Assassins Whowozzit Rules and Support Thread

[poohcarrot]

Ta Dot-C, I ripped off your rules from Werewolf.

THE RULES

There will be two killers working together.
There will be one questioner who during the night phase, can question one person to find out if they are a killer or not.
There will be one protector who during the night phase can protect one person from being killed.

The game will be over when either the two killers have been eliminated, or all the innocents have been eliminated.

1. No arguing with the Narrator in the main thread. All queries, post mortems or requests for elaboration to be done in this thread or by PM if it’s something you cannot discuss in public.

2. When formally voting for someone to be treated as a prime suspect (and get killed) please make this crystal clear as in “I vote for Mr/Ms X as prime suspect” - or use block capitals etc etc. Do the same sort of thing if you change you mind and want to vote for someone else or to abstain/withdraw your vote - remember you can change your vote but can vote 3 times maximum during each day phase. Only your last vote counts

3. Make sure you never reveal your true role to anyone (unless you’re a killer in which case you will know who you’re working with) unless the Narrator says you can – else you’ll end up dead or locked up much quicker…

4. Try not to get too upset with what happens once the killings start - it’s a fun game to play so keep it light-hearted. If you do get killed you can still take part as a Gawper! – so you can gawp, but not take part in voting of course.

5. Gawpers you may post during the Day Phases, but you may not vote for anyone

6. No posting during a night phase – Gawpers this means you too!

7. Anyone revealing the contents of a PM will be killed immediately! PMing is really against the spirit of the game, (but I do it all the time) and I can’t stop you… just don’t talk about it, and don’t come running to me if it turns out you’ve been cosying up to a killer.

8. Anyone taking part will be a candidate for a special role.

Day phases: These last between 4 – 7 real time days to allow the players time to post and to vote for a likely suspect to be taken into safe custody. If everyone has used up all their votes earlier then the Narrator will close the voting and announce the start of the…

Night phase: These will generally last up to 48 hours to allow all 4 special roles to PM the Narrator with their decisions.

You have been warned!

Further information on gameplay will available in this thread where you can post if you need to do so away from the game thread.

[Quatermass]

Question: Does my Statler and Waldorf couple (Jimmy Glue and Indecisive Ian) count as Gawpers? I'm gonna assume that they do.

[Dotsie]

Yes, you are a gawper. Gawp away

[Jan Van Quirm]

Pooh/Sir - I just PMed you. I only just got on since last night and hadn't seen that last run of posting in the sign up and in this thread until now.

Dotsie & Quatermass - NO this is NOT gawping... What you are proposing Q, is roleplay and this is not a roleplay game however much it looks like it. Only the GM can set up and control the scenario and the resulting play is posted as ourselves, the forum members, especially the voting although we must use the roleplay element pooh's providing as the criteria of our deductions and/or evasions.

The participants cannot roleplay at all, as then their cover would be blown. Ergo Gawpers - who are specifically not part of the game but peripheral with a voice but no vote, should not be participating so specifically as an assigned character - only the cops and the killers have those and only undercover.

Sorry to spoil the fun and to be censorious, but I'm pulling rank here as the most experienced games runner and self-run RPer on this board. I would add that we players should also take no actual notice of pooh's nickname's on thread in terms of play or strategy - that is the same as always and for reasons already stated can't be literally acted on as it defeats the object of the potential corpses finding out who their real enemies are

[poohcarrot]

The nicknames are only meant as a bit of fun, so totally ignore all of them.

[Dotsie]

Sorry to spoil the fun and to be censorious, but I'm pulling rank here as the most experienced games runner and self-run RPer on this board.

Ahem. RPers don't have to spoil the fun Jan, they just like to

Why can't Quatermass blab away as he likes? Why does this affect the game? Let him float around the halls going "woooOOOOoo" as he likes, he isn't hurting anyone, and he seems to be enjoying himself

[Jan Van Quirm]

Dotsie - if I'm not supposed to be RPing (properly) nobody else can!

There's nothing wrong per se with it, but we had enough problems last time with people getting far too fond of injecting some very realistic agressive finger-pointing and advancing preposterous theories over and over at length. And they were players - you know who you are SIR!

