Inui Arihiko (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
broke_the_buddha) wrote2015-08-28 03:12 pm
broke_the_buddha) wrote2015-08-28 03:12 pm
Mini-game Start Up Fishing.
Yo, to those of you not too familiar with DreamWidth or canon RPs. I'm looking into trying to kick off a largely player-run game, and I'm looking to feel out what I might be working with.
Quick and Dirty Guide to those new to DW:
Here at Dreamwidth, you make an account for an existing character from a medium (book, movie, game), give them some icons, then start roleplaying. The most popular format involves using action brackets such as:
Sometimes people use past tense narrative full sentences or with subjects. ("He flips..."; "He throws it..." ; "He flipped..."). I don't see people using past tense without the subject, for your reference (so probably no "Flipped through the magazine." in the action brackets). Brackets are made by typing <small>[Actions go here.]</small>
Many don't shrink their brackets. Some go good old 90s style and use *action brackets.*
Typical narrative format as below is all peachy too.
In general, at least to my knowledge, most people aren't too picky about which you prefer, and if you want to switch scene to scene based on what works best, you're welcome to it. If you're doing narrative, I don't recommend revealing their inner thoughts about being A, if you want to maintain OOC suspense.
It's going to be a small game so don't worry about too much format Nazi-ing. Even "applications" are more of a description of your character so I can craft the game to suit our roster rather than a quality thing, at this point.
This Game
A lot of you may have played the Mafia Game, Shiki Game or the Death Note game; I've hosted variants of all of them. It's very similar to the party game Werewolf. You can see it in action here.
In a very short summary, A Character (A) is given an ability that removes other characters from play, without revealing who A is. The Regular Characters (RC) must try to identify and come to a majority consensus as to who A is to stop them. To give the RCs an edge, there may be a Character B (B), unidentified to the rest of the players, who has the ability to determine whether or not a specific character is an A or an RC. If they identify the A they must convince the others to vote that way. But if they prove too much of a threat, they might be putting a target on themselves. B may not even exist in any given game; but somebody who's sure of their judgment could pretend to be B.
This could be compared to Death Note, where A would be Kira and B would be L (Beyond Birthday fans must get a kick out of the labels in that summary paragraph). It's dangerous for L to identify himself, but it might also be dangerous for Kira to off the first person who identifies themselves as L, particularly as L will not know the tell to identify Kira to prove their status to the group.
This could be compared to Shiki where A would be the Kirishikis and B would be... well, there were multiple potential Bs. That series's A, Sunako, had set up Seishirou, a normal human, to look the most suspicious and be tested with the expected tells only to be found innocent, lessening faith in Ikumi and in anyone who might try to blame the Kirishikis after.
That sample game was based on people being online at the same general time, and was meant to be very short. That means CR (character relationships) only play so much of a part.
I'm currently looking at running a game that's long term compared to that, but still extremely short-term compared to most DreamWidth games. The specifics of the setting, such as whether it's more like Death Note, Shiki, or something completely different, will depend a lot on what kind of characters I anticipate joining in.
Things to determine include the setting, the motivation and the means.
For the setting, examples include something like DramaDramaDuck where characters primarily stay in their own worlds and interact mostly through online networks, aside from when they're magically brought to an undisclosed location for a short period of time to interact. Another example would be a more typical JamJar setting, where all characters are yoinked from their home worlds (or death) and plopped at a hotel, a theme park, a camp site, or whatnot.
The motivation would be what drives the characters (As, Bs and RCs alike) to take action. In Shiki, those who ended up as vampires needed to drink blood to live. Maybe characters are told those who are on the "winning" team get out alive. In Death Note, Light was motivated by the act of being Kira itself. Maybe characters get some kind of power up when they go home if they win.
The means would be the way the As and Bs operate; this would be a large part of determining what the "tell" might be. In the linked sample, a character couldn't use the letter 'g' anywhere. In a longer game with more interaction, perhaps a character would be given a tell such as being unable to eat real food (like in Shiki) or needing to have a certain type of contact with their victims (such as needing a name and face in Death Note). In both series, the Bs managed largely through investigation, but maybe a magical power is granted, and maybe there is a tell to them in order to use that power, making them suspicious.
Again, a lot of this depends on who all we get in. Let me know if you're apping gods or desk jockeys or if I need to be making a setting for both.
For the curious, I'll be looking at getting a third party to play the "info mod" who uses RNG to determine A (and B if they exist), the tell, and to handle telling characters they're dead or confirming B's investigations so that I can play too.
For the perverted, there's no age rating so if you guys wanna RP sex go for it. In general I'm not going to require content warnings for anything, and players will provide them if they want to purely out of the kindness of their own heart. The game itself probably won't have anything worse than death, though I'm looking into options for players with dead characters to have something to do. One possibility is having people app two characters, with the second one to come in if the first dies, or to automatically join in the second half.
Timetables.
