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[TricMagic]

That sort of conditional build up might happen on Slow/Limitation. With only Slow, buildup over time is probably correct. Granted, when you pick Cascade things do get out of hand. This from a Tric whos brain is burnt out.

[webadict]

Yeah, I'm not trying to be salty, NQT, sorry if I'm giving you a hard time about it.  I'm more trying to get a feel for if I'm missing anything crucial in my analysis and to remove as much bias from my analysis as possible, as well as let you know how my role felt while I was playing the role (though, this last one is entirely biased.)  I think it boils down to:  I liked that my role had changing things I couldn't quite control (truly, I DID like the concept of Harness Emerald, even if I wasn't a fan of the first Emerald), but I think one more Action to choose from would've made the difference.  I liked that my role interacted in a way with Toony's, though, I wish it was in a way that Toony and I both gained fairly equally from instead of him being put at a bit of a disadvantage.  I liked that I had Emeralds to collect, though I wish I had more room to collect them.

Those are pretty much my frustrations with my role, at as much of an unbiased opinion as I can get.

That sort of conditional build up might happen on Slow/Limitation. With only Slow, buildup over time is probably correct. Granted, when you pick Cascade things do get out of hand. This from a Tric whos brain is burnt out.

Slow can be multiple implementations:  I think time is one of them, Days/Nights.  Players remaining is another.  Number of times an Ability is used is a third (An Ability could improve each time it's used.)  There's a bunch of ways I could see Slow working.  I'm not saying it has to always be one particular way.  I'm saying that we were all given the same way, against a Town that had several ways to reduce the efficacy of time-building.

[Imp]

Yeah, I'm not trying to be salty, NQT, sorry if I'm giving you a hard time about it.  I'm more trying to get a feel for if I'm missing anything crucial in my analysis and to remove as much bias from my analysis as possible, as well as let you know how my role felt while I was playing the role (though, this last one is entirely biased.)  I think it boils down to:  I liked that my role had changing things I couldn't quite control (truly, I DID like the concept of Harness Emerald, even if I wasn't a fan of the first Emerald), but I think one more Action to choose from would've made the difference.  I liked that my role interacted in a way with Toony's, though, I wish it was in a way that Toony and I both gained fairly equally from instead of him being put at a bit of a disadvantage.  I liked that I had Emeralds to collect, though I wish I had more room to collect them.

Those are pretty much my frustrations with my role, at as much of an unbiased opinion as I can get.

That sort of conditional build up might happen on Slow/Limitation. With only Slow, buildup over time is probably correct. Granted, when you pick Cascade things do get out of hand. This from a Tric whos brain is burnt out.

Slow can be multiple implementations:  I think time is one of them, Days/Nights.  Players remaining is another.  Number of times an Ability is used is a third (An Ability could improve each time it's used.)  There's a bunch of ways I could see Slow working.  I'm not saying it has to always be one particular way.  I'm saying that we were all given the same way, against a Town that had several ways to reduce the efficacy of time-building.

I kinda think this implements the 'number of times an ability is used' for slow, while it's not clear how it will change or if it will be better/worse/same each time it's used, it does change with each use.

(Flux)(Meta)(Mutation)(Cascade)(Overpowered) New Sketch Idea [blue sphere]: Name a blue sphere. Everyone with that sphere has one of their abilities with it permanently mutated into a different ability based around a random blue sphere and the non-mutated spheres that ability had. This can transform actions in progress. This has no impact on [items]. The mafiakill is untargetable. If this ability successfully mutates, it is transformed into an ability which combines all the new spheres it had just created.

(Note: for example, if you mutated 'Protection' and two players had protections, their abilities would change into new spheres. Say, they became Thwart and Necromancy spheres, New Sketch would turn into an ability with the Thwart and Necromancy spheres, but not Flux, Meta, Mutation, Cascade or Overpowered)

Duplicate seemed like a neat slow improvement, though you need to somehow have something you think's worth duplicating.

