ESPIONAGE: A brand new simple forum game! (Central Rules & Information Topic)

[Jd-]

Still willing to be gm here o/

Give me juuuust a bit on that. I'll send a PM in a moment.

[Fujiwara]

Sooo, just wondering, but how come there are no informants in our Team Espionage round? Is it because there are at most 12 players (teams)?
I actually liked having informants.

[shinichi'sapprentice]

i fell asleep trying to reply. now, here goes:

You are required to vote for the daily arrest.
If you do not vote, your vote for a given phase will be a vote for yourself. For example, if a player doesn't send in a vote for a phase, the inactive player will already have a vote against them going into the results of that phase. As such, you are strongly urged to vote or else you'll be out of the game pretty quickly.

i guess my objection is too late now.
my reasons are somewhat similar to Yuri Iwamoto's. selfish reasons as i may say. it is actually my strategy that sometimes, i will not send in a vote. in round 1, i did not send in a vote until day 3. my list was:
1. Dumytru
2. Stopwatch
3. PhoenixTears
4. Kleene Onigiri
5. Monsi
6. Jd-
7. Raiden
because of some confusion, the result of day 1 showed that i voted monsi. but in reality, i didn't vote that day and my vote should have counted for dumytru. in that same day 1, there were a fuss about PhoenixTears and Kleene Onigiri's voting... i trusted that Jd- won't be the spy back then and throughout the game, i believed Stopwatch won't be the spy either. which then left me with only two remaining suspects: dumytru and Raiden. i finally decided to send in a vote for Raiden.

i don't know if people get my thinking but by not sending a vote sometimes, i get to observe each player's actions first. especially on day 1sssss.

i don't know what this

The reasoning for self-voting is pretty simple. Foremost, we do need people to vote no matter what in this game. The classic "no-vote" strategy that emerged in Mafia would make this game really lopsided and not very engaging, so we need to find a way to ensure everyone always votes and, more importantly, always have a reason to vote. We need to avoid revealing the lists through those votes, which is a cornerstone of the game (to avoid revealing your list).

underlined you talk about, but by having the top of my list voted, when i decide not to vote, i think it helps the detective because that's one person definitely in a person's list revealed aside from the day's killed innocent person's revealed list.

but eh,.. too late. now i am forced to vote just so inactive players are encouraged to speak up. one of the reason i fell asleep while i was trying to reply is that i can't think of an alternative myself on how to discourage inactivity.

---

questions about the round 3 gameplay:
-do the civilian pairs receive only one set of list? or does each receive a different one?
-are the teams going to be shown in public? for example,
team 1:
Fujiwara and Stopwatch
team 2:
Kleene Onigiri and Togop
team 3:
dumytru and Jellitto
...and so on.
?
if it is showed in public who partners who, then all the civilians have to do is to be watchful of how the teams interact in public. i am confused because it is said that there will be a different variant of the team espionage in which some players won't know who their teammate is? so basically, my question is: will everybody know who partners who?

[dumytru]

@shinichi'sapprentice

1. Obviously, a team recieves only one list. (I'm right, aren't I?)
2. For this Round, yeah. Jd- said it.
3. Teammates will also interact in PMs, not only in the game's topic.

[Jd-]

Sooo, just wondering, but how come there are no informants in our Team Espionage round? Is it because there are at most 12 players (teams)?
I actually liked having informants.

It's true that the Informants add a nice angle to it, I was just worried that we'd have too few teams to keep it balanced. If you guys want to add Informants in, though, we can do so!

i don't know what this

The reasoning for self-voting is pretty simple. Foremost, we do need people to vote no matter what in this game. The classic "no-vote" strategy that emerged in Mafia would make this game really lopsided and not very engaging, so we need to find a way to ensure everyone always votes and, more importantly, always have a reason to vote. We need to avoid revealing the lists through those votes, which is a cornerstone of the game (to avoid revealing your list).

underlined you talk about, but by having the top of my list voted, when i decide not to vote, i think it helps the detective because that's one person definitely in a person's list revealed aside from the day's killed innocent person's revealed list.

In Mafia, I started doing something as a townie (their equivalent of a civilian) where I would ask all of the players to not vote. This led to the mafia team (the Black Organization) having a much harder time voting out townies to reduce their numbers, because it was like, "If anyone votes at this point, they are much more likely with the Black Org since it's obviously to the town's advantage to not randomly vote out someone without any leads at all." This led to several rounds in which the Black Org had no chance to do anything since the town would be so ironclad. This, in fact, led to the first large game in which no townies died at all, if I recall. Nowadays, this strategy is generally seen as too powerful/boring due to it giving the townies a very distinct advantage. If it were applied to this game, it'd make the game extremely dull, from my experience on both sides.

@shinichi'sapprentice

1. Obviously, a team recieves only one list. (I'm right, aren't I?)
2. For this Round, yeah. Jd- said it.
3. Teammates will also interact in PMs, not only in the game's topic.

All true!

[shinichi'sapprentice]

but here, if you don't vote, top of your list is voted. and random for the special roles.
i thought, in mafia, when you don't vote, then you just, not vote. . . did that even make sense. -.-

[Jd-]

but here, if you don't vote, top of your list is voted. and random for the special roles.
i thought, in mafia, when you don't vote, then you just, not vote. . . did that even make sense. -.-

I was explaining why we have "forced voting" of any sort in this. In later rounds of mafia, to battle inactivity and things like that strategy, people were forced to vote. No solid means of doing this was ever established as routine, but I think the self-voting has finally given us what we need for that. I'm not comfortable with the lists being revealed this way, and it's a lot of work for the GM, so self-voting seems to be pretty good at diminishing most of those concerns.

[RoboG55]

Question for Round 3:
So no informants this time? Just the spies, detectives, and civilians?

