The Pub: Off-topic chat for forum gamers

[Ramsus]

Uh... so... you're just jumping ahead of me in Lex's schedule? Have we finally reached the point of mutiny against schedules and schedulers?

[Lady Serpentine]

Uh... so... you're just jumping ahead of me in Lex's schedule? Have we finally reached the point of mutiny against schedules and schedulers?

No, no, I'm putting it up here for review tonight! Then I'll submit it for recruitment at some point after things are clearer, either when my place is getting near or if there's a lull due to a lack of games.

[Ramsus]

Ah ok, sorry I misunderstood then.

[Lex-Kat]

Uh... so... you're just jumping ahead of me in Lex's schedule? Have we finally reached the point of mutiny against schedules and schedulers?

Down with schedules!! No more schedulers! Pull the wings from the tyrant Lexi!!!

Now I want a avvie of Tyrant Lexi. She needs a crown, sceptre, and a deviously evil grin. Maybe with a foot on some poor soulfool's neck.

[Lady Serpentine]

Down with schedules!! No more schedulers! Pull the wings from the tyrant Lexi!!!

Now I want a avvie of Tyrant Lexi. She needs a crown, sceptre, and a deviously evil grin. Maybe with a foot on some poor soulfool's neck.

...We have to dewing you?

[Lex-Kat]

Uh no. That's okay. I would prefer to keep my wings. Though, it's been a while since I've used any of my pixie avvies.

[Ramsus]

Yeah you've been a Murderpony for a while now.

[Peebles]

Would an Adventure Time WW get much interest on here? I've got this weird, nebulous idea of a WW game with no standard Seers, Baners etc, but where everyone would have a named role and minor ability that would only really be properly useful when they end up networked with certain other roles.

Adventure Time, as well as being one of my favourite things, feels like it would be a good fit to a game that would be slightly confusing and random. It would also allow player roles to be randomly and arbitrarily genderbent to give a new ability, which for some reason sounds like a great idea in my head.

I'm thinking of 15 players with named roles, with 3 wolves as a good balance, but that depends on the abilities I finalise I guess.

[Saposhiente]

Critical design note for named role games is that you need most names to be able to apply to either the village or the wolves; otherwise, people can just massclaim to find wolves.

[Peebles]

Kind of messes with any attempt to stay faithful to the source material doesn't it? Is it allowable to ban mass role claiming, or to include a caveat to dissuade anyone from breaking the game. After all, doing a mass role claim isn't exactly in the spirit of the game.

[Internet Flea]

If the roles aren't fully known, you might be able to get away with just giving the wolves some fake roles to claim. But yeah, I'd go the route of punishing mass roleclaims in some way.

[Peebles]

I was thinking:

Anyone trying to break the game via mass role claims or other shennanigans shall be put in a cannon and shot into the Sun.

It's not exactly enforcable though.

[Ramsus]

I never really understood the idea behind not allowing mass roleclaims. I understand banning roleclaims in general. Not really sure why guys 1-3 get to role claim but guy 4 gets booted out of the game if he finds the need to.

[Lex-Kat]

You can ban Role-Claiming. And it is enforcable. You just say that any player revealing their role will "...be put in a cannon and shot into the Sun." Basically, you warn at the beginning of the game that anyone revealing will be lynched when they do so.

Might wish to place this rule in BIG LETTERS, and make a reminder post just before the game actually starts.

[Count Dingdong]

Remember, though, that when you ban role-claiming, you also ban fake-claiming. If someone says they're something, even if they're lying, they've broken the ban of role-claiming. Otherwise, you have the problem of process of elimination.

If you don't want role-claiming to be a problem, I'd suggest keeping what roles are in the game secret and giving the wolves cover roles that are close enough to their roles to fake while still seeming town.

My big problem with banning role-claiming is that people are going to claim that they're vanillagers. Or, if it's a power role-heavy game, they'll want to actually say what they did to help town. It's like telling a Seer that they can't ever reveal their scries. Ever. I was in a game like that. It was horrible. ...well, there was more about it that was horrible, including that I was NK'd N1, but that's beside the point. Part of the game is telling the truth about claims and, perhaps more importantly, lying about them.

If a wolf can't fake vanillager in a standard game, then wow. If they want to try and screw people over or gain perhaps a day or so by fake-claiming a power role, good on them if they succeed. In an all-PR game, it's much more difficult to fake-claim, but if the narrator is able to provide some help (say, a wolf (or even a townie) asks for a cover role, the narrator provides it), there shouldn't be a problem. The problem of mass-claiming is when wolves CANNOT fake-claim well. And if a game is made correctly, wolves should be able to fake-claim.

...the big problem with mass-claiming is perhaps the behind-the-scenes networks that can form because of it. Some games on this forum prohibit PMs in order to make all claims and the like public (and give masons/wolves a bit more power through private collaboration that others don't have). So, that's another thing to consider...

...and I realize this is long. Sorry... it started as a small post, but then I kept writing... >.>

[Internet Flea]

Another, meaner way to do it is to give various people the exact same role, so if there are mass claims it's followed by mass confusion and lynching townies.

[Saposhiente]

Banning roleclaiming is bad practice and unenforceable; players can ask each other questions that force them to reveal information about their role without claiming. Nobody violates the letter of the rule, you have to draw an arbitrary line, and you might not even be able to always spot violations of that sort. More importantly though, as Count DD pointed out, it really constricts gameplay. Instead design your game so that massclaiming is a bad idea. Other than putting direct measures to harm players whose roles are known, one way to do it is to choose several characters (ideally including at least one important character) to omit from the game, and tell the wolves which characters you omitted, so that they can fakeclaim those names.

[Ramsus]

You don't even have to tell the wolves anything special if you just have the list of possible named roles out there from the beginning and omit some. Then the wolves can try and claim with the same kind of risk as normal, not knowing if they claimed something totally safe or someone else's role.

[Peebles]

Thanks for everyone's views.

I've got problem with role-claiming, it's a part of the game. I just don't like the idea of a plan to mass role-claim to essentially make the game not worth playing.

Would listing all fifteen roles, randomising which roles are the wolves, but not revealing that to the players, work?If no-one except the wolves know which roles are wolf roles, does this solve the risk of a mass roleclaim?

[Ramsus]

It certainly does, and that's one of the normal solutions for that reason. (Also sometimes it's just because it's funny to see good guy and bad guy characters on the reverse teams.)

[Lady Serpentine]

Yep.

Similarly, saying you'll put in secret roles, whether or not you do, does the same; no-one can tell if anyone is a wolf or not because the wolves can make up whatever they like that sounds plausible. Especially if they have a disguiser who can back them up.

Though, if you are going to randomize it, I suggest that you not make pairs automatically on the same team - otherwise as soon as one wolf is killed it's known that the other side of that pair is a wolf too.

[Peebles]

Sounds like the solution I'll work on, then. Adventure Time really lends itself to being able to explain just about any team that comes up.

[Internet Flea]

TFT, WinterLilium, you guys still playing over at CFC?

[Legato Endless]

I think TFT is on vacation.

[Zack]

I think TFT is on vacation.

On vacation? What does he think this is, a game?

[Peebles]

C'nor, your inbox is full.

[Lady Serpentine]

Space free!

[Ramsus]

C'nor, your inbox is full.

That's part of their charm.

[Lady Serpentine]

That's part of their charm.

Heh. It is pretty common, isn't it?

[Peebles]

Heh. It is pretty common, isn't it?

Very it seems, as it's still saying it's full.