Next game

[StoicRoivaS]

I talked with a couple people about this idea, and I'm not entirely sure it's what we're looking for, but it seems semi fun.

I wanted a major mechanic change and so I went with the idea of wolves win on total takeover (i.e. everyone's a wolf, not half) but they don't kill at night, they have a chance to convert a human to a wolf. The chances of success would drop throughout the game. With the chances starting moderately high (possibly even 100% for a night or two) the game would start with fewer wolves than normal. The obvious problem this brings up is the human's win condition. How do you win 1v11 when it comes time to lynch someone? The best answer I have so far is to make a hidden modifier to the wolves votes during the day. This way it may take 3 wolf votes to count as a "vote" towards a human. It creates some mystery in the voting process because as the game goes on, the public results and the actual result will vary largely.

Potential problems that immediately come to mind are game length and anyone with stellar logic skills may garner some extra info from the lynch result. The first point, game length, I think I would rectify by making it somewhat of a speed game. Open firstly to the people who could be at their computers at least once every single day, maybe twice. I'm hoping to use little or no "blue" roles to balance this game, but if they are that badly needed, they would be new roles. I'm very against things that end up "wolf heavy, add guard lol" when at all avoidable. With few blues, I'm hoping nights can go extremely quickly and days will be 24 hours or less, ideally.

The second point to consider is someone with adept logic skills. I think we know who we are. I'm not going to bother explaining how this can be exploited, but I personally would consider it a reward to anyone motivated enough to spend their time in such a way. If I were hosting this game (I say if, because I've often wanted to play my games) I'd not consider it a "point" at all and merely leave it at a "feature" for any willing player. If you want to spend the time getting extra info from my game structure, more power to you, TWG needs more motivated people.

Like I said, maybe it's not what we need right now, but it's an idea I'm working on. Maybe later this week or this weekend, after I get some big homework out of the way, I'm hoping to write a sim program for the design and see how it stacks up to the average game. Rioting has found some noticable trends that he's mentioned to me from his sim, so I'd be assuming those are the "standard" that I should balance this idea towards.

But, yeah, manhunt, I'm game.

P.S. Since Kilga is a raving child post-whore at times, I'll just go ahead and say it for him:

Originally Posted by StoicRoivaS

rectify

[Kilgamayan]

Originally Posted by StoicRoivaS

Since Kilga is a raving child post-whore at times

You say this like it's a bad thing. :(

ps

Originally Posted by StoicRoivaS

whore

lol

[StoicRoivaS]

It's a good thing when you have the tact of Kilga, but when used by other nameless [cough]JWC[/cough] people, it's a bit annoying.

[Kilgamayan]

o ok

[iggymatrixcounter]

I will be one of the players that exploit this game if it comes to be that way. Just so you know.

Night phases are crap. A game should be designed so that we skip that time period completely. Whenever I need to send in a pm to the host, I almost always do it before night even begins. I feel that everyone else should do the same. You should talk about how to use your power during the day while everything else is being discussed, not 24 hours after.

Be careful with sims though, many times what could happen and what will happen differ so much that considering every possible senario may lead to a false game balance.

I'm taking a one game twg break so if you need a host person I may be able to do it if soomeone wants to play in their own idea. But I won't be playing the next game no matter what it ends up being.

[rioting]

I have an idea I'm playing around with, see what you think of it: The game would put more emphasis on the social engineering and human interaction part of the game though does not elminate gathered knowledge from special roles. I'm defining the role of clairvoyant as a role that receives a list of either 3 or 4 names at night in which 1 is a wolf and the remaining 2 or 3 are non-wolf. The names wouuld be chosen completely at random but a wolf would be gauranteed to be in the list.

Another addition I'm trying to work out is a group of wolves who do not know each other. Instead of a consensus they would each vote for a night kill and the person with the most votes would die. (Big problem is ties...) The wolves would each get a PM with the votes of the other wolves but not who voted for whom.

