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

[Jd-]

The "Secret Teams" variant originally went like this:

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Secret Team Espionage Variant

Another concept based on Team Espionage with players again being randomly assigned teammates at the start of the game from the pool of players, but with the added facet of other players not knowing who your teammate is. In this variant, only you are privy to the identity of your partner and you may still communicate privately. However, actions and votes in general are not shared, with players living and dying separately.

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Having everyone live and die separately fixes all of the issues that Togop mentioned and simplifies the voting results/etc dramatically. However, I am not sure that this should be the way that we first try a team game due to some of the added complexity that will come from it. That's why I first suggested a simpler team game that brings together the idea of teams but doesn't complicate matters too much just yet.

I'm of course open to trying it if enough people feel strongly enough, as always.

[Kleene Onigiri]

I would try the Team Espionage that's not secret yet. To figure out how the team aspect is working out and it's a bit simpler and won't run into many rule clarifying issues like the secret one.
After that round was a success, trying it with secret Teams?

[Conan-chandesune]

I'm of course open to trying it if enough people feel strongly enough, as always.

Quite honestly, i feel quite strongly that the Secret team part should be done in the first try and we can modify it later on with Togop's and other suggestions. Also,

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

I feel bringing in Attributes and other stuff will only complicate matters and make it much more complex like Mafia (which is one reason i stay away from it as I feel it is too complicated)............ Espionage, till now, is beautifully simple and Team Espionage with the secret variant will be too.

[Kleene Onigiri]

I wouldn't use the attributes in the current round. Since having too many changes will just confuse and if something doesn't work well we'll have trouble knowing why.

Togops rule example is quite complicated contrary to your statement. JDs secret version is simpler.

The attributes aren't complicating it much. Its just like a additional hint that could tell you who a special role is.

[Jd-]

Let's see how normal teams work out this time, and if the team game is a success, we may even go right into a secret teams round for Round 4. Who knows, secret teams may become the de facto standard for team variants and this will be the only normal team round. Let's try them both as time goes on and see how things work out. I think the rules for Round 3 are locked now, just because the game is starting soon and we've already advertised it a certain way pre-sign-ups. If we change too much now, it may lead to a bit of unnecessary confusion.

In the meantime, I'm still thinking about the Detective's Informant-like assistants role for Rounds 4+. It's gonna be really interesting to have someone to bounce ideas off of throughout the next round, since it's been a solitary game up until this point. Commence hype!

[shinichi'sapprentice]

suggestion for the name of this "Detective's Informant-like assistants role". . . THE IRREGULAR ASSISTANTS
with the ability of. . .INVESTIGATING WHO THE INFORMANTS ARE! since the informants appear as regular civilians when investigated by the detective. not sure if THE IRREGULAR ASSISTANTS should have a list as well.

also, the INFORMANTS should be given an updated ability. not sure what yet. since their only use, at least on how i think of it, is just to stir things up. they make day 1/early phases fun. (it really is fun trying to figure out their signal on how to identify themselves to the spy). but after that, the thrill starts to disappear. round 2 breva did an awesome job hiding his identity, though i doubt he did a good job protecting the spy. as the INFORMANTS live on as phases go by, the role kinds of feel useless, especially because you don't have a list, it's dangerous to talk a lot. . . but eh, people please tell me your opinions about the INFORMANTS!!! i thought their interesting but, . . yeah, their interesting.

[Jd-]

I was thinking about giving the Informants an ability too. There are a few different directions to go with it.

As for the Detective's Assistant role, we can either make it a direct counterpart to the Informant or we can do something entirely different. It'll all depend on what we decide to do with the Informants' ability. I'll think on that some more.

One related angle I was exploring was introducing a civilian ability that would tell you if someone is "acting suspiciously" (similar to Investigate). So if the ability were used on the Spy, Detective, Informants, or Detective's Assistants, they would all come back as being unusual. This way, you can't be sure if the person you've found is good or bad, the major target or not, etc. Essentially, it's a "special role detector", but like other abilities, its results cannot be shared in the topic, so you have to get creative in how you carry forward with it. The only problem with this is it tells you which civilians to trust, and I don't necessarily like that--the interplay between me, Fujiwara, Kleene, etc. last game was really great because we couldn't be 100% sure about each other, so that made me a bit weary about introducing such an ability. One option is to make it a one-time-use sort of thing, but... I'll think about it some more.

Maybe one idea to consider is the idea of a special role who gets a list of suspects following a kill, perhaps just once per game. This could maybe be the Detective's Assistant role (which, to avoid confusion, we could name "Prosecutor"). This Prosecutor role would get a list of some size that would help them narrow down who it was that killed that victim. I'd only implement this one if we added the one-time-kill ability for the Informants (with only one Informant kill per round no matter if there is one or two or three of them), because then there would be some ambiguity as to who the killer was. This list should probably be the size of at least half the player population--that way, it'd definitely be bigger than the usual list, but it'd also be guaranteed to have an enemy on it. I'd like to make this role have negative effects for the Detective upon death, such as giving a list of suspected Detectives from "their notes" to the killer. Still more thinking to do before implementing anything like that, so we'll see.

[RoboG55]

What would happen if there were an odd number of players in a team round? Would there be a 3-person team then?

[Jd-]

What would happen if there were an odd number of players in a team round? Would there be a 3-person team then?