I was thinking of making this a 2-3 month game, and making each "round" (that is, one killing, one vote) last about a week. Characters would be required to make one post a week, and there may be a weekly comment number requirement; I'd actually like to encourage boomeranging, and with the secrets being kept, I don't anticipate long posts with a lot of spelled out introspection. Characters are allowed to have in-boxes screened (that is, private posts only seen by the players/characters involved in the thread--this is possible on Dreamwidth, for those new to the medium), provided they're unscreened at the end of the game, at mod request (or you can put the moderator account on the "Access list"), or for AC (activity check). It'll be an invite-only game for now where we'll assume at least the people in our small game are trustworthy enough not to cheat OOCly (out-of-character).
If you guys could comment with any feedback, on whether this makes sense, on how I might simplify the explanation, and especially with who you might play as, that'd be excellent. While I'm calling it Invite Only, I basically mean anyone I know or anyone who knows someone I know or who heard about it. In general this is small scale enough and beta enough I just want to run with the trust system of trusting people not to cheat. As we go if somebody has some ideas for how to work this into a longer or larger game, I'd be up for hearing them.
I'd like to start up sometime in mid-late Sept. and run through Nov/December.
For now, if you could just comment below with what characters you'd be considering, and any questions, comments, preferences; if you express interest, I'll try to contact you back with specifics for an official sign up, once I've set more specifics up for the game.
Thanks for reading and sharing!
Quick and Dirty Guide to those new to DW:
Here at Dreamwidth, you make an account for an existing character from a medium (book, movie, game), give them some icons, then start roleplaying. The most popular format involves using action brackets such as:
[Flips through the magazine.] What?! It's his sled?! [Throws it down angrily.] Spoiler warnings, damn it!
Sometimes people use past tense narrative full sentences or with subjects. ("He flips..."; "He throws it..." ; "He flipped..."). I don't see people using past tense without the subject, for your reference (so probably no "Flipped through the magazine." in the action brackets). Brackets are made by typing <small>[Actions go here.]</small>
Many don't shrink their brackets. Some go good old 90s style and use *action brackets.*
Typical narrative format as below is all peachy too.
He flipped through the magazine.
"What?! It's his sled?!" He snapped, throwing it down angrily. "Spoiler warnings, damn it!"
"What?! It's his sled?!" He snapped, throwing it down angrily. "Spoiler warnings, damn it!"
In general, at least to my knowledge, most people aren't too picky about which you prefer, and if you want to switch scene to scene based on what works best, you're welcome to it. If you're doing narrative, I don't recommend revealing their inner thoughts about being A, if you want to maintain OOC suspense.
It's going to be a small game so don't worry about too much format Nazi-ing. Even "applications" are more of a description of your character so I can craft the game to suit our roster rather than a quality thing, at this point.
This Game
A lot of you may have played the Mafia Game, Shiki Game or the Death Note game; I've hosted variants of all of them. It's very similar to the party game Werewolf. You can see it in action here.
In a very short summary, A Character (A) is given an ability that removes other characters from play, without revealing who A is. The Regular Characters (RC) must try to identify and come to a majority consensus as to who A is to stop them. To give the RCs an edge, there may be a Character B (B), unidentified to the rest of the players, who has the ability to determine whether or not a specific character is an A or an RC. If they identify the A they must convince the others to vote that way. But if they prove too much of a threat, they might be putting a target on themselves. B may not even exist in any given game; but somebody who's sure of their judgment could pretend to be B.
This could be compared to Death Note, where A would be Kira and B would be L (Beyond Birthday fans must get a kick out of the labels in that summary paragraph). It's dangerous for L to identify himself, but it might also be dangerous for Kira to off the first person who identifies themselves as L, particularly as L will not know the tell to identify Kira to prove their status to the group.
This could be compared to Shiki where A would be the Kirishikis and B would be... well, there were multiple potential Bs. That series's A, Sunako, had set up Seishirou, a normal human, to look the most suspicious and be tested with the expected tells only to be found innocent, lessening faith in Ikumi and in anyone who might try to blame the Kirishikis after.
That sample game was based on people being online at the same general time, and was meant to be very short. That means CR (character relationships) only play so much of a part.
I'm currently looking at running a game that's long term compared to that, but still extremely short-term compared to most DreamWidth games. The specifics of the setting, such as whether it's more like Death Note, Shiki, or something completely different, will depend a lot on what kind of characters I anticipate joining in.
Things to determine include the setting, the motivation and the means.
For the setting, examples include something like DramaDramaDuck where characters primarily stay in their own worlds and interact mostly through online networks, aside from when they're magically brought to an undisclosed location for a short period of time to interact. Another example would be a more typical JamJar setting, where all characters are yoinked from their home worlds (or death) and plopped at a hotel, a theme park, a camp site, or whatnot.
The motivation would be what drives the characters (As, Bs and RCs alike) to take action. In Shiki, those who ended up as vampires needed to drink blood to live. Maybe characters are told those who are on the "winning" team get out alive. In Death Note, Light was motivated by the act of being Kira itself. Maybe characters get some kind of power up when they go home if they win.
