The problem is, it's *both* a logic game and an RPG, and gorillashaman and I both went immediately off the logic game *deep end* and kind of made it much harder for anyone to play RPG.

Seriously, I suspect "roles revealed only on death, no indication of which or how many until the game is done" would be a great benefit.

Putting in the MiB would also be a good way to encourage people to keep quiet about their role :)

If the villagers lynch nobody (because there's a tie, even a 0-all tie), the cultists get two. Part of the point is that the villagers *have* to lynch someone, somehow, every round. Remove that and you lose the most compelling part of the game: The idea that, by *not* adminstering frontier justice without any evidence beyond people's votes, *you lose*.

But in general, I agree. I fucked it up and I won't do that again.

I'm still against a *completely* blind game, because at that point everything really is almost entirely random - you can't *tell* if you're making progress or not, you can only hope you notice the cultists voting in a bloc early enough to see the trend and with time left to reverse it. But being blind *until the deed is done and the result is irrevocable?* That's a great way to add useful information and context to the game.

It's been a long time since we've done a blind game; why not give it a shot? I can run something if the usual GM's want to play. At this point I'm slated to be killed first as a Werewolf/Cultist anyways. :)

I posted this in the other thread, but since this is the official post-mortum, I think that there needed to be a solid reason for the villagers to not haphazardly kill people or to even have doubt. Even if it was with the introduction of the lovers, or someone who changes sides, or a Ralph Nader-like character, having that wonderful fuzzy gray area to play with makes this game much more psychological than black-and-white.

And COC is all about the psychological horror.

I'm more than happy to put something together if you wanted to play and enough folks were interested in experimenting. In theory, I'll have a lot of free time soon. :)

I can see an amazing power to having to old your breath for each evening round to see if there are more cultists. I think a blind game sounds pretty good.

All in all, I think the game went well, though I really think that the number of murdering specials in this game was a bit on the high side. I would have like to have seen more of the non-murdering specials.

You had one NIGHTLY murdering special.

There was also the doctor and the thrill-killer.

Well, you know where I stand. I'm strongly in favor of a Blind game as non-blinds seem to end up being "do whatever the specials say" and I don't roll that way. Being a villager shouldn't mean you're a willing sacrifice. I'd like to play a person who wants to live, thank you.

I think I agree with the majority thus far, here. I was playing, under the assumption that it was a role playing strategy game. Much like some of what I saw in the night posts, now that I can see them. I saw some of it the first day, but then almost all I read was out of character deductive reasoning. And that's great to DO, but it doesn't need to be ALL that happens. Maybe a good addition would be a daily/nightly side post for OOC, all comments under the main day post should be made IC, and then in the OOC post whoever wants to can play logic man all they want. If you're like me, and you want to take the RP side, you don't even look at the comments on that post. Then the logic-wielders have to convince the others, in character, of why they should vote for Bob or Trudy to be lynched.

I had another thought that maybe all characters could have a title in addition to their role...like, not just Villagers, but Villager/Fisherman, Villager/Pharmacist, Villager/Shopkeep, etc. You know, in order to encourage role play - like, "I walked into Reyl's General Store today, and caught him covering up some strange looking candles." Or maybe more interaction, say my character (btw, I LOVED the "robes robes robes!" maniacal bit) is on the robes kick, and a group of villagers search someone's house, and that person tries to keep them out and such. They couldn't give anything away but there could be some suspicion about why they can't open that closet or whatever and that's what gets the others to lynch them. But that might cause more problems and require a "day" to span several to allow for interaction.

I did want to ask - is there a rules basis for this game from somewhere else, or is it a personal creation? I'd like to adapt it to a tabletop if I may.

In fact, here's my suggestions:

* Merge the Sorceror and the traitor. The Sorceror spies every round looking for the PI, and if they're "sacrificed", they become a cultist instead and lose their spying ability. This guarantees that even if the PI is killed, the sorceror still has stuff to do - and opens a ton of interesting gameflow options, *and* prevents situations like the need of the cultists to technically kill the Sorceror to win.

