Themed games are too easy?

[Tiinker]

Anyone else get this feeling? You play with a big name Theme like Lord of the Rings or WoT and it doesn't even really matter how well you play the early part of the game because once people start claiming characters it's pretty much game over unless you can come up with a great character claim yourself and it's doubtful more than one on your team is going to get away with it.

Someone's playing so unbelievably scummy? It's k, they claimed Aragorn in a LotR game, or they claimed Iron Man in an Avengers setup, so they're pretty much free to sit back, chill and do nothing for the rest of the game without fear of getting lynched because they got saved by something assigned to them at the beginning of the game and something they have 100% no control of. Prettaaay unfair. So if you're mafia and you're not informed about the source material then more often or not you get toast. Unless you want to claim early on in the game with the high risk of an immediate counterclaim. Or you're just a beast. Congratz to you. 

 

That's my opinion anyway. Themes need to remain ambiguous in their setup.

 

"You are not allowed to reveal your characters" isn't a way of getting around it either because the characters all come out. If someone gets lynched, then their name comes up in their coroner report, not to mention characters are given away in death scenes and the like, and adding that flavour is pretty much the point of hosting a themed game, but I think there needs to be a better way than just inserting a pretty transparent rule.

 

Thoughts?

 

[peacesells]

I agree.

[Leelou]

I won't always allow character claims in themed games I run. 

[Turin Turambar]

I thought it would be interesting for the mod to have all the characters but not tell the players who they are. Then the scenes could still have some flavor and it would be a surprise to see who everyone flipped as.

[LilyElizabeth]

That's a major reason I create themes for my games. The other reason is the temptation to sacrifice balance to make the game fit the theme. 

[Nolder]

Yeah character claiming is something I'm quickly coming to ban from almost every themed game I mod.

The problem isn't the themes themselves (which I find fun) it's the oversight by the mods.

People need to start making characters like Aragorn mafia if they're going to run themed games with character claiming or they need to ban character claiming.

 

I'm not sure what you mean when you say banning character claims doesn't work. Can you explain further?

[Tiinker]

Things get revealed through the game when people die and in their death scenes and what not. Banning character claims isn't going to be much use when it doesn't do anything to stop players from speculating. Not to mention it doesn't get round people hinting their characters. This for example is pretty damn common:

 

Player 1 - "Are you Aragorn?"
Player 2 - " winkyface chuckle"

Okay, well Player 2, you didn't say it outright, but you may as well have said "I can neither confirm nor deny, but if I could I would probably say yes". And yeah you as the mod can punish them but no one is looking to modkill and what good is punishing? The damage is done and they've got a free ride to the end. People don't even get modkilled for inactivity so saying "leave it up to the mod" is great in theory but it's fairly obvious that it's not as practical. Take the Lord of the Rings game that was played recently as an example - no hate. In the end all the characters are revealed and it's a who claimed what situation and game play is thrown out the window.

 

Not telling anyone their character and revealing it with their deaths is great, but then the sole reason you're running a themed game is simply for the excitement of writing peoples death scenes and not to effect the actual gameplay. Personally, I'm not all that attracted to the game for the sake of reading the scenes. If you're going to run a themed game then I think the setup needs to be much more elaborate than the standard setup if it's going to work. Something like

 

Player 1 - "I am Aragorn"

 

-- Mod intervention -- 

"The King has come forth! Everyone must blah blah blah" or something along those lines.

[Basel Gill]

I've never banned character claims, but I have considered it. Thre are some good reasons which have been gone over already which had occurred to me. There are also some themes which once the mod is done picking out characters, might not have enough unused "good" characters left to make fake claiming have much chance of working for the scum team. The best way around that would be to ban character claims.

[Darthe]

Theme games should not exist without original themes or mafia safe claims that are strong as hell.  Period.  DPR says this, Verbal says this, I say this, practically all experienced mafia moderators say this.  If I was doing an LOTR theme game based on Fellowship, you can guarantee that between Legolas, Aragorn, Gandalf, Frodo, Sam, and Gimli at least one would not be in the game at all and at least two would be mafia fake claims.

