The Art of Game Creation

[CadCom he/him]

On 5/11/2019 at 11:06 PM, Alvron said:

At moment I have 47 roles.  Highly doubtful I would use them all in one game but if players enjoy the fun over the mechanics, it could have endless replayability.

The potential for this is endless. You could literally just make it completely random, and if it's unbalanced, oh well, a new game will eventually be run.

Or you could spend some time actually trying to balance roles, or choose between 3 randomly generated role assignments to determine which is the most balanced.

Edited May 14, 2019 by Cadmium Compounder

[Alvron he/him]

8 hours ago, Cadmium Compounder said:

The potential for this is endless. You could literally just make it completely random, and if it's unbalanced, oh well, a new game will eventually be run.

Or you could spend some time actually trying to balance roles, or choose between 3 randomly generated role assignments to determine which is the most balanced.

It's not about balance.  It's about having fun.  Win, lose, balanced or chaos, it doesn't matter.  What matters is if people have fun.

A small sampling of the roles:
Voodoo Practitioner:  Each Night you can choose one player and one six letter word.  If your target says that word during the following Day, they will die.  (Player/RP names cannot be selected.)
Good Neighbour:  Each Night you can choose the protect either the person above or below you on the player list.
Alarmist:  Once per game you can choose to roleblock every player for that Night cycle.
Torturer:  Each Night you can torture someone to learn their role.  They will be informed that they were tortured.
Karma:  Each Night you can target a Player.  Any action the target takes is also applied to them.
Sleepwalker:  (Passive/Hidden)  Each Night you randomly visit another player but no actions are taken.
Dependent:  (Passive)  You are reliant on the {Redacted} role.  Should all players with this name in their role die, you will lose all your roles.

As you can see by the last two, the player might not even know they have a role and they aren't all beneficial.  There are some negative roles/traits.

[Elandera she/her]

50 minutes ago, Alvron said:

It's not about balance.  It's about having fun.  Win, lose, balanced or chaos, it doesn't matter.  What matters is if people have fun.

A small sampling of the roles:
Voodoo Practitioner:  Each Night you can choose one player and one six letter word.  If your target says that word during the following Day, they will die.  (Player/RP names cannot be selected.)
Good Neighbour:  Each Night you can choose the protect either the person above or below you on the player list.
Alarmist:  Once per game you can choose to roleblock every player for that Night cycle.
Torturer:  Each Night you can torture someone to learn their role.  They will be informed that they were tortured.
Karma:  Each Night you can target a Player.  Any action the target takes is also applied to them.
Sleepwalker:  (Passive/Hidden)  Each Night you randomly visit another player but no actions are taken.
Dependent:  (Passive)  You are reliant on the {Redacted} role.  Should all players with this name in their role die, you will lose all your roles.

As you can see by the last two, the player might not even know they have a role and they aren't all beneficial.  There are some negative roles/traits.

Those are amazing. I love the Voodoo Practitioner. It sounds wonderfully chaotic.

[CadCom he/him]

@Alvron if we all get multiple roles, will we be able to perform multiple actions in one turn? Also, it looks like I'll avoid using six lettered words. 

[Alvron he/him]

9 hours ago, Cadmium Compounder said:

@Alvron if we all get multiple roles, will we be able to perform multiple actions in one turn? Also, it looks like I'll avoid using six lettered words. 

Still working on that part.  My upcoming Zombie game allows unlimited actions.  If you can think it, you can do it.  Will depend on how that goes as to how many actions I'll allow in the chaos game.

Good luck with that.  That particular incarnation might not even make it into the game.  It might be the 4, 5 or 7 letter Practitioner. 

[xinoehp512 he/him]

3 hours ago, Alvron said:

Still working on that part.  My upcoming Zombie game allows unlimited actions.  If you can think it, you can do it.  Will depend on how that goes as to how many actions I'll allow in the chaos game.

Good luck with that.  That particular incarnation might not even make it into the game.  It might be the 4, 5 or 7 letter Practitioner. 

How do you access that emoji?

[Alvron he/him]

7 minutes ago, xinoehp512 said:

How do you access that emoji?

The Alvicon?  It's one of several that @Burnt Spaghetti created for me.  I have them in a Doc for me to grab whenever needed.

[+Ark1002]

So, I've been wanting to create a game of my own for a while now. Is that possible? If so, how?

