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Broken Loose posted:How is there that much poop in the jacuzzi? Remember, the water deck restricts the jacuzzi size, so in a 3P game there'd only be 5 cards before panic gets forced. Single poop happens early on because there's not enough water in the jacuzzi to accomodate more poop. My solutions are just for the first time around the table. Things get a little trickier once people start getting their second turns, but since the optimal solution is to turn on the jets every turn for the first orbit, there won't be very much of a second orbit. Turning on the jets and swapping blind seems like a risk, but in fact it's an advantage because you want to be playing probabilistically and not deterministically anyway. Adding some true randomness helps compensate for the fact that the human mind is bad at generating truly random numbers, and when you try to be random you may in fact create a pattern people can exploit. I'll play your forums game, but I'm going to try to break it. I'm going to tell everyone what moves I'm making with what probability at each point and then use random.org to choose my actual move with those likelihoods. I fully expect someone else to counter-break it by calling panic on me at every turn to their own detriment out of spite, but like I said, that's multiplayer games for you. xopods fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 00:00
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xopods posted:I'll play your forums game, but I'm going to try to break it. I'm going to tell everyone what moves I'm making with what probability at each point and then use random.org to choose my actual move with those likelihoods. I fully expect someone else to counter-break it by calling panic on me at every turn to their own detriment out of spite, but like I said, that's multiplayer games for you. Isn't using a RNG straight-up cheating in a game that's all about not being read by your opponents?
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Jan 3, 2014 00:06
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OtspIII posted:Isn't using a RNG straight-up cheating in a game that's all about not being read by your opponents? If your game can be broken by someone bringing a die with them to the table, it's already broken. That was my point... if the only skill factor in the game once you understand the strategy is in successfully approximating random behaviour then it's just glorified rock-paper-scissors. Note that people do play rock-paper-scissors competitively for this reason, but that doesn't make it an intrinsically deep game. I could memorize a string of random numbers beforehand and use those if it makes it seem less like cheating to you. Or whatever, if BL is going to object, I can rely on my own instincts. I'm a semipro poker player so I'm pretty good at behaving erratically. xopods fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 00:20
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xopods posted:I'll play your forums game, but I'm going to try to break it. I'm going to tell everyone what moves I'm making with what probability at each point and then use random.org to choose my actual move with those likelihoods. I fully expect someone else to counter-break it by calling panic on me at every turn to their own detriment out of spite, but like I said, that's multiplayer games for you. Good. This is what I wanted. The game's gonna lose some from not being face-to-face, I admit, but I'm pretty sure of a couple things:
If anything, your statements are helping to convince me more and more of how good the current game is. The troll option of the game, the only thing I wouldn't like, is for it to be profitable to always panic and point a random player. However, I'm pretty sure that it's impossible for this to be a sustainable strategy because panicking without pooping first gives -2 at worst and +1 at best, and whoever doesn't get chosen has a chance of making out like a bandit.
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Jan 3, 2014 00:24
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Broken Loose posted:It's impossible to force a panic during the first lap, so you can't make somebody roll the dice off the bat. You don't want to make someone roll the dice against you because it's bad for you too. You want to make it as statistically likely as possible that you've pooped without making it correct for someone to panic yet. As you say, the +1/-2 scoring makes it undesirable to panic randomly, but by the same token that makes it desirable to poop most of the time, just not all the time, because unless you've shown yourself to be a constant (well, > 67%) pooper, no one should call panic before they're forced to.
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Jan 3, 2014 00:26
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My current problem is differentiating fart cards from water cards other than that you start with a fart card. What I'm likely to do is provide a bonus for 3 matching cards at game's end, not just fart cards. In fact, I'll just do that in the game thread. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3599650 SIGNUPS ARE NOW OPEN. GET IN THERE.
