[WW/Mafia] The Thing

[rogue_alchemist]

You are part of a research team in Antarctica, but there was something extraterrestrial under the ice and after your team started investigating it, something strange started happening. There was some kind of presence everyone felt on board, though there were no known signs of life. Trying to study the extraterrestrial technology, you start to feel like something is trying to control you. Then it finally happens, there is a mysterious bloody patch, but no body and everyone is accounted for, though each has started acting suspicious in their own ways...

Spoiler: Basic Mechanics

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The game is played in turns that consist of two different phases.
There's a day phase that happens from dawn ‘til dusk in game. This period will last 48 hours. During this time all the players try to decide who the bad guys are by voting for them. Votes are done in red text. You may change your vote if you wish, in which case, you should edit your previous post and strike-through your previous vote. Once the day has ended, whoever has the most votes is tested and only dies if they are a thing. The game will start on a Day Phase; the first Day Phase will last about 72 hours, while subsequent ones will last 48 hours. Voting does not have to be some official "I vote [name]", as long as it's recognizable who you're voting and the formatting has been done. I would prefer proper forum names, as I am still getting used to who is who.
The next phase is the night phase, which lasts from dusk ‘til dawn. This phase will last 24 hours. During this phase, The things will decide who to infect next. The team needs to try to reach consensus, but after growing past 3, simple majority will rule. No one dies in this phase.

After time's up, I will post the opening of the following Day Scene and it starts all over again.
This continues until either A) all of the things are destroyed by the scientist -or- B) the things grow their numbers to equal the remaining scientists (In which case they control day voting and town can't win).

Spoiler: Special Rules

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Each day people will vote who to test. There is no downside to the scientist to test, if the person is friendly, they live, if they are a thing, they die. Depending on how many people we get(>15), you should have 2 tests per day, and if the second test is positive, you get to keep going until you test a negative scientist.
We will start with 1 or 2 things (again depending on number of players) who will choose 1 new scientist to join their team each night. The only way the total number of players changes is if the scientists find a thing to test and that kills them.
I will make a QT for the Things, but otherwise no networking should be done. Everything should be out in the open on the main thread, except the things talking at night. They can use their QT whenever, because I know schedules may make 24hrs hard to manage, but votes must be finalized by the end of the night to choose who to add. I will then PM that person with a link to the thing QT and they will switch sides. Generally another blood path will be found, though no body each morning.

Spoiler: Roles

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This game is Scientists vs Things.

Spoiler: Team Scientist

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Scientist:Everyone starts as a scientist. Your job is to stay alive and find the cause of the sudden blood pools in the only method you know: testing. Each day you will all work together to choose who to test.
There are no other villager roles.

Spoiler: Team Thing

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Thing:You started as a scientist, but something happened and now you have an unquenchable desire to infect as many others as possible. Each night you and your fellow things will pick one scientist to infect.
There are no other werewolf roles.

No one can be neutral in this fight.

Recruitment will run for 2 weeks until December 07, 2020. I will probably end it 1 hour before this post time if the exact timing matters to someone.
Player List:
AvatarVecna
Caerulea
The Outsider
JeenLeen

[AvatarVecna]

Interested.

[Caerulea]

I enter your game.

[The Outsider]

You know, I'm something of a scientist myself...

I'm in.

[JeenLeen]

In.
Also, I realize this is basically a cult game without a death mechanic... which is good prep for my upcoming cult game that does have a death mechanic. So it should be good experience.

Technically, the game could end on Day 1, if the town is lucky and tests the right player(s), right?

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Each day people will vote who to test. There is no downside to the scientist to test, if the person is friendly, they live, if they are a thing, they die. Depending on how many people we get(>15), you should have 2 tests per day, and if the second test is positive, you get to keep going until you test a negative scientist.

So, if 1 test/day, do we keep testing if we find a Thing?
For the second or follow-up tests, how does voting for who to test work? It seems like it'd extend the Day unusually if we did a new round of voting, so would it be "if Most-Votes is a Thing, Next-Most-Votes gets tested next"?