[Elandera she/her]

1 hour ago, Ark1002 said:

So, I've been wanting to create a game of my own for a while now. Is that possible? If so, how?

You don't necessarily have to be signed up to GM in order to create a game. You generally start with an idea of what kind of abilities you want to try and/or a world you want to put it in. 

You can also ask someone with GM experience to help as you build the ruleset. They can point out balance issues and such as you go.

EDIT: The few I've created started because I wanted a game in that world. I figured out abilities later.

Edited June 2, 2019 by Elandera

[+Ark1002]

How would one go around being signed up as a GM?

[Elandera she/her]

5 minutes ago, Ark1002 said:

How would one go around being signed up as a GM?

Contact one if the moderators, including @Fifth Scholar and @Alvron (they're the only ones I can remember off the top of my head...) and get added to the GM PM.

You'll pick what kind of game you want to run (LG, MR, or QF), then be added to the rotation.

[+Ark1002]

Oh, cool

Thank you!

[Fifth Scholar he/him]

I don’t have the power to add you to the PM, Ark, but I’d be happy to put you on the GM waitlist should you know which game type you’d like to run. 

[+Ark1002]

5 minutes ago, Fifth Scholar said:

I don’t have the power to add you to the PM, Ark, but I’d be happy to put you on the GM waitlist should you know which game type you’d like to run. 

Who does have the power to add me to the PM?

Also, how could I get an experienced GM to help me with my first game?

[Fifth Scholar he/him]

4 minutes ago, Ark1002 said:

Who does have the power to add me to the PM?

Also, how could I get an experienced GM to help me with my first game?

That’s a very good question.  I think any of the site mods can do it, which would be any SE moderator save myself, though perhaps only a global mod has the power, so maybe just Wilson. As a subforum mod I lack the powers to add you.  I’ll ask the other mods though.

If you’d rather go the other way around, and help a perhaps more experienced GM, you could try co-GMing a game, which is intended to get you used to the process of GMing without the stress of trying to run the whole show at first. If you’d rather jump straight in, then another GM could co-GM with you instead and help guide you through it. (Or both.) It’s really up to you whenever your turn to GM comes around. 

[Steeldancer he/him]

1 hour ago, Ark1002 said:

So, I've been wanting to create a game of my own for a while now. Is that possible? If so, how?

That's a good question.
I just tend to look at things, and go "man, this would make a cool SE game," and then attempt to format it into a game that isn't totally broken. 
But as Fifth pointed out, it's probably a good idea to do some co-GMing first. It helps you get a sense for how it works. You can also always rerun an old game, with some tweaks to make it work better. Personally, I like to make games with exciting new mechanics and settings that haven't really been done before. That kind of thing varies from GM to GM. Get a bit of experience, and you might find some ideas coming together for cool mechanics or just a stable game to run. 

[Alvron he/him]

25 minutes ago, Fifth Scholar said:

I don’t have the power to add you to the PM, Ark, but I’d be happy to put you on the GM waitlist should you know which game type you’d like to run. 

You should have the ability to add someone into the GM PM.  Anyone can add another so long as they are in that PM.  There's a little button after all the names that does it.

[Fifth Scholar he/him]

Perhaps it’s the curse of mobile, but I’m not seeing that.  I think there’s a maximum capacity for PMs (50 or so?) and then to go above that, mods have to start adding new members to the PM. 

[xinoehp512 he/him]

I would like to co-GM a game, to see what it's like.

[A Joe in the Bush]

Yeah, we actually need to make a new GM PM. There are a lot of inactive GM's in there, and Alv isn't there, and we're past maximum capacity.

[+Ark1002]

I would also enjoy co-GMing a game, if there's one open

[Araris Valerian he/him]

I think I'd like to try my hand at co-GMing as well. I've been around far too long to not have seen both sides of a game.

[Mailliw73 he/him]

5 hours ago, Fifth Scholar said:

Perhaps it’s the curse of mobile, but I’m not seeing that.  I think there’s a maximum capacity for PMs (50 or so?) and then to go above that, mods have to start adding new members to the PM. 

This is correct. 

[Stick. she/her]

Fun fact: I think I’m one of the few (if not the only) players who’ve been around for nearly 3 years but have never GM’d/co-GM’d a game. XD

Edited June 5, 2019 by _Stick_

[+Ark1002]

I want to do a LG, can you please add me to the pm?

Unless someone else has a game I can Co-Gm first