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Prior to proceeding to Round 4, we have to decide if we're in for the following:

1) Whether or not to go with the earlier proposal that the Detective is always on your list, somewhere. This opens up some potentially undesirable avenues, but it may be the solution to everything. Pros: Lists are easily shareable and it preserves the end-game domination of the Spy, because the Spy/Informants being on the list is in no way discernible. Cons: Knowing that a list of players is definitely not the Detective may in some way impact the flow of the game.

2) Lists are fully shareable at any time. However, since the lists only concern the Detective, it's incredibly inadvisable to share them. Once the Detective dies, there's no issue with sharing the lists because the Spy being included is inconsequential and random.

3) We decide one way or the other whether votes should be visible or not. Pros: Civilians voting for people reveals who is on their list, thus potentially giving some info to the Spy as to who may or may not be the Detective. Cons: The Spy and Informants can easily arrest anyone they want, secretly, in the early phases since they'll be the most coordinated. My opinion: Leave them visible and see how it goes.

4) Assassinate is in for Informants. This is a one-time-use ability that can be used once per game by one Informant. If one Informant uses the ability successfully, it cannot be used by a different Informant later.

5) Exactly which solution to go with in order to change Investigate. Current version would have it that the Detective chooses 3 players. The GM then returns ONE "non-spy" result at random from those three, but will never specifically say that someone is the Spy. A further recommendation is that once someone has been deemed a non-spy, they cannot be sent in again for an Investigate. If they are included again, that person will always be sent back as the non-spy result, yet again. This resolves the need for limits, I believe.

I definitely object to secret voting. Both open and secter ballots would make the civillians cooperate. Otherwise they'll either reveal TMI, or would let the spy decide the arrests. However, secret ballot gives the spy way too much power, while open ballots give civillians more possibilities (though not power per se).

Another point, I think detective-only lists shouldn't be partially realed post-mortem.

Also, the limits on how many times the detective can include the same person im the suspect list is this (and the limit would be needed, I'm just not sure if it should be 2 or 3). Additionally, if we do investigate like that, the results of it should be sharable should the detective decide to step fourth.

Prior to proceeding to Round 4, we have to decide if we're in for the following:

GREEN = Likely to be implemented currently

RED = Not likely to be implemented currently

1) Whether or not to go with the earlier proposal that the Detective is always on your list, somewhere. This opens up some potentially undesirable avenues, but it may be the solution to everything. Pros: Lists are easily shareable and it preserves the end-game domination of the Spy, because the Spy/Informants being on the list is in no way discernible. Cons: Knowing that a list of players is definitely not the Detective may in some way impact the flow of the game.

2) Lists are fully shareable at any time. However, since the lists only concern the Detective, it's incredibly inadvisable to share them. Once the Detective dies, there's no issue with sharing the lists because the Spy being included is inconsequential and random.

3) We decide one way or the other whether votes should be visible or not. Pros: Civilians voting for people reveals who is on their list, thus potentially giving some info to the Spy as to who may or may not be the Detective. Cons: The Spy and Informants can easily arrest anyone they want, secretly, in the early phases since they'll be the most coordinated. My opinion: Leave them visible and see how it goes.

4) Assassinate is in for Informants. This is a one-time-use ability that can be used once per game by one Informant. If one Informant uses the ability successfully, it cannot be used by a different Informant later.

5) **UPDATED** Exactly which solution to go with in order to change Investigate. Current version would have it that the Detective chooses 3 players. The GM then returns ONE "non-spy" result at random from those three, but will never specifically say that someone is the Spy. Once someone has been deemed a non-spy, they cannot be sent in again for an Investigate. If they are included again, that person will always be sent back as the non-spy result. The Detective is also permitted, should they wish, to come forward with any information found through their Investigations (only while they are alive, naturally). Should the Detective include someone who is no longer permitted to be Investigated (such as including a dead or arrested player, or someone they've previously exhausted their Investigation limit), the action fails for that phase and the Detective receives no new information as a result. Additionally, if the Detective includes anything more or less than 3 players, the GM will likewise only inform them that their action has failed.

