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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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Broken Loose posted:Erm, that's what I should have said. Gorilla knows the others aren't really gorillas, but the humans are all like "these gorilla costumes are flawless" and want to study the gorilla except once the humans arrive they have no way of identifying which one of them isn't human. If you have archives, you should read my Neanderthals on a Train mafia game. What you're describing is quite similar to the plot (except that the Neanderthals were the majority and the scientists did know who each other were). Also, it was the best Mafia game of all time. 
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Jan 7, 2014 16:14
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jmzero posted:I think if you had public animal identities, you'd want to simplify the objectives. I'd think maybe 2 general alignments, but then a couple floater objectives - like: guys with hidden red cards want to exterminate the humans, green cards want to make peace - but then this other guy wins as long as it makes it to the last round or something. And the various animal powers/rules/whatever mean that you have good reason to (at least often) profess a different alignment than you have. If nothing else, having general alignments makes balancing less brutal; getting a lot of different objectives generally balanced could be brutal. My plan was to have 2-3 sets of qualitatively similar objectives. Like, if the game has tracks to monitor the state of Defence, Economy, Science, Industry, etc., then many of the objectives would be "Make [whatever] as high/low as possible by the end of the game." Others would be "hoard as much of resource X as possible." So some people are trying to prioritize one thing over all else, others are sneakily trying to make sure one thing tanks, and others are trying to get allocated more resources than they actually need. quote:In a game like Resistance everyone is normally going to claim they're Blue all the time. I think it'd be awesome if people were constantly claiming different alignments at different times (or, at very least, there wasn't a default "good" alignment - making it a hidden team game instead of a "traitor" game). But that means you need more complexity in the public part of the game, so that different public roles perform different functions over time, so that there's good reason to lie but not always, and so that there's enough swings to shake people out of ruts. Maybe you could have themed decision cards - like "should we steal their food while they're gone" or something; and maybe Snake is extra good at that or something. Yes, this was kind of the intent. Like, maybe Industry is dangerously low... if you want to get made the Minister of Industry that turn, you're likely to claim that your secret objective is to maximize Industry. But maybe you actually want to keep it low and are going to look at the crises facing it and claim to everyone that you need lots of yellow resources to fix it because you know that there just aren't many yellow resources. So you can keep it low and pretend like there was just nothing you could do. Or maybe you say it needs blue resources, and it does, but you claim a number that the Treasurer can't allocate you exactly, so he has to give you extra and you keep them, and you set it up that way because your objective is to hoard blue resources. But anyway, even if you were telling the truth, then later when Industry is safe again, you're going to claim that you lied because no one's ever going to assign you to it again once the danger is averted, unless they believe it's not really your objective to maximize it. quote:Another idea: maybe instead of alignments, each character gets a secret ally (ie. I'm badger, and my secret ally is crocodile - I win if either I win or crocodile wins; but he doesn't necessarily win when I do, because he has his own secret ally). There's some awkwardness here.. like if you get your own card, maybe that just triggers a redeal - but maybe it could work? This way you have a public objective (your own), but also another secret objective to keep things spicy and reward you for deception. This is quite sweet and something I'll think about. Probably for elegance what should happen is that you have a special kind of objective if you draw yourself as your secret ally. Like, maybe that's how you get traitor alignment. So you don't even know if there's a straight up traitor in any given game. Except then once in a blue moon you'd end up with everyone being a traitor, which would be hilarious but maybe not exactly a great game. So maybe not a traitor in the traditional sense, but still a more self-interested win condition, and one that's a bit easier to achieve than the general win condition, to compensate for the fact that you can't win with someone else. quote:Also: maybe some people get public objectives? Like Monkey is always "peace" and Tiger is always "fight", but everyone else gets hidden alignments/objectives? And somebody's objective is just chaos - like when people don't agree on things, something goes on the bone pile, and Hyena wins if the bone pile is big enough by the end. This was also part of the idea. Everyone has one public objective and one secret and you total the scores between them to see who wins at the end. Generally speaking, the public objectives would be something positive for the group, so to some extent people want to help you do it, just not too much, while the secret objectives would often involve undermining something.
