MTG Salvation

We are now accepting submissions for the Player's Choice Queue 2016, #1. The Player's Choice Queue is a special game-type that fires upon demand. Hosts may submit setups for consideration, including a brief description of the game and/or flavor sample, and the playerbase may vote for whichever setups they would prefer to win the nod for the next PCQ game to move forward, and fire immediately.

Players may submit their setups for consideration up until December 25th. Voting will open on or around December 26th, and run until January 8th.

Voting will be checkbox.

Have at it!

Intrigue Mafia

-Ecophagy

The Triumvirate, the uneasy alliance of power brokered between Crassus, Pompey, and Julius Caesar, lies in ashes with the death of Crassus, and the remarriage of Pompey to an enemy of Caesar. Faced with orders to return to Rome to face prosecution, Caesar has instead crossed the Rubicon, in defiance of the Senate. He marches upon Rome itself, with the veteran 13th Legion behind his banner, and the fate of the Roman Republic hangs in the balance.

Within the Senate, the mood is tense, and in-fighting is fierce. Pompey and Caesar alike are battling for support among the aristocracy. Which faction will emerge triumphant? Whose voice will carry the day? Whose influence will turn the tides of the conflict, and with it, the fate of entire Roman world?

---

Intrigue mafia is a game for 16 players, designed around the "Endorsement" system. Each day, before the lynch takes place, you may endorse a target player. The more endorsements a player receives, the more powerful and unusual that player's abilities will become.

-To facilitate greater cooperation, strategy, and trickery, this game will feature universal private communication between all players, with the sole restriction being the inability to quote role PMs/mod PMs. To creative and cunning minds, this should present both tremendous opportunity and tremendous danger. The mod must be copied on all such communications, and I reserve the right to cancel this mechanic if the health or integrity of the game is negatively impacted, E.G., people no longer posting in the main thread.

-By Azrael standards of design, in this game complexity and flavor will take a back seat in favor of clean-cut elegance, strategy, and counter-play between players. This is NOT another game that is bursting at the seams with a thousand gimmicky ideas. Instead, the design is more judicious in balancing creativity with complexity. Focused around creating risk, danger, and opportunity, it emphasizes the importance of the core mafia skills of analysis and deception, significantly raising the stakes for making cagey behavioral choices. The town will gain in power and strength depending upon how wisely it can allocate its resources, cooperate, and how well it can determine friend from foe. The mafia will gain power through deceit and cunning, its strength growing in direct proportion to how many townies they can deceive into trusting them.

-The game will also feature a spectator participation element. Spectators may choose an alignment, and may even have the potential of influencing the game, in a unique fashion never before seen here or on any other forum.

*Lightning crashes, thunder rolls, an evil scientist cackles in the background*

Four Faction Chaos

Review- Ecophagy

Non-stop action. No night period. Four different mafia factions, of two partners each.

-This setup will emphasize the paramount importance of using effective behavioral analysis to inform the intelligent use of abilities - by not only the town, but also the mafia. And amongst the mafia pairings, playskill and teamwork will be critical to achieving primacy over not only the town, but three other sets of competitors. With a potential of four kills and a lynch in a single night period, I expect the game to be fast-paced, but uniqnue measures were taken within the design process to account for this unusually high kill quotient.

-If one member of a mafia pair is killed, the remaining player's ability to night-kill is reduced to a single, one-shot kill.

-All abilities/kills have to be submitted during the day, before a lynch takes place.

-If you have a preferred mafia partner in crime, you may PM me before the game begins with a preference of being paired with that player. I will determine whether that preference can or should be honored.

-Flavorless

Wheel of Time Mafia

Needs at least 20 players, can support up to 26

Definitely Specialty level, with large amounts of flavor. Would love if someone more creative than me was willing to write said flavor, but I can certainly do it.

Moderate complexity game. Higher than 'Normal' certainly, but not as high as most of Zindabad's games or like..Matrix.

Hasn't been reviewed yet, and am reluctant to have it reviewed because I want everyone to play in it! But I will ask some people that don't like to play in large games to look it over before it actually starts. Expect a fun and challenging setup. I can't promise that it will be absolutely balanced, but I can promise that it will be enjoyable and will still be a conventional game of mafia.

If you are familiar with the world of Wheel of Time, you will be at an advantage over people that are not familiar with it in some regards.

Experiment #3 - Big Red Button Mafia

A really screwed-up idea for an open-setup game.

