City of Death (Apolyton game)

[Adagio]

I was just thinking about adding another game to the Apolyton game series

This game is basicly the same as Mafia, except for a few "minor" rule changes:


None of the players lives here, so nobody knows the town, and nobody lives here either, so you can't ask for direction. The moderator for the game designs a map, nobody gets to see this map. The map should be designed with grid-layout (like Civ). At start none of the players knows where in the town they are

The basic story is: There's a mad-man lose, and he's been tracked to this town. Tons of police has been dispatched to this area to get rid of this mad-man, what they don't know is: The mad-man is one of the police officers. All players has radio-equipment, so they can all communicate

During each turn, all players posts (or pm's, or both ) their orders. Posting in the thread is the same thing as saying over radio something like "I'm walking north", though the mad-man wants to kill everybody (do'h ), and of course he doesn't want the others to know where he walks, so he might want to PM his orders instead.

When a turn is over, all players gets a small minimap of what they're seeing at this moment (Each player needs to independently keep track on the whole city, from what they've seen during all turns)

A player has a sight-radius (Though only forward). The sight-radius is divided in two:
Close: You can recognize all players in this area
Far: You can only see silhouets (sp?). If you see a murder, you wont be able to recognize the killer (Giving him a chance to escape)


Orders:

Each player has a movement rate (Still to be set... depending on the size of the grids). In this example I use a movement rate on 4. Each player can move where-ever they want, they can even go in circles if he wants to (Like: 1 north, 1 east, 1 south, 1 west)
A player can also use the "look around" order, which uses 2 movements, but then this player sees everything around him (He can still use other orders, as long as there's still any movement left)

---more orders to come... wants to see if there's any interest at all before finishing all game elements---





So? Does this has any interest at all? (Feel free to come up with rule changes, to discussion)

[Skanky Burns]

Will reread this when I am less drunk.

[duke o' york]

Maybe if you'd posted a couple of examples, with a street map for the purpose of a general explanation. This is going to require a lot of work from the GM, because each player will have a different view of what is going on, and you'll have to send them all PMs separately, according to where they find themselves on the map, along with (possibly) a map of the streets they have already gone down.
You should have the lunatic post wrong orders in the thread, and then correct ones by PM - or else it'll be obvious that when all those who are not the lunatic post here, the other player is the nut-job. This would allow people to change their minds about movement, or to fool other players.
How many moves will a murder involve? One would be the best, as the lunatic's superhuman powers allow him to get away quickly, and it'd keep the game going longer.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Sounds like it might be difficult for the GM to keep track of everything and send out all the graphs and stuff. But it does sound interesting.

[Adagio]

Ok, I'll post an example map later (Will start making one soon, but I'm leaving within the next 30 minutes)...

I'm not sure about the murder thing... I've thought of several possible ways:

Gun - Each player starts with a gun with 6 bullets. A gun can be used to kill one a "long" way down the street, but it's got a small problem: It can be heard from all over town, so all players will have a small idea on where the murder took place (From where the sound comes from, will only be written as text, not shown on map)
Strange - To strangle another player makes no sound at all, but of course you need to be very close...

But I believe murders will only take one move...




Though one important thing about this game: If you're dead, you're silent... if you saw the killer just before you got killed, this player is not allowed (for obvious reasons) to tell the other players... If the player sees his killer just before dying (in the same turn), he wont be notified on who killed him
Oh, and you're not allowed to post pictures of the map, you're only allowed to tell other players how the map looks like (In your own words that is)

[Adagio]

Ok, the example might take a little bit longer to make, since I'll probably make the map in a program dedicated to this... this would make the GM's job much easier... I don't know if I get much time to start on it tonight, but I hope so



Could someone who's got any experience with graphics make small icons to use for the map?
I think the size of the icons should be 16x16


I'm not completely sure what kind of icons I would need, but this is what I'm sure about (more or less):

- Small bushes
- Trees
- Water (to make a river)
- Path (This is a ghost-town... from around 1885)
- Houses (That means: roof... should be in two colors, to tell the difference between a one story house and a two story house)

That's the basic things I need to give an example...