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Jan 7, 2014 16:33
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silvergoose posted:Link? I love reading old mafia games. At least, the good ones. This should be it. I don't have archives myself though so I can't tell for sure. Let me know if it isn't. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3375857 EDIT: A little bit of not-terribly-important context... this was the second game I ever modded and was inspired by someone's quip in another game I was playing. That one was Murder on the Orient Express, and someone got frustrated with people being dumb and said something about "This game should be called Neanderthals on a Train." To which I said "I'm totally running that game," and I did. I subsequently ran two other Neanderthals games: Neanderthals at the Louvre, and Neanderthals on Trial. xopods fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Jan 7, 2014 |
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Jan 7, 2014 16:35
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modig posted:Hippie commune, or a religious cult. Some group with a general shared goal like "world peace" but who don't really share a thinking process. I think I've got it. Religious cult + animals is the combination that did it. Wise Men of Karaya I'll set it in Karaya so it can tie in with Sultans and feed off that success. I'll invent a fictitious religion for the Karayans. It'll combine the animal spirits aspect of Native American myth with the Vodoun idea of divine possession. So you vote for your High Priest each turn, and then he assigns everyone their spirit animal for the turn, which gives them a special power and also their public objective for the turn... something that's good for the group if they accomplish it and also scores them points. Meanwhile everyone has a secret objective which is consistent throughout the game and scores them points at the end, assuming the "good guys" win. One person is an Unbeliever and doesn't actually care about his score; he simply wins if he causes the group to lose, but has to pretend to be doing his best to carry out his public objectives, lest he be found out. In case the Unbeliever is figured out or just decides to start obstructing things openly instead of playing along, the High Priest can at any point call for the excommunication of whoever has the lowest score, i.e. whoever is doing the worst job of fulfilling his or her assignments. If the vote passes, the person's resources are redistributed among the remaining players and they lose their vote, but will continue to participate in the game some lessened way, maybe by having an influence on what challenges the group has to face. Their secret objective card is NOT revealed, so you'll never know if you Excommunicated the right guy... however, even if they were formerly a good guy, anyone Excommunicated now wants the group to lose, and shares the Unbeliever's win condition. This all seems pretty cool to me. Now I just have to figure out what the group is actually trying to do and how they do it. 
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Jan 7, 2014 21:45
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Your rules aren't really written for other people's eyes at the moment. They're more like designer's notes. At the very least, start off with an explanation of what the players are trying to do thematically and then what that translates to mechanically.
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Jan 8, 2014 04:31
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ActingPower posted:EDIT: There you go. Now it looks like a real ruleset instead of an outline. Seems like it might be fun with some work, but I see a few main problems currently: (1) The connection between the cards required for a Work and its function is so tenuous that it will take a lot of plays before people can play without referring to the crib sheet constantly. Referring to the crib to see what you can build/what you need to collect is fine, but the bigger problem is that in looking at other people's Works, it's not going to be easy to tell at a glance what your opponents can do. (2) Aside from simply trying to collect high-numbered cards, I don't see that there's going to be a huge amount of strategy to the game. There are very few combinations of four cards you could hold that would fail to get you at least a simple work. In fact, I can list them: EEWA, WWFA, AAFE and FFEW. That's it. Any other four cards give you something. I would suggest additional restrictions on works... like maybe you can only score points for Ideal Works, which consist of paired and/or connected numbers, e.g. 7789, 4443 and 4567 are all Ideal, but 3588 is not. You could still allow people to build non-Ideal works to use their powers (and later either Dissolve them for cards or try to Swap cards out to make them Ideal), but only score VPs for the Ideal ones. (3) You've probably got more options on a player's turn than you really need. Trading a card with an opponent is maybe sometimes useful but the difference in value between doing that and just drawing a card is usually going to be very thin. Maybe you likewise don't need both Swap and Dissolve. More choices doesn't always mean more complexity, sometimes it just means more AP and more distraction. (4) It's going to be tough to balance all those different powers, especially as some of them get radically more powerful as you get a higher Low, while others don't really matter as much and still others actually diminish in value past a certain point... e.g. Sabotage is probably at peak effectiveness around like 3-4; if you make too good a Sabotage work, it becomes hard to use because you may have to Flip your own Works or Unflip your Opponents'. (5) I assume you want The Great Work to be the hardest to build, but AEFW is over 4x easier to acquire than either FFWW or AAEE if you look at the math. I would recommend instead that you have four Great Works that are AAAA, EEEE, FFFF and WWWW. Getting four the same is much harder than one of each. xopods fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Jan 8, 2014 |
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Jan 8, 2014 17:03
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ActingPower posted:Blarg. A set of one of each type of card was originally my main idea, and I'm loath to change it. But in my one little playtest, I did notice that it is really easy to make. Perhaps I could double it to WWFFEEAA, meaning you really have to work at it to get it? I did want to do something with having four of the same suit, since there's really nothing you can do with that at this point. I'll think about it, at least. What if you had intermediate works? Like, you have an FFF, a WWW, an AAA and an EEE, and then when you've made all four you can form the Great Work out of them. Overall this seems like a game that's going to have relatively small hand sizes, so I'm not sure that sticking in one work that takes eight cards is going to work well.