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Jan 3, 2014 00:46
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xopods posted:If your game can be broken by someone bringing a die with them to the table, it's already broken. That was my point... if the only skill factor in the game once you understand the strategy is in successfully approximating random behaviour then it's just glorified rock-paper-scissors. Note that people do play rock-paper-scissors competitively for this reason, but that doesn't make it an intrinsically deep game. There's a huge difference between RPS and Weighted RPS, though--RPS is broken because the game state never changes, which means that you actually can easily build these probability models. With Weighted RPS, where different actions have different average payouts, the values that each of these actions have will change as gaps in points open up. Higher risk and reward strategies gain in value as you fall behind in points, while safer ones get better as you pull ahead. Partially, this improves the problem just by making probabilities impractical to calculate on the fly, but more than that it forces traces of your personality into your gameplay that are way easier to read (or bluff with) than a totally arbitrary choice between rock, paper, and scissors. I'd say that the fact that you can have competitive RPS players who can display reliable superiority at the game does actually kind of imply that it's a deep game, too. The deep part is just human nature, but just because it doesn't take complex rules to tap into that doesn't mean it's not powerful. xopods posted:I could memorize a string of random numbers beforehand and use those if it makes it seem less like cheating to you. That sounds perfect, actually--being able to act erratic is absolutely a skill, and one that should give you an advantage in this game. Would doing something like bringing dice into a pro poker tournament be acceptable? I had just assumed it wouldn't be legal.
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Jan 3, 2014 01:06
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OtspIII posted:There's a huge difference between RPS and Weighted RPS, though--RPS is broken because the game state never changes, which means that you actually can easily build these probability models. With Weighted RPS, where different actions have different average payouts, the values that each of these actions have will change as gaps in points open up. Higher risk and reward strategies gain in value as you fall behind in points, while safer ones get better as you pull ahead. Partially, this improves the problem just by making probabilities impractical to calculate on the fly, but more than that it forces traces of your personality into your gameplay that are way easier to read (or bluff with) than a totally arbitrary choice between rock, paper, and scissors. This is exactly what I've been saying about BL's game though. Currently it's very RPS-like in the first orbit, in that you're basically just profiting by one point for every poop you get down, but don't want to get challenged, so there aren't asymmetries in the game state or the payouts, so it's very easy to figure out what unexploitable play looks like and to achieve a reasonable approximation thereof. As you say, complicating the strategy doesn't get around the fact that every two-player game is solvable and every multiplayer game is either solvable or has a kingmaker situation going on... but your job as a designer isn't to do the impossible yourself, only to ask the players to do the impossible. quote:Would doing something like bringing dice into a pro poker tournament be acceptable? I had just assumed it wouldn't be legal. I'm not a live player, but I believe it would be. If you can have a smartphone at the table, I don't imagine that anyone would object to a die. Failing that you could always glance at the seconds on the tournament clock to get a randomish number. But the thing about poker is that most people play badly and predictably enough that you don't want to be unexploitable yourself, you want to be exploiting, which you generally can't be doing if you're playing an equilibrium strategy. Poker's less like human-on-human RPS tournaments and more like the machine tournaments where you could easily just write your program to play randomly and it would be guaranteed to finish middle of the pack, but if you want to win you have to assume others want to win too and be better at guessing their imperfect strategy than they are at guessing yours.
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Jan 3, 2014 02:10
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xopods posted:As you say, complicating the strategy doesn't get around the fact that every two-player game is solvable and every multiplayer game is either solvable or has a kingmaker situation going on... but your job as a designer isn't to do the impossible yourself, only to ask the players to do the impossible. Do you mean in general, or are you referring to Poop Jacuzzi? Also, do you agree with my assessment that having a pro-random first lap is beneficial to the game due to the deterministic setup?