Could someone with graphics experience please create those?

[duke o' york]

That would depend upon what you're going to use them in, wouldn't it?
In fact, depending upon how many players you want to have, you could use one of the Civ 2 gangster scenarios, and keep track of who is where in the city with an easy semi-isometric view, naming the different units after different players. Or would that be too much work for you, to set the city up, and rename all the units? You could then allow other people to use the scenario to run games in parallel with yours (if it's a good one ).

[Jamski]

Is this any good?

The tiles above, and the examples below :

-Jam

[Jamski]

That's better

There's tiles for paths, rivers and bridges, trees, bushes and a house.

Any more? Do you need the 16x16 tiles to have borders?

I tried to give it a 1885 look.

-Jam

[Adagio]

Looks great

It's wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but your version looks more useful... if there's a way to get a few different kinds of buildings it would be better (Like having small/tall buildings), but for an example it's great, thx

Originally posted by duke o' york
That would depend upon what you're going to use them in, wouldn't it?
In fact, depending upon how many players you want to have, you could use one of the Civ 2 gangster scenarios, and keep track of who is where in the city with an easy semi-isometric view, naming the different units after different players.

Sounds interesting, but I don't know about this scenario... I never played scenario, and I'm not sure if my cd even works anymore, haven't tried to for many years... (Don't have any of the addons)

[Adagio]

I have to fiddled around to see if I could make a "grid" on a picture box (Where it autofills the grid with these pictures) in VB .net, but haven't been able to do it yet

I found a code example, which creates a graphics object, but I can't seem to find a way to convert this graphics object into something that can be displayed in a picturebox
I wont work anymore with this tonight, I guess I have to ask my teacher tomorow...

[Adagio]

If I don't get it working tomorow (Don't know if my teacher knows anything about doing graphics), I think I can just pm a text-version of what's going on (Just paint the map on some paper). The text version could look like this: (In this example I go with a 5 moves rule... Each 'move' takes 1 minutes)

7:05 pm:
You walked north a little bit. After 2 minutes you noticed a shadow walking around the corner further north, but you were not able to recognize him. As you looked to the right, you noticed the dead body of Jamski, laying in the back of a wagon. He had a rope around his neck. The sun is almost gone, you vision has been reduced with 1

Other ideas I had thought about:
- All players can kill, though it might be unwise to just kill if you're not the mad-man: If you shoot a player you believe is the killer, but it turns out he's not, you're an outlaw, which means all other players should kill you also, before they win, but you wont be able to win the game, you can only make it impossible for other players to win (The winner is the one who kills the mad-man)
If there's an outlaw, the player who kills the outlaw is a winner also. The mad-man wont win unless he kills everybody...

- The killer can use all sorts of things to kill/harm his enemy, and he can pick up all sorts of items. Like if I mention "You see a rope on the front porch by a house nearby", it means you can pick it up. You wont be notified about things within reach, unless it's the last move (if a player passes by a rope in the first move, he shall pm me to say he grabbed the rope (Only works for one turn back of course)
Heavy objects might harm your speed (I'll tell if an object is heavy or not)
This would probably only work if I write what you see, and not post a picture

[Jamski]

I can make bigger buildings, but then they'll take up more than one tile. Is that ok? 16x16 is really small to do anything fancy and still recognise it, and I've kept to 24 colours too (including one reserved for transparancy should it be needed)

-Jam

[duke o' york]

Someone would have to see the "outlaw" killing another player before they could be declared an outlaw. Otherwise, it could have been the madman again. Nobody will want to declare themselves an outlaw, so it's possible that two murders could occur on the same turn in different areas, without the majority of players knowing which was the real madman. That should add to the suspense!

[Adagio]

Jamski >>

Yes, that was what I was thinking about, having the buildings take several squares, but only seen from top... kinda like in GTA (1 & 2)...