Twelve players - four mafia, eight townies. No nights, no nightkills, no mafia chat.

Instead of voting to lynch, players propose sets of three players who are given a quicktopic and three days to agree to kill one of each other in secret. (Proposals are still approved by majority vote.) If the deadline elapses, all three are killed. The thread stays open throughout, and players may even pass new proposals before the original players show up again. Fun times are had by all question mark?

The mysterious message arrived on your phone and flashed on the screen.

"Take the next flight to Paris. Opportunity of a lifetime. Not a hoax. Be there at 1800 hours local time. 15 others like you."

What the hell is this garbage? Some spam, promotional material? Probably advertising property or a new cruise line or something.

You move your thumb to the trash can icon, but pause.

The number.

There's no reply number.

Whatever. Probably some hacker bull**** or something. You start to press the delete button, when suddenly, the message changes before your very eyes.

"Don't touch that button. You are about to receive the greatest offer you could imagine."

Okay, now you're curious. How the hell did that message change? You scan your inbox, making sure you didn't just open another message without realizing it. Nope, nothing like that.

Intriguing.

You call up the airline company.

"Hello. I'd like to book the next flight to Paris."

-

You touch down in Paris, and another message lights up your phone.

"Meet at the Cafe des deux Moulins. Upstairs."

You go through customs uninhibited, grab your luggage, and call a cab. It's time to get to the bottom of this.

-

You enter the deserted cafe. Weird, isn't this place usually packed? You climb the staircase to the office space above the establishment and enter a room.

...

You count the people.

15. Just like the message said.

Everyone is chattering away, each apparently just as curious as you about the mysterious messages.

You hear a tapping noise and someone clear their throat. The chatter subsides

A man sitting in a high-backed office chair swivels around at a desk and turns to face all of you.

The man is a tad portly, with a blue pinstriped suit, a thin handlebar-styled moustache pointing slightly upwards, and a bowler hat that matched the suit.

He beams.

"I'm sure you're wondering why I've brought you all here."

Instantly, the questions begin. The man holds up his hands and the talk eventually fades again.

"Many of you have heard of the end of the world, I'm sure. Well, I have good news and bad news for you."

Pause.

"The bad news is, it's all true. Everyone is going to die."

The people in the room grew visibly angry and began to shout more questions. The man held his hands up again.

"-However, you have a chance to affect that. All of you are about to take a defining role in the history of humanity. I've selected 4 of you semi-randomly based on your, ah...talents...to serve me as my Horsemen. Famine, War, Pestilence, Death. 4 of you will gain the powers of the endtimes. The other 12...well, if you can weed out the ones I've chosen, congratulations. You save the earth for another 100 years until I decide to do this again. However, if you fail, the consequences will affect all of you and everyone you know (and even those you don't)."

One of the people stepped forward defiantly.

"And if we refuse?"

The man in the chair stood up, leaned on his elbows towards the speaker, and smiled again, his eyes flashing with a mischievous wickedness.

"You can't say no to me. I'm Apocalypse."

-


-

16-player game, reviewed by Xyre and ganderin_dan. Everyone has a power role. The mafia consists of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse - War, Famine, Pestilence, Death - who were semi-randomly selected from the pool of 16 roles. The horsemen receive an additional horseman ability in addition to their regular role. Medium-high complexity, high skill game.

Metronomes Mafia, a game for 14-16 players (haven't settled on a number, yet). A super-high complexity game where there are no extra game mechanics, but every player has a Metronome ability. After a certain number of Days and/or Nights pass, that player will change their ability to that of a different one, and then back again after the same number of Days/Nights pass. Every player will also have a more powerful "off-beat" ability that they can use when the Metronome clicks over, which will cause them to be vanilla for the rest of the game after use, similar to the Amistarian "burnout" mechanic. High skill level required.

FTL Mafia

Based on the indie game that I still play years after being relevant.

Yes, it's another all-gimmick account game, but with some interesting twists.

Each player represents a pilot, and gets to pick one of the various races present in FTL to be. However, players don't directly interact with the game.

Each pilot will then be assigned a ship. The ship, represented by a gimmick account, is what will be posting in the thread. Players vote to lynch ships, not players, and similarly, abilities will target ships.

Each ship has some intrinsic ability, though these abilities may change depending on who is, or how many are, aboard. And yes, players can switch between ships during the game.