[Nolder]

Things get revealed through the game when people die and in their death scenes and what not. Banning character claims isn't going to be much use when it doesn't do anything to stop players from speculating.

Ok but speculation isn't really the problem is it?

And I don't see how character reveal on death negatively effects the game.

 

Not to mention it doesn't get round people hinting their characters. This for example is pretty damn common:

 

Player 1 - "Are you Aragorn?"

Player 2 - " winkyface chuckle"

 

Okay, well Player 2, you didn't say it outright, but you may as well have said "I can neither confirm nor deny, but if I could I would probably say yes". And yeah you as the mod can punish them but no one is looking to modkill and what good is punishing? The damage is done and they've got a free ride to the end. People don't even get modkilled for inactivity so saying "leave it up to the mod" is great in theory but it's fairly obvious that it's not as practical. Take the Lord of the Rings game that was played recently as an example - no hate. In the end all the characters are revealed and it's a who claimed what situation and game play is thrown out the window.

As a mod I would warn or modkill player one. Probably just warn and remind everyone that character claiming isn't allowed.

Encouraging someone else to break a rule also imo breaks the spirit of the game and that's not something I'd tolerate.

 

I agree though that relying on mods just hasn't worked in the past. I think as a community we need to start speaking up more when mods aren't doing their jobs. Prod them to replace or modkill inactives. Call them out for allowing people to character hint. etc etc.

I think so many of the problems we have are really mod problems and if mods stepped up we'd see an increase in activity and fun games.

 

 

If you're going to run a themed game then I think the setup needs to be much more elaborate than the standard setup if it's going to work. Something like

 

Player 1 - "I am Aragorn"

 

-- Mod intervention -- 

"The King has come forth! Everyone must blah blah blah" or something along those lines.

I've contemplated doing things like this in the past but it either takes a LOT of forethought or a reckless "winging it" attitude and either way it can still end in disaster so I haven't really dabbled too much with in game events.

[Nolder]

Theme games should not exist without original themes or mafia safe claims that are strong as hell.  Period.  DPR says this, Verbal says this, I say this, practically all experienced mafia moderators say this.  If I was doing an LOTR theme game based on Fellowship, you can guarantee that between Legolas, Aragorn, Gandalf, Frodo, Sam, and Gimli at least one would not be in the game at all and at least two would be mafia fake claims.

You know, giving mafia safe claims is something I'm reluctant to do normally just because I love seeing the wacky and creative claims people come up with sometimes.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

the Indy game worked very well, bc it got past the idea of mafia bad town good so I took a while to get the concept and even then it never really sank in.

 

I think you can make themes work if you think out of the box a bit.

[Lanthirrhos]

I find that the best thing to do with a themed game is to NOT make "Lord Evil Man" mafia, and to not make "Mr. Police Officer" town.

 

You get your character list, random which are mafia, and work from there. Sure, you may have to twist the character's flavor to fit the role they end up with(if you worry about that sort of thing), but it alleviates the inherent problem in sticking to a theme too closely, and brings the game back to... mafia.

[Basel Gill]

 

Theme games should not exist without original themes or mafia safe claims that are strong as hell.  Period.  DPR says this, Verbal says this, I say this, practically all experienced mafia moderators say this.  If I was doing an LOTR theme game based on Fellowship, you can guarantee that between Legolas, Aragorn, Gandalf, Frodo, Sam, and Gimli at least one would not be in the game at all and at least two would be mafia fake claims.

You know, giving mafia safe claims is something I'm reluctant to do normally just because I love seeing the wacky and creative claims people come up with sometimes.

 

 

Even without giving out safe claims, if there aren't a certain number of characters left out of the game, scum will find the deck stacked against them just because any fake claim will have a high chance of being CCed by whoever really does have the character.