OPTION 1: To safeguard this mechanic from definitively identifying the Spy, including a name on a list more than once will be limited: For players included in an Investigation but not given a "non-spy" result, the Detective may only include them twice per game in their Investigations.

OPTION 2: To safeguard this mechanic from definitively identifying the Spy, including a name on a list more than once will be limited: For players included in an Investigation but not given a "non-spy" result, the Detective may only include them once per game in their Investigations.

6) Lists will no longer be partially revealed upon death, due to the increased focus on the Detective and lack of a focus on the Spy.

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That's where we stand currently. I'd forgotten to include the partial reveals situation (I posted about it a few days ago), but yeah, that's definitely out if we go this route with Investigate.

For the two options for Rule #5 above, one option gives the Detective a bit of leeway (Option #1), while the other ensures that the mechanic cannot possibly be overpowered (Option #2). The question is: Would it still be valuable if it were limited to including a player only once per game? Or, is that just far too little and the limit should be two? In a game of 20 players, the Detective could Investigate only 6 times, which may not sound like much, but it gives him six confirmed non-spies per game. That is actually a significant chunk of the population. The question then becomes: Is that enough?

If we go with Option #1 for Rule 5 up there, we could possibly solve the issues by raising the limit to 4 players per list. Thoughts on all this?

Jd- wrote:Prior to proceeding to Round 4, we have to decide if we're in for the following:

GREEN = Likely to be implemented currently

RED = Not likely to be implemented currently

1) Whether or not to go with the earlier proposal that the Detective is always on your list, somewhere. This opens up some potentially undesirable avenues, but it may be the solution to everything. Pros: Lists are easily shareable and it preserves the end-game domination of the Spy, because the Spy/Informants being on the list is in no way discernible. Cons: Knowing that a list of players is definitely not the Detective may in some way impact the flow of the game.

2) Lists are fully shareable at any time. However, since the lists only concern the Detective, it's incredibly inadvisable to share them. Once the Detective dies, there's no issue with sharing the lists because the Spy being included is inconsequential and random.

Yep, sounds good. Naturally, these changes will impact how the game plays out, but I think it’ll work in a good way. For example, if randomly voting for people not on the list (to protect the detective) will reveal the detective to the spy, then maybe randomly voting for people not on the list isn’t such a good idea.

Jd- wrote: 3) We decide one way or the other whether votes should be visible or not. Pros: Civilians voting for people reveals who is on their list, thus potentially giving some info to the Spy as to who may or may not be the Detective. Cons: The Spy and Informants can easily arrest anyone they want, secretly, in the early phases since they'll be the most coordinated. My opinion: Leave them visible and see how it goes.

I think votes should remain visible. Visible votes also help us in figuring out the spy and things like voting initiatives can only work if we can confirm that people voted who they said they voted.

Jd- wrote: 4) Assassinate is in for Informants. This is a one-time-use ability that can be used once per game by one Informant. If one Informant uses the ability successfully, it cannot be used by a different Informant later.

Yep.

Jd- wrote: 5) **UPDATED** Exactly which solution to go with in order to change Investigate. Current version would have it that the Detective chooses 3 players. The GM then returns ONE "non-spy" result at random from those three, but will never specifically say that someone is the Spy. Once someone has been deemed a non-spy, they cannot be sent in again for an Investigate. If they are included again, that person will always be sent back as the non-spy result. The Detective is also permitted, should they wish, to come forward with any information found through their Investigations (only while they are alive, naturally). Should the Detective include someone who is no longer permitted to be Investigated (such as including a dead or arrested player, or someone they've previously exhausted their Investigation limit), the action fails for that phase and the Detective receives no new information as a result. Additionally, if the Detective includes anything more or less than 3 players, the GM will likewise only inform them that their action has failed.

OPTION 1: To safeguard this mechanic from definitively identifying the Spy, including a name on a list more than once will be limited: For players included in an Investigation but not given a "non-spy" result, the Detective may only include them twice per game in their Investigations.