If you like playing anonymously, aren't scared of the potential for ever-shifting hydras/identity hunting, and you want to make me go literally crazy with modding duties, vote for me.

The game will be low flavor, after my terrible failures at writing flavor, but knowledge of the game will reward you.

I volunteer as tribute to review games that need reviewing, as well as glancing over any setups people want more eyes on.

TinyHunt

13-player, open setup game.

Central mechanics are:

• Day one public election vote that gives a player a double vote for the remainder of game.
• No vanilla roles.
• Players are not eliminated upon death - protection in the game is voted upon nightly by dead players, with countering dead scum mechanic.
• Anti-claim mechanic available to scum team. There will be no ill advised day one mass claim, or the town just instantly loses on night one.
• Relatively short day/night phases.

Dibs Mafia

This is an experimental setup where there is one ability up for grabs during each game day. The first person to call DIBS gets the ability. Every player is otherwise vanilla, except for the mafia factional kill.

Variable player size. For 12-24 players. Fast-paced game days. No third-party roles.

Oh, Iso asked me to throw this one in:

Majora's Mask
My own take on the flavor, and equally as likely to be a trainwreck as the game that already ran on this site. This 12-player game will end after a set period of time (in this case, three Days). However, at any time the town may opt to play the Song of Time to reset the game to Day 1, reviving all dead players (even the scum) and getting another three Days' time to try and rout them. The town wins when all four scum are dead at the same time. High complexity, skill-intensive and swingy (not due to role imbalance but due to the inherent game mechanics).

That sounds hilarious.

Mind Screw Salvation Mafia

Moderator: Taredas
Reviewers: desCoures, Xyre, Azrael, Cantripmancer
Players: 21... right?
Closed Setup (and how!)
Day Start

Flavor Sample: Here

Rules:
<0> The first rule is that I cannot tell you any of the other rules.

It is now Day 0.
With ??? votes in play it takes ??? votes to lynch?
You are currently located in a secret facility in 1970's-era China
The weather is clear.
The TV has been turned to channel -1.
No scrolls are blowing in the wind.
The white warning light is lit.

Deadline: ??? on ???? (GMT -5)


Background: Mind Screw's ultimate inspiration is the card game Mao, with a healthy dose of inspiration by certain MTGS games generally run by certain individuals named "Azrael" and "Xyre". This time, however, we'll be running in reverse - the game is on MTGS, and most adapted concepts are derived from certain MafiaScum games.

There have been five previous Mind Screw games, all on MafiaScum. Mind Screws 1, 2, and 3 ran brilliantly. Mind Screw 4 used a post count mechanic that proved overtaxing and limped to completion. Mind Screw 5... the less said about that game, the better (RL and an in-game controversy interfered, leading to general abandonment).

Mind Screw Salvation Mafia Design Manifesto

- Mind Screw Salvation, like all Mind Screws before it, exists on the bleeding edge of design. Expect some things you've never seen before, as well as old ideas reused in new and innovative ways.
- Rule 0 is in play. Chairman Mao is out there somewhere. As long as he's in the game, all other rules will be hidden to players (including Chairman Mao himself). Once he's gone... well, we'll see, won't we?
- Bastard without bastard. The moderator will not lie to the players unless I make an error or I am directed to do so (by a player ability (i.e, Godfather) or global effect). If your role says it does something, then it does that barring interactions with another abilities. But, be warned... lies of omission don't count. Speaking of that:
- Hidden triggers. This has been specifically noted as part of the charm before. Note that this cuts both ways - just because you're part of the informed minority doesn't necessarily mean that you actually know anything!
- Town vs. players vs. mod (this may or may not be literal). Mind Screw takes a more old-fashioned approach to modgaming - gaming the mod is risky. If you're right, it could help immensely. If you're wrong... well, there's a reason why my title on MafiaScum is "Mod Screw"

Mind Screw Mafia Features:
- Open-ended abilities. Several roles have nearly limitless potential uses and choices. Do not expect the optimal use of your role to be cut and dry.
- Rules-affecting roles. Several roles interact with the rules (or related things).
- NPCs. There are seven in all. They may or may not do anything, and may or may not be valid targets for lynches and abilities. (Also, there's a homage in here somewhere.)
- Top down designs and other flavorful roles. Here, the flavor may not be so much in the flavor text as in the design of the roles themselves. A useful hint: Every role in this game comes from a point of origin (either real life or a work of fiction; most if not all are based on things or works that are notoriously confusing).

