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Secret programmed actions?
- hotseatgames
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Let's say there is one robot, and all of us are vying for control of that robot. We all program an action, and then they all happen in a certain order. That seems simple enough. But what if I didn't want you to know which action was MINE? I'm curious if anyone knows of a game that has done this because I want to see how they did it. I have some ideas but so far none of them are perfect.
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There was a game in the 80s called "Maloney's inheritance" where all players traveled the board in one car and had to bid for control every turn. That might be worth looking into.
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Maybe something like use shapes to determine how things have to go? Starters, then Linkers, and an Ender. Maybe the game provides Starters/Enders and players have to provide the Linkers, and they can only go in certain orders to be complete?
...I can't upload pictures, maybe I can link to one?
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For example, you could have 3 robot phases, then each player can add cards to each phase (move, shoot, jump, etc) and the majority card in the phase determines the action. So a player could add 3 "fire" cards to phase 1 and be likely to influence it. Some random cards thrown in can obscure who put what in as well (like BSG). Some cards can even have special actions like "move this card to the next phase when revealed" so a traitor can influence one phase with cards added to other phases to further hide what they are doing. Obviously this is a complex process, so it had better be worth it.
If it is just to disrupt the robot in a non-specific way (awwww, he turned left instead of right, now we gotta try again) then the process can be pretty light and quick, like cards thrown into a pile with an initiative order on each one, the traitor just hangs on to that "robot ejects pilot, initiative 1" card till they really need it.
For a party game where the stakes are low, the gameplay quick, and the end goal is just to see what kind of group communication f'up can happen, then it probably doesn't matter, maybe each player has a secret goal (make the robot jump twice in a round, spin in a circle, etc) so they are incentivized to try to alter a pre-determined group task (make the robot go in a circle) and then exploit it to make a specific OTHER thing happen instead to get a game point. Whether it happens by accident or on purpose doesn't matter, so the secrecy part is so folks can never be sure what types of sabotage the others are trying to create.
hmmm, now you have me thinking hard about this....
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- hotseatgames
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Players then get to program movements for the characters (and the killer), trying to get them to interact with each other in meaningful ways, like "oh, how unfortunate that the killer wound up in the same space as Cindy!"
In order to facilitate this, my current thinking is that each player has a hand of cards, one of which would say MOVE and the others would be blank. Each turn, all players would add a card to one of the characters (again, killer included) "stacks". No one would know who put a real command on a character vs. a blank. Once all cards are placed, the decks are shuffled and executed in order (the character order would shuffle each round so that order of execution changes each round as well). Unless more than one player wanted to make a character do something each turn, YOUR command would go off as planned. But it may end up that a character moves two, or even more times in a round.
I think the only way this could work and not be a total clusterfuck is if MOVE is all you can tell someone to do. So anything that happens when 2+ characters wind up at the same place would be automated. I'm still working this out.
But what I essentially am trying to create is that each player is trying in essence to direct a fragment of a horror film, but the participants are not necessarily being cooperative. This would hopefully lead to several "Don't go in there!" moments. I think the "secret" part is necessary because if I know you are trying to kill character X and I want character X to survive, we will just spend the whole game cock-blocking each other and that doesn't sound fun.
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Players are dealt characters. Those characters have goals in terms of how they win which are often in opposition to one another but can align (e.g. the mechanic wants to make it out alive and the robot to stay alive but needs the nurse to die, the murderer wants everyone organic to die, etc.) but everyone can control every character on their turn. At some point in the game you can reveal which blocks other people from controlling your character but puts a target on your back.
You won't get any inspiration about programming actions but it does provide an alternate framework for a similar concept.
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- hotseatgames
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So if you had an attack or defend card, then you might need to obfuscate who played it as that would show which player wants a character killed or saved.
Some of this reminds me of the game Pirates Cove. Players secretly pick which spot to go but if they pick a spot with another player or worse, the clockwise moving AI pirate ship, then combat ensures and you can suffer a moderate, but not necessarily game ending, setback. If players could periodically influence moving the killer to specific places (i.e. where you DON'T want to be) using this card mechanic instead of it being predictable, that might add to the "horror" factor.
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