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[qwertyuiopas]

Well, although I haven't run a game like this yet, I want to make my own.

Only I want it to be unique.

Generally, I think that I will let new players enter in waves every 5 or so turns.

Also, players should be able to improve their situation somehow.

In that sense, this will probably become more of a mafia-RPG hybrid.

_________________________________________________________

Starting:
You are a villager in a small village(surprise.).
There is a mysterious plague going around, and some travellers passed a few days ago.
Unknown at the time, one of them has the plague, and it has spread to at least one of the villagers.
Your goal is to survive the plague as long as possible.
Plague-bearers will be notified of it the day AFTER they get infected.
They win once everyone alive is infected.
Each night, they may choose one player to attempt to infect.
If their target is already infected, both they and their target will be informed.
Otherwise... I don't really know at this point. They have a chance(maybe 100%) to infect their target. Something like that.
Everyone has a generic role of some sort, as this is/was a regular generic fantasy setting village, so farmers, maybe a smith, that kind of thing.

You WILL need food.
If you get a core group of uninfected and lock yourselfves in an anti-plague tower/fortress, you WILL starve eventually.
If the plague gets the farmers, you WILL starve eventually.
If you have not prepared sufficient food stores or hunters and the season is not fertile, you WILL starve eventually.


Maybe if this first game is good enough, I could improve the mechanics and then for game 2, have two games at once that can trade goods with each other, maybe other GMs can create their own pockets of sanity.




Discuss.

Post 2 will be the up-to-date rules and overall index.


Edit:
Idea: instead of roles, use skills.
Generally this would be like dwarf fortress in this respect, where the roles start with a high core skill of the appropriate type, although anyone can learn a new trade given a lot of time and/or a good teacher.
Also, working alongside a skilled worker will give a bonus equal to 10% of the diffrence in skill levels.

[qwertyuiopas]

Spoiler: Skills (click to show/hide)

Each player will have various skills.
They allow/improve actions.

• Farming: Helps provide food. Otherwise similar to generic townie/mafia in other games.
• Hunting: Helps provide food. Otherwise similar to generic townie/mafia in other games.
• Observing: determines the effectiveness of observing another player. Similar to "detective" role in other games.
• Building: allows one to create structures such as fortifications. Similar to generic townia/mafia in other games.
• Offensive fighting: allows one to successfully kill pther players and threats. Similar to "hammerer" or "vigilante" role in other games
• Defensive fighting: allows one to successfully defend pther players from threats. Similar to "guard" role in other games
• Crafting: Used in the creation of assistive tools.
• Mining: Accuiring stone and ore from the ground, as well as creating caves and other underground constructons such as fortresses.  Maybe even dwarf fortresses.
• Tree cutting: Used to gather wood.
• Medical: Chance to prevent death in other players.

Spoiler: Actions (click to show/hide)

There are two types of action:
Time consuming and quick actions.
Each player may only do one time consuming action per day.
On the other hand, they can do as many quick actions as they feel like, subject to specific limits.

Time consuming:

