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[Starver]

Honestly, if I would have done a terminator themed mafia game, I would be heavily inclined to bastard mod it, have Sarah a sort of 'survivor' with Arnold tasked with protecting her.

If it weren't contrarian to the Terminator-style temporal mechanics[1] (there's more than one other film I could use, though) I'd have thought about a form of feedback-loop based upon who prevails per round to (not necessarily straightforwardly) influence faction-changes among the remainder.

But concocting the interactions-matrix (e.g. if a certain machine is terminated, their remains kick-start a better model that the future can have sent back, perhaps in the form of a Resistance member who was actually captured and used as an infiltration template) would be a pain, as would any private-chat membership management, even if it might give plenty of opportunity for balancing against luck-based factional tsunamiing.


Perhaps a better model would be Bill And Ted (in the "we just need to remember that at this point we'd rather like to find our future selves had already pre-visited and planted something useful... here!" sense, though not sure how that would work in a combative environment without nerfing the "kills" idea (unless something else of Bogus Journey is included).





[1] I enjoyed the huge amount of flavour written, but I'm uncertain about "watching the timelines change". Unless that was what using the (fictional, but based on a real finding?) T-Meg as Temperal Courier was all about? I must re-read that bit, I only gave it one pass to soak it up. Anyway, unlike various things that produce a Marty McFly fading mechanics or Millenium-style 'timequakes', you shouldn't get to see changes without living through (and beyond) yourself. But I digress.

[Skynet]

I enjoyed the huge amount of flavour written, but I'm uncertain about "watching the timelines change". Unless that was what using the (fictional, but based on a real finding?) T-Meg as Temperal Courier was all about?

Yeah, that was the idea. When prepping for this game, I looked up different fan hypotheses about Skynet's actions, and one hypothesis claimed that Skynet could be able to bootstrap itself by sending information about itself back in time, giving it essentially unlimited research ability. So I decided to adapt that fan hypothesis for this game. In this game, only Skynet (and T-Meg) really took advantage of Temporal Courier mechanics. The main limitation though is that Skynet has to literally trust whatever T-Meg said, and if T-Meg misinterpreted what Skynet said in the previous timeline iteration...or worse, lied, then Skynet has to proceed off that faulty data. For this game, at least, T-Meg's data was reliable enough for Skynet to use.

This is how I wrote up the fakeclaims. I created 9 different vanilla townie profiles, and then choose only three vanilla townies as being "real" while handing off the other 6 vanilla townie profiles to the other factions. "Fictional, but based on a real finding" is probably the best way to explain the fakeclaims: T-Meg and the other terminators did actually exist in some form and played a role in the backstory, but they weren't present in the Tech Noir.

---

Personally, I believe that the most logically consistent form of time travel would be Casual Time Loops, but that type of time travel isn't exactly fun for storytelling (or rather, it could be fun...but it requires a lot of thinking beforehand). And since the Terminator franchise (aside from the first Terminator movie at least) doesn't believe in casual time loops either, well, better stick to canon...

[notquitethere]

Let me add, that I also really enjoyed the setting writing you did, so much so that it inspired me to watch the first Terminator film. What was especially good about it was it felt like paying attention to it mattered: the alternative factions and their wincons flowed directly out of the setting.

[ToonyMan]

Nothing like themed games to make players more cultured.

I saw T1 and T2 as a little John Connor kid which was definitely not appropriate for my age, but I think the films hold up still as an adult.

Now we need some other scifi themed games like Alien, RoboCop, Total Recall, Starship Troopers...

[webadict]

RoboCop would be a deconstruction of how Mafia incentivives vigilante justice and might = right, paralleling a type of toxic masculinity that is ultimately a hindrance to the real discord, while using vigilante justice and might = right to punish those that follow the system...

So, yeah, RoboCop is a slam dunk theme.

[Caz]

Thanks for hosting and making this game Skynet, the flavour was awesome.

Starship Troopers...

Starship Troopers 2 was pure trash but the plot would make an excellent mafia setting. THERE'S A BUG. IN YOUR BRAIN. A BRAIN BUG.

[Starver]

This is now getting to be non-game and non-Mafia in total (unless it's food for thought), but...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[...] The main limitation though is that Skynet has to literally trust whatever T-Meg said, and if T-Meg misinterpreted what Skynet said in the previous timeline iteration...or worse, lied, then Skynet has to proceed off that faulty data.
[...]
 And since the Terminator franchise (aside from the first Terminator movie at least) doesn't believe in casual time loops either, well, better stick to canon...

I have always maintained (well, through the first two, and it works for the third, but may not last much more than that (esp. through the Sarah Jane Connor Chronicles, which I have not yet managed to see every episode of) that an entirely self-consistent single looping timeline is possible in Terminator canon if you allow for deceptive/falsified/mistaken information to come back via the various more 'informative' iterations of time-traveller.  (Rees only knows what he's been taught, the Ts that expound details have largely been reprogrammed, Skynet may be unaware that all it is doing is bootstrapping the cause of its defeat by forcing the creation of Sarah's radical situation changes - as you said something of in your flavour - and future John Connor might be reinforcing the preparatory messages he needs to be heard over the actual Judgement Day truth.)

A whole set of self-reinforcing timeloops (the only real divergence, at first, being Sarah's 'dreams of her own future', which aren't real so can't be taken as canon) doing exactly that, because they always[1] have.


[1] Alternatively, they 'settled down' into a low-energy stability, if malleability to chronicity can occur. But when you need to ask about the Rees+Sarah=>John=>mentors Rees--->loops back to Sarah, you ultimately get the question of whether the original Rees (or functionally equivalent) was unmentored or the original John (likewise) was from a different relationship, before finding the sort of lazy All You Zombies 'sweet spot'.

