I’d suggest a more RPG-style game that’s CLUE-esque involving surviving an onslaught of murders until the time runs out and the police arrive?
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Were you thinking of it like Werewolf? Where somebody is the killer and you have to survive, or something around the wheelhouse of a 1313 Dead End Drive?
I enjoy this idea of a clue-type RPG game, with different traits/characters that is a bit randomized, we could easily put this along with all the other ideas so far and make some sort of cluster.
Like Each Turn Adds 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes of time, for each “action”, And the idea is to survive the game at an exact time (Starts at Noon, Survive 24 “Hours”?)
I was unfamiliar with Werewolf until just now, but I guess that is roughly the idea of what I was thinking. The main thought process I had was just sort of not knowing who around you that you could trust, but having to accomplish something before help could arrive in a time-constraint setting.
Each turn taking up some amount of time does sound really interesting. There was a prior suggestion about having some form of health meter that would decrease through actions and have you die when it fell empty, and I’m not sure which creates a more fun element of survival, or if there could be a fun combination of the two.
I’ve been messing around with TTS lately, generally looking at old print-and-play games from BoardGameGeek and thinking about how to adapt them to TTS. I’ve adapted one so far… I have been learning a little scripting so maybe I can help out there.
If the game is like Clue, or some other deduction game, it should be possible to use scripting to grade the guesses. I am not sure if that turns it into competitive Mastermind, or if that would even be fun.
A possible collab idea might be to have a game with a modular board, and each person could make up one part of the board.
Other ideas in my head for some reason.
- You’re a space squintillionaire alien, planets are your currency, and planet tiles are like big coins with special rules.
- You’re a giant robot with a huge hand of cards representing all the guns and pods and missiles and bombs and other doodads mounted on you. You’re trying to win some super simple game like: each turn roll a die, if you roll a 6 you win. Your cards do stuff like let you roll twice, or make an opponent reroll, or deny them victory unless they play the victory-denier-denier.
However I’m pretty interested in what you guys are thinking with hidden allies/motive games. I’ll try to get on board with those.
You could do it like a Desert Island motif where everybody is at a full 100 health, but each turn = 1 day with the goal of being rescue, but things like snake bites, and hunger could eat it all away (and there is a mysterious murderer among the group. But I like the original idea of surviving until a certain time, for the police to arrive.
I’ll call this IDEA #4 - The Midnight Murders
I’ll need your help then so much on this, fleacircus, because I can not script to save my life!
I like both of these ideas, because they shouldn’t be that complicated of rules, and they seem easy enough but has that element of “screw over your friends” along the way.
I will put them in as IDEA #5 - Galaxy Businessman and IDEA #6 - Mecha Move
We could always do some sort of hybrid of all of them, and if you have ideas for card games or “improv games”, let me know as well.
We could wind up just doing a video game trivia game if that’s what you want, but so far we have a few great ideas!
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The “One Sentence Ideas” are now CLOSED
You can still come up with ideas and help expland during the process, but right now we are going to be doing THREE THINGS
- Vote for our game to create.
- Come up with a better name for these games
- Expand on these ideas (Vote on the poll and explain why)
I’m gonna give you EIGHT CHOICES to pick from, based on the ideas we have gotten.
@ThatPazuzu - YOUR HONOR!
An Improv Game where a Crime, Location, and Huge Deck of Exhibits are Drawn, One plays prosecutor, One plays defendant, and One plays the judge as they try and figure out a crime that was committed.
@Arp1033 - Triple Agent: Revolver Ocelot Simulator
Each player is given a card with their actual goals on it, and tries to manipulate, lie and strong arm everyone else to see these goals met. Also, every player can see one other goal that is in play but not who has that goal, leading to lots of confusion and hilarity
@dijondujour - Counter-Intelligence
A co-op, team vs team game that takes place on a Clue-esque board where you know where your teammates are but not where your opponents are. Ambitious because you get a wall covering your opponents actions.
@Meteorga - The Midnight Murders
A more RPG-style game that’s CLUE-esque involving surviving an onslaught of murders until the time runs out and the police arrive? Using a turn-to-time system and health bar counter.
@fleacircus - Galaxy Businessman
You’re a space squintillionaire alien, planets are your currency, and planet tiles are like big coins with special rules.
@fleacircus - Mecha Move
You’re a giant robot with a huge hand of cards representing all the guns and pods and missiles and bombs and other doodads mounted on you. You’re trying to win some super simple game like: each turn roll a die, if you roll a 6 you win. Your cards do stuff like let you roll twice, or make an opponent reroll, or deny them victory unless they play the victory-denier-denier.
- Your Honor!