4 wolves
2 regular wolf masons (told each other's identity at start of game)
1 unknown regular wolf
1 unknown wolf clairvoyant (4 names received to find clairvoyants)

8 humans
2 masons (told each other's identity at start of game)
7 unknown humans

3 clairvoyants (2 perhaps?)
1 unknown master clairvoyant (3 names received)
2 unknown clairvoyants (4 names received)


Clairvoyant visions are passive and names are chosen randomly (a clairvoyant could theoretically receive the same list multiple times). Clairvoyant lists would not contain dead people or the person receiving the list.

Just an idea to work with but I think it could be fun because it put less power in the hands of the "seer" type role.

[StoicRoivaS]

@ Iggy: You're welcome to work with me some more on balancing my idea and host it, should you wish to. It still needs some work, but I wouldn't mind playing it.

@ Rioting: Sounds like a really interesting role, with one major problem. With a list as small as 3-4, the wolves will become extremely obvious once a name is hit twice or 3 times. If you truly randomly choose which wolves are on the list each night, the odds are quite high that over the course of 6+ nights, the same name will show up 3 or more times. It's not guaranteed, but it seems like a very strong ability, especially considering having 3 people with the power. Not to mention how doomed the wolves are when 2-3 of them get together. Also, with wolves not deciding on the kill together, you're essentially giving the wolf masons power over the kill. They'd decide together who to kill, and the other wolves would have no say whatsoever. Just some things to consider. Sounds fun though.

[iggymatrixcounter]

to rioting: make the clairvoyants only recieve visions equal to the number of wolves. (after that then they no longer get visions). And only have 1 wolf in each list with no overlap. That will greatly balance that role out and create more engineering for those who have the role.

Also, for even more fun, make them all the same vision for each voyant so wolves have the balancing act of not wolfing two humans from a voyant list.

But those are my ideas, take them as you want.

to stoic: I have tons of ideas that I can put out there, including games where the dead can still vote but not post, the dead can still post but not vote, ONLY the dead can vote (faster days/nights and really long game), ive tweaked my 'lowest vote wins' game really well, games where all special roles have to post lies, etc, etc.

Some are good and some are still in square one stage but I'll work out any one of them if people want it.

[rioting]

@stoic, @iggy:

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm going to work on the idea some more but I wanted to get the idea out. I didn't really look into the odds on the lists but I can see that after having multiple lists distributed, the repetition of wolves' names might jump out. Some other options I was considering: Adding a 5th wolf either known or unknown or removing the unknown wolves and keeping it standard.

Initially I liked the idea of ensuring that no wolf end up on more than one list but then if the clairvoyants collaborated, they could eliminate anyone who showed up more than once in any given night's list. Perhaps the clairvoyants should each receive random lists with a number of names equal to the number of wolves plus one. In that setup they would also act as psychics though.

I'll think about some different scenarios...

[iggymatrixcounter]

Or like I said, give the same list out every night. There's no room for setting up alliance so colaboration would never be 100% legit since wolves can lie but if you think it's possible, just make all lists the same/ same lists of 1-4 but each voyant gets 1 of 4 each night.

[StoicRoivaS]

Yeah, I'd thought about the same thing. With the same list, you eliminate the problem of collaboration between clairvoyants, and with cycling of wolf names, you'll also lower that problem. This brings another issue that I won't specifically mention, but the smart may catch on. Be sure to ask me sometime and I'll point it out.

[DiscoBobbyPARANOiA]

Originally Posted by StoicRoivaS

Yeah, I'd thought about the same thing. With the same list, you eliminate the problem of collaboration between clairvoyants, and with cycling of wolf names, you'll also lower that problem. This brings another issue that I won't specifically mention, but the smart may catch on. Be sure to ask me sometime and I'll point it out.

The clairvoyants could prove their roles to each other without a doubt, duh.

As far as next game:

I would REALLY love to play either manhunt or 'valley of the seers' (as I've heard it called, but that may be wrong) Where I'm assuming everyone is a seer. (Thought about running one like that, but I'm not too confident in my balancing skills.)

