The Unique Mechanic (NEW CONTENT! READ!)

[Frank]

The one unique gameplay mechanic I want to install is this: death in the Evil Dead world is only semi-permanent. When you die, you are removed from the game for one Day (if you're Night killed) or Night (if you're lynched/Daykilled).

Now, exactly what happens next I haven't figured out, but here's the basic skeleton:

Any Demon who dies gets to come back after his/her brief stint in purgatory to taunt the Town and openly deliver messages on behalf of the Demons. Will be limited to five posts per Day, or something of that nature, and will not have a vote.

Any Townie who is killed by the Deadites will rise again after the purgatory period - infected by a Deadite, but only in fits and starts. He/she may participate as usual, albeit without a vote. Here's the kicker: he/she may say anything he/she wishes, but the Deadites may also compel him/her to say anything they want him/her to say. The Town will thus have no idea how much of what he/she says they can credit.

A Townie who dies by a means other than Deadite kill may be communed with through the actions of a Town power role. He/she may not vote, but may participate in the discussion and, as a confirmed Townie, have a strong voice.

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This needs refining, I know, so input is welcome.

[The Guy with the Gun]

I like it as a start. The whole deadites coming back thing.

I'd have a way to deal with it, (I'm thinking Ash can remove those players one by one)

[Frank]

Jul 10, 2008 12:36:05 GMT -5 The Guy with the Gun said:

I like it as a start. The whole deadites coming back thing.

I'd have a way to deal with it, (I'm thinking Ash can remove those players one by one)

Hm. Yes. But only after something happens - when the game starts, Ash has no powers, I think. Then we set up tons of ways for him to get them.

Thanks for joining me over here, by the way. I know I'm just getting started, but I'm pysched about this. Feel free to create roles at will; we can always narrow down later.

[Frank]

OK, I think this mechanic needs clarification, because it will inform a lot of what we eventually do. The way I see it, each player has a life-cycle. The nature of that life-cycle is dependent on the alignment of the player: Town, Scum, or PFK. So it goes like this:

PFK

1. Alive

2. Killed by any means: Dead, forever, with no hope of return or partial return. Can't vote, can't talk in the thread, go straight to the spoiler board without passing Go. Easy peasy.

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DEADITE

1. Alive

2. Killed by any means: After a one Day or one Night cooling-off period, becomes an Undead Deadite. Color-wise, maybe it'll be a talking Deadite head. As an Undead Deadite, counts for 1/4 of a Deadite when calculating Scum win condition (a talking head can still bite you, if you're not careful). Can participate freely in the game thread, but cannot vote or use any powers.

3. Banished: Dead, forever, with no hope of return or partial return. Can't vote, can't talk in the thread, go straight to the spoiler board without passing Go. Easy peasy. I envision three ways for an Undead Deadite to be Banished:

3A - Ash chainsaws them into oblivion
3B - The Inquisitive Fool uses one of his powers
3C - The Necronomicon is destroyed

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HUMAN

1. Alive

2. Killed - depends on how the kill happens.

2A. Killed by a Deadite - After a one Day or one Night cooling off period, becomes an undead deadite, as above. Counts 1/4 toward Deadite win condition. Can't vote or use any powers. Can participate freely, BUT is subject to having words put in his mouth by the Deadites (there will be a Puppet Master Deadite with this power, perhaps).

2B. Killed by any other means - Dies. However, some roles (The Inquisitive Fool, perhaps, or some other role?) can bring them back as Chatty Ghosts with Wisdom to Impart. In this capacity, may speak freely but not vote or use any powers, and count as 1/4 against the scum win condition.

3. Banished: Dead, forever, with no hope of return or partial return. Can't vote, can't talk in the thread, go straight to the spoiler board without passing Go. Easy peasy. I envision two ways for a Chatty Ghost With Wisdom to Impart to be Banished.

3A - A Deadite with the appropriate power uses it.
3C - The Necronomicon is destroyed.

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The basic goal of this mechanic: it will keep the game from getting quieter and quieter as more talkative players are killed off. It will also sow confusion for everyone, Deadites and Town inclusive - imagine the first time the Deadites try to take out a very vocal pro-Town player and find him still able to talk, but now as a confirmed Townie!

Actually, that's a concern. How imbalancing is that ability, anyway?

