Sci-fi Paranoia/ Survival Horror

So talking with Ninfia inspired me to try to cobble together a game based on my love of science fiction paranoia survival horror (think The Thing). I've come up with three configurations for this, but only two I want to talk about right now.

The basic premise is that everyone is on a badly sabotaged space station. Most systems are downed/damaged, the officers are all dead, and there is an alien "parasite" on board that can take people over. The Crew (Town) are trying to Incinerate (Lynch) the Infected (Mafia) before the Infected whittle down the Crew enough to equal/exceed them in number.

The players have a Work Shift (Night Phase) and a Status Report (Day Phase).

During the Status Report, everyone gathers in a common space, votes on whether to lynch someone or not, and reviews what was accomplished during the Work Shift.

The Lite version works like a basic game of Mafia. Fluff wise, every Work Shift, someone chosen by the Infected has been, well, infected, and they begin to undergo an obvious metamorphosis before they can blend in smoothly. Completely vulnerable, they are presumably dispatched for the Crew around them, and they are Incinerated. i.e. the Infected (Mafia) picks someone to kill, and they die.

There are two digressions from the normal rules.

1) There are Rooms. During the Work Shift, everyone secretly decides what Room they are going to work in that shift.

Players are NOT allowed to plan secretly (though PMs) what rooms they will go to, but public coordination of who goes where is acceptable.

If, during the Work Shift, you are alone in a Room, you can Explore it to gain a Role, if it has not been previously searched by another player. Basically, you find a useful piece of equipment that effectively bestows upon you a Role (i.e. a bioscanner that turns you into the Detective, etc).

Infected can also gain Roles in this way.

If you are with just one other person in a Room, nothing happens as you basically both just stare at each other with your backs to the wall all shift in a fit of (justified) paranoia.

If you are in a room with three or more people, you can perform a Ship Task, which gives the Crew a one time bonus (by vote discover if one person is Infected, by vote give one person protection from Infection, or even activate a distress beacon, giving the Infected only so long to win before the interstellar CDC arrives.

During the Status Report, everyone knows how many people were in the Room with them, but not the identities of the people (everyone is wearing identical space suits, and the lighting is really bad, okay?).

I think the number or rooms would roughly equal n-2, where "n" is the number of players in the game.

2) If the Infected's target is alone in a Room, or in a room where only other Infected are present, instead of being Incinerated (removed from play), they secretly become one of the Infected.


In the Heavy version, Rooms and Infection works a little differently.

1) When Exploring Rooms, you might find a Role, or you might find a another Room. Basically, more Rooms, or variety of Rooms and things you can find, and a greater range of abilities.

There are a greater array of Ship Tasks, including some that require multiple Work Shifts to complete. Also, there are Ship Tasks for the Infected, such as Infect Food/Drink, where a random crew member becomes Infected (and is Incinerated if they are in a room with others, as per the previously described rule).

There might also be Ship Crises, where the players have only a Work Shift or Two to complete a Ship Task or everyone looses (reactor meldown, total life support failure). There might even be some tasks that require a volunteer to go outside the ship to effect repairs, and then those inside could vote on whether to let them back in or not (effectively, an extra lynching vote, but for one volunteer only).

2) The Infected to do not get free kills/infections every Work Shift.

Instead, if the number of Infected in a Room equals or exceeds the number of Crew in a Room, the Crew are converted to Infected. Some roles can prevent this.


Sample Rooms:

(Note: Each role can only be taken once. If an Infected takes a role, no one else can have it. If a Crew member with a role is lynched, the role is revealed and it can be reassigned by popular vote.

Med Bay:
Explore: Find diagnostic scanner (gain Detective Role)
Ship Task: Publicly vote during Report Phase to check alignment of one player.

Laboratory:
Explore: Find cache of reactive medicines (Protect Role)
Ship Task: Administer experimental cure (By vote, during day shift, administer cure to one person. It kills them if they are Crew, and returns them to being Crew if they were Infected. They are, however, silenced for the rest of the game due to amnesia (vote in secret).

Armory:
Explore: Find flamethrower (Lite: gain Vigilante role, Heavy: you will not be converted to being infected if you are outnumbered in a Room).
Ship Task: Everyone is issued enough firepower to feel safe. You may accomplish tasks with two people in the room on the next work shift, before the paranoia escalates.

Security Station:
Explore: Find security scanner ( gain Role Cop role).
Ship Task: By vote, reveal what room one player was in the previous work shift.

Engineering:
Explore: Find radios (you may communicate with one other player of your choice via PMs. If lynched, the other person does not need to come forward).
Ship Task: A task must be completely here in the first 3 Work Shifts, or the ship explodes and everyone looses.


In the Heavy version, the loot found Exploring a given room would be different than for the lite, and randomized each time.