If FoU had duplicated votes repeatedly, Duplicate would have stayed with FoU (only person with [votes] item at least until web got the [vote] ability emerald if ever) and would have steadily gained another clementine, free and 1-shot, per use.  If you guys lived and spread the new clementines between you, could have had each player with gaining a new one per use.

[Imp]

(Improvement)(Cascade)(Flux) Harness Emerald [target]: Replenish your target's limited-shot abilities at the end of the night. Your target's next action on someone also replenishes all their targets limited-shot abilities at the end of the night. (A player will be informed of this if and only if they have abilities that require replenishing.)

You guys had it challenging that you didn't start with any items or abilities that specifically targeted another player.

But if one of you (not web) had gotten even the airsoft rifle through any means, or any other item that could target, you could have set up an awesome replenish chain just with your harness emerald with the green one -

Your original plan I think was to ensure Cascade was duplicated; if you were lucky enough to get Harness Emerald dupped, we might have seen an incredibly different game if you'd lived to use it.

With 2+ harness emeralds, even with just replenish zipping cascade back and forth, I think you guys could have gotten some cool stuff going, if given time.

[Maximum Spin]

I actually didn't take Slow, so if you perceive my ability as Slow, then it's too slow.

Also, while I understand that the effective-one-shottedness of New Sketch Idea is a natural result of Flux, it being my only normal action felt really underpowered. There are niche scenarios where it could be really useful, like trying to draw kill actions and making them stop being kills and possibly become gifts, but... it's not really that good an ability on any strategic level, it's just "a cool gimmick". A lot of the mafia actions felt that way - like sure, it'll make the game very weird and confusing, but it doesn't actually help. (Well, Fallacy more or less asked for that, at least.) Also, I didn't really go into Flux expecting whole actions that spontaneously overwrite themselves, that makes it much more annoying than I imagined.

[FallacyofUrist]

A rule of thumb I like to use in BYOR design is, each role should have internal synergy, external interaction, and a way to get fucked over.

What that basically means is that the role has effects and powers that support the other effects and powers it has, and it has some way to support or counter some other roles that exist, and there's at least two ways that it's countered.

Additionally, even in a vacuum, where the other roles it's interacting with are neutral towards it, it still needs to provide some utility.

Meta-powers are like cayenne pepper. A little makes a game spicier, too much makes it inedible.

You'll get better at designing BYORs with time and practice. You certainly did better than many of my earlier attempts.

[notquitethere]

Also, while I understand that the effective-one-shottedness of New Sketch Idea is a natural result of Flux, it being my only normal action felt really underpowered. There are niche scenarios where it could be really useful, like trying to draw kill actions and making them stop being kills and possibly become gifts, but... it's not really that good an ability on any strategic level, it's just "a cool gimmick".

I think one sticking point here for you and Web is in how I implemented (flux), in that you could have this whole other power from N2 onwards that may or may not be useful... but you had limited way to know how useful it might have been ahead of time, so it's harder to think strategically at all. Now, if I'm not in a listening mood, I can say players with (flux) literally ask for this, get over it. But on the other hand, with Imp's very expansive power, I implemented a large degree of fluxiness without sacrificing all strategic elements. Definitely something to learn from here, that even if players say they want a role that can change from one day to the next, they usually don't only want that. I think in all of these case, giving a way a few extra tools to round out these roles would have helped smooth over the experience.

Additionally, even in a vacuum, where the other roles it's interacting with are neutral towards it, it still needs to provide some utility.

This all makes sense, but moreover, the utility of a role can't be too obscure to the player. I think this is why Toony was grouchy about his role— he couldn't see the direct utility. He was basically the only person who could mechanically discern sphere claims, and his role had lots of interesting interaction potential with other powers... but in isolation none of that is immediately obvious or actionable to the player.

[Imp]

the utility of a role can't be too obscure to the player. I think this is why Toony was grouchy about his role— he couldn't see the direct utility. He was basically the only person who could mechanically discern sphere claims, and his role had lots of interesting interaction potential with other powers... but in isolation none of that is immediately obvious or actionable to the player.