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Jan 9, 2014 17:42
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I'm digging the idea of a dexterity traitor game but I don't know if Jenga is the right game to base it off of, because in Jenga you have to reset the game state and thus the difficulty every time the tower falls. How about something with more of a theme and a variety of different dexterity games? For instance: You're all crew on a space station facing various dangers, which correspond to various minigames you're going to play with a versatile set of wooden pieces (different shaped blocks, balls, sticks, etc.). Everyone starts with three Danger Level cards in their hand, numbered 1-3, which they can't show to anyone else. Each round, you flip over a Situation card which gives you the type of game someone will have to play - e.g. Core Breach! Next, you vote on which crew member will take on the situation. Then everyone plays a Danger Level card and draws to replace it. The traitors obviously want to play high-numbered cards and the non-traitors want to play low, but of course you're restricted to what you have in your hand, and if you play all your low numbers now, you'll be stuck with only high ones later unless you get lucky with your draws. Meanwhile, traitors don't want to go high all the time, lest they be identified. You add up the Danger Level cards to find the actual total Danger Level, then consult the rulebook for how to set up the minigame in question for that danger level - this might mean having to use more blocks, or having a lower time limit to complete the challenge, or a harder initial configuration, or what have you. For Core Breach, maybe the game is that you construct a little cage out of blocks according to a diagram in the book and then have to remove a cylinder from the center of the structure using a pair of sticks, without knocking anything else over, within a time limit that depends on the danger level. If you succeed, you (and you alone) draw an extra Danger Level card and expand your hand size. If you fail, then the station is damaged. Everyone has to discard one card and is now playing with only two Danger Level cards instead of three. Furthermore, it's now time to place the blame: the group votes on someone to chuck out the airlock and eliminate from the game. After three failures (everyone down to zero cards) the station is destroyed and the traitors win. If you survive a certain number of challenges, then the heroes win. The traitors also win if enough good guys get airlocked that they can control the vote, since they can then nominate their own guys after that and deliberately fail the challenges.
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Jan 10, 2014 04:32
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The Leper Colon V posted:I think having everyone be too absorbed in their own tasks could cause a real issue, though. It'd be like if Space Cadets had a traitor. How would you even notice? What would be fun about it, at all? What if it was like Space Alert where you have a real-time planning phase where everyone's panicking and/or subtly sabotaging (or simply being good and efficient, if they're capable and willing of doing that) and then an untimed resolution phase where you get to see what everyone did and accuse people of being the traitor. Then some kind of negotiation/voting phase where you get to do something about potential traitors before the next real-time phase.
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Feb 4, 2014 16:29
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Zombie #246 posted:That is incredibly awesome, you are a cool dad. I can't wait for my boy to be old enough to play games with me. He's one now, so it'll be a while, but he already thinks my shelf of games is pretty cool to look at, and he likes playing with Go stones and stuff. (Don't worry, I watch him carefully to make sure he isn't going to put them in his mouth and choke.)
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Apr 9, 2014 20:12
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ThaShaneTrain posted:I just found out about this thread so there's not much context on my journey but I got a contract with Mayday Games! Congratulations! It's a real rush getting your first publication deal. Keep us posted on how things go from here. Mayday doesn't have the best reputation with fans (numerous complaints on BGG about their customer service and product quality) but that likely just means they're understaffed and on a tight budget, like a lot of small publishers. For others who are looking to get published it'll be useful to hear whether you have a good experience publishing with them.
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Oct 4, 2014 20:01
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ThaShaneTrain posted:Thanks! So far it has been great. The contract is pretty generous compared to the average contracts I've read/heard about. Yeah, this doesn't surprise me at all. Small operations by their nature tend to be more human in dealing with freelancers but by the same token tend to have to cut corners elsewhere, whereas big companies can afford big production budgets and better customer service, but are more likely to play hardball when it comes to contracts.
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Oct 5, 2014 15:06
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Xom posted:Oh-Seven, the missing evolutionary link between Oh, Hell! and our own xopods's Insidious Sevens, is now available on BGA, implemented by yours truly. Xom posted:I really think it's between "overbid" vs. "underfill" (and "underbid" vs. "overfill"), for the pros and cons I described. I don't have a very strong opinion. It sounds like you're attempting to appeal to bridge players with these technical-ish terms. But I might be inclined to go even more basic and just have "Success %", "Over %" and "Under %" or "Hands Won" "Misses (High)" "Misses (Low)" . If it's really just between the options given, I think I personally like overfill and underfill, but if you're aiming to appeal to bridge players they might prefer you stick to conventional terms. I don't know.
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Aug 30, 2020 12:14
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