[The Guy with the Gun]

That's the thing, if we do it, the dead ones CANNOT know their killers, or else thats a short game.


Also, we should limit the Town-->deadites speech [and force them to say things through out the days +I'm thinking post restrictions of cliched phrases to stay alive as well "I'll swallow your soul, etc"], (but not the Undead Deadites, they should be allowed to say whatever they want)

The main problem is the undead Townies will STILL play VERY pro-Town, and so thats why their speech should be restricted. Perhaps they have to submit their things to say TO the deadites, and the Deadites may alter the speech anyway they choose before they send it back. or something similar.

Otherwis,e the Townies will just say "Oh, my first thing was a lie." or "I'm wearing shoes" and then they'll say thier deadite phrases. Which we want to cut down on.

There is NO incentive for a Townie Deadite to try to help the deadites, and they will try to cut back on the confusion. That's the key issue. We need rules and restrictions to prevent them from doing that sort of thing.

[sachertorte]

Do we really need to restrict dead townies from participating freely? The only unbalancing aspect would be a powerrole who died before getting to reveal stuff. Other than that, I don't see how restricting speech is a necessity. Also it seems like a huge PITA for all involved. I say, just let dead-Townies yap as much as they want. If you must you could allow The Evil Dead to send text via PM to a moderator who will then send the message to the dead-townie who must then post the text as is, unaltered as their NEXT post.

Essentially you are allowing the dead to talk. Either you let them talk or you don't. I don't think it is possible to "make" them talk in a certain way, or make them talk the way you want them to. Any effort to do so will be cumbersome, confusing, and will ultimately fail to restrict whatever it is you are trying to suppress. Does that make sense?

[Frank]

Yeah, so here's the deal. I told myself that in developing this game, I would stick to two rules for myself:

1. Absolutely NO post restrictions. A player can post anything he wants; and

2. Absolutely NO percentages. An ability either works or doesn't; there's no random.org, coinflips, or luck involved. One thing that made me sad was that the outcome of the first game I moderated turned on blind luck - the SK, who had been playing quite well, and the Scum Godfather, representing a team that had played quite well, both targeted each other. The ultimate outcome - the Scum killed the SK, and not vice versa, was the result of two separate random.org trips. So basically a really well played game turned on dice rolls, and I hated that.

So, Roosh: can you live with leaving the dead's ability to speak unrestricted? I'm planning to limit the number of pro-Town investigative roles somewhat, so there's that. The biggest danger is the problem of the Sorority girls being able to confirm one another from beyond the grave, but of course there are ways to eliminate Undead Deadites, and plus the existence of Undead Deadites means benefit to the Scum as well, so maybe it nets out to zero.

[sachertorte]

Jul 11, 2008 9:20:32 GMT -5 Frank said:

2. Absolutely NO percentages. An ability either works or doesn't; there's no random.org, coinflips, or luck involved. One thing that made me sad was that the outcome of the first game I moderated turned on blind luck - the SK, who had been playing quite well, and the Scum Godfather, representing a team that had played quite well, both targeted each other. The ultimate outcome - the Scum killed the SK, and not vice versa, was the result of two separate random.org trips. So basically a really well played game turned on dice rolls, and I hated that.

I'm not a fan of coin flips either, but don't forget that the SK in Blade Runner survived a Night Kill prior to his showdown with scum, so it all worked out I think.

[The Guy with the Gun]

Jul 11, 2008 9:20:32 GMT -5 Frank said:

So, Roosh: can you live with leaving the dead's ability to speak unrestricted? I'm planning to limit the number of pro-Town investigative roles somewhat, so there's that. The biggest danger is the problem of the Sorority girls being able to confirm one another from beyond the grave, but of course there are ways to eliminate Undead Deadites, and plus the existence of Undead Deadites means benefit to the Scum as well, so maybe it nets out to zero.

The biggest thing with the elimination of Undead Deadites is that if it's a protown Person (Ash) doing it, it's easy to pick out which ones you want to eliminate- as you just focus on the ones that were demons and now still alive.

I just see it as being a random thing that's more Pro-Town than not.
In my experience, the Town's always been winning these things, because of that reason. So in my mind, whenever I balance the game but I can't do it perfectly, i prefer to skew it to the Scum side rather than the town, just because the Town has an easier time more oft. than not.