Ideas for more rooms/gear would be welcome, as well as thoughts on balance or really any feedback would be super welcome.

This sounds like a really fun game.^_^

I love this idea and I think there's a lot of potential for strategic play here. If you want to follow Ninfia's example with volleyball maf, you could run lite version as a minigame to experiment with balance and see what rules work and don't work, and then run the heavy version once you know what tweaks you need to make.

One thing I'd keep in mind is that when a crew member is infected, that's basically -2 to the town ratio because it's -1 town +1 maf, so just balance accordingly. Since this isn't a guaranteed-every-work-shift thing, I'm not quite sure how you'd balance it, so maybe run some simulations with random number generators until you get a ratio that works?

I like the atmosphere though, hit me up if you want pretty graphics/formatting because I like making pretty graphics/formatting

I, too, have thought about the ratio, and am thinking that the starting ratio of Crew to Infected might be 7:1? Whatever the total, I would make sure that if the number of players are divisible by 3 that there are at least two Infected. With bad luck for the infected, they might still die first lynch, but I want a game that can go on for a long time, and require a fair bit of strategic play.

Hence why there is a huge incentive to stick together so that ship tasks can be performed safely, but also for individual players to strike out and secure roles for themselves. But in trying to secure a role, you are also making yourself vulnerable to Infection and getting your side switched, if an Infected can guess where you are going to be, alone. And even the town, as a whole, has incentive to send people alone to places to get gear, because otherwise they are letting the Infected collect roles and become more powerful.

I would be happy to run a Lite minigame, but I am not sure on the etiquette for doing so? Should I wait until Ninfia's game is finished, or I've been around for at least X amount of time?


I would love some pretty graphics/formatting! I was admiring the stuff for Gakeun Mafia 2 game, and feeling woefully inadequate :P Atmosphere is so important!

Re: ratio, 7:1 is interesting and I can see it working. If it ends up being a problem that there's only one maf you could always give them a bulletproof or lynchproof for the first phase or two to make them slightly harder to kill too early, though I'm not sure if that's necessary.

Minigames can be run whenever. Generally, people like to wait until other games have slowed down a bit (like after a few people have died), but there's no rule that says you have to wait until a certain time.

If you want to host but you're not confident in your ability to run a game solo, you can also ask someone else to co-host with you. I'm always available as a co-host if you don't have anyone else in mind to ask.

Let me know when you're ready to run it and maybe give me a rough outline of the setup post you're gonna put up and I can totally style it for you like I did with Ninfia's game \ovo/

Thank you!

Actually, something I could use some help with is figuring out more Rooms. Assuming a dozen players (like Ninfia's game) I would need 10 Rooms, and I don't know of that many roles? I've been googling them, but if you had any suggestions (or ideas of what objects might grant those roles) that would be very useful.

As for help running it, I think I could manage. I've been GMing tabletop RPGs for 16 years, so this shouldn't be too far out of my comfort zone. Plus, I figure you are one of the players most likely to give the system a thorough stress testing. Having you not available to play would seriously diminish the quality of the test!

Man those are the kindest words I've heard from someone who's only known me for like, two days, hahaha

Hmmm, rooms. Something that stands out to me that you don't have is a stunner/roleblock, so you could definitely add one of those. Otherwise, I also like roles that tie in closely with the mechanics, so maybe something involving forcing players in/out of rooms or swapping room locations (teleporter?)

Flavor-wise, you don't have a command center, dormitory/sleeping quarters, or mess hall yet, and depending on the kind of station it is you might also have an archive/library.

That's it off the top of my head, but if I come up with anything else I'll drop in

As I mentioned in the other thread, I am just going off of how much other players seem to respect you.

Dormitory I am having trouble with for Lite, but I figured them out for heavy:

Basically, during a Work Shift you can lock yourself in your private quarters, and be safe from ending up alone with an Infected, but as a trade off, you can't explore or perform a ship task. Then I need to hide an item so that infected can bypass the lock and get into private quarters, and also ship task to lock all the private quarters, which might be advantageous to the Town if people keep claiming their were just hiding in their rooms.



Library/Archive is a great idea! I think I would call it a Server Room though, because future lmao.

I imagine you could use it to alter information and create false results.

I imagined the Command centre had been destroyed, but there is probably an auxiliary one, now that I think about it.

Ah! Here we go: I can work of this.



I'm thinking of the idea of adding Wounds/Injuries. You can choose to start the game with a Wound/Injury that gives you a penalty for the first round or two (or possibly until you spend time in the med bay) such as being silenced or having limited access to rooms or not having your roles work, but in exchange you get a useful piece of information (name of one other town players, location of a useful piece of equipment, etc.

Injuries are private, and you don't need to reveal to other players that you are injured. You do not get to choose your injury, RNG does.

i.e.

