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.

This post goes under “treatments” and “rehabilitations,” because here’s what I’m thinking for conflict resolution in The Things?: Yahtzee!.

Starting conditions: Every player has 5d6 and a hand of at least five cards. Any red card in your hand means you’re a Thing.

Whenever a player declares a conflict (on herself or other players), and assuming that conflict isn’t vetoed, everybody rolls their 5d6. The player with the highest total gets initiative, and describes the stakes of the conflict from his end–basically, “if I win, x happens.” (Ties are broken by a 1-die reroll, player’s choice of die, and three players together can veto anyone’s stakes.) Other players state their stakes clockwise around the table, then everybody gets to reroll as many dice as they like.

After that reroll, you start looking to put your dice in a box. Is everyone familiar with Yahtzee!? You try to make your dice conform to certain “hands,” many of which resemble poker hands, like a full house, four of a kind, etc. There are also catchalls like “total all your 3s” and “Chance,” which is a total of all your dice if they don’t fit into any other category. You can only use any given category once; if you can’t fit your dice into a category at all, you have to put a 0 somewhere.

The first group reroll is a freebie, but subsequent rerolls have a cost–cards from your hand, which go into a pile in the middle, face down. Each die you reroll costs one card, and you must describe a character action to accompany it. Any other player can grab that card from the middle and reroll up to two dice, describing her character’s reaction; in doing so, she takes the risk of becoming infected by the acting player. The cards grabbed for reactions don’t go directly into your hand, but stay face-down until the conflict is ended. All this happens simultaneously–throw or grab cards as you please, or declare that you’re done by putting your hand face-down on the table (on top of the reaction cards you grabbed, if any).

Whichever player gets the most points out of their category (”total all your 3s” is obvious, but a full house is worth 25, and a five of a kind is worth 50) wins the conflict; her stakes come true. Whichever player has the highest end total of dice–independent from the special scoring categories–wins the conflict in-character, and must describe how her character wins (”I block the door”) and how the winning player’s stakes come to pass (”but you go out the window”). These two players may or may not be the same person.

Finally, every player picks up his hand–now including reaction cards–and draws up to five, if necessary, from a deck of all-black cards. Any red card in your hand means you’re a Thing now. If you are a Thing, you can’t use your last red card for a reroll.

a) Does this make sense?

b) How do Things get more than one red card? Maybe there should be one deck of all black cards and one of half red, half black; when drawing back up to a hand of five, players could grab the necessary number of cards from both piles, look at both, decide which one to keep, and put the other one aside in an out-of-play discard pile.

c) Each (pregen) character will have one or two special abilities related to this process–like “Set Your Jaw: use ‘total of all 4s’ as many times as you like” or “Devil’s Luck: you may reroll up to three dice on any reaction.” Those are lame, though. What are some good special abilities?