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

[Jd-]

well, thanks a lot people. you got me into watching Liar Game ... episode 6 now.

anyway, i still don't understand how this 5-vote system works. is it similar to the "minority voting" or the "restructuring game"?

Spoiler:

don't spoil anything!

hold on, let me listen to Fukunaga's explanation of his strategy again...

The 5 votes per person is not from LG. The idea that the last should be excluded is in the downsizing game. Anyway, don't watch it, read the manga. The games in the TV show are simplified versions of these in the mange.

Edit: Now that I think about it, people did get five votes in the downsizing game.

Is that so? That's an interesting coincidence; I haven't seen that game in years now if I'm thinking of the right one.

On the topic of Liar Game, though, I highly recommend watching the drama instead of reading the manga. I just found the manga to be a bit of a slog with really uninspired and unrefined art. More importantly, though, the author made several mistakes while he was writing the games, which caused several retcons to be made later to fix some missed calculations and such. It just got tiresome and was in dire need of some streamlining. I also strongly prefer what the drama did with the games, especially thematically. It feels like the natural evolution of the ideas in the manga that felt a little rough around the edges in many cases.

Liar Game is also one of the few times that a Japanese drama series placed an emphasis on editing, set design, and production value, whereas those are three aspects commonly overlooked in drama productions (along with general acting ability, but that's a discussion for another time). So, yeah, SA: I say watch the TV series and enjoy it all the way through. If you still want more after that, go check out the manga.

If you liked Liar Game you should give One Outs a try. It's a baseball manga by the same author and reads a bit like Liar Game without the annoying naive girl.

Baseball is my favoritest thing evers, so I'm surprised I'd not heard of it before. I see from a brief glance that it has an anime--is that any good? I'll look into it more later I think.

However, in terms of baseball, we do already have MAJOR, which--to me--satiated all desire I had for the entire genre. Talk about a show that hit every possible note...!

[Fujiwara]

If you liked Liar Game you should give One Outs a try. It's a baseball manga by the same author and reads a bit like Liar Game without the annoying naive girl.

Baseball is my favoritest thing evers, so I'm surprised I'd not heard of it before. I see from a brief glance that it has an anime--is that any good? I'll look into it more later I think.

It is! It's how I was introduced to the series and fell in love with it. Like Liar Game the art in the One Outs manga leaves something to be desired, so if that's an issue, definitely go for the anime, which was produced by Madhouse no less. You should definitely give it a try.

However, in terms of baseball, we do already have MAJOR, which--to me--satiated all desire I had for the entire genre. Talk about a show that hit every possible note...!

I absolutely love MAJOR! But I disagree with the notion that there is such a thing as too much baseball anime. :v
(In fact, I wish there were more series like MAJOR.)
But despite both series being about baseball, they're just very, very different. One Outs is really a lot more like Liar Game with lots of mind games and cheating going on and doesn't have the typical sports anime tropes that MAJOR features.

[shinichi'sapprentice]

two movies to go, and i'm heading for the manga... i initially wanted to just read the manga but noticed that the status is 2005-ongoing... i don't want to leave myself hanging... waiting... for whatever it is that is gonna happen next... so i decided to start watching... which is what i usually do to new series introduced to me... especially those that has only a few episodes/chapters ←by few episodes i mean less than 26, and by few chapters i mean less than 200

Spoiler:

i still don't get what is it that Shinichi lacks and Katsuragi Ryou has... gold? money? so, Shinichi in his college days was incorrect in his presentation/answer because he lacked the means(money) to gather more information blah blah blah? too lazy to rewatch, what were you guys' interpretation?

which thennnnnn, leads to the second off topicness in this thread, Jd-, why is Shinichi not in the list of favorite general character in the user control panel settings of our profile? my whole life, i have only encountered so far, three people/characters that has the name Shinichi. i forgot the second one. but i believe there is another Shinichi i know. Liar Game's Shinichi is the third one. he just made the name Shinichi more awesomer than all the names in the history of names. which makes me feel honored because my real name starts with s too. *grins* anywayyyyy, i want to revert back my favorite general character to Shinichi. but if no can do, then fine i'll stick with Haibara. but while we're at it... when will the newest DC movie be added to the list of favorite conan movie? i haven't watch it myself yet because maybe, just maybe, Kamite will plan sometime to make a dctp movie night for the latest movie... nah, that's one of the reasons... i just don't have the time to watch it right now... haven't even watched the DC anime since the vampire case/ mystery train -whichever came last... i don't even remember. so yeah, that too. people just might have loved the latest movie and wanted to make it their favorite conan movie in their profiles

annnnnnd on topic, did somebody explain the new voting system to me? might have missed it because of all the Liar Game talk... still kinda don't understand how it works... maybe we should decide when round 5 starts? or start the sign-ups? or is everybody still busy? Jd-, are you still ill?

[Jecka]

If you liked Liar Game you should give One Outs a try. It's a baseball manga by the same author and reads a bit like Liar Game without the annoying naive girl.

