Time Cycle – The game will alternate between 48 hour days and 24 hour nights. During the daytime, accusations and item votes may be made, and public messages may be posted. During the night, player abilities may be used in secret by PM'ing the GM. Private messages may be sent regardless of the time of day.
Note also that secret messages can be sent through the GM. Just PM me whatever you want the message to be, and whether you want it to be public, or forwarded anonymously to a particular player, and it will be done upon the next morning, midday, or evening post. This is effectively a looser version of the old "secret voice" system from classic NotW.
Voting – There will be no voting, just accusations. The first day 2/3 of accusations are needed to kill a player. The next 2 days a majority of the accusations are needed, after that more than the runner up is the only thing needed.
Spoiler:
Originally Posted by Niklas
Alright, here's the thing:
When disaster strikes, you find yourself an isolated group with a werewolf (or whatever) among you, is it reasonable that the first thing you do is start voting on one person to hang per day? Heck no.
When disaster strikes, you find yourself an isolated group with a werewolf (or whatever) among you, is it reasonable that accusations fly back and forth, tempers flare, steel flashes and blood is spilled? Heck yeah!
My mechanic is intended to capture exactly this subtle difference. In my games there were no votes and no hangings. There were accusations and (more or less) accidental deaths. In effect they are exactly similar, but one gives a believable story and the other doesn't.
For the players, the only difference is that they should take care to cast their accusations in roleplay style, so instead of "The Wool Merchant gets my vote", you would instead have to say "I find the Wool Merchant's presence very unsettling, I bet he is the werewolf that has arrived among us". Not much different for how most already play, and how IMO everyone should play.
For the GM, the difference is a bit more tricky, but also more liberal. Instead of the everyday hanging, beheading, throwing off a cliff, walking the plank or whatever standard lynch mechanism has been used, you get to do the death free-style, different each day. In my game the wool merchant was trying to escape the angry people at the table that had started throwing their wine goblets after him, and as he ran he tripped and fell down the stairs and broke his neck. He was innocent. The Guardsman on the other hand was first accused by the noble Knight, and when it came down to it the Knight drew his sword in challenge, to which the Guardsman answered by growing furs. Then I could implement that death as the Knight killing the Guardsman in single combat.
You get the idea. Roleplaying and storytelling in a believable setting, rather than trying to tack an unreasonable and not believable out-of-game mechanic (the voting) into the setting itself.
In addition to accusation, it is possible to give someone your vote of confidence. This work as an inverse accusation.
There will also be some items revealed during the course of the game. These will be voted for publicly. A person with “normal” accusation power would get 1 vote. Those with more accusation power get the equivalent amount of votes.
Any accusations or votes can be sent privately to the GM and will then be announced in the evening post.
Injuries – Some things might cause some players to be injured. While injured a person normally can’t accuse someone nor perform night actions. How injuries get cured will remain a mystery.
Character stats – There will be numerous stats for each character; the only one available in the thread will be your public title.
Victory Condition – This is the title for how you win the game. The one most people get is “Innocent”.
Personal Goal – Personal goals are just for flavor, to add some action to the game and bragging points after the game.
Items – Several people will get items. These can be transferred privately at any update post (morning/midday/evening). They can also be revealed privatly between parties this way. They can also be revealed in public. They will then be voted upon the next day.
You will also get listed abilities if you have any and your base strength for endgame determination (abilities or items might alter this however).
Communication Etiquette – Regarding public messages, try to keep night talking to a minimum. Also, if you have OOC stuff to talk about that doesn't pertain to playing the game, talk about it in the signup thread or in the general NotW thread. That means that if you're suspicious of someone 'cause there was no night kill last night, and this person was inactive, by all means post it in the thread. If, on the other hand, you saw an image in the mustard on your chilli dog that totally reminded you of something that one of your fellow players said the other day, it'd probably go best elsewhere. And one other thing: If you're dead, don't make any posts regarding the game, please. I know that the standard "Aw guys you shouldn't have lynched me" can be sort of amusing, but there's too thin a line between that and after-death meaningful communication, which is forbidden.
Regarding private messages, there's a reason they're called private. Don't directly copy and paste quotes from private messages into other private messages or into public posts. Summarize them if you want, but don't give a word-for-word quote, and don't give the impression that you're doing so. The big exception here is if you know that the recipient has already seen the PM in question - that is, you can see on your copy of the PM that it was also forwarded to the third party. This exception is there just because it makes group discussions over CFC's PM system a lot more convenient. Simlarly no direct copying of IM logs either.
Finally, remember that this last rule goes doubly for any PMs you have from the GM - do not, under any circumstances, copy and paste your ability description, your motivation, your victory condition, or anything else from your starting PM. The same goes for confirmations of ability use or whatever. Summarize it if you want, but word-for-word quotes are not permitted.
I reserve the right to steer the game (for the purposes of balance), indulge me - it's my first time!
Secret Crewman-Runner-Agent Man!