Yeah.  Like my failure to say 'me' about blowback - the potential reward of Toony's assumption blowback means town, and confirmed town a couple hours into D1 is good - Fails for me hardcore.

Claiming a sphere could make me a target!  Especially if I'm the only one with the sphere.  Maybe they can kill me - maybe they can change me in bad ways just by changing that sphere or removing it from play!

I don't agree with the logic that since Toony's town and has an item from blowback that can kill him, the person with blowback is also town! (Items can be traded.  That item can kill anyone, even me if I let it)

I lost my whole, ideal for me, perfect, I wanted so much role in FBYOR 6, **because** of Toony at that.  I am not stepping right up to say 'Yeah, Toons, do that to me again, with or without help!  You don't like my role this time either, sure, neuter it, let me help!'
Likewise, I could imagine uses for Toony's abilities, especially once the Glass detecting dead folks spheres-used-on-turn-of-death was discussed, and also once I started making items appear, and many ways it could help track liars.

Also, we didn't know Web would outwardly say "I collect chaos gems".  Web could have been more stealthy than me about artefacts.  We don't know who steals from us, we don't know it's web that's taking emeralds when he actions - 5/11 possible targets for web started play without a chaos gem, making it hard for us to be sure of narrowing down his 'thief-side'.

If web went sneaky and just silently piled up Chaos gems, which appear useless - well Toony has a chance to say "Web, last night you had 3 of those useless things, and now you have 5.  I think you have a team helping you collect them, wasting actions to give them to you - you and your team are scum".

I think nqt thought and planned a lot into this, for stuff we didn't happen to choose to do.  That doesn't make our stuff useless, it's like a swiss army knife but this group of campers didn't need a bottle opener or a screwdriver and someone else brought their favorite pair of scissors, so we don't find the device very useful.  A different set of camper choices and dang, we'd have used the heck out of the knife.

[notquitethere]

CYOS 2 - draft v1

This is where I'm currently at with rejigging the sphere system. Some general changes:

- Overpowered has been split up into Speed, Variety, Mass-Effect
- Corrupted, Dud and Suspicious have been ditched, with Distributed, Counter, Cursed, Selfish and Niche added
- Thief has been split off of Thwart
- Trading is now its own thing, but to make the game thread a little less mechanics-heavy, there won't be general items, there'll just be hats and fruit
- Some spheres are meta-spheres, whose effects depend on whatever other spheres you have, so you can't have more than 2 of them.
- It's easier to build roles without flaws... but often via picking Fruit or Hats which don't do much on their own

Spoiler: Spheres Explained (click to show/hide)

The spheres are broad categories of roles and limitations to roles and can include things not shown in the examples below. Some spheres are dark blue, indicating they work on a meta level, modifying other spheres you have. As such, you can't pick three dark-blue meta spheres— the role has to do something.

Blue Ability Spheres
Sneak: You can detect the actions of others (e.g. watch, track)
Chat: You interact with chats (e.g. have an additional chat with another player, or are able to send information to other player's chats etc.)
Curse: Curse abilities give other players detriments that are not fatal, they may get progressively worse, add harmful corruptions, or mimic or transfer existing flaws.
Daytime: At least one of your abilities works during the day.
Fruit: You send players fruit. On its own, this does nothing, but may be augmented by other spheres. Fruit can be traded, but it rots away at the end of the next night. Fruit ingested usually would give a temporary effect or ability.
Hats: Your role involves hats, which are items that can be Traded in the Trading phase, which usually give a passive effect to the player. Players can usually only wear one hat at a time.
Improvement: You can improve a role (new powers, new shots, better targets, one-off free actions etc.)
Kill: You can kill to some capacity. This might be a direct kill ability, or indirect like poison, arson, infection etc.
Mass-Effect: Your abilities have multiple targets or game-wide effects.
Mimic: You can use other players abilities in some way (e.g. copycat, hypnotise, reflect)
Mutation: Your ability changes roles in some way (e.g. swapping, evolving, mashing-up)
Necromancy: Your power involves the dead (e.g. mediums, resurrection, graverobbery, ghouls)
Protection: Your powers protect others from harmful (usually killing) powers.
Redirection: You can change the reliability of other player's targets (e.g. bus/redirect/randomise)
Peek: You can learn details about player roles (sphere detection, censuses etc.)
Second Wincon: You have another way to win the game beyond your main wincondition.
Selfish: You have a way of avoiding some harm (often killing).
Speed: You have multiple actions or lots of [free] actions.
Spheres: You have a power that targets spheres. What it does to spheres will depend on your other spheres.
Super: Your power trumps other powers in some capacity. e.g. a kill that cannot be redirected, a detect that can't be fooled.
Thief: You steal things (particularly hats, but fruit, role abilities, shots, votes etc. all possible)
Trade: There is a trading phase that happens after each day, for trading hats and fruit. Your spheres interact with the Trade phase in some way.
Thwart: Powers that prevent other player's actions (e.g. bans, delays, jails).
Variety: You have more abilities to pick from than other players (guaranteed more powers than any player without Variety)
Votes: Your power involves votes.