OPTION 2: To safeguard this mechanic from definitively identifying the Spy, including a name on a list more than once will be limited: For players included in an Investigation but not given a "non-spy" result, the Detective may only include them once per game in their Investigations.

6) Lists will no longer be partially revealed upon death, due to the increased focus on the Detective and lack of a focus on the Spy.

I’m in favor of option 1. Let’s leave the detective with a bit of power. I don’t think it’s at all over-powered that way. If the detective includes a name twice and doesn’t get it back as non-spy that makes it slightly more likely than average that the person is the spy, nothing more – is that really so horrible? In any case, I think we should try it out like that and if we find out it’s too over-powered, we can still adjust it afterwards ...

In any case, I think with those rules we should be able to play, no? What does everyone else think?

I think that implementing so many changes at once may confuse things. We want to know if a particular factor has made it unbalanced and if we have multiple changes then it's harder to tell what the cause is.

If you guys think it's balanced though then I guess go for it?

Stopwatch wrote:I think that implementing so many changes at once may confuse things. We want to know if a particular factor has made it unbalanced and if we have multiple changes then it's harder to tell what the cause is.

If you guys think it's balanced though then I guess go for it?

I've been keeping a tally together to keep people updated so that they'll have an at-a-glance look at what's changed, so hopefully there won't be too much confusion. The actual amount of changes is pretty small, I think. Let's see how things go, methinks.

ESPIONAGE ROUND 4 IS GO! Click here to check it out and sign-up!

I also think it's quite a lot of changes.

I'm for the changes 1)Detective on your list, 2)Sharable lists, 4)Assassinate and 6)No list revealed on death
Since 1), 2) and 6) are linked together
4) Is good to try out. It's strengthening the spy side and in case it's too strong in the next few rounds, we can take it out again.

@3): I wanted to tell my concerns what could happen, before it actually happens in the game and feels "unbalanced". Invisible votes was just a possibility to counter the concerns. Maybe there is a better solution if we need one.
But in order to not get too many changes at once, I would keep the votes visible for now, see how it goes and then keep that possibility in mind for future rule changes if needed.

@5) This rule was in order to nerf the Investigate to give the spy a bit better chance to not get found out at the first phase through a lucky investigate? Sounds fine, but the spy was also already buffed with assassinate and get's more defense because there isn't a list for him, just for the detective. This also means that the detective doesn't have a list he could conclude from the town votes anymore either. So it's already harder to for the detective to find the Spy.
So I would definitely go with Option 1) because I'm not sure if the detective could get stuck with his investigations if he can just repeat a name once D:
Because if you have 3 names to choose it could go like that with 11 teams/players (so 10 people to choose from, although... can the detective use his own name in the deduction? Should be clarified ) and have someone died and arrested every day too (so the most extreme case that could happen)

Legend:
stroke through: died/arrested
green: not the spy result
orange: named once in the investigate
red: named 2 in the investigate

Choosing 3, Option 1:

Day 1:
1, 2, 3 -> 1 is not detective; player 10 died, player 9 was arrested.

Summary Day 1:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Day 2:
2, 3, 4 -> player 4 is not the spy, player 8 died, player 7 was arrested.

Summary Day 2:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Day 3:
Spy is already stuck. He doesn't have 3 players left to choose from (as long as he can't choose himself), since 2 and 3 were used 2x already and player 1 and 4 are not spies and if you include them into the investigate, you get the same result that 1 or 4 are not spies.
This won't change much when you use option 2 either.
And the spy still has 4 people that he's not sure whether it's the spy or not.

Of course that's the most extreme example, but it can happen and the detective get's "useless" then.

So my suggestion is, that the detective has the choose 2 people instead:

Choose 2 people, Option 1:

Day 1:
1, 2, -> 1 is not detective; player 10 died, player 9 was arrested.

Summary Day 1:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Day 2:
2, 4 -> player 4 is not the spy, player 8 died, player 7 was arrested.

