Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[notquitethere]

Revolution III - Assassination Games

In the words of GlyphGryph, "This is not mafia. It is almost mafia."

In 2013, Birdy51, last ran the game known as Revolution. Although it is certainly not Mafia, the main goals remained the same. There is Scum and Town players, as always. Only this time, there are no lynches, hammers, and night kills. There is no Night and Day. There is only the glorious Revolution.

The concept is simple.

On one side, you have the Rebels or Revolutionaries. It is their goal to overthrow the evil Empire.

On the other, you have a smaller group of Spies dedicating to protecting the righteousness of the Empire by sabotaging Rebel operations.

Each round is split into two phases, the Planning Stage and the Mission.

During the Planning Stage, a player is tasked with the job of assembling a team. This role proceeds in a predetermined order - the order people sign up. After selecting a certain number of players (exact numbers depend on the total number of players we get to play), everyone posts their vote in the thread - either to either PASS the current team or FAIL it. The vote passes or fails on a hammer (it needs a majority to pass). If the vote is a failure - if people decided they do NOT like this team choice - the role of team assembler passes to the next person on the list, and the process repeats. After a certain number of failed attempts to select a team (dependent on player size), the mission is simply declared a failure. Eventually, people will accept a team. When that happens, we proceed to the Mission.

During the Mission, the thread will be locked, and players will submit their actions for the night. Rebels on the mission do not need to submit any particular action - it is assumed they will aid the Rebellion and insure the mission succeeds. Spies may choose to either "Lay Low" or "Sabotage". A certain number of sabotages (1 for all missions except mission 4, which requires 2) lead to the mission being declared a failure. Come morning, I reveal the results of the night action, including any visible actions such as sabotage, but not who took those actions. Players will simply know that one, two, or three players threw sabotage actions, leading to mission failure.

There will be a maximum of five rounds total. Each round requires more members to go on a mission, meaning that you must be more and more sure of who you trust and who you don't as the game progresses. The game ends after three failed missions or three successful missions. If three fail, spies automatically win; if three succeed, the assassin gets a shot and if it misses then the rebels win.

The game will be played with the following rules. We will be using the Assassin Module:

*You are either a Spy or a Rebel; one Spy will be the Assassin, one Rebel will be the Commander, one Rebel will be the Bodyguard. The Commander knows the identities of the Spies, and the Bodyguard knows the identity of the Commander. At the end of the game, if the Spies haven't won, the Assassin may pick a player to kill: if they pick the Commander then the Spies win.
*No player may communicate about the game with any other player, including Spies, outside the thread.
*Spies are informed of the identity of other spies. However, they will NOT be given a pregame day to discuss strategy.  If they need to communicate to one another, they must use the thread like everyone else.
*Each Mission will last at least as long as is needed for all actions to be gathered. Hopefully, not too long.
*Provided we have enough players (5-10), the game will start on Sunday the 11th.
*Mission votes are now public, to hopefully speed things along and give more conversation fodder
*If a mission pick hammers a failure, players may proceed on to the next person's pick even if the mod hasn't arrived yet to declare that
*If a mission pick hammers on a pass, players should stop posting in the thread and any spies on the mission should send a PM to say if they're sabotaging or not

That is all. Who here is ready to start a Revolution?

Player List:

1. Toonyman
2. BluarianKnight
3. Knightwing64
4. JimGroovester
5. FallacyofUrist
6. Webadict
7. EuchreJack
8. Vector
9. TricMagic

This game is based on Resistance. Full rules here: https://www.ultraboardgames.com/the-resistance/game-rules.php

Previous games:

Revolution I: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122540.0 - Spy Victory!
Revolution II: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=126947.0 - Spy Victory!

Spoilspec:
- Could Be You

[notquitethere]

The previous time this was run it was felt to be unbalanced in favour of scum. I don't think that that's the case if town play well. Specifically:

- Voting against people's mission picks gives you more information, don't be afraid to do this as town
- Be aware of open attempts by spies to try to communicate in the thread: they do not have a scum chat
- If you're the Commander, you'll want to steer town towards a win without being too obvious otherwise the Assassin will know for certain who you are
- If you're the Bodyguard, you'll want to come across as the Commander so you soak the Assassin bullet.