[dapianoplay3r]

I think if you are going to do a themed game with character claims then give the mafia good fake claims

As Darthe says leave out a main character or something and let the mafia have it

 

Also with scenes don't use character names of characters that could vet a player

Or make up a completely unrelated story for scenes

[WWWwombat]

Ban character claims and hinting. Don't use obvious roles. Be more general with the theme.

[Ithillian Turambar]

the Indy game worked very well, bc it got past the idea of mafia bad town good so I took a while to get the concept and even then it never really sank in.

 

I think you can make themes work if you think out of the box a bit.

Yes Mafia does not actually equal 'bad guys' it equals "informed minority' and the Town are the uninformed majority.

 

I even told them that yes they were and bad guy - but they were Town in the game - but it still mean that people basically did not claim hahahaha

 

And I had ambiguous characters like hovitos Tribesman and German Soldier that the Mafia team could have used if they really struggled.

 

Next game gots no named characters. Just characteristics lol

[dapianoplay3r]

That amused me

after some flips it seemmed obvious that the town wasnt "good"

 

I need an ibdy sigy though

[peacesells]

That amused me

after some flips it seemmed obvious that the town wasnt "good"

 

I need an ibdy sigy though

 

And I argued it to no avail.  /facepalm

[Ithillian Turambar]

Ibdy?

 

Also ... No-one ever trusts the Mod

[dapianoplay3r]

Indy

 

its ok peace

[dicetosser1]

but even in games where some characters are very well known, that fact does not always give anything away.  Think about Ishy as Anakin in the Sith game.  I think that the players take on their own character and the game has more impact then the theme itself

[hazelkrs1]

I think when creating themed games, it's up to the mod to make sure that claims won't break the setup. You can do this by outright disallowing character claims, but if you're going to do so I think more mods should discourage players from even guessing as to who a certain player might be. I see that too often in a game where character claims aren't allowed, people will still debate about this character or that one or w/e. If you can't claim a character, discussing who might be them is just as bad and should be punished by the mod.

 

Ideally however the mod should design the setup so that character claims won't hurt the setup at all. Taking out major character to give as safe claims is one way, but I think more should adopt the strategy of going against the grain and changing alignments of major characters at times, with or without justification. Wombat's GoT game is a great example, one of the factions was divided a lot differently than how most would think, and this added a wrinkle in the game which really made any character claim still questionable. In fact this game had affected people's perceptions of themed games so much so that the next GoT-themed game (Darthe's in the BT), people were still doubting alignments of characters, which my team used to it's advantage for a time (we were mafia, and had town thinking that the Starks could be anti-town since they rebelled against the throne, very fun game ).

 

I think this illustrates that even a few mods choosing to go a different direction with a theme will have a great effect and influence on keeping people on their toes a bit when it comes to character claiming. If I'm not mistaken Darthe even said at one point after his game was over that one of his goals in modding that game was to make people more uncertain about just claiming their character so soon.

[WWWwombat]

I don't think I did anything super crazy with alignments in that game. I mainly blurred the lines between town and mafia, but basically Stark and Highgarden were town and everyone else was pretty much anti-town to some degree (although Stark and Narrow Sea could win together). I also offered customized fake claims in that game (some of which I thought were pretty cool). I didn't leave out tons of important characters, but there were so many factions and so many characters that it didn't matter that much. Also, the faction leader mechanic was meant to discourage mass reveals and possibly flood the game with survivors so that any faction could achieve hegemony with the right strategy. IIRC, the only faction that remained intact was the King in the Narrow Sea.

 

The only significant regret I have about that game is that I nerfed the cult too much. Also, Ape is a terrible cult leader. I probably should have rerolled that role.

[dapianoplay3r]

Can you re do a game like that again

 

I missed that game. Mainly cos I didn't know the material and didnt want spoilers

 

I regret it so much