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Jan 3, 2014 02:21
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Broken Loose posted:Do you mean in general, or are you referring to Poop Jacuzzi? Also, do you agree with my assessment that having a pro-random first lap is beneficial to the game due to the deterministic setup? I mean in general every two-player game is theoretically solvable and multiplayer games can either be solvable outright or have a political non-solution in that any given strategy for a single player can be defeated by some combination of strategies by the other players, and thus boil down to simple politics. It seems like that should ruin gaming in general, but in practice all the designer has to do is make the solution complex enough and the politics obfuscated enough that it doesn't bother anyone. I agree that the result that jetting and randomizing is optimal means that the second lap is more interesting than it would be if the optimal strategy was to peek and then make the poop/don't poop decision yourself, but I think it would be better still if there was some randomness in the initial setup itself somehow, so that the first lap wouldn't play out so mechanically and that there'd be value in watching what others are doing. All this said, your idea about collecting three matching water/fart cards is good and might make it sensible for later players (like maybe the 4th and 5th in a 5-player game) to peek in the water instead of jetting. xopods fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 02:50
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Somewhat related, the current title is looking to be either The Mystery of Chocolate Isle or Whispers from Where-Under. Conversely, if at all possible, I could just go for the record longest game name. Whispers from Where-Under: The Mystery of Chocolate Isle: Poop in the Jacuzzi
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Jan 3, 2014 05:06
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To reduce the determinism and use up the remaining 5 cards on the sheet and minimize printing cost, I will take a chance at spicing things up in a down-to-earth way. Each player begins the game with a random character card, which stays secret until a Panic! scoring round or as stated otherwise.
Do these seem simple enough to fit the concept, yet interesting enough to provide serious choices during the first lap? This is about the most I'd consider complicating the game.
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Jan 3, 2014 10:09
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Seems simple enough. Hell, you could even depict them textless. Seems like they might need playtesting for balance, though. Jeff, especially.
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Jan 3, 2014 11:03
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Broken Loose posted:[*]Jeffrey - Reveal when used: May exchange a facedown card with another player's When? quote:Do these seem simple enough to fit the concept, yet interesting enough to provide serious choices during the first lap? This is about the most I'd consider complicating the game. Yes, that's probably enough to make people's initial strategies different and thus give you something to guess at in the first orbit.
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Jan 3, 2014 12:52
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xopods posted:When? Your turn only, once per turn. I'm torn about making it once per game. Gonna have to test them first.
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Jan 3, 2014 17:47
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I really like the idea of adding in characters to play as. Seems like a really elegant way to maybe address some of the concerns shown in the thread so far (assuming that the playtest doesn't wind up proving all those concerns as pointless)
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Jan 3, 2014 18:18
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CodfishCartographer posted:I really like the idea of adding in characters to play as. Seems like a really elegant way to maybe address some of the concerns shown in the thread so far (assuming that the playtest doesn't wind up proving all those concerns as pointless) Yeah.... "elegant".....      My significant other said she outright refuses to play the game after seeing the characters. The worst part is I just GISed the names in question.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:24
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Broken Loose posted:Somewhat related, the current title is looking to be either The Mystery of Chocolate Isle or Whispers from Where-Under. You are way too in love with these goofy game names. Just call it Jacuzzi Shitters.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:32
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Crackbone posted:You are way too in love with these goofy game names. It turns out Jacuzzi is a brand name of hot tub. Whispers from Where-Under: The Mystery of Chocolate Isle: Jac-Oopsie!: Poop in the Hot Tub But yeah, no swearing, and I'd probably just end up keeping one of the more pretentious-sounding names at this rate.
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Jan 3, 2014 19:52
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I like "Poop in the Soup"
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Jan 3, 2014 19:55
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I actually laughed out loud at "Jac-oopsie", but obviously fair to not want to use (or parody) a brand name. Too bad!
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Jan 3, 2014 19:58
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Broken Loose posted:It turns out Jacuzzi is a brand name of hot tub. You sure they aren't like Hoover - so much the brand name that they're generic?
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Jan 3, 2014 22:11
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Why are these men in the hot tub without underwear on?
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Jan 4, 2014 00:10
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If I remember Hot Tub Time Machine correctly, there's nothing wrong with some dudes hanging out in a hot tub naked together, if none of them make a big deal out of it. Just some guys enjoying a hot tub, relax bro. Alternatively: who says they aren't wearing underwear? I really love ridiculous themes like this. On one of the Shut Up and Sit Down podcasts, they talk about their ideal themes, and I think Paul mentions wanting a gardening board game. I think he was trying to state the most boring theme he could think of, but it got me thinking about what the single most boring theme in a game could be. Filing paperwork, maybe?