Fair Warning: Balance in this game is a best guess. We *think* it's balanced, but there's really no way to know for sure.

Mod's Hint: Keep your eyes open for advice hiding in plain sight.

---

Very high complexity, very high power, bastard mod elements. I will mess with your head. And you will like it.

You've been complaining about lack of design creativity and cookie-cutter roles? You want this game to fire.

Too Many Neutrals 2

Flavor TBD (might be a Klein saga game, might be something else).

A game of almost half neutral players with their own alternate win conditions (AWCs), and with the Shutdown rule from Ozone Underground, whereby a majority of players can agree to end the game on the spot, with only neutrals who have completed their win conditions prevailing.

As those who played in Ozone Underground can tell you, the shutdown mechanic substantially changes the tactical playing ground. It will require players on all teams to think in multiple dimensions about how they'll win and who intends to stop them, and requires far better role analysis than a typical mafia game. The mafia and town likely will have to work together to keep the neutrals' numbers in check, and requires the neutrals to play both sides off against each other while they buy time to "win".

I've learned from the mistakes of that previous game and am designing accordingly. Currently the plan is to avoid some of the additional tactical confusion/obfuscation by just going mafia/town/neutral. I can promise all the neutrals' win conditions will be new or substantially different from those in the original game.

No matter what, promises to be high complexity with a flavorful dash of bastardy.

See, why aren't all these games firing instead of whatever else is getting hosted these days?

because they're not on the hosting lists

Quote from Ged »

See, why aren't all these games firing instead of whatever else is getting hosted these days?

The next time the FTQ gets only 2 submissions, I know whose doors to come knocking on (aside from my own).

Or we could just do more PCQs. That works too. I am pleased that we seem to have an embarrassment of riches shaping up, here.

Star Trek: Myriad Universes IV
Design by Annorax and Teia Rabishu
Reviewed by Iso and Prophylaxis

19 players.
Similar complexity to previous games in the MU series.
Several new-to-Mafia mechanics have been added.
More series-based flavor; this game's flavor is less reliant on the post-series novels than previous ones.
Bastardry is very strictly contained; this might be my least bastard setup yet.

Juliet Mafia

This is an experimental game of mafia where we will all write our own chatbots (1 month deadline) and set them at each other. There will be no special roles.

Chatbots must match these criteria:

* Capable of making a random vote at the beginning of the game when there's nothing to respond to
* Capable of responding to posts that quote the bot
* Capable of making an original thought if not replied to within 24 hours (or whatever timeframe we all agree on), by quoting a post and responding to it.
* Capable of submitting a name for a kill, if mafia.
* You may build in alternate tactics for scumplay, if you wish.

Beyond that, you can put in as much effort as you like to make your chatbot smart or dumb. But please, no joke bot entries. Try to play to win, as much as you can in an experiment like this.

Problem: What if we don't have enough coders in the playerbase to kick it off?

hey I wrote a chatbot for Skype in ruby. I was able to run it through AppleScript and pipe output into skype directly. I was having problems pulling messages from Skype though, and I stopped development at that point.

seppel if you teach me or point me to resources for pulling data from places I'd be down for that. it would be hilarious if nothing else.

if you made a standardized script for the input/output and just had people customize the logic it would be an interesting competition.

For Juliet, I got stuck at that same point, so I just made it that I could copy and paste posts into an input box, and she processes the rest. I actually have to be around to get Juliet to reply, which satisfies the requirements.

makes sense. the logic on mine wasn't super sophisticated at the time but it would be fun to dip back into it if I find some free time.

Quote from Seppel »

Juliet Mafia

This is an experimental game of mafia where we will all write our own chatbots (1 month deadline) and set them at each other. There will be no special roles.

Chatbots must match these criteria:

* Capable of making a random vote at the beginning of the game when there's nothing to respond to
* Capable of responding to posts that quote the bot
* Capable of making an original thought if not replied to within 24 hours (or whatever timeframe we all agree on), by quoting a post and responding to it.
* Capable of submitting a name for a kill, if mafia.
* You may build in alternate tactics for scumplay, if you wish.

Beyond that, you can put in as much effort as you like to make your chatbot smart or dumb. But please, no joke bot entries. Try to play to win, as much as you can in an experiment like this.

This sounds AMAZING. I'd be totally up for that.