[rogue_alchemist]

@JeenLeen, good question. If we end up with only 1 test/day, the same continue the test thing will happen. If there are 2 tests per day, then people will have 2 votes to cast.

Either way the end of the day will work a little weird I guess. Part of the idea of the mechanic is that once you find a Thing, you then vote on the next most likely because you know who has seemed chummy with them. Likewise on a failed test, then it changes your outlook on who looks suspicious. I haven't mechanically thought through how this changes with Forum play. I am open to some suggestions, but currently I am thinking it will be 'instant runoff' like you suggest that most votes gets tested and then 2nd most and so on. However the caveat will be that since each person has 2 votes (that would need to be on different people), I will aggregate the votes to find the 3rd and so on person to test. If nothing else, it'll be an interested test of a voting mechanic. I may have to change it the next time around, but I would like to test this.

[JeenLeen]

You could have everyone do a "follow-up vote" during the Day (say in... Blue Text or something), so that those votes are already known if the main person tests as Thing.
If we hit a Thing with the primary red vote, the person with the most blue votes gets tested as follow-up.
If that person is also a Thing, the person with the second-most blue votes gets tested as follow-up.
And so on, using the blue votes.

You could have the red vote runner-up be the "next person tested", but I feel like that adds a complicating layer to vote analysis that would make it hard to really read votes. Having the "follow-up" votes be a completely separate system seems sounder.

Spoiler: some ideas that aren't as good as I thought they were

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If each person does have a QuickTopic, you could have them post their "who to test 2nd" votes there. But only reveal them publicly if the first person is a Thing.

Alternatively, during Night Phase people could cast votes for the follow-up test (publicly or privately), and it be revealed in the morning if the person (perhaps retroactively) died. But that prevents allowing a third test if the first and second one catch a Thing.

[rogue_alchemist]

Yea, it does complicate vote tallying, but that doesn't really matter as much here because town doesn't die if an innocent is killed. If we have two votes are the norm for the day then a 3rd test is used if the 2nd is successful, then I guess I will have to use 3 colors, but I can work that out when we actually see more how many people we will use.

here is an interesting analysis of some voting systems, though again having to choose 2 would complicate this a bit.

[CaoimhinTheCape]

I'm in! And to post this I need at least 10 characters in my post!

[Elenna]

I'm in

[Valmark]

I'm in! blah blah blah

[PartyOfRouges]

I’m in....

[Grek]

I'm in. This sounds exactly my speed.

[Xihirli]

Sorry, I’ll be sitting this one out. But play knowing that I will sing high praises!

[JeenLeen]

On voting: I guess it wouldn't be terrible if, if we hit a Thing on the vote, have a 24-hour Day-Extension for a second round of voting. It'll slow things down, but would likely be the fairest method.

On the other hand, I definitely prefer a faster method. I looked at the Youtube video a while ago, and (while I forget the name or the mechanics of it) I feel like the third method of voting might work well.

[Book Wombat]

I'm interested.

[JeenLeen]

Interesting and half-joke idea: we don't decide how to handle run-off votes until Day 1 starts, and we can use how people talked about voting methodologies as part of our analysis. I reckon some methods are better or worse for the Thing(s), so that could factor into how folk reason.

On the other hand, it's quite possible someone will propose a scheme because they think it helps Town but it doesn't. But that should be funny if someone gets lynched for a Thing-friendly voting proposal only to flip Town. (Which is probably why this idea I'm offering is a bad idea.)

[Apogee1]

Interesting and half-joke idea: we don't decide how to handle run-off votes until Day 1 starts, and we can use how people talked about voting methodologies as part of our analysis. I reckon some methods are better or worse for the Thing(s), so that could factor into how folk reason.