[xObserveRx]

Well...

Since this is turning into "Post a game you think would be good" time, I might as well talk myself (and everyone else) through my game idea.

Like I said before, It's a lot like TWG IX. There are some differences however, so let me start off with the basics:

17 Player game (Yes, I know that's not an even number, continue reading, you'll see why.)

2 Wolves
1 Cupid
1 Pair of Star-Crossed Lovers (Subject to change)
6 Pairs of lovers

Okay, so for anyone who doesn't know how a lovers role works, here's the jist of it. Two lovers are linked together, if one of the lovers dies (or is lynched) the other has a certain time period before he/she also dies (of a broken heart... how tragic.) So, with that being said, The time limit between lover deaths in my game will be 12 hrs (or one phase).

IE: Human lover gets wolfed on night one. After day one's lynch, lover's part dies right then and there, it gets posted in the same post as the lynch. The person who got lynched (assuming it's not a wolf, or the cupid role) will have their partner die along with the night kill for the wolves. (The lover death will have a msg such as: "<name here> died of a broken heart." or something along those lines, to avoid the confusion of who the wolves actually killed.

So, there's been a few mentions of this cupid role, so what is it exactly? That's what I'm getting to now.

The cupid role is a seer in this game, but it's not the type of seer that's normally seen in a game (no pun intended). The cupid will PM the host each night with the name of a player of his/her choosing. The host will send the cupid the name of the seer'd player's lover. Knowing this will be only of a slight advantage, but with only 2 wolves in a 17 player game, anything else would seem rather biased toward humans.

So, lastly (before I get to those question I KNOW you have), I wanna talk about the other role I mentioned: The star-crossed lovers.

So yeah, this is pretty much a mason-ish type role. It's simply a pair of lovers who know their partner at the start of the game. This is to give a solid alliance a fair chance to be created. I don't think much else needs to be said about it.

Okay, so about those questions. Here's what I thought about over the past few days. (These aren't solid answers yet, just good guesses on my part. Feel free to tell me if these things aren't fair or whatever.)

First off, what happens if the cupid role seer's a wolf? All the seer gets back is a partner name, nothing else. No color (only red and green anyway), no role, no nothing. This will still be a slight advantage human wise, maybe, but I don't see it being a very big one.

Secondly, should the wolves be linked? I don't know yet. I don't think they should be, as one lynch could end the game. I want this game to promote activity and quality posting, seeing as the humans really only have 6 days to figure things out. Two people will be dying starting at day one. (aside from the time the cupid dies, assuming he/she does.) Linking the wolves seems like way too much of a disadvantage for them in my mind.

Those were the major issues I had. There's still a bit of speculation about how many humans should be in the game. I toyed with the idea of having only 4 pairs of humans, 2 wolves the cupid and the star crossed lovers, but I'm not sure yet.

If anyone else can see some problems here, I'd love to hear them. But anyway, yeah, this is what I think a few people (myself included) would like to see the game get back to.

And that's it.

[Kilgamayan]

Can the current game move along faster since it's apparently broken to hell and back? Our proximity to Game 45 is inversely proportional to how much I whine about it. >_>

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by iggymatrixcounter

I will be one of the players that exploit this game if it comes to be that way. Just so you know.

Night phases are crap. A game should be designed so that we skip that time period completely. Whenever I need to send in a pm to the host, I almost always do it before night even begins. I feel that everyone else should do the same. You should talk about how to use your power during the day while everything else is being discussed, not 24 hours after.

I've actually thought about how a game with no night period would work.

It'd probably be alright, but what if the wolf choice ends up getting vote swing'd and they get lynched instead? What if the seering choice ends up lynched in a similar fashion?

If you want to get rid of waiting for night, you could institute a 1 hour night phase. Basically, everyone would know that they need their PMs in within 1 hour of the day ending. If they'd like they could give their PM early, or if they're worried, they'd just hang around at end of day and throw off their PM then.

