Confusion was still everywhere, but you had to leave immediately, your mission was too important. A full write up of what happened in the battle would be left to historians (in other words, this is all the additional background I can provide right now, or there may be a bit more I could put in another teaser but this is all for tonight. You would get more with the start of the game/signup thread, just know that the general idea is the players have been brought together in a ragtag group to hunt down, through dangerous, mountainous terrain, the evil Gnomish wizard Atto Ngoogol and defeat him once and for all.)
Rules:
I may have forgotten some things here, just a general disclaimer, but this is a start, should give you a decent feel for the game.
Firstly, normal Mafia game rules apply. I think you all know what this means, (for this game, including stuff like no forwarding GM messages, talking at night IS allowed, private messaging IS allowed is also my final call on this one) more detail will be in the final thread however, for brevity I only detail now significant new and interesting rules.
Factions: All players will belong to a faction. I will not specify the number or makeup of factions, but they are numerous, and all members of a faction share goals. Members of your faction are your teammates, not your enemies, and no, this isn’t a lie or trick by the GM, there really are no “infiltrators” on any faction, the faction you are with at the start of the game can be fully trusted as your allies.
Victories: All players have two Faction goals and a personal goal. The primary goal counts for 50% of Victory, the secondary goal for 30%, and the personal goal for 20%. For the majority of players, either your primary or secondary goal will include “Defeat the evil Gnomish wizard Atto Ngoogol.” Please strive to accomplish your victories as best as possible, within the game rules and forum rules and good sportsmanship. Victories are achieved regardless of survival, unless survival was one of your goals, but a player plays well and dies early they will not be and should not feel penalized, if their goals are still achieved in the end.
Strength: Characters will have a strength stat, which includes a base strength and an effective strength after modifiers are added, say from an item. Higher is always better. There may be other interesting attributes or qualities players will find of their characters as the game goes on.
Injuries: Players may be injured during the course of the game, which generally does the following: prevents them from using abilities, from casting support votes, and their base strength is minimized to one for the duration of the injury. An injury will recover on its own without interference after two phases (day/night) from when it was received.
Names and Player Action: All actions and votes for a player must be done by their CHARACTER NAME. Do NOT vote, or send in orders, by a poster’s CFC name, they will NOT count.
Example: Earthling is the character Joe McFantasyPerson. You may nominate: Joe McFantasyPerson or send me an order at night to roleblock: Joe McFantasyPerson. nominate: Earthling, or roleblock: Earthling ARE NOT VALID. The names of all characters will be listed in the OP, but not which CFC posters they are unless they die, though your fellow players may decide or not decide to tell you who they are.
Actually - one thing to note here - I had mentioned in the past whether this game wanted some restrictions on private messaging, the current answer to this is no by default. I suppose this right here relates a little bit in atmosphere, theme, or difficulty of the game. But I guess I should mention - if the directly above rule is somehow going to be universally hated/not acceptable to players, then it could change. So feedback on that is still open.
Nominations
What follows is equivalent to what would be a “lynch” in another Mafia game, however, in this game we do not have lynches, instead there are “nominations” for a champion. I
must stress right now and immediately, do not gloss over this, this is NOT just a flavor thing, nominations are very different from lynches. If you only thoroughly read a single thing in the entire ruleset, please please please let it be this.
So, while you may in general think of this as equivalent to a regular Mafia game lynch, here’s the details: Each day two players (this number may change as the game goes on) players are “nominated” to lead the group forward against challenges they face, threats from the Dark wizard or elsewhere. Nominated players are not being voted to the noose from their fellow players, but chosen to fight external threats – this may yet be deadly, but do not expect players to die like they would in a normal game’s “lynch.”
Each player gets a single vote for a nomination, and may vote for any player. You may vote with
vote: so-and-so or
nominate: so-and-so or just bold
so-and-so (but please see the above on names in general). Support votes also exist and are done in
green; they still count as your vote, so a player can only make one vote, or one support vote. A support vote DOES NOT REMOVE nominations against another player. Instead, by supporting a nominated champion, the supporting player agrees to help that player fight and overcome obstacles before them. Players may also abstain, this does not count as “vote for no one.” Regardless of the number of abstains, even on the very first day, the players with the two highest counts in nomination votes will be nominated.
There is also a final, likewise extremely important rule on nominations. Given the chaotic nature of magic both the land your foe put before you, it has been determined that the group should nominate a day’s champion as early as possible as threats may come out any time (out here in these wastelands magic at night seems even stranger and rather more dangerous, and with Ngoogol on the run, it was not felt that striking during the night was his major concern) . So the rule is as follows:
Firstly, for this game, please do not edit votes in previous posts, make a new post and
strike out votes as needed for your own convenience. Posts with edited votes will generally not be counted, especially if it would affect vote tallies game in light of the below.
Nominations will be tallied sometime on an hour (American Eastern time at :00 on an hour, or at any rate I’ll tell when “on the hour” corresponds to on the CFC clock, with something like “48 hours on the hour from this post”
, chosen beforehand randomly, after the 36th and before the 48th hour of the day expires. The players nominated at that time are magically marked – they will be the day’s nominees even if players come to wish they could change it. Recall, again, the game has a 48 hour day, 24 hour night cycle. Votes for items or other purposes still count right up to the deadline.