On the other hand, it's quite possible someone will propose a scheme because they think it helps Town but it doesn't. But that should be funny if someone gets lynched for a Thing-friendly voting proposal only to flip Town. (Which is probably why this idea I'm offering is a bad idea.)

This would be hilarious if perhaps inadvisable

Also in

[AvatarVecna]

How are things going?

[JeenLeen]

I think I counted 10 players. (Or, rather, I counted 10, and hope I added everyone.)
So likely 1 Thing to start, if game starts on Monday.

--edit--------------------
This is my first cult game. What's the general metagame/fair play for such?
In a sense, the best way to 'win' (as an individual) for everyone is for everyone to get converted. But that's no fun. So it is assumed and expected everyone plays as best they can for their original faction (e.g., as Town) and, if converted, then plays as best they can for their new faction (Thing).
At least that seems the way to play fair and have fun.

[Grek]

The canonical strategy is to test everyone in a fixed order. Consider the case where we have 11 players (which we do by my count), A through K:

The Thing knows that it needs to get 5 more conversions than the Town votes successful tests. The Town has already committed to voting A & B on Day One, C & D on Day Two, E & F on Day Three, etc. So it knows that on Night One, the person who is the furthest from being tested is B. It knows that the Town knows this though, so it might hedge its bets by picking A, K, I or J - people who are still pretty far off from being (re)tested, but not maximally far off. The same logic repeats Night Two - C & D just got tested, so they're the obvious ones to convert, but converting anyone off of K, A, B, I or J (who hasn't been converted already, of course) is a reasonable fake-out move for the Things. This sort of logical repeats throughout the game, with the Thing being strongly incentivized to 'chase' whoever was just tested, on the grounds that they're less likely to be tested again soon.

Note that this is true even without a fixed ordering; the Thing still wants to convert whoever was most recently tested, because the town in turn has less incentive to test recently tested people - it's just less determinant if the town votes all willy nilly.

[Valmark]

We might want to start thinking of the next game in case ra doesn't come online- recruitment isn't finished yet but the player list hasn't been updated for a long while.

[JeenLeen]

We might want to start thinking of the next game in case ra doesn't come online- recruitment isn't finished yet but the player list hasn't been updated for a long while.

I'm the next game, and should be good to start it if needed. I'll defer to AV as the scheduler about how such is handled. (I'll likely be without internet connection for about half a week before Christmas, so not sure where the timeline will line up.)
Here's hoping rogue_alchemist's health & family are okay.


EDIT: based on that, if I run my game, I should probably give a week recruitment for folk to decide to join or drop out, and then I'll be without internet the latter half of next week, and then it's Christmas... I should reshuffle to start my game the Monday after Christmas at the earliest. Sorry that I was mistaken about being "good to start if if needed".

[rogue_alchemist]

I am getting the game up, sorry for the delay. It is first thing in the morning on the 7th here for me. I meant to submit it last night, but got distracted. Been a hard week last week for me.

[rogue_alchemist]

Any suggestions on getting the thread approved? Seems to be taking a while

[Valmark]

Any suggestions on getting the thread approved? Seems to be taking a while

You could try PMing the moderators- that's what I did, but it could have been just a coincidence. Otherwise no idea.

For reference, I think I PMed flat_footed specifically.

[rogue_alchemist]

The Game is live! I have 11 players (assuming Book Wombat's interest meant a definite in). The things are messaged, so we will have 72 hours until end of D1-T1. I like the suggestion of an extra 24 hours for 2nd test. We'll see if the balance is too far off with only 11 players and 2 tests.

[Elenna]

You could try PMing the moderators- that's what I did, but it could have been just a coincidence. Otherwise no idea.

For reference, I think I PMed flat_footed specifically.

Yes, I've seen the advice to always PM the moderators when submitting a new thread, since otherwise they don't really look at it often.

[rogue_alchemist]

Yea Flat_Footed responded quickly and got it going. I guess I know now for future reference.

[JeenLeen]

To help any players who are looking for it: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...3522-The-Thing