Red Flaw Spheres
Blowback: Your abilities may cause direct or indirect harm to yourself or your team, or aid to your enemies.
Cascade: Something you can do can get out of hand and have cascading effects, impacting extra players after your intended target, in possibly hard to foresee ways.
Convolution: Your role has some significant complexities to how it can be used, e.g involving achieving specific states.
Counter: Another player has a direct counter to one or more of your abilities.
Cursed: Your role risks becoming progressively more flawed (accumulation of restrictions/vulnerabilities, magnetism for role-theft etc.).
Distributed: Parts of your role begin the game scattered among other players.
Flux: Your own abilities are subject to change, making long-term planning difficult.
Limitation: You have at least one ability with a limitation (limited shots, limited targets, limited phase use etc.)
Niche: At least one part of your role (but not all of it) is only useful in very specific circumstances.
Selfless: You lack access to some protections other players may have (most often protect-immune, but not exclusively).
Slow: Your role takes several day/night cycles to reach its full potential, or only powers up after a certain number of players have left the game.
Uncertainty: Knowledge you receive might not be absolutely confirmable, there may be gaps, or there may be misinformation to sift through.
Vulnerability: You are more likely to die (e.g. lovers, self-destruction, magnetism etc.)

Questions:

- Is this still as fun to traverse as the original grid?
- Do the connections make sense?
- Are there any combos that feel too obvious/easy?
- What spheres, if any, feel like traps?
- What spheres would you add?
- Any sorts of roles that feel like they should be possible but aren't? (For instance, it's not really possible to make a traditional JOAT with the spheres.)

I think nqt thought and planned a lot into this, for stuff we didn't happen to choose to do.  That doesn't make our stuff useless, it's like a swiss army knife but this group of campers didn't need a bottle opener or a screwdriver and someone else brought their favorite pair of scissors, so we don't find the device very useful.  A different set of camper choices and dang, we'd have used the heck out of the knife.

That's what I was going for, yes!


Also, congrats everyone, this is now the longest game thread on the subforum, bypassing both the length of uPick's total day activity and its post-game discussion.

[Imp]

Also, guys.  What did you do when you asked for your role?

Here's what I did, and what happened.

Spoiler: My role and sphere's request dm to nqt: (click to show/hide)

Wow does this look awesome.

Warehouse 13.

Improvement -> slow -> blowback -> suspicious -> limitation -> convolution -> Mutation -> flux -> cascade -> Overpowered.

Thank you for your fantastic creation, and the chance to be part of it!

I dearly hope you enjoy every bit of this game, including the role creation part!

In case it matters, and it's fine with me if it doesn't matter at all - the chance to empower others in significant ways, even if I do not understand how at all, would be a great delight to me.  I'm aware there are many other ways this role might be designed, and I'm eager to see whatever comes.

Spoiler: It triggers this pre-game response from him, and here's my reply: (click to show/hide)

OK, I will keep all your additional notes in mind.

Just a small thing, there is a way you can could pick the same blue spheres while picking four fewer flaws. I just want to double check that you had intentionally picked that route. As I said in the OP, there is no special benefit for picking more red spheres.