[ToonyMan]

We almost won as town last time I played, should have trusted NQT over Nerjin...

I'll in.

[BluarianKnight]

In.

This is the sort of game I live for.

[Secretdorf]

In

[Secretdorf]

Or out

[Knightwing64]

In

[FallacyofUrist]

In.

[Jim Groovester]

I will in.

[webadict]

Sure, why not. In.

[EuchreJack]

In, only because 9 appears to be the optimum number for a rebel win.  Six is pretty brutal.
EDIT: Although the game pages seems to disagree with me: "It's not easy to overthrow a powerful government. You can expect the spies will win a significant proportion of the time with the core game rules, particularly when played with more than 7 players."
...maybe I should withdraw, although that statement refers to the standard version.

My apologies in advance if Meatworld drags me away kicking and screaming.

I might suggest some sort of randomizer on the player order for turn one.  Bodyguard before Commander might be overpowered for rebels, although it also draws Assassin attention.  Bodyguard right after Commander is pretty much a complete waste for rebels, albeit it makes it a lot harder for the Assassin to find the Commander.*
*Again, just some random theorizing, I've never actually played this game.  It just seems that Bodyguard can use the Commander to "check" their info if they proceed the Commander.  Then again, Bodyguard after Commander can generally guess at the spies by feeding off the Commander's suggestions and votes.  Unfortunately, the closer they are, the easier it probably would be to "tell" who's who.  Ideal placement for rebels would probably be to have 2 deep between Commander and Bodyguard, so the Bodyguard can monitor without revealing either of them.  Back-to-back might prove fatal at Assassination time.

The previous time this was run it was felt to be unbalanced in favour of scum. I don't think that that's the case if town play well. Specifically:

- Voting against people's mission picks gives you more information, don't be afraid to do this as town
- Be aware of open attempts by spies to try to communicate in the thread: they do not have a scum chat
- If you're the Commander, you'll want to steer town towards a win without being too obvious otherwise the Assassin will know for certain who you are
- If you're the Bodyguard, you'll want to come across as the Commander so you soak the Assassin bullet.

My biggest fear would be Bodyguard outing the Commander.  As you can see above, the Bodyguard can monitor the Commander's moves to get a general idea of the spies, but that monitoring might tip off whether they appear before or after the Commander.  But if they're outed as either Commander or Bodyguard, that behavior is enough for the Assassin to figure out which they are.  Bodyguard would generally be following the Commander's cues: they can't do the opposite, the best they can do is guess and see how the Commander responds, which is going to look different.

I actually think its more likely that spies will lay low if more than one makes it on a team.  It gives them more operatives that look clean, even if that is a complete fallacy.  Being the first team builder is pretty scary for anyone that isn't a vanilla rebel.  There is no cover.

[ToonyMan]

There are many ways the Commander and the Bodyguard can play.

There's no reason to randomize the turn order, and I'm not just saying that because I'm first up.

[EuchreJack]

Well, the roles are randomized, so there is one layer of randomization already.

...besides, as you see above, going first isn't much of an advantage, at any rate, so enjoy! 

[ToonyMan]

Going first is an advantage. I almost was never allowed to build a team last time I played because the spies had sabotaged the first two missions. If the third mission was a failure too I never would have went. Going first means I get to elect myself which narrows my remaining choices and increases my chances of success regardless of my alignment.

Re: Spies laying low if more than one gets on the team
Spies can't communicate in private so they'd have to publicly signal each other or all sabotage the mission. The number of sabotages for a mission is told to everyone so spies put themselves in an awful spot if more than one sabotage happens. Ideally a mission only contains the minimum number of spies to sabotage, if you're a spy that is.

[notquitethere]

In the last game one spy put the other two spies on the same mission, which passed and then the same team went ahead a second time. It was almost a disaster for the spies.

The initial turn order will just be the order people signed up in, as the roles are complete random.