A couple of options. First, we'll reach out to everyone that's played before and ask if they'd like to join up to even things out. If not, someone will drop out to do so (I don't mind dropping out to ensure the game is fair for everyone). I expect, though, that the game will fill up before Sunday.

Either way, we'll work it out!

[Togop]

I don't like the idea of adding more roles (you have forum mafia for people who want many roles ). The mafia-like game I personally like best has only two roles: mafia and civillian (not even detective). The whole point of the game is to figure out who is who based on what they are doing, so I'm definitely against special-role detectors, and I'd rather informants were undetectable.
While the informants in round two didn't do much, I'd say the informant role as is has a lot of potential if used skillfully by the spy. If anything, I'd suggest the following:
The spy gains the ability to ID an informant (oce they know the identity, they could PM it to the GM). There should be no feedback as to whether the ID was successful, of course.
Successfully IDed informants get the right to send one message to the spy through the GM at somepoint during the game (the ID is used to make sure the informant can't use the message to identify oneself).

[Togop]

The "Secret Teams" variant originally went like this:

---

Secret Team Espionage Variant

Another concept based on Team Espionage with players again being randomly assigned teammates at the start of the game from the pool of players, but with the added facet of other players not knowing who your teammate is. In this variant, only you are privy to the identity of your partner and you may still communicate privately. However, actions and votes in general are not shared, with players living and dying separately.

---

Having everyone live and die separately fixes all of the issues that Togop mentioned and simplifies the voting results/etc dramatically. However, I am not sure that this should be the way that we first try a team game due to some of the added complexity that will come from it. That's why I first suggested a simpler team game that brings together the idea of teams but doesn't complicate matters too much just yet.

I'm of course open to trying it if enough people feel strongly enough, as always.

That fixes the issues (more like complications than issues) I mentioned because when I was mentioning only once that occur if we want teammates to die together. If they just vote/die separately, the only incentive left to protect your teammate is that you know their role. I feel it's to weak. Also, what happens to the currently 2-round limit after the death of the spy to kill the detective, when there are two detectives and two spies? What are the civillians' lists goi to include?

[Jd-]

That fixes the issues (more like complications than issues) I mentioned because when I was mentioning only once that occur if we want teammates to die together. If they just vote/die separately, the only incentive left to protect your teammate is that you know their role. I feel it's to weak. Also, what happens to the currently 2-round limit after the death of the spy to kill the detective, when there are two detectives and two spies? What are the civillians' lists goi to include?

There are a few different ways to do it, so I decided to leave it vague until we actually decide to do a round like that. Civilian lists would show at least two special roles, which could be two spies or one spy and one detective, etc.

I think there's a strong incentive to keeping your teammate alive even if you don't die together. A player who has lost their teammate is then at a disadvantage because they don't have anyone to exchange suspicions and deductions with. I'd definitely do whatever it took to keep my partner around, who would be the only player in the entire game of which I was certain of their role. That's pretty powerful information in itself.

Now, as for the end-game terms. Foremost, I think both the Spies and Detectives should still share their special actions but vote separately. This way, there's one kill per phase and one investigation per phase, but both players get the results from each, etc. This simplifies the complications tremendously. However, one difference is that I think both Detectives should be killed/arrested for the game to end for the Spies to begin their escape.

The resulting end-game is something that can go one of a few ways:

- Once both Spies are killed/arrested, the game ends.

- Once one Spy is killed/arrested, the remaining Spy has two phases to kill/arrest any remaining Detectives

- Once one Detective is killed/arrested, the remaining Spies have to find the other Detective before their escape procedure begins.

- Once both Detectives are killed/arrested, the remaining Spies have two phases to escape capture before they are considered victorious.

That's how I envisioned it going, at least. It just depends on how we want to handle it. Ideas welcome!

I don't like the idea of adding more roles (you have forum mafia for people who want many roles ). The mafia-like game I personally like best has only two roles: mafia and civillian (not even detective). The whole point of the game is to figure out who is who based on what they are doing, so I'm definitely against special-role detectors, and I'd rather informants were undetectable.
While the informants in round two didn't do much, I'd say the informant role as is has a lot of potential if used skillfully by the spy. If anything, I'd suggest the following:
The spy gains the ability to ID an informant (oce they know the identity, they could PM it to the GM). There should be no feedback as to whether the ID was successful, of course.
Successfully IDed informants get the right to send one message to the spy through the GM at somepoint during the game (the ID is used to make sure the informant can't use the message to identify oneself).

I think that's a fair point and I can't imagine we'll ever have more than four special roles (Detective, Detective's Assistant should that go through, Spy, and Informant). I think--apart from the Detective--keeping people away from certainty is always going to be where we should lean, yeah. I like that there's always a litttle mystery left no matter how certain we feel we are. The Informants merely being in the game create a nice barrier from the Detective fully trusting civilians, and that's always a good thing, so I do agree on that for sure.

[bash7353]

I think I agree with Togop that it would be best if there was more incentive to protect your team mate. Kicking you out of the game as soon as your partner is arrested or killed seems like a good way of achieving that.

I am, though, against arresting the team which gets the most votes between the two of them. That would open up the possibility for players do eliminate certain teams because they hadn't been arrested before.

[RoboG55]

So in the team rounds do the members vote individually? Or does the team have to agree on who to vote and vote together?

[Jd-]

So in the team rounds do the members vote individually? Or does the team have to agree on who to vote and vote together?

In the current round's rules, they decide and vote together. One team, one vote. You also vote for other teams as a unit, too, instead of individual players.