessarily need to turn in all of their cards at the end of the event for scoring - it'd be hard to keep track of lost cards anyways, whether accidental or deliberate. But since every card's being hard-tracked in this environment, I've left that out of my design just to make things more interactive and interesting. (That's also the idea behind how I've stated that each player will only start out with one known rule.)

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    MrBlarneyMrBlarney Registered User regular
    Well, based on the response level, it seems like the best thing to do at this point is to cancel the game for the time being. It's not like this hasn't happened before, so it's no big deal. And last time, I was able to port mechanics and ideas to future games, so no matter what, this won't be a total loss of time and effort. For the time being, I guess I'll just run some more conventional forum games, and I'll try another one of these "Phalla" things once I've got something a bit more thematic.

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    discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    Thanks for running anyway.

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    WildcatWildcat Registered User regular
    Thanks for offering to run this, MrB. Hopefully you'll get a fuller response next time!

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    BedlamBedlam Registered User regular
    Well good game I guess. Yes I was the serial killer, feel like I always get a bum deal with that tho.

    I tried to be a good boy and put out feelers early but I guess I raised @Langly's ire too quickly because he seemed to be out to get me from there. Would like to know what I did wrong and what I could do in the future.

    Ironically if you hadn't been so quick to off me I would have taken care of your @Egos cult problem pretty early. Unfortunately I had to spin my wheels a bit in defense mode and so that got put on the back burner. Cthulhu Fatagan my dude, you played well!

    The rest of the village can suck a fart. You may have gotten me but it was due to sheeping and hearsay rather than actual deduction and that burns my ass. One day you lot will follow a nethead and be ever so eager to fling yourselves off a cliff like a bowl full of lemmings rather than use your goddamn brains! Then you'll be sorry!

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    BluecyanBluecyan Buzz.. Buzz Buzz? BUZZ! Buzz buzz BuzzRegistered User regular
    What's this? Rules for five card poker?! You're supposed to take these out of the deck.

    Sorry for the low responses, seemed like a neat game.

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