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Jan 4, 2014 00:16
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CodfishCartographer posted:If I remember Hot Tub Time Machine correctly, there's nothing wrong with some dudes hanging out in a hot tub naked together, if none of them make a big deal out of it. Just some guys enjoying a hot tub, relax bro. Farmville and Harvest Moon already fill that gardening thing, and Papers Please is a phenomenal game about filing paperwork, so. I mean, those are all video games, but honestly you can make a game out of any theme. And now I have an idea for one of our monthly game design contests.
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Jan 4, 2014 00:22
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Takenoko is a gardening themed board game and it's pretty good.
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Jan 4, 2014 09:57
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I really like Jac-Oopsie, personally.
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Jan 4, 2014 10:12
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So to get away from poop-talk: I'm planning on entering the monthly game design contest, and was looking for some input on the idea I've got so far. Basically, it's a fairly simple storytelling party game for 3+ players (although I guess 2 players could work). The idea is that all players are making wishes using magical Monkey's Paws. Each player gets a hand of 5 standard playing cards, and on their turn places one down and makes a 'wish'. They can wish for anything, but the idea is to try and come up with a wish that won't backfire in some ironic way. All of the other players, after one player makes a wish, can place down a card of equal or higher value to the wisher's card, and then that player will tell how the person's wish backfires on them. If someone does say how a wish will backfire (and the group decides it isn't something stupid, and actually makes sense) then that player earns points equal to the card he played, and the card that the person making the wish played. The person who gave the backfire will then return the card he played to his hand, but the wishing player's card is placed into a discard pile. If a player makes a wish and nobody challenges it, then that player earns double the point value of the card she played, and then her card is added to the discard pile. Play continues until all players are out of cards in their hands, or until someone reaches X points (35-50?). Face cards are worth 10 points each, but when it comes to 'playing higher value cards' then 10>J>Q>K. Ace is valued at 11. The suit of each card represents what KIND of wish you make, or in what way the wish backfires.  = Selfless wish. This is a wish that has to benefit someone else, and cannot directly benefit the wishing player. If a hearts card is played to backfire another wish, then that backfire has to directly harm someone besides the wishing player. = Greedy wish. This is a wish that has to directly benefit the wishing player. If used as a backfire, then that backfire has to somehow directly take something away from the wishing player. = Malicious wish. This is a wish that has to directly harm someone besides the wishing player. If used as a backfire, then that backfire has to cause direct harm to the wishing player. = ??? I haven't gotten a good idea for another theme of wishes yet.Right now, there are a few things I'm unsure of. First off is figuring out what kind of wish restriction clubs will have. Second, is the restrictions on playing a backfire card. Right now I have it so only ONE person can play a backfire card on a wishing player, and whichever player puts their card down first is the one who gets the opportunity to suggest a backfire. I'm debating if I want it so multiple other players can suggest ways for the wish to backfire, and then the group (or maybe just the wishing player) decides on which backfire suggestion is best. Limiting it to one player adds a sense of a time limit, making the game more tense, but having multiple suggestions could lead to more creative and funny results (but also longer turns). Any input on the specific problems I'm having, or just questions / comments in general would be greatly appreciated.
