SCHIZOPHRENOIDA: THE DARK DESCENT
Disclaimer: Since the subject matter of this game involves mental illness, I feel it's fair to both put a warning up beforehand, and to explain that the purpose isn't to degrade or glorify schizophrenia, nor try to present any sort of narrative that may attempt to paint the nature of the illness in a certain light. I'm neither a psychologist nor a victim of the disease, but I thought of an interesting idea for a game and figured it would be a good set-dressing for the scope of the game. I make this with full empathy of those affected and hope that eventually some sort of cure can be found. This is just a game and is meant purely for the sake of entertainment. If I get something wrong or falsely portray an aspect of the disease, keep in mind it's purely for the sake of the game.
Welcome to Schizophrenoida, a hybrid mafia-SG type game that involves the players making (or attempting to make) educated choices based on a set of information provided to them, while a smaller group of players attempts to undermine them by providing false information for varying reasons. I didn't put it on the mafia sub-board, because while it includes mafia-esque social deception elements, it's not the core of the game.
OVERVIEWThe game follows the adventures of the (yet-to-be-named) protagonist throughout a normal day of his/her life. The players will be divided into three "teams" of players that will work towards separate goals. It will last from the moment the protagonist wakes up until midnight at the end of the day. Each turn will last at most 5 days and will be divided into two phases. Both the teams and the types of phases will be described in following sections.
The basic overview of gameplay is that the players are presented with three scenes to choose from, at which point they vote on which scene is the "real" one, and submit actions to be voted on accordingly. Once an action is selected, the Phrenoids and Schizoids both plot to create their own version of the scene, separate from the "real" scene, that will be mixed in with the real scene that the players will vote on and base their actions in the following turn. This continues until the protagonist either dies, or the game ends (and then scoring is done).
THE PLAYERSThere are three main roles a player can be assigned once the game starts. They are as follows:
NoidsNormal, uncorrupted elements of mental clarity and thought. Their goal is to steer the mind towards its higher aims, its most coveted desires and aspirations.The "default" role in the game, akin to the town in mafia. Noids work together to see through the deception and clouded mind and steer the protagonist towards a successful day. They win with two of the three victory conditions, and are the most numerous of the three roles.
PhrenoidsVivid fascinations wreck the ever-longing mine for the world-that-turns, conjuring imaginations of the world-that-was intermixed with the world-that-could-be. Luminary echoes cast their shadow across eons of reality and the fanciful tapestry of the real world, longing that fascinates the waking mind and wreaks havok among the individual who would otherwise be more concerned with world affairs. A "neutral" role in mafia-speak, the Phrenoids work together to create scenes that would otherwise seem favorable to the players. They don't get to see the real scene like the Schizoids do (although they do get a word count), but they do have access to
memory, which the Schizoids don't usually have access to. The Phrenoids have an independent win condition. It doesn't matter if the protagonist lives, dies, or fails at everything they do. Regardless of who wins the game, the Phrenoids are considered successful if their scenes are chosen more often than or at least as often (40%) as the real scenes (schizoid scenes are counted as neutral for this purpose).
SchizoidsDark creatures of doubt and despair, spiders crawling about the cobwebs of the subconscious mind, feeding off of the destruction of goals, aspirations, and dreams. Corrupted servants of the greater mind, who either through fomented malice or a misguided sense of self-preservation, shield the self from it's self-realization and perpetuate a cycle of misery and self-loathing.Schizoids are the "mafia" of the game, and are directly working to undermine the success of the players. The exact win conditions will be detailed in a later section, but they are also able to submit a scene for consideration of the players. Unlike Phrenoids, they have a copy of the "real" event to judge, but don't have access to
memory, unless they spend one of their limited
subversion tokens.
All roles can vote and propose actions like normal during the action phase.
