More Things
December 28th, 2005 10:05 am

Josh’s comment about the Mafia Game is pointed and accurate; the feeling of “are you one of them? Are YOU?” is exactly what I want to capture with The Things?. My problem with the Mafia game is that it goes to the trouble of according credibility to certain people (the police, sheriffs, what-have-you), then fails to support that credibility. Nobody can verify your role until the game’s over. (And of course, as Josh mentioned, resistance to execution, which is what the dice-slotting system below is for.)

It may be obvious that my real problem with the Mafia Game is that I never draw a Mafia card, and I always die first or second, because I come off as too eager to kill someone. Of course I want to kill someone! I want to kill the Mafia! I hate the Mafia Game! But I still play it when given the chance, because paranoia is fun.

The one-room-fewer-than-players idea is solid: four areas (say mess hall, lab, barracks and “outside”) provide enough variability in networking to allow for different board configurations, while guaranteeing that at least two players have to be hanging out together. But I want an armory too. Everybody wants an armory.

What can you do, mechanically, when left alone in the armory? In the lab? Outside? There should be some incentive for players to go to each room, and some (possibly different) incentive for Things to do so; that should be enough to make players worried enough to follow when anybody goes off by herself.

Posted in Game Treatments by Brendan
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Kevan
April 26th, 2007 9:12 am

Maybe further dice-related special abilities could be picked up in the form of weapons; that default characters can only fit their dice into a few basic categories, and picking up weapons allows them to use further, stronger combinations. (Either keeping some basic rolls unavailable until weapons are taken, or having a few super-weapons with weird dice-combos, or both.)

Some weapons would be unlimited and easy to get hold of (a “total-3s” knife can be picked up in the mess hall at whim, and everyone can have one), others would be rare or even one-offs (there’s only one “roll-anything-and-double-it” flamethrower, so you’ll have to challenge the owner if you want a go with it).

And I suppose the Things should have free tentacle and claw weapons that they can unfurl whenever they like, at the cost of their identity.

Outside could have harsher resolution mechanics - no free first-reroll, or a double discard-cost, or something, so that you can force other people to fight you under more difficult conditions, if you think you’ve got the upper hand otherwise, or if you want to force a Thing to start using its Thingness to survive.

Not sure about the Lab. I suppose just using it for blood tests, of having to get people there before you can test any blood, that coming up with a convincing or distracting reason to stay in another room will be enough to protect a Thing’s secret.

The idea of the Things being able to achieve different things if left alone in rooms is fun; I suppose sabotage is the obvious thing, that it’s something humans could decide to pursue as well.

Would be even nice to do it secretly - board-side, face-down spade cards for each piece of significant machinery in the complex, perhaps. Players being required to draw the card into their hand if alone in the room, and replace it immediately - the first time someone tries the radio, they must flip its card to see if it’s the correctly-numbered spade or not. (Which means that you can sabotage the generator *and repair it later* if you keep the original spade card in your hand.)

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