- Triple Agent: Revolver Ocelot Simulator
- Counter-Intelligence
- The Midnight Murders
- Galaxy Businessman
- Mecha Move
- HYBRID OF 2 OR MORE IDEAS
- None of the Above/Video Game Quiz
0 voters
Feel free to vote in the poll, let me know which ideas are good, what needs to be explanded upon, or what sort of ideas you want to see in this game. They should be all doable as a concept with rules.
The poll will be closed FRIDAY @ MIDNIGHT PACIFIC so we can get the ball rolling.
Expect a double post after this.
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Our poll is now CLOSED and here are the results (it’s also above us)
Midnight Murders was our current winner with Triple Agent and Your Honor being 2nd Place, and then Counter-Intelligence. So for the time being, this will be our game to develop.
So currently, I have placed 8 counters across the board and made a quick “clock” as a deck to build out (1-12 and then 00 to 55 in 5 minute increments)
So now we move onto the important part
The Rules
What is the “Win Condition” of the game? Is it to solve the murder OR is it to survive an onslaught of murders?
Is one of the players the murderer and the rest of to figure it out as the murderer places traps?
Is everybody a detective trying to deduce from people not around?
Do you want it to be based on a dice roll or by cards drawn and played?
What would you like the name to be?
What would you like the location to be? (Desert Island? Spooky Mansion?)
This is where I would need your help, gang.
I think card-based would be the way to go, maybe have some sort of card pool that people add to each round. That way, the murder some trap cards are general and others are more direct. The former are easier to avoid, and the latter is more effective somehow, but puts the player using it at risk of outing themselves.
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Death Till Dawn.
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I like this name much better. It gives it that deadline of like 4 or 5 am. It’s great!
I like that. One player is the killer and the rest are detectives, the goal is to kill the killer (or survive) while similar to werewolf the goal for the killer is to eliminate everybody undetected.
Do you think the cards need to be placed in a group pot? “Advance 15 minutes everybody gets a snack” mixed with “next player loses 20 health because of reason”
Or should cards be placed in separate “rooms” where the consequence doesn’t happen until you enter (but each roll builds 5 minutes into the time)
I love the card idea.
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The group pot idea sounds really good to me. As much as I love board games with huge elaborate boards and lots of pieces, I really adore games that are as simple as a deck of cards or two. If it does go this route, I think it’s important to have shifting time frames depending on the amount of players. If it’s, say, 8 hours all the time, that wildly swings the balance depending on how many detectives there are playing cards to advance the time between the Killer’s plays.
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I like that room idea, but making it a little more simple would be a better idea. Maybe the group pot is applied to a random set of rooms that players choose to go to each round? Not having to travel from room to room by rolling would simplify things nicely, but adding a bit of choice prevents a player from dying by complete chance.
Also, there should probably be a few rule changes if the game reaches 1v1, because at that point the active players know full well who the killer is.
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I like that, there needs be something for when it’s that 1v1, either a chase out the mansion, for freedom or a way to kill time by having the choice of maybe 3 rooms?
You deal in one of 3 areas, you pick the area to play. But each area could either have consequences (lose health) or reward (time advance)
But i dunno how the 1 v 1 rules should work as well as if it should be a group pot (everybody deals one, everybody picks up one to play) or each room (if you play in “attic” you can only play another card in attic.
To help single out people.
Or you can have it be like a “group pot” but each card being placed (hidden) is in one of up to 8 rooms (1 per player to place, but they play as people)
To help with 1v1, you could have the dead detectives have things they can do, such as that their reveal their final breath contained a clue, or something they had said previously offhand is a major clue as to how to survive, aka
"gasp that swords… hilt… blarg"
or
"My, that statue doesn’t quite look right, eh?"
If a player “dies”, they must discard everything in their hand, including their identity card (just your detective card)
The remaining part of their game is suggestion. They keep playing in terms of talking to players about which place seems the most “safe” and who they suspect it might be.
The deck needs a variety
-
Time Advancement ("bathroom break - 5 minutes)
-
Health Damage (accidently caught fire by a candlestick - lose 10 health)
-
Nothing (pet a cat)
Do you think there needs to be health increase or insta-death?
What about cards to give clues?
Or possibly the way a “murder” happens is if two people are in a single room, the killer has access to murder cards, but the detective can draw their one and only accuse card to negate a players card.
Player 1 and Player 2 give each other a card. (Any of them)
Player 1 suspects player 2 is the killer and uses the accusition card.
Both cards are discarded, unknown if they are good or bad.
P2 is now a suspect. If P1 lives at the end and correctly accused P2, P1 wins. (But it might make them a big target)
If P1 lives but it wasn’t P2, but a P3. If P3 wasn’t accused, they win. They got away.
If the killer dies, (but still unknown until the end) everybody who is able to survive the death traps and each other wins… unless they got an accusition in before the death.
