When the Larvae Moult | The infection spreads | Post-mortem p.74

Karl wrote:This is maybe straying into Forum Game Test Group territory, but a mechanic I've been sitting on for a long time is the idea that the wolves can only target from the bottom half of that day's posters in terms of post count. Hard to keep track of and enforce, but probably good for in-thread activity and making sure the most involved players make it to the end.

Surely just godkilling the inactives would avoid severely handicapping the mafia for the same effect? SONM always had some sort of 1 post every 24 hours rule to try and force at least some semblance of activity.

I'm somewhat surprised Edd and Grey made it to the end without being godkilled honestly.

Nun wrote:

Karl wrote:This is maybe straying into Forum Game Test Group territory, but a mechanic I've been sitting on for a long time is the idea that the wolves can only target from the bottom half of that day's posters in terms of post count. Hard to keep track of and enforce, but probably good for in-thread activity and making sure the most involved players make it to the end.

Surely just godkilling the inactives would avoid severely handicapping the mafia for the same effect? SONM always had some sort of 1 post every 24 hours rule to try and force at least some semblance of activity.

Sure, that's a viable take on it for sure. We've had that rule here in the past too (Drumstick's AYAW? comes to mind, as well as probably others). I think the reason I like the idea of making a top percentage of players immune is that it rewards good play (and is maybe slightly good for the village), whereas an inactive cull punishes bad play (and is maybe slightly bad for the village).

There's no reason a game couldn't have both systems in some respect, as long as they were tuned properly. I guess I just think playing with that mechanic might be interesting / fun!

I definitely agree that not having at least one mechanic like that in this game was an oversight, as I think to an extent it 'feels bad' that Grey got to win without really doing anything. That's no slight on him -- it's my bad, ultimately.

Errkal wrote:

OrangeRakoon wrote: :p

I started out Human and became the spy so I got the human pm at the beginning so on being ask about I knew what to say.

Ahh, that makes sense!

Who was controlling Hexx when they sent me the least convincing pm known to man?

"least convincing"...didn't you get Gamma_Hexx elected, via vote rig, on that part?

Karl wrote:I think what I miss most about, say, 2010-era AYA?s were the big spontaneous in-thread happenings -- Phoenix Wright GIF laden Megatons in particular. I'm really interested in thinking about ways to recapture that for our current userbase. Many of the same players are still around, but can't spend all day watching the thread or all evening putting together theories, so I wonder whether a game could be put together to mechanically encourage that kind of moment. Perhaps the act of accusing someone could have some mechanical importance.

This is something I reflected on after both of my games. Aside from time being an obvious issue as we're all that little bit older, I ended up concluding that, generally speaking, the way we play the game has evolved and moved on. It is, somewhat uninspiringly, played mostly behind closed doors with less impetus on in-thread action. We've surpassed things like Corazon being killed for calling one of the wolves a dickhead in an unrelated thread. There's more plotting, more planning and less spontaneity.

I definitely think tinkering with the format we're familiar with is the way to go (i.e. my no-Mayor system in Are You a Supernatural?), it's just exploiting those mechanics and realising what's possible takes time.

Was there any reason to the avatar changes?

This was a cracking idea for a game, if a little hard to follow at times as a normal human. Really a shame that we never got to that revelation during the game that accounts were being left behind as it would have been a great moment and would have made the game so much better after that point. We obviously didn't take Karl's warning that this wasn't a normal game seriously enough and didn't read into the real thought and effort that went into the game enough either. I do think though when it became clear we probably weren't going to get there the hints should have been laid on thick cause like I said that would have been the big moment of the game and now we'll never really get the chance again!

Archive request!