As to the game: if I didn't already properly say it was an enjoyable watch (if typically confusing, from a no-info/no-jeopardy POV). And the hidden flavour, once revealed, was a bonus.

Other old films? Well, not as old, not SciFi, but one could 'stir up' the likes of Reservoir Dogs. A 2010 (Odyssey 2) theme has potential (or 2001, with greater plot-divergence) to set up a save-or-fail scenario. I think I saw a potentially good E.T. one once (but suffered from game-/player-chaos in application). Almost current - relatively - the whole Matrix setting has so much potential I daren't even mention the variations I'm conjuring up in my mind (again, I have Opinions about the canon), and let's not even dare discuss Inception.

[Vector]

I still have kind thoughts for the olde Homestuck Mafia. That was The Shit.

[heydude6]

If you're worried about set-up balance, you could also try PMing Meph and asking him for advice. He doesn't usually play, so it's okay to do so with him.

[Skynet]

This is now getting to be non-game and non-Mafia in total (unless it's food for thought), but...

I think it’s good food for thought...and could be useful for flavor reasons.

So, I liked your spoiler, and think it is interesting.

However, one problem that plagues stories with casual time loops is the inability to change anything. You are stuck essentially with the hand you are dealt with, and there is some potential in exploring the existential angst associated with knowing that the future is predetermined, at some point that potential gets exhausted and there’s no obvious way forward for storytelling. The other approach (“You can retcon anything thanks to time travel!”) also causes existential angst, but in the opposite direction - what’s the point of changing the timeline when someone in the future will go back in time and change it right back? I might have exhausted that potential in this game as well, meaning no real path forward for storytelling (or at least, none that is immediately obvious).

My question is this: if your spoiler is correct, what types of story you would tell? What real stakes could exist in such a setting if the readers know that all characters - Skynet, the Resistance, and other third-parties - are all futilely trying to stop the inevitable? (That answer could also help me write the flavor for a possible sequel to this game.)

[Starver]

Ah, well now <hurriedly rereads what I wrote, to remind self> this is why I ultimately decided to spoiler it and caveat it as non-game material. It wasn't properly intended to be Mafia-relevent.

But...

Twelve Monkeys, that's probably an type-A example (well, found it rewatchable again and again) and I mentioned the Bill And Ted thing earlier. With your perilous-exisyencs Back To The Future as a strong type-B (perhaps not the best example, first that comes to mind).  Or perhaps Timecop for either capacity, depending upon if you had a non-player TEC enforcer you might insert into the flavour to 'mop up' aberations (or whatever the stupid 'you touch yourself' blob-death thing was). I think you could, for both cases, design modifications to the generic wincons that meant that inevitability or hyperfluidity of timeline can work.

Frexample: "You win if you discover/obscure <some 'forgotten' information>". It doesn't really matter if the flavour demands it all ends up at the point whereupon everything is as it must have been to send various pro/antagonists back to the start if you cover enough possibilities to fudge a possibly elastic travel between (options for) concrete endpoints.


Though I'm not entirely sure how this fits in (because I never saw enough of it to establish the internal logic or otherwise) there was a series called Primeval (or "Primæval", as it probably ought to have been, being British ) which had random/maybe-not-random time portals 'start' to spring up between now and the overwhelmingly large swathes of prehistory (it was Walking With Dinosaurs era, so plausible CGI was just mature enough to be used weekly). This usually meant the obvious "Dinosaur Of The Week rampages through contemporary setting, supersecret government department sends in paleontologists to repatriate the whatever(s), seal things off then cover it up" that you'll imagine.

Of course there was a Protagonist who seemed to know how to freely find and travel the portals (maybe more than that) and had an Agenda (I forget what - misanthropy?). And she had a particular Henchman (apparently yer standard soulless, sadistic, laconic and loyal 'black-ops' brand) who was the protagonists' usual foil when it was more than just a naive dino-herding episode. But I think the Jumping The Shark Megalodon moment involved the time she called in her own particularly overwhelming version of The Cavalry, which turned out to be many versions of the Henchman emerging from many spawning portals from all kinds of points in his timeline (think "Thirteen Doctors in Thirteen TARDii" without the feel-good part). How's that for a LyLo-forced one-shot to try or fail to engineer regardless of the mook/minion having been lynched. Revive w/multi-vote.

(Well, except that I'm fairly sure it got defeated, somehow, by the protagonist team's own innate rag-tag ingenuity. It was probably a season-finale, so might not have have been properly resolved until the next season-start. I lost track.)


Noting: I'm not a good designer of balanced Mafia games. The last one I tried, not here, was intrinsically balanced by being multiple naive cult-leaders who all thought they were SKs[1], with hidden game setup to (theoretically) progressively clump them into cult-groups (or get rebuffed) according to how they targetted each other each night, until one group dominated. Unfortunately, I missed a 'race condition' in my system and it just frustrated everyone as repeated attemptex night-'kills' didn't happen again and again and again to everyone's frustration and I didn't know how to unspoilery placate the players without an unplanned reveal. It was a mess, and put me off hosting anything too experimental.

Alternately, revamping a tried and tested balanced werewolfy-game with added retroactive actions, revivals and/or refactioning needs great thought than I can reliably muster.


None of that'll help, I'm sure, but you asked. So it's your fault.   


[1] I fake-assigned them each versions of SK-characters they'd used in prior games (and true fake-claims from past Townies they'd played), which I felt quite happy with.