• Farming:
    The player spends a good portion of the day growing food. They will produce 1+{farming skill} food, if they do not specifically ask to keep it for themselves, it is automatically added to the stockpile. If there are no available fields, output is halved(rounded up). If the season is winter, the output is quartered and rounded down. If both, it is first halved and rounded up, then the result is quartered and rounded down.
• Building:
    The player assists in the construction of the project(s) of their choice. This adds 2+{building skill} construction points to the project. If specified, the player can distribute these points in integer quantity. Requires appropriate resources to be present.
• Hunting:
    Gathers between 0 and 1+{hunting skill} food units. The player may request to keep it, otherwse it is added to the stockpile.
• Observing:
    This is basically the standard detective skill, the player observes another player and gets information about them. Success is 1+{observing skill} in 6, but with higher levels than 5, some of it spills over to gain more detailed or varied information. This is important because on it's own, a single bit of information is probably(though not always) not enough to come to a conclusion.
• Defending:
    The player defends the target player(s) from attacks during the day/night(only one per 24 "hours"). This is generaly accomplished using the diffrence in skills, and a d6.(attacker skill + d6 vs defender skill + d6)
• Attacking:
    The reverse of defending. It is assumes that it will take a long time for secrecy and/or preparation and recovery time.
• Crafting(metal and wood variants):
    The player can create tools to assist other players by providing various skill bonuses. Wood gives +1, metal gives +2, but metal takes 2 days for a complete tool. Both require one unit of wood, metal crafting also one unit of metal. In the early game this requirement can be largely ignored, as there will be plenty of raw materials.
• Mining:
    A time consuming action, a player can dig into the stone to search for resources or create a fortified position. It takes 6 units of work to dig one unit of rock/ore. The ammount of work a player can do is ({mining skill}+1)d6.
• Tree cutting:
    Go out, look for, and cut down trees. Then bring them back to the village. Accuires ({tree cutting skill}+1)/2 d6(with .5 a d6 being 1 d6 times .5) units of wood.
• Medical:
    Keeping others from dying. The exact probability should be a 1/(1.3+{medical skill}) chance of failure(75% for unskilled, skill level 3 is only 25%). No man is god, but even the worst healer sometimes succeeds.

Quick actions:

• Voting: Deciding who(if anyone) is suspicious enough to kill at the end of the day. Not that you can't go ahead and kill more than one, but any others must be carried out as a time consuming action with no guarentee of success.
• Talking

Spoiler: roles (click to show/hide)

• Farmer:
    Starts with 4-6 farming skill and some misc related
• Hunter:
    Starts with 4-6 hunting skill and some misc related
• Builder:
    Starts with 4-6 building skill and some misc related
• Gossip:
    Starts with 4-6 observing skill
    Has a secondary profession(3-4 main skill, and some misc related)
    Others see them as secondary profession
• Guard:
    Starts with 4-6 defensive fighting skill, 3-5 offensive, and some misc related
• Smith:
    Starts with 4-6 metal crafting skill and some misc related
• Carpenter:
    Starts with 4-6 wood crafting skill and some misc related
• Miner:
    Starts with 4-6 mining skill and some misc related
• Wood cutter:
    Starts with 4-6 wood cutting skill and some misc related
• Doctor:
    Starts with 4-6 medical skill and some misc related

Spoiler: Gameplay mechanics (click to show/hide)

The game will be devided into days and nights.
Every day, the players may choose one player to kill, or to refrain from killing.
This will be decided by a vote.

Initially one or two players will be infected, although they will not be infomes that they are until night one.
At night an infected player may attempt to spread the infection to other players. If their target is already infected, bothe players will learn that each other are infected. After being infected, a player will NOT be informed until the next night.
Infected players may try to "lay low" to avoid revealing themselves greatly reducing the chance of being detected as infected.
Each player needs to eat one unit of food a day. If a player goes two days without eating, they will die. Eating is an automatic action. The town starts with a stockpile of 30(plus farming at a self-sufficient level) food(see? It's more of a late-game mechanic). Every few days, new players may join the game as migrants. There is a chance of some of them being infected(there is a possibility of them all being infected, and/or the infected ones knowing themselves to be infected before they arrive).
All PMs must also be sent to me.
Revealing conversation can be detected, unless it is accomplished through magical means(telepathy?), and then it can only be detected magically. Magic and related effects are Very Late Game, though.
Construction can be anything, resource requirements subject to common sense, if you don't know, ask me.
Tool-making takes one day for wooden objects, two days for metal. One wood for wooden objects, one metal and one wood(fuel) for metal objects. Wooden tools give a +1 bonus to the skill they were made for, metal gives +2. The town starts with a stockpile of 8 metal ore and 32 wood units. Again, resource harvesting is a late-game concern.

The infected win when the non-infected are dead(or infected), the non-infected don't win, at least not without some plot device such as the source of the infection(probably just another evil wizard-adventurer(DF 2.8!) trying to take over the world )

Spoiler: Player list (click to show/hide)

• inaluct
• Archangel
• NUKE9.13
• Kashyyk

Spoiler: Waiting list (click to show/hide)

-Empty-

Spoiler: Important links (click to show/hide)

-Empty-

Need suggestions and comments.
If it looks complicated, don't worry! Most of it is automated/abstracted so it only matters if you care to do some non-standard actions.