* Eliminate the vigilante and the doctor's poison pill. If the villagers want to kill a cultist, they'd damn well better hang 'em high, or hope to get lucky with the Lovers or the Thrill-Killer. Alternately, drop the doctor's poison pill and make the vigilante a one-time-per-game thing.

* Don't tell people what roles are in the game, or how many of each role.

* Eliminate the suicide rule.

* Eliminate the rule that Lovers can't vote for each other, even if you keep the one that they can't let they vote *stand* at end of day when voting for each other.

* Still reveal roles on death. This added information really is very important to avoid spending a week on literally random lynchings before you have enough to maybe see a pattern in the votes.

* Fewer Specials in comparison to total players.

*nod* I could see extending "night until 2PM. That'd give me enough time to do all the write-ups and everything.

I think in a big game it wouldn't be that much of a big deal. I think the Vigilante's killing factor is also very personal; this time we had a very enthusiastic Vigilante and the way things started off made it very much in theweaselking's favor to be vicious but in a larger game and a more hesitant Vigilante, you may see fewer Vigilante kills.

The Serial Killer needs to have no limits because their objective is to be last person standing. Saying they only get five kills would be rather...pointless.

If some you like and some you don't, which ones are which?

* Merge the Sorceror and the traitor.
= could be fun, but probably not necessary.

There's already a variant for it. Plus the Sorcerer's incentive, even if they don't get to murder people, is to create chaos and dissent; they only win if the Cultists win.

Vigilante should NOT be used though; it gives villages 2 kills per day. The serial killer or werehamster are better if you just want random carnage.

I disagree but I think the Vigilante should only be used in larger games with higher numbers of Cultists. If you have a twenty-four person game, you're more likely to get a villager if you have three cultists so using that ability makes it more harmful at that point.

This is one of the few pieces of solid information the villagers get. I think suggesting this is the result of seeing it play out the way it did in this game. I've played four or five of these now, and this is the first solid villager win by logic I've seen. And once in a while, yeah, I'd like to see that kind of win.

*nod* True, although this time it simply steam rolled. I think what allowed logic to just roll over this game was the fact that the villagers had two kills every set of rounds (if the Vigilante wanted to) and there were only two cultists.

The problem here was really not enough cultists. Also, adding MORE specials makes things more random and chaotic.

Agreed to both.

* Eliminate the suicide rule.
= Agree.

Eh, still not sure about that. I think having a mechanic to get rid of people who sign-up but don't play is important (even if it does "penalize" the players) but there needs to be a way worked out where someone could play silently if they chose.

I'm not worried about the suicide rule being *abused*, I'm worried about it giving out information and being, well, boring.

I have to agree with that logic.

Really there should only be two all the time kills each day: the lynching and the cultists. Have some other one-off kills, but nothing else that happens regularly.

I like the idea of now knowing what's in the game before play more than a full blind game. If a blind game is done, I would really want the notary in play.

I get that the logic was cool and predicted a win scenario, but it did take out a lot of the fun. Would it have been more fun if GS and WK had presented it as a character? Would it have been more fun if I had read through it with the mindset of a crazy thrill killer more than my own? I don't know.

Maybe to promote role-play everyone can also be assigned a function of the village, i.e. inn keeper, florist, head of the tourism commission, farmer, fisherman, mechanic, cable installer, waitperson, teacher, professor, recluse author, baker, crystal shop owner, pizza delivery boy, comic book shop owner, gas station attendant, dog catcher, bartender, seamstress, ranger, fire marshal, mail deliverer, town gossip, etc.

You can still use logic even in a partially blind game. Just behind-the-scenes logic. If you know what's in the game, but no one can reveal themselves, and you know what things are when they die, you can use logic.

My biggest gripe is specials revealing themselves and the game becomes "Do whatever the specials say or else!". That's no fun.

Don't give people roles like sylvan suggested, but let them take them up if they want. If you want a logic game, that's fine, just mellow it out. No giant posts with charts of who is alive, what's left, and what's gone.

I kept a spreadsheet up privately that told me everything GS posted in his daily posts, because I was paying attention. We don't need a secratary.