Roles will be allocated randomly and secretly when the game starts. The ideal ratio I'm going for is 1:2 for Schizoids and 1:3 for Phrenoids, although these aren't perfect and may be adjusted to suit the intended balance based on how the math works out. One hard rule, however, is that Phrenoids will never outnumber Schizoids, they can only have at least as many members as the Schizoids do, so if the math divies up the players in such a way that there would be more Phrenoids, that slot will be given to the Schizoids instead. Apportionment is hard. When the game starts, however, there will be a post detailing the number of players in each role.
In regards to voting, consensus among Phrenoid and Schizoid players is required to use tokens or post scenes. This can be a simple majority, but is ideally unanimous. Since there will probably at most be two players per Phrenoid or Schizoid team, this means you either agree or a course of action is picked randomly. For single player teams, well, hopefully you can agree with yourself
COURSE OF PLAYThe game operates on turns, each turn divided into two phases.
Ponder PhaseThe ponder phase is where the players discuss the three scenes presented to them and decide which one is real and act accordingly. During this phase a player will submit both a vote for the real scene, and a course of action (or vote on an existing course of action). This phase will last 3 days, or until all players have submitted their vote. Alternatively, if a majority of players has voted for a certain course of action (such that it would succeed regardless of other players), the turn will end after 24 hours from that last vote (to allow for further argumentation and debate).
During the ponder phase, an additional tidbit of information will be presented in the form of
memory. Memory can usually be trusted to be accurate, and represents the relevant knowledge of the protagonist as it pertains to the matter at hand. This can be things like, the arrangement of the room, the name of a coworker, what you ate for dinner last night, etc. Keep in mind that memory is
not perfect even when not subverted, and can be incomplete or lacking details entirely. Memory will never, however, directly mislead the players. It won't make things up that don't exist, or remember events that never happened. It can only be deceptive via omission. That is, unless...
SubversionDuring the action phase, where the Schizoids and Phrenoids plot their next scene, Schizoid players can opt to spend a
subversion token to get a glimpse at, or even alter memory. There are two main ways to spend a subversion token:
Recall: Recall is simply that, you recall the memory that will be displayed in the next ponder phase, and get to see it before the rest of the players do and get to plan your scene accordingly.
Subversion: Subversion is much more dramatic, and allows Schizoid players to
alter the memory that will be displayed in the next ponder phase. Sometimes even memory, that vague and listless warden of thought and mind can be subjugated by dark forces.
The Schizoids will start with three tokens, although there may be very rare opportunities to get new ones. When a token is spent on recall, it will be used up only if the Schizoids' scene isn't selected by the players. When spent on subversion, it will always be used up, regardless. There is a bit of a gamble here to spice things up.
An important element of subversion, is, of course, that the players won't know that memory was subverted. However, this can also persist into later turns if players wonder whether that memory was real or not, so there is an additional rule regarding subversion. If the players choose the
correct scene while subverted memory is present, they will learn that the subverted memory was false.
Action PhaseThe action phase is more akin to the "night" phase of mafia, in that only the Schizoids and Phrenoids have a part here. It is during this phase that they get to discuss and plan out the scene they want to submit for the next ponder phase. The action phase will last at max 2 days, although if both teams submit an action beforehand, then it will end at that point.
WIN CONDITIONSThe game will start at 6:00 am and last until midnight, and time flow will be decided by the narrative. Throughout the game, players will need to accumulate
success points in order to ensure the protagonist succeeds at their goals and continues to maintain their normal life after the day ends.
There are three types of tasks, from which successful completion can earn success points:
Foundational Tasks: 5 points
Major Tasks: 3 points
Minor Tasks: 1 point
The task list will be updated at the beginning of each ponder turn as tasks get completed, added, or failed. In order to "succeed", success points must be higher than failure points. Failure points are earned by failing a task, where the points are added to the failure tally instead of the success tally.
Additionally, each task will have "upgrade" and "subvert" conditions, which can detail ways in which a task can be upgraded to a higher tally (9 points for foundational), or subverted (one tier lower, or 0 for minor). These can apply to either success or failure. For instance, failing a task but fulfilling the upgrading conditions will lower the tally, so that the failure is less severe. Succeeding a task but while fulfilling the subverting conditions will make the success less beneficial. Of course, you can also succeed or fail while upgrading, which will make the upgrade or success that much more detrimental or beneficial. Both upgrading conditions and subverting conditions will be detailed appropriately (although not precisely, it is still very much a narrative game, creativity is welcomed) for both failure and success.