Quote from Megiddo »

if you made a standardized script for the input/output and just had people customize the logic it would be an interesting competition.

I'd like this!

Hah!

<importing personality: Cyan>

We have enough posts by everyone that we could feed individual player posts into each bot, and have them respond to other bots using the players' posts. It could be like the 2015 invitational except we just sit back and watch ourselves play.

I hope someone programs a bot that tries to overthrow the mod.

that's how the matrix was formed

Quote from Seppel »

Hah!

<importing personality: Cyan>

We have enough posts by everyone that we could feed individual player posts into each bot, and have them respond to other bots using the players' posts. It could be like the 2015 invitational except we just sit back and watch ourselves play.

Please, please, please do this.

Polling is now live, running till January 8th. Fifteen contenders in all.

EDIT: Megs, how many player slots for your FTL setup?

Hey Az, Dagger already ran a game called "Intrigue Mafia". Consider a re-name.

I think we'll be fine, people can distinguish by host name.

Quote from Azrael »

Polling is now live, running till January 8th. Fifteen contenders in all.

EDIT: Megs, how many player slots for your FTL setup?

14.

Bumping to say I've finished (mostly) the draft of TMN2. It's predictably pretty bonkers. Who wants to review it?

I should probably crack down on completing the setup for Metronomes, soon.

Some of these sound really fun.

Congratulations to Taredas (Mind Screw), Xyre, (Big Red Button) and Iso (Horsemen), our three PCQ winners.

In accordance with the recent decision in the council thread, the three of you will have the next three PCQ slots to fire. If a subsequent PCQ slot is added, that priority will continue.

Taredas, you may fire when ready.

Tar and Iso: How do you two want to go about doing this? Tar made mention in the Council thread that Mind Screw is almost effectively at the top of the Specialty list, and since Tar and I are both running setups at the moment, who do we want to go next? I have no problem running two Experiments at the same time, since they pretty much run themselves, if Tar wants to wait until Stargate has buzzed along a bit. Alternatively, should we just let Iso go first to avoid all those problems?

I am also currently running a game and my flavor is not yet ready.

After the three of you, it's Majora's Mask and Ace Attorney, tied at 6 votes. Megs didn't self-vote, so he'd win the tie-breaker.

But has anyone reviewed that setup?

I can see that Ace Attorney's been reviewed.

Let proph go. I'll get MM finished by the time it's needed.

Quote from Xyre »

Tar and Iso: How do you two want to go about doing this? Tar made mention in the Council thread that Mind Screw is almost effectively at the top of the Specialty list, and since Tar and I are both running setups at the moment, who do we want to go next? I have no problem running two Experiments at the same time, since they pretty much run themselves, if Tar wants to wait until Stargate has buzzed along a bit. Alternatively, should we just let Iso go first to avoid all those problems?

Naturally I put up Mind Screw Salvation signups *before* seeing this post...

Given the responses to Tordeck on the available host list, I'm 99% sure Mind Screw is the next Specialty up (with Ace Attorney after it), so if we want to put off Mind Screw Salvation until Mafia vs. Wolves finishes, I'm fine with that - just move Mind Screw Salvation to the old signups and move it back when it's time?

Otherwise... well, I used to host on MafiaScum? I've run two games at the same time before.

Quote from Taredas »

Quote from Xyre »

Tar and Iso: How do you two want to go about doing this? Tar made mention in the Council thread that Mind Screw is almost effectively at the top of the Specialty list, and since Tar and I are both running setups at the moment, who do we want to go next? I have no problem running two Experiments at the same time, since they pretty much run themselves, if Tar wants to wait until Stargate has buzzed along a bit. Alternatively, should we just let Iso go first to avoid all those problems?

Naturally I put up Mind Screw Salvation signups *before* seeing this post...

Given the responses to Tordeck on the available host list, I'm 99% sure Mind Screw is the next Specialty up (with Ace Attorney after it), so if we want to put off Mind Screw Salvation until Mafia vs. Wolves finishes, I'm fine with that - just move Mind Screw Salvation to the old signups and move it back when it's time?

Otherwise... well, I used to host on MafiaScum? I've run two games at the same time before.

I have no problem with this personally, though we might want to wait a bit before actually firing Mind Screw only because there are a lot of games that just started so people might feel a little overwhelmed.

I wouldn't mind running two games at once, but again...flavor needs writing, and I'm a little pinched for time as of late.