There, I think thats everything.

Oh, and many of the more unusual roles will NOT be starting the game, only coming as late-game migrants.
Think realism.

[Alexhans]

what's the point of this??

I think you should move it to the forum games section...

You WILL NOT BE able to read back...

a lot of players will flake, abandon...

This is not mafia... Mafia is an uninformed majority Vs an informed minority...

And all of the players have to survive?? meh... Definetly NOT mafia....

[qwertyuiopas]

No, the point is that it WILL be a mafia, but with a LOT of behind-the-scenes mechanics that the player don't have to care about but CAN.
Most of it will be handles by me.

Instead of "you are a detective, you can do detective stuff", anyone can try to be a detective, but only detectives will really do a good job of it. They could also train a replacement.

This is generally supposed to be a survival-mafia hybrid, but because the basic gameplay is over 50% mafia, it will remain here. At least until I have fleshed out the rules and have more input.
Still, I should get to the real mafia bits.

Edit: I have added a roles section, and have compared the skills to the roles in other mafia games.
The whole point of going into more detail is so that the mafia equivalent han strike at the otherwise useless townie-like roles, as they are a strategic weak point, rather than cannon fodder. When fully developed, this should provide more in-depth gameplay by giving everone a useful role so that random lynchings aren't as effective.
On the other hand, allowing any player to take any role, though with limited initial effectiveness reduces the impact of losing a key player.

All of the INITIAL players will know each others' public roles.

As the townies start feeling inpenetrable I'll throw NPC threats to force them to fight two fronts at once.
If they manage to wipe out the infection threat, I will NOT tell them. Once they know for SURE that they have(hint: an infected player can hide from detection by acting normal, it would take a _very_ skilled observer to notice that they are faking normality. They could keep this up indefinately, though as time passes, they probaby will be at greater disadvantages) wiped out the threat, I'll move this over to the generic games section, but as long as the mafia gameplay component is the primary concern(and it will be for the first few turns, I guarentee it!) it will remain here.

Also, I'm not against the infected developing mutations such as telepathic communication and such, over time. They just won't START with an advantage(other than secrecy).

[qwertyuiopas]

Okay, a bit of a bump to say that I finished the details post.
The gameplay mechanics are generally finished.

Please discuss, your feedback is appreciated!
(also, if nobody posts, I'll just let this die)

[Pandarsenic]

This at least looks attempt-worthy.

[NUKE9.13]

See also; Mafia Role To Quest.
Interesting but likely to be very hard for infected.

[inaluct]

Sign me up. We can't judge this thing until we've seen it in action.

[qwertyuiopas]

How would you feel about running a small ~4 person game to see if things work?
It would mean that fewer people get in at first, but at the same time when the first round is over there will be an example for other players.
Owait, I just realized:
I started this with one big gameplay mechanic, even if no others exist:
  Allow players to join mid-game

Still, should we start at just a few players or wait for a crowd?
Also, will be reading MRTQ.

[Archangel]

I shall try this, and I think that starting with only, say, 6 players would be a good idea.

[qwertyuiopas]

I HAVE NOT GIVEN UP ON THIS.
But on the other hand, it is not very good to have over 1/3 of the posts in a topic...
All this needs is a tiny bit more intrest, enough to get the first day started.

Remember, all of the players are assumed to do villagy stuff unless they override it specifically, so you can practically ignore all the complex mechanics for 10 days at the very least!

Edit:
I think I will start this game with 5 players or so.

[NUKE9.13]

Fine. In, or something.

[qwertyuiopas]

For a small game, I think I will select the anti-town by a simple roll of a d6.
That means if there aren't many players, there might not be an opponent, but you guys won't know that

Also, join now and you will get to choose your own role!(first 4 players in)

[Kashyyk]

I have to say YES!

[qwertyuiopas]

Well, I guess I will be starting an experimental round soon, so it is your last chance to join.
Sometime today when I remember it and feel that people have had a decent chance.