This is one such, where if they can all talk- then it eliminates the Demonic Strategy of trying to kill someone to silence them from talking.
So you can't kill off the "storyteller's" of the game, because they'll still be able to keep talking and analyzing, and they're going to be mod confirmed as well upon their deaths as to who they are too. So you KNOW who's interests he's got at heart when he's stating his thoughts.

But just keep that in mind- the Dead talking HEAVILY favors Town. As No one will listen to the Scum UnDead.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That said, Maybe you can make the undead Deadites into a Jury?
-I have no idea where I was going with this and was going to delete it, but maybe it'll spark something.

[sachertorte]

The man's got a point. After Cecilvania, I'm not sure if I'd want to reward the Town with talking dead confirmed townies. Town needs to learn to think for themselves, if you allow dead townies to talk, then the game will become a discussion among the confirmed townies. After Day Two, I'd expect all decisions to be made by confirmed dead townies. If Cecilvania had such a ruleset, Town would have been rewarded for lynching OAOW (and me) by gaining insight from a trusted source. Die Town Die! (I'm not bitter, really).

On the other hand, by implementing the rule it would change the dynamics of scum strategy which might be interesting. Scum would not want to kill certain players and turn them into trusted townies.

[Frank]

Jul 11, 2008 16:32:34 GMT -5 sachertorte said:

The man's got a point. After Cecilvania, I'm not sure if I'd want to reward the Town with talking dead confirmed townies. Town needs to learn to think for themselves, if you allow dead townies to talk, then the game will become a discussion among the confirmed townies. After Day Two, I'd expect all decisions to be made by confirmed dead townies. If Cecilvania had such a ruleset, Town would have been rewarded for lynching OAOW (and me) by gaining insight from a trusted source. Die Town Die! (I'm not bitter, really).

On the other hand, by implementing the rule it would change the dynamics of scum strategy which might be interesting. Scum would not want to kill certain players and turn them into trusted townies.

My biggest hope is that this plan will keep the game active for longer, since those dead players will continue to contribute.

The way I had imagined the Undead Deadite Townies working is that they'd be limited to, say, 10 posts per Day. However, the Demons would be permitted to provide 5 of those 10, saying anything they wanted. Thus the Town could never quite be sure what analysis the Undead Deadite Townie was providing honestly and what was scum filtered. Sure, the Townie could say, in post #8, "Ignore that last post, I was lying there," but the scum could then direct him to say in #9, "No, I was lying in post #8, but not in #7," and it would be confusing enough to muddy the waters considerably.

Or do you think that would be a horrible mess?

[Frank]

And remember, each Undead Deadite Townie counts 1/4 toward the SCUM win condition, so leaving them all around to do the discussion could cost the Town in the end. Four Undead Deadite Townies might supply some analysis, but they also equal out to one extra Scum, so after four Deadite Night kills there'd be an extra scum in the analysis - bringing Scum victory about somewhat more quickly if those Undead Deadite Townies don't get whacked.

[sachertorte]

I'm thinking horrible mess. And letting the Demons post for the dead townie will be a bear to implement. Are you sure you want to deal with that?

In terms of critical analysis, Demon talking for dead townie won't be able to hide the true townie's analysis and intent.
In terms of posting information (investigation result, mason confirmation), then the Demons have a chance to muck things up; but I think the true Town posts would become obvious. Furthermore, Demon talking in such a way becomes a Demon trap. Which data to believe and who believes what and why gives the Town even more data from which to determine scum.

[Frank]

Jul 14, 2008 12:50:51 GMT -5 sachertorte said:

I'm thinking horrible mess. And letting the Demons post for the dead townie will be a bear to implement. Are you sure you want to deal with that?

In terms of critical analysis, Demon talking for dead townie won't be able to hide the true townie's analysis and intent.
In terms of posting information (investigation result, mason confirmation), then the Demons have a chance to muck things up; but I think the true Town posts would become obvious. Furthermore, Demon talking in such a way becomes a Demon trap. Which data to believe and who believes what and why gives the Town even more data from which to determine scum.

Huh. That's a good point. I hadn't really thought about that angle, and now that I do, it makes the whole idea less tenable than I had planned.