If P1 and P2 accuse P3 and he kills off P1 who accused P3 first. If P2 survives til the end. They technically win. As they lived.
TL;DR Find the killer before it’s too late!
KILLER’S CONDITIONS:
Go Undetected and Live Until Time Expires
DETECTIVES CONDITIONS
Accuse the Killer First and Live to Tell About it
Here is a mini-update, to what was created so far on Tabletop Sim.
I made a fast-and-easy game board, each color is gonna be a room or location of a mansion, but for the time being, it’s gonna be these colors, feel free to join in with art and ideas for the 8 rooms.
Each of these 8 rooms will already have 1 card placed in, placed by a killer, they get to put one card on each room (essentially getting an advantage each time) - so when the killer is in the same room as a player, they get to know 2 out of 3 cards to play.
Every player will however get 3-5 cards at the start of the game, to build time, to sabotage others (health?) and to get and others if it’s your suggestion.
Every player (even the killer) gets an ACCUSATION card and a health meter
The card is the secret to winning the game, as whoever was the first to correctly identify the killer AND live to tell about it wins the game. It also is used to negate a card during a “session” out of fear of death.
If you are the second to accuse, you are next in line. If the “First Accuser” dies, you could be the one to win the game… and yes you could “sabotage” that player into making them die so you can get ahead in the game… but would you want to do that?
I just wrote a quick deck of 8 cards (One “Killer” and Seven “Detectives”) with the goals in mind. this is the secret identities for the entirety of the game.
What is "A Session"
In a turn, one player is in “control” and takes themselves and a player of their choice into a room of their choice.
There is already one card in the room, placed there by the killer. Each player must then put face-down another card into the room.
This makes the room have three cards.
The challenging player then picks any of the three cards, the one they drew, the one their opponent drew, or the one left there by the killer.
The card is then revealed, and the results are given (health loss, time grow, end of turn, or something else?)
The second player, the one forced into the room, must then pick of the two remaining cards, leaving one card left in the room.
Once both players have drawn their card, the one “in control” is rotated to the next player.
If during a session, a player is scared, or is certain they have found the killer, they can play their one and only “accusation” card. The player in the room with them will be the one “Accused” and will be given that player’s card.
The player then picks of the cards, which one to remove from the game - it will be removed, but nothing will happen, they could have eliminated something to bump the time half an hour, or something that could have sent to an early grave.
(Revealing it to the table is entirely up to them, but it IS discarded)
I also found out that each card is 700 x 1000
So here is a template (it’s plain and black) so feel free to use this template to draw your rooms, and come up with ideas for cards.
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WE HAVE A VIDEO OF THE PROCESS:
AND HERE IS A PLACE TO DOWNLOAD IT AND PLAY IT (SO FAR):
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=864982639
I created a quick deck that could be broken and quick simple rules
If Killer - Go Undetected and make em waste their “A Card”
If Detective - Use the “A Card” on the Killer at the Right Time
If Killer Dies without anybody using the “A Card”, the identities are switched with someone else being the new murderer (I mean they DID die)
During 1 v 1, It will be left with a Killer and a Detective.
Killer needs to either kill the last detective and WIN, or waste the clock because they blew their accusation.
Detective needs to either kill the last killer and WIN (as a murderer) or waste the clock because they made the right decision.
If both live when time runs out, Killer gets away if he didn’t get accused.
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I guess if the killer dies, then whoever was in the room with them when they die becomes the new killer. I mean it would be a surprise to the new killer, but it’s gotta be somebody.
Also, these are super WIP because I’ve got a train to catch in half an hour, but one idea led to the other and I wanted to throw them out there.
I’m gonna need to figure out that newfangled Tabletop Simulator later. It looks like it can do some pretty neat things, especially the blindfold stuff.
That’s some good ideas for cards. I think the deck might be a little too much lenient on health and not so much other ideas - should there be other ideas? (Flipping cards?)
Should each player get a “character” that’s an archtype of detective? Spy, Undercover Cop, CSI Detective, Robot, etc.
As for the “death of a killer” being the killer - it will defeat the purpose of finding the killer - everybody would know.
Unless in the event of a “death” you want the player to surrender their identity card to the player and keep it hidden (so they have two detective cards or one detective and one killer card) to keep the game going.
I like either idea so far!
I figured the killer’s identity wouldn’t be revealed until the end, even if they died. But giving the other player your own card would add a nice element of suspicion to them. That way you’re not sure if the person who received the new card is the new killer, or if they just have another detective card.
As for other cards types, there should definitely be ones that heal a player. Flipping cards would be good, as well as just general card switching, (like exchanging cards between rooms, letting a player switch a card in the room with one in their hand.) Also maybe one that protects from instant death traps, if those are still going to be a thing, (either it nullifies them, or it gives them a lesser damage value.