Baseball is my favoritest thing evers, so I'm surprised I'd not heard of it before. I see from a brief glance that it has an anime--is that any good? I'll look into it more later I think.

I actually just saw something about One Outs the other day because I was looking up Kappei Yamaguchi's Anime roles again So I found it funny that it was brought up just a few hours after reading about it. Anyway, I might watch it if I have time.

[Kamite]

What have I done? Might as well do a Liar Game theme now. I volunteer

[shinichi'sapprentice]

yeah. i was just about to blame you, you round three spy, you... all my head is thinking right now is the Liar Game...

so, back to espionage... are we really gonna be leaving the decision to choose who is arrested if tie votes occur to the GM... again? we had rule changes so it'll be an easy job for the GM if these stuffs occur... but if it's ok for the GM, then nevermind...

[Jellitto]

Back to the topic...

The one thing I have been thinking is that just how active one must be when using this New Method?

If a player posts once per day and sends in their votes, are they being inactive? It just feels to me that apart from those who don't post anything and don't vote, that is the group of players getting arrested next only because of their activity level.

To me having to decide on five votes to give to players you want to stay in the game sounds too complex and time-consuming especially early in the game, when you don't really trust anyone yet.

I would just remove the real inactives from the game instead of changing the voting system.

Questions:

So, can the Spy get arrested if a tie occurs? Can other special roles too?

[Kamite]

yeah. i was just about to blame you, you round three spy, you... all my head is thinking right now is the Liar Game...

You know the new chapter is finally out now

[Jd-]

Back to the topic...

The one thing I have been thinking is that just how active one must be when using this New Method?

If a player posts once per day and sends in their votes, are they being inactive? It just feels to me that apart from those who don't post anything and don't vote, that is the group of players getting arrested next only because of their activity level.

To me having to decide on five votes to give to players you want to stay in the game sounds too complex and time-consuming especially early in the game, when you don't really trust anyone yet.

I would just remove the real inactives from the game instead of changing the voting system.

Questions:

So, can the Spy get arrested if a tie occurs? Can other special roles too?

I think the new voting system would make things more interesting, as far as encouraging more interaction and such. What I like most is the temporary alliances that would be formed, in arranging to receive votes from other players. This way, the early rounds are actually made a lot less complex as far as determining a target--instead of finding someone to suspect, you're finding people to temporarily trust instead. So while you're not exchanging a blood vow, you are temporarily trusting one another for at least that phase. Later on, the game would change: You would still be arranging votes for yourself, but once suspects emerge, you would be specifically trying to get people to not give votes to that suspected player. I think it's an interesting dynamic and one we haven't explored in these sorts of games before.

As for determining who's active and who isn't, sending in your actions and posting once per day would definitely be considered "active".

We may not be able to implement the new voting system before the next round. However, we really have to do something about the inactive players. Removing them outright imbalances the game (including using your inactivity to help your side; I can think of a few scenarios where that would be useful including last game), so... I'm not really sure.

As for your last question, the Spy and special roles could indeed be arrested in the event of a tie, if we did go through with that system sometime.

[bash7353]

On the topic of shareability of lists and how the rules should incentivise I've come up with this:

Every Civilian gets a list. In previous rounds those lists contained information regarding both Detective and Spy. There was an incentive to keep your lists to yourself, so as to protect the Detective, but at the same time publishing the list would help identify the Spy. Whether the lists definitely contain Detective and Spy or they do so with a greater probability than other roles, we've agreed that, despite the incentives I've mentioned, it won't work if players are free to share their lists publicly.

As Togop pointed out, if every Civilian makes their actual list public everyone will be able to count how often each player appears, which'll give them two players who are bound to be Detective and Spy. That would pretty much guarantee a Detective/Civilians win. It's doubtful that Informants and Spy pretending to have lists themselves will be able to seriously obstruct this kind of strategy, but even if they could, the game would become one of statistical analysis. I'd predict that most people would make their lists public and if you're voted depends on how often your name comes up. Aside from that every round would end very quickly as Detective and Spy will always be found early. I don't think that's how we want the game to play out.

The only way to prevent the innocent side from using this strategy to easily win is to have lists contain no indication as to the Spy's identity whatsoever. That's how they were generated for Round 4 if I remember correctly. The Detective was found on every list, but all other players, no matter if they were the Spy or not, appeared with the same probability. But, in my opinion, that's not ideal either. At no point during the game is any Civilian able to use his or her list to help find someone evil. The only thing they are able to do is narrow down the Detective, which, I suppose, is valuable information. There are players on your list you might be afraid are the Detective, so you decide not to vote them. Overall, however, I think this change had made lists far less important as they weren't really considered as much as in earlier rounds when making decisions over the course of the game.

As I see it, we can't have lists indicating the Spy's identity, and we can't have lists not indicating any evil role's identity either. So what I'm proposing is this:

We put Detective and Informants on the lists.