Summary Day 2:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Day 3:
3, 5 -> 5 is not the spy, with the extreme example, 6 would die and either 5, 3 or 2 is arrested.

If 5 is arrested, the detective knows the spy is either 2 or 3. If 3 or 2 is arrested, he'd know the remaining one (2 or 3) is the spy for sure.
This is the only case where the detective can be 100% sure who the spy is.

IMO, that's fine then, because the detective need to be really lucky. And if you go with choosing just 2, option 2 is fine with that too then.


Choosing 2 and option 2

Day 1:
1, 2, -> 1 is not detective; player 10 died, player 9 was arrested.

Summary Day 1:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Day 2:
3, 4 -> player 4 is not the spy, player 8 died, player 7 was arrested.

Summary Day 2:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Day 3:
5, 6 -> player 5 is not the spy, 6 dies, and either 2 or 3 get's arrested.

After that phase the detective can't investigate again. (but still has 1 phase more than with choosing 3 people)

And he'll know the spy could be 2 if 3 is taken out or 3 if 2 get's take out. So also 100% sure who's the spy if the detective is really lucky. Otherwise he'd have 2 suspects in this extreme scenario.

Also, I didn't count in the assassinate. Which would make the detective stuck on day 2 already too, because he doesn't have enough people to choose from D:

So I would go with either:

a) Choose 3 and option 1 (2x name) or
b) Choose 2 and option 2 (1x name)

Jd- wrote:

Stopwatch wrote:I think that implementing so many changes at once may confuse things. We want to know if a particular factor has made it unbalanced and if we have multiple changes then it's harder to tell what the cause is.

If you guys think it's balanced though then I guess go for it?

I've been keeping a tally together to keep people updated so that they'll have an at-a-glance look at what's changed, so hopefully there won't be too much confusion. The actual amount of changes is pretty small, I think. Let's see how things go, methinks.

...not what I meant.

Stopwatch wrote:

Jd- wrote:

Stopwatch wrote:I think that implementing so many changes at once may confuse things. We want to know if a particular factor has made it unbalanced and if we have multiple changes then it's harder to tell what the cause is.

If you guys think it's balanced though then I guess go for it?

I've been keeping a tally together to keep people updated so that they'll have an at-a-glance look at what's changed, so hopefully there won't be too much confusion. The actual amount of changes is pretty small, I think. Let's see how things go, methinks.

...not what I meant.

I read your post in parts, but that wasn't your intent it looks like. Anyway, I'm not really too worried about being able to pinpoint which, if any, changes are overpowered because I have a feeling it's going to be pretty obvious if it comes to that. We'll see how it goes, but thus far, it's not really been a big mystery as to what's needed adjusting on a round-by-round basis. Due to the lists and the Detective's powers being changed, either the new system will work or it won't, but I think now the game is much closer to how it was intended than before.

New Voting Concept: Campaign Voting

Until now, all rounds have used the typical "most votes gets arrested" idea that's pretty common in games with voting electorates at their core. I had two ideas that I think could change things up in a fun way. Foremost, everyone would now--in both of these concepts--receive something like 5 votes to allocate to fellow living players during any given phase.

This concept is tentatively known as Campaign Voting. Each player would assign their 5 votes to any living, non-arrested players that are not themselves. Additionally, we could make it so that your 5 votes could all be allocated to one person, or would have to be spread out. There would be a penalty for not voting, in some form (either as a natural result of not forming any alliances to protect yourself and thus having no support, or a penalty similar to the current one).

Of course, there are two ways to really do this: Either we make it so the player that receives the most votes is arrested like before, OR we change it so that the players that receive the least votes are up for an arrest. In other words, we would eliminate ties, and the GM would randomly arrest one player from the lowest amount should any ties occur.