If you want to post to those extremes in the game then play don't gawp - it'll interfere with the game too much and maybe scupper what the game-runner's trying to achieve.

[Quatermass]

Dotsie - if I'm not supposed to be RPing (properly) nobody else can!

There's nothing wrong per se with it, but we had enough problems last time with people getting far too fond of injecting some very realistic agressive finger-pointing and advancing preposterous theories over and over at length. And they were players - you know who you are SIR!

If you want to post to those extremes in the game then play don't gawp - it'll interfere with the game too much and maybe scupper what the game-runner's trying to achieve.

I won't finger point. I'll just get Jimmy Glue to make some really tasteless post-mortem one-liners and Indecisive Ian just commenting on the deaths.

Jimmy doesn't give a crap about who dies and why. He killed a number of people for Lorenzo the Kind, and he's even seen them tortured.

Indecisive Ian is more compassionate, but he thinks that death is a part of life and education in the Assassins Guild (he got over Lord Downey's 'test' about a decade before), and he just enjoys the fun while practising his poltergeist skills. If he's going to comment on the living, it won't be as to whether or not any are the murderers, but just make some annoying remarks. As I said, Indecisive Ian is basically Richie from Bottom with just a little more intelligence, compassion, and sexual experience (the latter coming from his brief tenure in the Seamstresses Guild).

[Jan Van Quirm]

Nothing wrong with finger-pointing in this game - that's what it's all about essentially. It's the amount of effort put into it that's the issue and, as you may have noticed from the posting of the regular players so far, they don't put much into that and even then fights and acrimony can break out quite easily.

If it amuses you to gawp as a writing exercise then there's no harm as such, but it just seems an enormous amount of effort for very little effect or indeed interaction. This isn't a fanfic or story-telling thread, it's just a very silly and absorbing elimination game with a vague Discworld theme. It's entirely up to you so long as you realise it's not going to get much reaction from anyone and take umbrage as a result *shrugs*

I'll shut up now and won't say I told you so if you get bored or give up

[Quatermass]

If it amuses you to gawp as a writing exercise then there's no harm as such, but it just seems an enormous amount of effort for very little effect or indeed interaction. This isn't a fanfic or story-telling thread, it's just a very silly and absorbing elimination game with a vague Discworld theme. It's entirely up to you so long as you realise it's not going to get much reaction from anyone and take umbrage as a result *shrugs*

I'll shut up now and won't say I told you so if you get bored or give up

Well, I'm considering giving up, because I wanted to use this as a means of helping to refine my improvisational writing skills. I mean, within a day, I managed to knock up two characters who could plausibly be part of the Discworld universe. I thought that there would be a certain amount of RPing going on, and I invented those two characters and made them ghosts because I know how things go when I completely screw up an RP by going all MS on the story. This way, I could keep the 'murders' separate from my own attempt to add flavour to the story that turned out to be never was.

[Dotsie]

People used to post a lot of creative writing stuff, you could start your own thread and post stuff in there. That might be more appropriate, as no one seems to be commenting on it in the other thread, which is really more about the game.

[Jan Van Quirm]

People used to post a lot of creative writing stuff, you could start your own thread and post stuff in there. That might be more appropriate, as no one seems to be commenting on it in the other thread, which is really more about the game.

That kind of thing went on a lot in this Games forum - see Story About Discworld - Starring, The Fans of Terry Pratchet for freefall RP and The Chaos Singularity for creative writing - mspanners used to do some great Discworld fanfic too, but unfortunately I couldn't find his old thread(s). Making a specific RP/personal writing thread in here will secure the comment and feedback that you might find more invigorating and encouraging Q

Overall there aren't a lot of people on here who post their stories and hardly any RP - for myself I don't feel comfortable doing Discworld fanfic at all although I love doing the Tolkien variety. I think it's something to do with Terry still being about and still very brilliant so it's probably a laziness thingie If you want to drop by my own site DreamWorlds (click my sig) that's given over to all kinds of creative pursuits, and has a lot of time for writers, especially RP enthusiasts and so you won't have this problem of getting into a conducive creative outlet that you find on here, as this forum's mainly to do with Terry-inspired discussion and generalist chat/socialising.