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Jan 6, 2014 05:37
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The Taiwanese publisher that we licensed the rights to Sultans of Karaya to China and Taiwan has further sublicensed them to a Chinese publisher who apparently printed 10,000 copies and sold them out in 48 hours or something. The amount of money I'll get from this will be pitiful because of all the intermediaries, but he's super excited about the success and has told my publisher that if he has any more games for groups of that size (8+ people or so) he wants to negotiate for the rights directly. Which is very nice, because usually if a Chinese company likes your idea they're just going to take it and unless you're a multinational corporation, you don't have much recourse. So now I have to come up with a new big group diplomacy/hidden role/traitor/negotiation kind of game. And although Sultans has been way more successful than my other games, there are a few things that I'm not terribly pleased with about it, so I want to hit one out of the park this time. I've got the beginnings of an idea, but none of the details fleshed out. Essentially, I want to make it a cabinet-forming and resource allocation political game. Like, each game turn you're going to vote for a president, who then gets to assign everyone else to a post. The various posts each get you a personal advantage, and the right to make a particular decision that turn... however the president's advantage is +1 vote for the rest of the game, so unless you decide you want to 100% trust someone, you can't make the same guy president all the time or eventually he'll control the vote on his own and become a dictator, at which point it's probably game over for everyone whose goals don't align with his. Meanwhile, everyone has secret objectives, at least one of whom just wants to sabotage everything. Like, there are failure conditions whereby everyone loses except that guy. But if that doesn't happen and the country (or starbase, or whatever it is you're managing) survives, then out of the other players whoever best achieved their secret goals wins. Can anyone think of some super-sweet theme for this other than just running a country, which could give me inspiration for the mechanical details? Or just some feature that they'd really like to see in such a game? Or just general feedback on the concept? I feel like it's something that could be really amazing, but at the moment it's still just a blob of goo waiting for a catalyst to help it crystalize. I've been working on tight, minimalist little games so long that figuring out where to even start on something bigger is intimidating me.
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Jan 6, 2014 23:33
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xopods posted:Can anyone think of some super-sweet theme for this other than just running a country, which could give me inspiration for the mechanical details? Or just some feature that they'd really like to see in such a game? Or just general feedback on the concept? I feel like it's something that could be really amazing, but at the moment it's still just a blob of goo waiting for a catalyst to help it crystalize. I've been working on tight, minimalist little games so long that figuring out where to even start on something bigger is intimidating me. Junta Run a banana republic. Mired by a design from the year I was born, the entertaining core of the game is NOT the coup/overthrow war game, but the simple drawing of "foreign aid" and distribution of it by El Presidente to his cabinet. This core was ripped out and the coup part simplified for the more recent Junta: Viva El Presidente I would be excited to see this streamlined even more, so I don't have to explain how attacks work or have to roll any dice. Another theme option: the true rulers of nations, corporations and their board of executives.
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Jan 6, 2014 23:46
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PlaneGuy posted:Junta Yeah, I've heard of Junta, though I haven't played it. In this it wouldn't be the president himself allocating resources. He'd assign everyone's positions and then either a sort of Interior Minister or Treasurer or something would pull resources semi-randomly and allocate them, or it'd be a two step thing where one guy (Minister of Commerce/Industry?) would decide what kind of stuff to produce for the turn and someone else would distribute it.
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Jan 7, 2014 00:15
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quote:Can anyone think of some super-sweet theme for this other than just running a country How about animals choosing the king of the jungle? It makes for some flavorful roles: it'd be fun to be a snake or a badger or a rhino or whatever. And there's a lot of fun design space for relationships between animals and maybe general alignments or something (predators and prey, or Lion Party vs. Hyena Party - each of which having some support animals or something).
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Jan 7, 2014 00:16
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jmzero posted:How about animals choosing the king of the jungle? It makes for some flavorful roles: it'd be fun to be a snake or a badger or a rhino or whatever. And there's a lot of fun design space for relationships between animals and maybe general alignments or something (predators and prey, or Lion Party vs. Hyena Party - each of which having some support animals or something). I really like this idea, and animals definitely lend themselves to unique personalities and abilities, without having to toe any political lines. You could even have some sort of food chain mechanic where different animals have power over others.