The New Method: Whoever receives the least votes is immediately up for arrest (ties result in a random arrest from the players that receive the same lowest amount of votes), meaning you are responsible for campaigning for votes for yourself in order to survive for the game. Now, we have to consider that this makes it easier for the Informant/Spy to hijack votes as they could always protect each other and would be able to always vote each other in support. However: This would also be shown to the civilians in the voting tally, as the Informants would have a lot less ability to hide themselves without publicly supporting their Spy. Naturally, this means the Spy and Informants have to both get involved in the discussions if they want to survive.

The Classic Method: Whoever receives the most votes is arrested like before (ties result in no arrest), meaning you would be campaigning to have yourself left out of anyone's votes. It would probably be best if you had to spread out your five votes instead of dumping them all on one player. I'm not actually interested in this method, but am including it for the sake of covering all bases.

Of course, this new, alternative method to voting is a real danger and threat to inactive players. While they are being inactive, they would not be able to forge any voting alliances to secure enough votes for themselves to continue in the game. At first glance, it may seem like it's harder for civilians to do a targeted arrest, but it does ensure that inactive players have minimal impact on active civilians being arrested just for being active. Once someone is found suspicious, players could campaign for others to drop their vote support for that player.

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There are pros and cons, but I think there's a lot of fun to be had here. What does everyone think? There are some additional things we could try to throw in, like making it a real "Election" in which the person who does get the most votes is given a special ability (maybe similar but less powerful than Investigate) or something. Just some ideas to float out there.

There's a serious problem with that system:
Suppose the spy and one informant reveal their identities in prep phase and start exchanging votes for each other. Then each of them would get 5 votes per day, which is the average munber of votes a person wouldget under your system. So, unless everyone else gets 5 votes, there would be someone else with less than 5 votes, and so a civillian would get arrested. If everyone else gets exactly 5 votes, then a random person would be arrested.
Thus every day we'd get one kill and one random arrest. Sounds balanced?

Togop wrote:There's a serious problem with that system:
Suppose the spy and one informant reveal their identities in prep phase and start exchanging votes for each other. Then each of them would get 5 votes per day, which is the average munber of votes a person wouldget under your system. So, unless everyone else gets 5 votes, there would be someone else with less than 5 votes, and so a civillian would get arrested. If everyone else gets exactly 5 votes, then a random person would be arrested.
Thus every day we'd get one kill and one random arrest. Sounds balanced?

Yeah, it's definitely something to deal with. A couple of options would be to remove being able to give another player more than one vote (or limit it to just two or three or something, though this doesn't really prevent the problem as it would still take a long time to be able to arrest them in the end), or introduce a new ability for the "elected" player who receives the most votes to combat it. Maybe the elected player, in the next phase, would be able to "silence" (to use a previous idea) a specific number of players' votes (which would be mentioned as to who got silenced in the results). For ease of use, we could make the amount of silence-able players always the number of Informants. To prevent the Spy from always being able to prevent an elected player from being elected, the person who would be elected would be considered only after the arrest and kills have taken place; thus, whoever survives with the most votes at that point would then have the option to use silence for the next phase.

One option I started to mention in there but deleted to simplify the concept was that the special role players wouldn't be able to vote at all in a hypothetical alternative, and of course the votes wouldn't be revealed as a result (such as no totals and no names as to who voted whom). It would only show who was arrested, so there wouldn't be a means of reliably testing whether someone was or was not the Spy by asking them to vote a certain way in a vote exchange, etc.

Ultimately, my aim was to turn things around from having to always just focus on a few suspects at a given time to gradually creating a history of actions and discourse that lead to trust within the player base. I think there's a good idea in this concept. This gives the civilians a lot more to do, as their first prerogative from now on would be to first make allies and then slowly start looking for the Spy.

RMed.

I can suggest alternative ways to have a more engaging voting system and make the spy engage:
For the voting system, each day you can cast a confidence vote for as many pyers as you like, but only once per plauer. Then the players are ranked by the number of votes they get.
The one on the bottom gets arrested (or nobody/random if tie).
Furthermore, if the spy is in the bottom X%, they get penalized by being unable to choose who to execute; instead, a random civillian (definitely not the detective) gets executed in lieu of the execution ordered. If no execute was ordered, nobody gets executed.