One thing from ToS DR games that I wanted to bring up is maybe give incorrect executions more of a punishment for the living players? Like, maybe execute one of them at random as well alongside the falsely accused player
That is spicy. Are there any examples for an Ultimate Talent ability based off a given talent?
If you wish to not give anything away, I could think of a random talent.
Hey now, I know they do that there but let us try this out as a step by step process.
Alice did already give the idea of executing the falsely accused player and also the MM wincon getting furthered.
So let us just, test that first instead of jumping that quickly lol
Given that I hadn’t played one of these games in a very long while, there was a bit of difficulties that inherently came with the whole ‘big thing that you aren’t really sure how to play effectively’ deal. Luckily for me at least, the role I randed essentially told me: “You will not be able to kill, realistically.”
I, on a whim, decided that Mole was possibly a threat and wanted to know roughly what they could do. So I checked them. And given the result I got back, my brain lit up. Thinking I basically already had the game in the bag and just needed to survive, I tried to stick hard to Dat…and it worked. I played very slowly outside of further investigation, and always played buddy all game.
The trials were fun, but I never really risked myself that much because playing safe was so insanely effective.
Due to boredom and slight desperation regarding a guaranteed win, I wanted to be able to guarantee a win and as such collaborated with Mole, who I knew for certain was the MM by that point. Given the ‘vote MM’ clause regarding the mistrial wincon, I decided that I was just going to throw Mole under the bus since lolguaranteed win.
There were laughs, thrills, and many instances of me doing completely random things in my rolecard just to confuse Alice and/or Spec Chat
What was the most fun for me was the exploring and the ‘lifey’ elements of it
Act 2: Daily Life
Main issues come in this section, so it will probably be the most important one to read.
Alice. You need a cohost if you’re going to do a second edition of this. Many of my ‘experience’ problems with the first all go back to the fact that you’re juggling several players all doing a ton of actions, and the logical implications of such a thing being a hamper on your ability to do some things in a timely manner. This wasn’t an issue all the time, but I especially noticed it in the first Daily Life. With the extra mechanics you are proposing, I think it makes it all the more necessary.
Buddying up is too effective. Whether through having people park in a public area or through always being together, going together makes the lives of everyone super easy. Given that it’s the only really safe way to explore, I think people will always go for it for their sake.
It’s also why “necessary stops” happen to be the best places to kill people, as seen with second and third trials of edition 1.
Areas, and where you can search in them, are way too vague. I asked several times just to know what would be able to check in each room I was in. It’s necessary, and at least having a shitty ms paint drawing ready for each room would do wonders for pacing.
Having more hidden rooms and other locked off places as well would make exploring not the exact same ‘check around here, check in there’ approach that the first edition had throughout every exploration phase.
Killing is difficult, but that’s fine.
As long as more messy kills aren’t impossible to pull off and get away with (ideally through abilities and such), then everything should be better off.
Trials are going to naturally be difficult if you remove a ton of the PoE-ish things that people can do
I do think Cafeteria and other public areas are too busted, though.
Overall, I would give high marks for everything else related to exploration. Making night longer and not as draining would probably be a good move as well since easy access to weapons and such makes the issue of ridiculously easy PoE much more vague.
Act 2a: Deadly Life / Trials
Deadly life / trials are pretty simple by comparison, and I thought they were both very good. I think tons of added chaos to them would make the game significantly worse since you have a scumteam running around instead of just one. Given that town needs to get exactly right, having more than one person actively trying to fuck with that is…not desirable.
Punishment for fuckup being higher is reasonable, though. It’s plausible that it’s just not my cup of tea.
Act 3: Abilities
I think everyone should have the reasonable ability to kill, as that would solve many of the problems that were present in the last edition.
I was forced to play investigative because I had no easy way to determine what was poison or to be able kill through alternative means. And that made the balance you were going for too skewed in an undesirable direction.
Act 4: Mastermind
Mastermind in edition 1 was essentially a participant who didn’t have enough information or access to other means to fuck with the game. Mastermind could be found socially through the trials, daily life, and deadly life, alongside through PoE.
The Mastermind is a fine balance. If it’s too easy for them to fuck with the murder evidence, they are almost certainly going to win through mistrials since murder evidence is one of the very few ways to actually thin PoE, since Blackened is much like a solo scum that doesn’t want to die socially (which is fairly hard to find).
Mastermind overplaying their hand would fuck them over, but underplaying it would also fuck them over. It should be a fine balance and they should need to be smart with how they lead trials astray.
Act 5: Conclusions
The game is…good
I’ve laid out my thoughts in here and while I have my reservations (mainly in regard to how easily MM can overplay their hand and not be punished since WC exists), I think a decent amount of your proposed changes make the game more interesting.
Thanks for hosting the first one.
It was a lot of fun.
The WCs kind of need to get the trials right since they turn into normal participants once their first wincons are fulfilled, so they can’t be causing chaos willy-nilly. Traitors technically need to fulfill their wincon before the game ends, so they shouldn’t be intentionally throwing trials.
Fair enough
It all depends on the wincons of course, but I fear the implications of a bunch of players getting together to throw trials because their wincon supports it