If Civilians decide to make all or many of their lists public, they wouldn't be able to identify the Spy, but only the Informants. As a result the Spy would learn the Detective's identity, so this doesn't seem like a very smart move. If you're playing for the innocent side keeping the Detective safe should trump identifying Informants, so I think my suggestion incentivises players to keep lists secret. Lists will help some Civilians narrow down possible Informants, who they might decide they should arrest. Also, their behaviour during the game - who they defended, for instance - might reveal possible Spy candidates. That way lists will still have a purpose, and players can still draw helpful conclusions from them, but making them public, at least in early stages of the game, would only hurt your own team.

There is one problem that I see, though. If the Detective dies or gets arrested the incentive to keep lists secret is immediately removed. That could potentially cause problems. For one thing, the Spy would have to very careful not to make up and post a list as his or her own that people might be able to tell is fake since other lists contradict it. I don't really like the idea of Spies and Informants losing because of something like that.

I'm not sure how exactly to do that. We could do something like 'either Detective or Informant(s)' similarly to how it was done in Rounds 1 through 3, but the question would be how to handle rounds in which there are multiple Informants. What we could also do is put Detective and Informants on every list. As of right now, I'm inclined to go with the more extreme latter option.

What do you guys think? Is that something we could try out and see how it goes?

[dumytru]

It looks like this to me:

Spoiler:

Seems like we have to figure what to include, what to exclude and what is random on the lists.
Optionally, there could be a weighted include.


EDIT: Yeah, googleearth's idea is awesome.
I think it's definitely worth trying.

[shinichi'sapprentice]

There is no rule in Espionage saying that transparent text isn't allowed.

I have some concerns about that.

Before starting this round, when rewriting the rules, I stole some ideas, essentially their entire 'Guildeline' section, from Mafia. I was trying to be very clear about what is allowed and what isn't, but that isn't always easy. Right now the rules say

— Encrypted codes or any initiative that requires knowledge of the role you hold in order to prove yourself to others is not allowed.

We should clarify that. Perhaps that's something to talk about in the Rule Discussion Topic.

bringing this here now.

Transparent/Invisible texts are under the font color tags. (e.g. [color=transparent*]text[/color*]←without the asterisks) So, if we're not allowing the use of transparent texts, we should not allow the use of all font colors then? Together with all the other tags that can be used (font color, font size, etc.).

'encrypt' is defined as having to convert an information or data into a code, especially to prevent unauthorized access

i think this ↑ was added because one of the main rules of the game is to only talk about the game in the designated topic/thread. and if players will use some kind of code that requires their team to have to decipher and stuff to confirm their role, then that's gonna be an issue.

and again, the rules say that it is not allowed if it will be used to confirm one's role. in my defense, i used transparent/invisible texts as strategy to confuse the other team that i may be detective. i don't think the use of said text needs lots of knowledge of code ciphering. and now that someone used it, then next time everybody should just highlight everything so..? if you guys think otherwise, then let's get discussing \o/

[Stopwatch]

I mean, I could just be bitter given that I didn't look for it because I was under the impression it wasn't allowed in the first place , but I think that banning it is fair as for me it comes under "encryption" in the sense that the rules intended it (in my opinion). That said, I'm okayish if it's allowed, but only if that is made clear in the rules beforehand.

[Jd-]

I'd say no use of any sort of encryption, hidden text, or anything that is not obvious to all players that read the topic. Whether or not it had any bearing on the last game is incidental at this point, if you ask me--that game played out in an interesting way nonetheless and is now over, so onward and upward.

My recommendation: Specify that no encryption is allowed, nor is hidden, transparent or resized text. You may also not use your signature or profile to in any way indicate your role--all cues must take place in the form of posts that would be readily apparent in a fair manner to any player participating in the game and would not require foreknowledge of special forum functions or anything outside the realm of general fairness. You may also not post images that would in any way signal your identity (such as using a specific filehost or your own server, etc).

That's my recommendation.

[bash7353]

If I'm close to other players and I've been talking to them privately a lot, jokes and references might have been established that would only be understood among this small circle of people. That way I could during the game post messages that seem meaningless to most, but convey certain pieces of information to some players.

In my opinion that qualifies as encryption. And it shouldn't be allowed. The reason we want to prevent players discussing the game using private messages is to force them to be non-selective. If they have something they might wanna say or information they might wanna share, like their list or Investigate results, they can either say it to or share it with everyone by posting in the topic or no one. Any effort that shares information with some while withholding it from others should be forbidden, except for anything considered in-game like Order.

If you use transparent text it's likely that some notice it and others won't. I would argue that it shouldn't make a difference if you can control who's able to decrypt it and who isn't.

Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting you can't use jokes or references in your post. If it can be reasonably expected that most players will understand it because it references a television show or something that happened here at DCTP or something similar that's public information, that's fine. Just don't try to convey something to someone while withholding it from others.