Additionally, there is a
physical health tally, which starts at 0 points and can be increased by physical harm to the protagonist. There are three types of harm present in the game:
Critical Harm: Things which would typically kill or critically injure someone (e.g., getting shot).
Major Harm: Things which would typically seriously injure, but possible kill someone (getting hit by a car).
Minor Harm: Things that would minorly injure someone, but in a substantial way, and rarely actually cause death. (tripping and falling).
When harm is suffered, a 3d6 is rolled to determine total harm. For critical harm, it is rerolled twice, with the highest result being used. For major harm once, and for minor harm none at all. Additionally for critical harm, there is a second (not rerolled) roll that gets added to harm, which doesn't count against the instant death rules below.
If a natural 17 or 18 is rolled (a critical), then there is an additional
instant death chance. For critical harm, this will immediately kill the protagonist. For major harm, this will kill the player if an incidental reroll also scores a critical (this reroll won't be added to the harm tally, just is used to determine the chance of death). For minor harm, you have to get truly unlucky with two rerolls succeeding.
Regardless, preventing physical harm is paramount to player success, not only because death immediately results in a Schizoid victory, but because going over 50 harm results in
serious injury, which can still cause a minor Schizoid victory if the game ends with greater than 50 harm.
That means, of course, that harm can be reduced. There will be various ways to do this, but the most common being of course, medical attention. Unfortunately medical attention also takes time, so either way avoiding harm is the best course of action. For the sake of gameplay, the game takes place in a near-future setting for the purposes of medical care only, where even grievous harm can be attended to in a matter of hours, provided that the protagonist can actually make it to medical care...
Ending up in a serious injury state will immediately start adding "medical care" tasks to the tasklist, which can result in reduced harm if succeeded (or with persistent harm and failure points if failed).
VICTORY TYPESThere are four main types of victory in the game. FAILURE results in a Schizoid win, while VICTORY results in a noid win.
MAJOR VICTORY: Ending the game with more success points than failure points, and no serious injury.
MINOR VICTORY: Ending the game with more success points than failure points, and no serious injury, but one of the two foundational tasks was failed.
MINOR FAILURE: Ending the game with more success points than failure points, but with serious injury.
MAJOR FAILURE: Ending the game with less success points than failure points, or with death.
JOINING THE GAMETo join the game, simply make a post with your noid's name and a vote for the gender of the protagonist. The name of the protagonist, well, will be "determined" on the first turn
While I don't particularly care what names you use, the base suggested scheme is a combination of greek letters. Or maybe you can spice it up with human names, or names of famous people, or whatever persona you want the voices in the head to take on.
Well, those are all the rules. Trying my hand at a simple game this time so that I can get into it without being overwhelmed. But, I probably will get out of hand with the writing if my past games are any indication of my ability to not get carried away with the narrative.
Also, for the sake of discussion among the player teams there will be a
discord.
Oh, also some ground rules. I don't like rules, but these are mainly aimed at discussion:
1. No metagaming. This mostly pertains to DMs and such. The only discussion should be either in the designated channels (for Schizoids and Phrenoids) or out in the open (prefer on the forum, but discord can be used too). Mainly I just don't want Schizoids and Phrenoids coordinating, since that would be a bit OP.
2. Be nice?
I'm bad at making and following rules, so here you go. Simple honor system ya'll.
Oh and also this game is obviously gonna need some tuning and balance, so we'll see how this first game goes and we can tweak it from there. Suggestions for mechanics, balance, etc. are always welcome, although I probably won't be making any chances during the game unless some grievous flaw is pointed out.
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Topic: Schizophrenoida: A Dark Narrative [SG/Mafia hybrid] Ponder Phase 3 (Read 2301 times)