The means would be the way the As and Bs operate; this would be a large part of determining what the "tell" might be. In the linked sample, a character couldn't use the letter 'g' anywhere. In a longer game with more interaction, perhaps a character would be given a tell such as being unable to eat real food (like in Shiki) or needing to have a certain type of contact with their victims (such as needing a name and face in Death Note). In both series, the Bs managed largely through investigation, but maybe a magical power is granted, and maybe there is a tell to them in order to use that power, making them suspicious.
Again, a lot of this depends on who all we get in. Let me know if you're apping gods or desk jockeys or if I need to be making a setting for both.
For the curious, I'll be looking at getting a third party to play the "info mod" who uses RNG to determine A (and B if they exist), the tell, and to handle telling characters they're dead or confirming B's investigations so that I can play too.
For the perverted, there's no age rating so if you guys wanna RP sex go for it. In general I'm not going to require content warnings for anything, and players will provide them if they want to purely out of the kindness of their own heart. The game itself probably won't have anything worse than death, though I'm looking into options for players with dead characters to have something to do. One possibility is having people app two characters, with the second one to come in if the first dies, or to automatically join in the second half.
Timetables.
I was thinking of making this a 2-3 month game, and making each "round" (that is, one killing, one vote) last about a week. Characters would be required to make one post a week, and there may be a weekly comment number requirement; I'd actually like to encourage boomeranging, and with the secrets being kept, I don't anticipate long posts with a lot of spelled out introspection. Characters are allowed to have in-boxes screened (that is, private posts only seen by the players/characters involved in the thread--this is possible on Dreamwidth, for those new to the medium), provided they're unscreened at the end of the game, at mod request (or you can put the moderator account on the "Access list"), or for AC (activity check). It'll be an invite-only game for now where we'll assume at least the people in our small game are trustworthy enough not to cheat OOCly (out-of-character).
If you guys could comment with any feedback, on whether this makes sense, on how I might simplify the explanation, and especially with who you might play as, that'd be excellent. While I'm calling it Invite Only, I basically mean anyone I know or anyone who knows someone I know or who heard about it. In general this is small scale enough and beta enough I just want to run with the trust system of trusting people not to cheat. As we go if somebody has some ideas for how to work this into a longer or larger game, I'd be up for hearing them.
I'd like to start up sometime in mid-late Sept. and run through Nov/December.
For now, if you could just comment below with what characters you'd be considering, and any questions, comments, preferences; if you express interest, I'll try to contact you back with specifics for an official sign up, once I've set more specifics up for the game.
Thanks for reading and sharing!
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Apps are here!
And if you want to put some tell ideas into the hat, then toss them in here!
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But, I have a few other muses to bring in if someone else brings in a similar canon. So, a tiny ant who's barely tall enough to make it across a grain of rice (Ed Elric), an Exorcist who puts buffets out of business (Allen Walker) or a tiny swordsman who doesn't realize the fatal fashion flaw of combining pink...ish purple and red (Himura Kenshin). That said, if anyone else wants any of the three, feel free since they're kind of a soft reserve.
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Kagura (Gintama): A foul-mannered, verbally abusive fourteen-year-old girl who belongs to the Yato species, powerful human-like aliens with an aversion to sunlight and tremendous physical prowess. (This one can perhaps be ruled out if we end up with mostly fairly down-to-earth characters - or she might just find a reason to downplay her tremendous strength and durability.)
Maj. Alexander Luis Armstrong (Fullmetal Alchemist): A hulking gentle giant and skilled alchemist, with a deep sense of personal morals and a very... colorful, personality. (Alchemy might or might not actually work in the game's setting.)
Special Agent Dale Cooper (Twin Peaks): An eccentric FBI agent, with a cheerful demeanor and a kind heart, but a certain dreamy bizarreness to him. (He's been shown to be capable of performing minor divinations, which might or might not actually work in the game's world, as it's not an inherent power or anything.)
Detective Kuraudo Oishi (Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni): A portly, committed, but in some regards rather impotent smallish-town police detective. Hard-nosed and fairly serious about his job, but not humorless. (No real special abilities or other issues to be concerned about.)
Ryuk (Death Note): A fun-loving shinigami. Affable and goofy, but still, at heart, an amoral and alien monster. Definitely a much more appealing choice if we end up with a Light Yagami in the game! (Would probably need to lose his death note, or have some personal code against using it - unless he's the murderer, of course.)
Stan Pines (Gravity Falls): A gruff, money-grubbing con-man who runs a museum/novelty shop full of phony occult and cryptozoological paraphernalia. (Only special consideration of note is that he does have some knowledge of the paranormal and is capable of reverse-engineering weird-science type gadgets, but these are minor advantages.)
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Apps are here!
And if you want to put some tell ideas into the hat, then toss them in here!
Apps are screened but you're free to poke others to synch stuff up and make sure you're coming from the same canon points and such. If you want to. Different canon points are fine.
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I'm not sure who I would do as a second character, but if one is required maybe Rem or Naomi Misora.
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Apps are here!
And if you want to put some tell ideas into the hat, then toss them in here!
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....I suddenly realize Madao sounds incredibly dark when you have to put him into words. But he's also the only one in my list who hasn't killed fitty men.
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(I don't even need to translate that.)