Yes.  I am deeply torn by that and actually carefully studied and picked through the flaws I thought I might be interested in, and those I absolutely intended to avoid, before doing more than glancing at the benefits.

I did notice that I could get fewer red spheres, but...

Convolution sounds good to me, even if not in a Holmes sort of way, I like complexity and having to track many factors (but I may not be able to, if I don't think that way for those factors, else it might be easy and fun).  I may misunderstand, but that's a red sphere with a blue mask on it, right?    To my 'I have eyes of a fool' or something flaw, it looks pretty blue-ish.

Blowback has the chance to maybe help many people, even enemies, maybe all at once.  I actually like the idea of that, though I know you could take this in many directions that don't help anyone, even those I am trying to help; I could just hurt myself and even everyone else, which I don't prefer, but would accept, it's still very Warehouse 13.  That's... almost wanted, so I color it bold pink because... yeah this is 'bad', but... maybe this is a wanted drawback.  It could get icky, but so could the blue spheres.  You could totally give me things from blue that were not what I hoped for, and still give me 'everything I asked for'.  So, just hoping, so it's pink.

Suspicious isn't something I really want, but wow, Warehouse 13 is a very suspicious thing overall, so theme makes it 'oh, yeah' with regret.  Also, depending on what kind of suspicious, maybe I can handle this with my day game.  Maybe I can make it fun, even, believable and useful and neat.

Limitation... don't 'want', but can accept.  And limitations are potentially cool, and also fit a Warehouse 13 theme.  But to my eyes, this is the only red sphere I requested here that I don't 'have' to have.  I really want to improve (self or others, but I lean others) so that means accepting slow unless I want to hang out in that top right corner.  And I really don't want to only and ever sell better fruits of self preservation, for all my targets might be okay with that.  But I'm thinking, limitation surely means 'still playable', so... I'm kinda okay with it?

Improvement -> slow -> blowback -> suspicious -> limitation -> convolution -> Mutation -> flux -> cascade -> Overpowered

vs

Improvement -> slow -> Overpowered -> flux -> cascade -> Mutation

I will absolutely listen to you, and if you advise or outright choose for me that shorter route, of course I will agree and thank you.  I don't know exactly how to ask you for my dreams, I just know... I'm weird enough that some of what some folks might consider nightmares could actually be delightful parts of my dreams, to me.

Hugely appreciate the chance to discuss.  Still listening if you choose to say more.

I highly recommend you all negotiate with nqt, which he suggested was an option in the OP.  Bolding is mine:

- Players will typically know their own abilities: insanity, hidden abilities etc. are unlikely to feature unless a player signals through character creation that that's what they really want

What does that mean?  What can that possibly mean except nqt is open to us talking to him and telling him what we really want?

[notquitethere]

What does that mean?  What can that possibly mean except nqt is open to us talking to him and telling him what we really want?

Yes, I'll include a section for "additional notes" in role creation next time, so players are encouraged to share some of their hopes or intentions.

[TricMagic]

I wouldn't mind another sphere game. Got a role already with that.

[Quarque]

Also, guys.  What did you do when you asked for your role?

Spoiler: my role pm (click to show/hide)

Your spheres are perfect! I wanted to play a corrupt fruit merchant, so here is my submission:

Name: Lambert Schothorst
Spheres: Fruit-selling => Protection => Corrupted => Super

I wanted fruit-selling and corrupted for roleplay value. (corrupt fruit merchant sounds fun)
Needed a sphere to make the fruit do something, that was a choice between protection and improvement. Protection felt more practical.
Then I wanted some payoff from the red sphere, the Super sphere looked great.

I loved the how the role turned out, but revealing so much D1 was absolutely a mistake. I did it mostly because I wanted to start trading D1, but it would have been better to just hand out two pieces of fruit N1. In case I'd survive I could then have the recipients confirm D2 that I have something desirable to trade.