I, the GM, will NOT tell you when this deadline is each day, except that it is random, no player can do anything to change it, and I will not be unfairly changing things as the game goes on either (As with any other random effects, I have a random number table already chosen that I can show to any bystander or after the game, I’ll just the next number off the set when the time comes). The actual game update will still come after 48 hours if I can manage it, or at any rate that’s when the day officially ends.
So this may sound confusing, and you ask, what does this mean to you as a player? It means the following:
ANY AND EVERY NOMINATION/SUPPORT VOTE made in the first 36 hours of the day, after the morning update, is sure to count, unless the player later changes his/her vote. AFTER 36 hours, at any point on the hour, the votes may officially be tallied. Votes and vote changes after that WILL NOT BE COUNTED for the nomination tally (again, item votes are not affected by this rule). So, as a player, if you want to be sure that your vote is counted, vote in the first 36 hours. The evening update will not happen until after 48 hours, but at some point during that time voting may be closed, and if you vote afterwards, or change your vote, it may not be counted. Players are still certainly welcome to not vote, wait until the “last minute” to vote or change their votes and so on, that’s a valid strategy, just be aware of the dangers of playing with magics beyond your kin.
Example: One day, Charlie has three votes for him, Alice has four votes for her and Bob has three, after 36 hours have gone by. It’s still day, players can keep posting, and changing their votes and so on. It turns out this day, after 5 more hours, is when the votes are tallied, but the players don’t know that. So any player who changes their vote between 36-41 hours would have that counted, any changes after 41 hours actually wouldn’t count, and so the tally and writeup I will make at the end of the day would not reflect that. But regardless, if, say, David wanted Bob nominated he would be smart not to wait until the very end of the day, like 47 hours in, before voting – or else run the large risk that vote would not count.
Magic System: Players will have the opportunity to solve puzzles, riddles, or something similar during the daytime, providing a small strength boost or penalty if they are nominated or involved in any conflict during the day. To our mundane, human world such challenges for the mind are the closest we can get to represent overcoming some magical challenge, counterspell, or so on which gives a benefit to your character if you succeed, or penalty if you fail. I’ll go into more details later/spruce this up for the final ruleset, also I’ve said a bit about this before. Puzzles will be provided at the midday update, so a player who wishes to solve the day’s puzzle must say so beforehand, and will be committed to doing so – if you change your mind, don’t do it or give a wrong answer, you will suffer the penalty. Other players may help players solve a challenge even if there character will not be giving an answer.
Character Creation
Ah, the fun stuff. Actually, I’m not sure if I’m going into perfect detail here, especially as I don’t know if we’ll be doing this one or the Simpsons game. However, here’s what I would need from players:
Do NOT share with other players your plans for character creation before the game. During the game, you may tell people about yourself as a character, your name or alignment or whatever. However, you are still forbidden to discuss character creation mechanics – you can’t say “I put a 3 in strength during character creation and this is what I got” or “I asked for an evil character but didn’t go into specifics so Earthling gave me this character.” Talk to me if you have any questions or other circumstances. If you don’t create a character, yes, I could create one for you and a have a few spares ready anyway, this would drag out the signups/starting this game a bit though.
Absolutely Mandatory: Your Character’s Name
Absolutely Mandatory: You have 3 points to spend on attributes for your character.
The categories are:
Strength, Ability, Item, Other.
You may put 0-3 points in Strength or Ability, 2-3 points in Item, and 0-1 points on other. In the broadest sense, this influences what your character would have in terms of regular Mafia game concepts – more points in strength means a directly higher strength, more points in ability means a more powerful ability, or points in Item to ensure you get an item. Put a point in “other” to get something that may be all around more interesting, powerful, useful, or so on with your character, rather than a standard-ish role you might expect is close to any other Mafia role. Example: let’s say some player may wind up with a good chance of being a roleblocker, a common mafia game role. A player who puts 3 points in “ability” could just get a solid roleblock ability, and that’s it. A player with 2 points in ability and 1 point in other will get something more complicated/interesting.
Keep in mind everyone will be on a faction with some number of allies. However, you will not know or coordinate with your allies during character creation. But there are reasons to consider each choice and how you want to play – if you opt for a powerful item for instance it means that even if you get into trouble it may yet help your allies, or the drawbacks, like if you have too low strength and your allies do too you’d all always be in danger of being easily wiped out.
Important/Mandatory: Your preference for your character’s alignment, in terms of Good/Neutral/Evil.
Recommended: Your character’s race, nationality, religion, or such important details
Recommended/easy: Your Character’s favorite food, color, and animal, or some equivalent fun fluff details.
Recommended/a little work but c’mon. A couple paragraphs of backstory. Here, I think I’ve said this in some other posts and may quote from them in the future, the idea is the following – we have a generic fantasy setting, so feel free to come up with interesting stories, it will make things more interesting for all players hopefully. Particularly useful but not mandatory would be things like your character’s Race (y’know, human, elf, dwarf, etc… As with other things please don’t get far too outlandish)
Frequently Asked Questions:
Q: How in the world do you pronounce that awful “Ng”
A: Like a “g” expect when it’s pronounced like an “n”
That’s about it for this game, or at least all I recall going into the ruleset for now