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Jan 7, 2014 00:23
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jmzero posted:How about animals choosing the king of the jungle? It makes for some flavorful roles: it'd be fun to be a snake or a badger or a rhino or whatever. And there's a lot of fun design space for relationships between animals and maybe general alignments or something (predators and prey, or Lion Party vs. Hyena Party - each of which having some support animals or something). This is neat, but the problem is thematically I'm not sure how visibly different animals meshes with secret objectives. It could work if I decided to go with public objectives + secret objectives. So everyone who gets Gorilla has a shared public objective so you need to make sure not just that you don't let one person become Supreme Dictator for Life, but also that you don't let the Gorillas form a voting bloc... but even among the Gorillas there can be mutual distrust because everyone still has a secret objective. The main threat to the jungle could then be humans, but I'm not sure how that works with the traitor mechanic. But especially if I'm hoping to sell 100,000 copies in China, avoiding too-literal political themes is a good idea, so animals would be good. Gonna give this one some more thought. My publisher definitely digs animal themes.
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Jan 7, 2014 00:44
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xopods posted:The main threat to the jungle could then be humans, but I'm not sure how that works with the traitor mechanic. Could a traitor make a particular animal look to humans as sharks do: so scary they must be hunted to extinction? An animal of the "hunted" kind cannot win the game, or the animal that is viewed as least harmless is the only to survive ("who the hell would shoot a panda? look at its face! d'awwwwww")
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Jan 7, 2014 00:55
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xopods posted:This is neat, but the problem is thematically I'm not sure how visibly different animals meshes with secret objectives. It could work if I decided to go with public objectives + secret objectives. So everyone who gets Gorilla has a shared public objective so you need to make sure not just that you don't let one person become Supreme Dictator for Life, but also that you don't let the Gorillas form a voting bloc... but even among the Gorillas there can be mutual distrust because everyone still has a secret objective. The humans are all Dian Fosseys. Or they're just hilariously wearing animal costumes. I really really like the idea of a game where everybody is a dude in a gorilla costume except for 1 actual gorilla who can and will kill all the others if he finds out they're human.
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Jan 7, 2014 01:08
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Broken Loose posted:I really really like the idea of a game where everybody is a dude in a gorilla costume except for 1 actual gorilla who can and will kill all the others if he finds out they're human. mother of god. in unrelated to your reply, but related to you: http://messhof.com/Poocuzzi
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Jan 7, 2014 01:19
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Broken Loose posted:I really really like the idea of a game where everybody is a dude in a gorilla costume except for 1 actual gorilla who can and will kill all the others if he finds out they're human. It's hilarious conceptually but I don't know how you'd make it work as a game, since the players know the rules to the game they're playing. If it's one guy against everyone else it can work in a traitor type game - informed minority vs. uninformed majority - but you can't really do the reverse, since if you're the only dude who doesn't know who the gorilla is, it's obviously you, and therefore everyone else is human.
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Jan 7, 2014 01:30
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xopods posted:It's hilarious conceptually but I don't know how you'd make it work as a game, since the players know the rules to the game they're playing. If it's one guy against everyone else it can work in a traitor type game - informed minority vs. uninformed majority - but you can't really do the reverse, since if you're the only dude who doesn't know who the gorilla is, it's obviously you, and therefore everyone else is human. You couldn't as a real traitor game but you could in gameplay terms - humans earn points for playing cards out of their hand, but a certain number of those cards trigger the gorilla player winning (ie killing all humans). Things like take photo with gorilla, collect hair samples, etc. Too much of that and the gorilla gets wise.
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Jan 7, 2014 01:41
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xopods posted:It's hilarious conceptually but I don't know how you'd make it work as a game, since the players know the rules to the game they're playing. If it's one guy against everyone else it can work in a traitor type game - informed minority vs. uninformed majority - but you can't really do the reverse, since if you're the only dude who doesn't know who the gorilla is, it's obviously you, and therefore everyone else is human. Maybe the gorilla is sick of the jungle and wants a nice house and a wife and a 9-to-5 job and cable loving tv. His goal is to be voted human in the end so he gets on the plane with the rest of the scientists when they leave. BUT you can't be too human or the humans will know you're not trying to be a gorilla, which is what the humans are trying to do.
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Jan 7, 2014 01:42
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