...but I just had a talk with my teacher, and he knows nothing about graphics, so I guess the first version of the game will be text based only... but of course it'll still be as a grid game. When a player spots another player (nomatter who he is), I'll say how many tiles away he is (and in which direction)

Duke >>

You're right, nobody would say "Hey, I'm an outlaw!", I didn't consider everything about this part. To get the outlaw part working, I believe we need to set up a score-system (Where scores from all games will be calculated)
The scores could be something like this:

Mad-man:
1 point per kill
-1 point if he's seen murdering someone, when there's more than 5 players left in the game

Police:
1 point when all mad-man's and outlaws has been killed (For each survivor)
# points to the killer of the mad-man, and the same for the killer of the outlaw. The # is based on how many survivors there is at the killing (Nomatter if there's still a mad-man/outlaw around)

Outlaw:
1 point per kill
-5 points if he gets spotted murdering someone

When a police kills someone, he's only an outlaw from the GM's eyes (Calculating scores), but as long as he's not seen, he's not an outlaw, which means the game ends when the mad-man is killed, even though the unseen outlaw is still alive



Does this make sense at all?

[duke o' york]

*Click*

Locked and loaded! Let's get slaughtering!

Your map will have to be much bigger than the example above if you want more than a couple of players.

[Adagio]

Sure, the map will be much bigger, though I'm not going to tell how big

But it might turn to NOT be a desserted village, but maybe I'll make it a house or something (You know one of those houses seen in horror-movies)... or maybe something completely different... who knows!!!



Now we just need more players though... doesn't seem like players are interested... or they unclear about something?




And more to the game:

Each player has an inventory, where they've got space for 7 items... some items might take up 2+ space.
From the beginning of the game I wont be able to include all possible weapons on the map, I might add some later...
When a new weapon appeirs on the map, I'll post weapon info in this thread. When writing information about a weapon, I'll include the size of it, the normal use of it and such... By 'normal' I mean the most obvious thing to use it for, but sometimes a weapon might have several hidden uses (Like placing a bucket filled with rocks above a door... when someone enters, this player misses a full turn, for getting knocked out

The alternate use of items* is something the players have to figure out by themself, giving me a full description on how you're planning on using it (and possible consequenses)... I will then respond back if I accept this use...


This leaves up tons of ways to play this game

* (Not all items I mention is directly classified as weapons... e.g. a bucket), but can be used as one (e.g. in combination with other objects)

[Jamski]

Wow, so we have like LOADS of freedom?

-Jam

[Adagio]

Yeah... it's pretty much up to the players imagination, as long as it makes sense


This would of course leave lots of work for the GM, but since I'm not the GM for Nuclear War anymore, I'll be the one for this game

[duke o' york]

This is becoming far more complicated with time.....

[Jamski]

Is it more of a roleplaying game then? But competetive?

-Jam

[Adagio]

I don't know about roleplaying... never play those games, since I hate all this magic stuff that's always in roleplaying games...


At the beginning I was considering adding noises and being able to run & walk, but I believe this will be stretching it a bit...

I wonder if this will be possible or not... but I hope so



Btw, pm'ing between players is of course allowed... could become useful if a police sets up a trap, and would like to warn another police, this player is 100% is not the mad-man

[Jamski]

Doesn't have to have magic to be a RPG. Not at all. It just tends to have a degree of freedom for the players who "are" a character in the game, and tell the GM what they want to do each round.

-Jam

[Adagio]

I was just refering to the fact that most RPG's I've seen (or even just heard of) includes mages and such

[duke o' york]

Has this died the same death that the proposed 'poly RPG forum game did?

[Adagio]

I haven't had a look at that game, so I don't know...

I guess people have kept away from this game, because of the bad (and huge) explenation on how this game is supposed to be played...


If someone could come up with a better explenation, feel free...

[duke o' york]

It went a little something like this.

[Adagio]

I guess I could make this game "better"...

When The Sims 2 is being released I probably get it (one way or another ), where I could make a house directly to this game. Taking screenshots from all players from their point of view... with the better camera this might work (Depending on how low you can get the camera)...


...just an idea... who knows if it'll work, but I'll sure try to see if I can get it working