[poohcarrot]

Within the last 48 hours, all the roles have been assigned. Whether people receive the pms or not is in the hands of the gods.

THE FIRST DAY WILL END ON WEDNESDAY 12 AT 10 pm (UK TIME)

[Quatermass]

People used to post a lot of creative writing stuff, you could start your own thread and post stuff in there. That might be more appropriate, as no one seems to be commenting on it in the other thread, which is really more about the game.

That kind of thing went on a lot in this Games forum - see Story About Discworld - Starring, The Fans of Terry Pratchet for freefall RP and The Chaos Singularity for creative writing - mspanners used to do some great Discworld fanfic too, but unfortunately I couldn't find his old thread(s). Making a specific RP/personal writing thread in here will secure the comment and feedback that you might find more invigorating and encouraging Q

Well, I don't like posting actual examples of my creative writing on the internet. I'm paranoid about plagiarism. And there is only one person IRL, a friend of the family, that I trust completely to read my books and give frank criticism (not to mention pointing out possible grammar and punctuation errors). What I did as RPing in the thread was meant to be just a bit of fun and trying to entertain you lot.

[Jan Van Quirm]

This involves general principles on how this game is run on this board, which differs from other forums or group games of Mafia/Assassin/Werewolf in allowing non-participant gawpers (for scaredy-cats) and a 3 vote system so people can change their minds or play silly buggers with the 2 that don't count...

The active role selection - this should be a lottery. For this game we have 4 newbies in here (SimStars, Del, poisondot and BigDaddy) so we don't know for sure whether they're going to turn up and actually play. Cur says that he selected the 4 active roles 'fairly', but how fair is fair?

Lets examine the solid facts.

1. We have 10 people playing
2. 6 of us have played this game before, at least once. Some of us are very experienced and played it at other venues as well as here or at the convention - well I have.
3. If possible it's desirable that you cut the newbs out of the picture with playing cops/killers on the absolutely valid grounds that Cur and Dotsie mention (unreliability, fear and uncertainty with too active an involvement)
4. Assuming that he's making 3 a factor in active role selection, Cur is then left 6 people he can 'trust' with being a cop (the most valuable players) or the ad hoc killers (not assassins)
5. Of the experienced players Bikkit historically posts very seldom or at all in the game thread (although on one occasion she was on holiday and offline so we'll let her off that one ).
6. Assuming that Bikkit's about and posting elsewhere on the boards then you still have 6 reliable/viable players to choose 4 roles for - still sounding fair?
7. Discounting Bikkit on her usual vague game play then Cur is then left with 5 experienced and reliably available people to divide the 4 active roles up with...

Finally which isn't entirely solid since Cur's so sneaky...
8. When we were getting ready to start (at that stage we only had 8 sign-ups remember) Cur asked for 4 random numbers from one of us having assigned us all a number from 1 - 8. Assuming that he did do that, then he's NOT excluding newbies from the draw is he?

OK - realities for running this game if you're Cur. The active roles are important and 7 is the minimum number of players at which this game can run to at least 2 vote-off rounds and at least 1 of the vital roles will be likely to fall in that period. If you're doing a completely fair draw then the best way to ensure you mitigate for wild card newbs getting a shot at an active role, is to make them a killer with a player who knows what they're doing, because the killers work together (well generally they do).

There's more innocents than usual in this game - 6 in all and Cur has pared the game down to the bone, so that we ourselves are the characters in the game (usually they're all bona fide Terry characters and play undercover) and all of us are authorised assassins. Cur is indeed testing us on our intellectual skills because he's made this a lot harder than usual with the venue and the skeletal structure.

If I get to the 2nd day phase we'll have a different ball game in that whoever gets voted off or killed is cannon fodder for us essentially and if we're lucky we'll be left with one killer to find. If we're really unlucky then we'll be a cop or even 2 down and then it gets nasty and I won't be doing this much analysis anymore - make the most of me whilst you've got me guys!