[Jd-]

Question for Round 3:
So no informants this time? Just the spies, detectives, and civilians?

As of now, yep, there are no informants. HOWEVER: This could very easily change if everyone wants to try it with them in. I'm open to it for sure, I just didn't want the civilians to feel overwhelmed, but I'll definitely think on it some more and would love to hear from everyone else on it.

Nix that, let's do it: Informants are in!

[Togop]

In Mafia, I started doing something as a townie (their equivalent of a civilian) where I would ask all of the players to not vote. This led to the mafia team (the Black Organization) having a much harder time voting out townies to reduce their numbers, because it was like, "If anyone votes at this point, they are much more likely with the Black Org since it's obviously to the town's advantage to not randomly vote out someone without any leads at all." This led to several rounds in which the Black Org had no chance to do anything since the town would be so ironclad. This, in fact, led to the first large game in which no townies died at all, if I recall. Nowadays, this strategy is generally seen as too powerful/boring due to it giving the townies a very distinct advantage. If it were applied to this game, it'd make the game extremely dull, from my experience on both sides.

Wait, if you do that, what's to stop the BO/spy from also not voting as well and taking everyone out at night?

[Jd-]

Wait, if you do that, what's to stop the BO/spy from also not voting as well and taking everyone out at night?

It's actually a problem from two different perspectives. The problem in Mafia with it is that the civilians have specific abilities that help them find the mafia members. The longer the game goes on with a large amount of civilians, the more likely the mafia people will be found. That's why it's to their advantage to end the game as quickly as possible before their identities are made known. If the Black Organization only take out one person (which is by no means guaranteed in Mafia due to various abilities) every two phases (Mafia games are split into Day/Night cycles), the town has a litany of chances to find the Black Organization members and expose them.

In Espionage, a related but opposite problem arises. The game is more based on discourse and general reasoning and social engineering rather than just using different abilities. If there is no voting, there will be no call for discourse. The Spy can just sit around taking out people, very, very slowly. However, since there's no voting, there's no discourse to facilitate the exchange of information. So even if the Detective investigates people and finds the Spy, the game will just be a waiting game where the civilians don't do anything other than die and/or wait for the Detective to tell them who to vote for (by whatever means he decides).

In essence, in Mafia, it's advantageous to the good guys to no-vote. In Espionage, it's advantageous to the bad guys to no-vote. They would essentially have the entire game to find the Detective and get it over with. That's why I decided to get rid of it before this game began, since voting here is of extreme importance and is a keystone of the game. With the new self-voting rule, I think we've finally found the solution to a few problems.

[Kleene Onigiri]

Some idea for a different game setting:
People would be assigned with an "attribute". For example cute or scary badass etc. When talking in the game thread, people need to show that attribute. Doesn't need to be completely like that. Like if Raiden would get "fearsome" he could instead be posting pics of tigers that attack/growl instead of cute ones xD
Of course that would mean that people need to talk more too :x
The sense behind the attributes is, that people would also get a hint for the attribute of a special role. Like : 'a special role has the attribute "cute"' which would be a new clue for everyone
Just a random idea I had :V

[Raiden]

Some idea for a different game setting:
People would be assigned with an "attribute". For example cute or scary badass etc. When talking in the game thread, people need to show that attribute. Doesn't need to be completely like that. Like if Raiden would get "fearsome" he could instead be posting pics of tigers that attack/growl instead of cute ones xD
...

*Shows Kleene the fearsome side of a tiger!*


...but intriguing idea!

[Iwamoto Yuri]

Some idea for a different game setting:
People would be assigned with an "attribute". For example cute or scary badass etc. When talking in the game thread, people need to show that attribute. Doesn't need to be completely like that. Like if Raiden would get "fearsome" he could instead be posting pics of tigers that attack/growl instead of cute ones xD
...

*Shows Kleene the fearsome side of a tiger!*


...but intriguing idea!

actually, I like that idea a lot.

[Togop]

This was originally a post of mine in the round 3 topic, though it belongs here, so...

Guys, what if we randomize and keep who one's partner is secret??? It would make the game much more fun!!! Cuz if one informant or one spy is caught here, the other will automatically be revealed from the figure above if the adjacent person is the partner.

I would also prefer secret teams. But there are things that need to be cleared up, and frankly I'm not sure how. Here's how I think it'd be best:
1) Clearly, when someone is arrested or killed, so is their teammate.
2) Clearly, if the teams are announced, the voting will be for people.
3) For the arrest, I'd suggest that votes are reported for individuals, but the team that gets arrested is the team with the highest total. Additionally, I'd suggest each team gets two votes. That way, team memrs can cast different votes and teams won't be deduced immediately from the voting. At the same time, to emphaisze it's a team effort, one teammate must submit both votes."Togop votes for Fujiwara, Jd- votes for Raiden."
Example:
First, Jd- sends to the GM: "Togop votes for Fujiwara, Jd- votes for Raiden." Then I send "I vote for Yuri Iwamoto". The result would be me voting for Yuri Iwamoto, and Ju- voting for himself (last sumbitted message is effective, and it doesn't specify Jd-'s vote).
Then, the results could be:
Jd- <- Jd-, Raiden, Fujiwara, breza
Yuri Iwamoto <- Togop, Raifuujin, monsi
Raiden <- shinichi'sapprentice, Jellitto, stopwatch
Togop <- Yuri Iwamoto
[...]
Team Yuri Iwamoto/Raiden was arrested with 6 votes total.
4) When the detective uses Investigate on someone, they find out two pieces of information:
-whether that person is ont he spy team
-who is their teammate
That is to make make up for the fact that the spy takes out two people at once.
5) Both members of the same informant team will receive the same order. Different teams may receive different orders.