At first glance, the sphere table v2 looks like it might be a little too easy to avoid red spheres. In general, balance-wise the Slow sphere feels like a trap to me. Chances are you might not survive longer than say 1 night and long term plans are bound to fail in the chaos of battle, anyway.
The selfish sphere is probably the best one there is and I would lock it behind reds.

[notquitethere]

Thanks for the feedback, Quarque.

At first glance, the sphere table v2 looks like it might be a little too easy to avoid red spheres.

In this layout, to avoid red spheres you have to take fruit, hats, spheres, or mimic. I think mimic (and maybe spheres?) is too useful in itself, so probably should chuck in another red sphere connection between that top right cluster.

In general, balance-wise the Slow sphere feels like a trap to me. Chances are you might not survive longer than say 1 night and long term plans are bound to fail in the chaos of battle, anyway.

Maybe reframing it as something like "cumulative" would be better? Like, a player's role should always be useful and interesting on N1, but a slower role might have a higher power output after a few nights but start lower on the curve.

The selfish sphere is probably the best one there is and I would lock it behind reds.

My thinking is that it's sort-of locked, in that if you don't want to take red, you have to have Hats, which are particularly susceptible to theft and are usually limited to one hat worn at a time. But it could be more locked, it's true.

[Imp]

- Is this still as fun to traverse as the original grid?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Probably.  It's fun.  I don't really rank fun.  It's *equally interesting and I didn't look at it and go 'yeah, not for me'* which means 'I'm good'.  It could be hugely different and still get a "I'm interested, let's explore this game" from me.

- Do the connections make sense?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Sure.  I don't really try to think that way.  I see it as 'you give us a list of unusually limited choices plus a completely unlimited wildcard (the role we request), what will we do with it?'  As such, I dare you to make a sphere grid that doesn't make sense.  "Nothing connects to that sphere that I want!?!?!??!!!!!!" is the only way to get me to say 'that doesn't make sense'.

- Are there any combos that feel too obvious/easy?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Not the right question for me.  What does a player want?  Can they make it?  Is it something you'd allow in your game (I want a role that wins D1 and other players don't have a chance.  Here's my spheres and role submission - I think you stop me, that goal sucks for the game.  You don't stop me by combo either).

- What spheres, if any, feel like traps?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There's a bunch of spheres I don't want, and at a glance I think I can avoid them all while maximizing what I do want.  Umm, traps?  As in, "I can't play if I pick this one" or "This is only playable if I don't get alignment X" - none.  I think this is all playable, and while... fruit selling was a trap last game, get detected as a fruit seller, they know your sphere, you are easy to target if target sphere is possible - that's a trap you can see and avoid if you want.  I'm a poor choice of a player to answer this question, because I can see them all as potential traps, it's all in the rest of the request, how it's implemented, and what else happens, like what else do other players choose.  If someone chooses 'role that makes X sphere a trap' ... well, I saw that coming.  But it's nothing to complain about or fix.

- What spheres would you add?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

blown pupils  uhh.  No specific ideas. But more is good.  Having so many we get to pick 4 blues is great.  Having more reds is great.  A lot of the reds look kinda blue to me, guess I'm colorblind.

- Any sorts of roles that feel like they should be possible but aren't? (For instance, it's not really possible to make a traditional JOAT with the spheres.)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Umm, no idea.  I think you turned me into what could become THE GOAT JOAT last game.  I think between role choice, and spheres chosen (both red and blue), and telling you a realistic interpretation of the role and spheres, how they could fit together and work, a communicative and creative player could probably get any role you decided to allow in play (ends the game with their win D1 role maybe is refused for reasons not negotiable, but anything 'reasonable', I think we could work it.)

Tric didn't have votes, and had a heck of a vote power.  I didn't have redirect and had the most creative redirection system going I can imagine.  I had slow and slow got corrupted (thanks, FoU and RNG!!!!!).  A lot of 'not immediately obvious' happened.  I have totally trust I could try to make any reasonable role, and do my best between actual role submission and the spheres, and you'd give me something reasonable and fitting.

I believe any player can do that, but they might have to actually talk to you, not just throw role name and spheres and presume you see what they dream.