Originally Posted by rioting

Another addition I'm trying to work out is a group of wolves who do not know each other. Instead of a consensus they would each vote for a night kill and the person with the most votes would die. (Big problem is ties...) The wolves would each get a PM with the votes of the other wolves but not who voted for whom.

I had the same idea a long time ago, but decided not to follow through with the idea. I decided that the best way to work it would be a MW tie breaker. That is to say, each wolf would have a vote value of 1, while MW would have a value of 1.5. Still probably would just end up with MW's wolf choice every night until later in the game though. Then you come into what would happen if MW gets lynched early. Random tiebreakers could work, I guess, but I just don't know if it's worth it for the fun of having a full on team of reds that don't know each other.

And since people are throwing out ideas for future games, here's something: I know something like this was touched on before, but what I would like is for there to be only 1 wolf chosen at the beginning of the game. Throughout the game, this one original wolf would be able to "bite" another player and that player would become red. Obviously there would be limits to how many players he could bite, not only in the whole game but maybe per night (and possibly if they get a night kill as well... I'm not 100% on this yet). I'd like to see a game where maybe there is maybe 2 wolves on day 1, and 4 by day 3. Get what I'm saying? Also, this would work well to discourage total blue ownings, because the seer could easily just be bitten if they come out. The point here is: no one is safe from being bitten, because that allows for open alliances to form, and they always lead to people not thinking for themselves. And at the same time there could be all the normal blue roles such as seer, guardian, psychic, etc. I don't plan on even trying to host next game, but let me know what you think, as this might be worth it for someone else to host (I'd rather play this game than host it ) or maybe I'll try hosting it later if there's interest.

[DiscoBobbyPARANOiA]

Here's an idea (after readign the foxhound game)

Anonymous TWG.

As in, people use new forum and aim names (I would be willing to create them and divvy out the names/password) and can't state their identity. Some people will hate it, and others will love it, from what I think.

The game setup would probably be at the far end of either side of the spectrum; a couple wolves + guard or see, or mystery roles. (at everyone's discretion)

Also, good players: you wouldn't be dying night one XD

Also, this is by no means a 'we have to do this next game' thing. I just would like to see it done, and would be willing to set it up.

[iggymatrixcounter]

Set it up first before using it as a game idea.

From what I can see from this race is fish: Orbs, rioting:clairs, stoic/iggy: low vote, observer:doubles.

If I missed you then I didn't personally think your idea had been thought up enough and was a, "what about this?" game. Tweak it or bring it to me to help you and I'll consider it with you.

The current game has about 12 hours left (approx) plus maybe a day or so of postgame bragging/whining/gg'ing/screw off'ing. So if your name is bolded, then I assume you're ready to pitch your idea when host signups and voting are done.

[Afrobean]

what about DBP's and my game

SOMEONE OFFER TO HOST ONE OF THOSE BECAUSE THOSE ARE THE GAMES I WOULD BE MOST INTERESTED IN PLAYING

[DiscoBobbyPARANOiA]

Originally Posted by Afrobean

what about DBP's and my game

SOMEONE OFFER TO HOST ONE OF THOSE BECAUSE THOSE ARE THE GAMES I WOULD BE MOST INTERESTED IN PLAYING

I'd host my game, and why he didn't list is is because there's no setup there yet, just the idea.

If I were to run it, it's most likely be:

18 players

1 seer
1 guardian
1 psychic
4 wolves (including 1 MW)
11 humans

(as caps filter'd was)

Since throwing in too much more would only steer people away from the idea, as far as I see it (I'd love an anon mystery role game but I'm sure 50+% of you wouldn't)

[iggymatrixcounter]

Disco, seer + guardian = no activity. You want to retrochange then do something with one of those. I don't mind a game with little blue strategy, but take out the alliance strategy, don't encourage it.

It's not that the games we have suck, it's the ironclad alliances that COULD be formed that takes all interest from the game.