Broken Leg: You need help to walk, and cannot go to a Room no one else is in until you spend a work ship in the Med Bay. Someone went back for you and pulled you out of the rubble. If they had been Infected, they would have gotten you then, or left you to die. You know this person is not Infected.

Badly Concussed: For two rounds you are badly concussed. You cannot use spellchecker and must vote for whoever has the most votes, even if it is yourself. Before your concussion you caught a glimpse of one of the Infected. At the start of the third round, learn the name of one of the Infected as your memory returns.

I think injuries are a really neat idea but I'm wondering if it might be too much on top of all of the room mechanics. I'd definitely focus on fleshing out and balancing the rooms first, and if there's room for injuries on top of that, add them in. Otherwise, injuries seem interesting enough to make up the core mechanics for a new game all on their own.

Alright. Assuming no more than a dozen players, this should be good for the room count for a mini game.

Special Conditions: 

Isolated: When there are no Crew other than yourself in a Room, you are isolated. If you are the nk target while Isolated, you become an Infected player instead of being Incinerated. 

Watch Your Back! If you and only one other player are in a Room, you cannot perform a Ship Task.

Stay on Task: You may not Explore if there is another player in the Room with you.


EVA (Space Walk):

Explore: Nothing

Ship Task: At some point, something critical on the ship's hull is going to break, and someone will have to go outside to fix it or everyone will lose. Once outside, the other players can vote to lock that player out. While Locked Out, they cannot participate in the Work Shift or Status Report. A Vote can bring them in again. If they are not let back in within two Two Status Reports, they will die from oxygen deprivation. 

Engineering:
Explore: Find radios (you may communicate with one other player of your choice via PMs. If lynched, the other person does not need to come forward).

Ship Task: A task must be completely here in the first 3 Work Shifts, or the ship explodes and everyone looses.

Captain's Quarters:

Explore: You find the Captain's Masterkey. You may secretly leave the Brig and act during the Work Shift only to return unnoticed before the Status Report. You may do the same if you are locked out during an EVA, and you will not die after being outside after two Status Reports. You may also use the key to let another player out of the brig/back into the ship, but the other players are aware that this has been done (but not who did it). 

Ship Task: You access the personnel files and tracking data. By vote, reveal what room one player was in the previous work shift. 

Med Bay:
Explore: Find diagnostic scanner (gain Detective Role).


Ship Task: Publicly vote during Report Phase to check alignment of one player.

Laboratory:
Explore: Find cache of reactive medicines (Protect Role).

Ship Task: Administer experimental cure (By vote, during day shift, administer cure to one person. It kills them if they are Crew, and returns them to being Crew if they were Infected. They are, however, silenced for the rest of the game due to amnesia (vote in secret).

Armory:
Explore: Find flamethrower (Lite: If you die, take one player down with you).

Ship Task: By vote, one player gets a double vote power for deciding who to Incinerate. Each time a Ship Task is taken here, vote again on who gets the double vote. Players may vote for no one to have a double vote. 

Security Station:
Explore: Find security scanner. Each work shift, learn what roles (but not Crew/Infected Alignment) one player has.

Ship Task: During Status Report, by vote, block off access to one room during the next Work Shift. A player with the Captain's Masterkey can still access this room. 

Brig:
Explore: You find a prisoner biomonitor tag. You may Tag one other player (or yourself). If they become Infected, you know. If you tag yourself and you become Infected, the rest of the crew knows, and you are Incinerated. 

Ship Task: During the Status Report, players can vote to lock someone in the Brig during the next Work Shift. While in the Brig, they cannot Explore or complete a Ship Task. Players in the Brig do not count as Isolated for the purposes of becoming Infected. 

Server Room: 
Explore: Someone left an admin account logged in! You create an admin account for yourself, and can interfere with networked devices (i.e., everything). You can the Role Blocker role, except you cannot block the Captain's Masterkey.

Ship Task: You may monitor network activity, and determine which roles are currently in play, but not who has them. 

Galley: 
Explore: You find the access key to the food lockers and can taint someone's rations. You gain the Vigilante role (kill one person during the Work Shift). If an Infected gain this role, they can only use it once. 

Ship Task: Everyone is has a solid meal in their belly, and the paranoia alleviates for a moment. All players may ignore the Watch Your Back! rule on the next work shift, before the paranoia escalates.

Cargo Hold
Explore: You find one random piece of equipment that is also present in the other rooms

Ship Task: You complete an inventory of gear. By vote, you may give a duplicate of any piece of equipment to any one player, with the exception of the Captain's Masterkey.

I have to say, I love the prisoner's dilemma-esque setup of putting yourself at risk for the good of the whole.

Haven't had time to fully read and think these rooms through, just kind of read them over quickly, but how do you plan on handling tie situations in votes? (e.g. if everyone doing a ship task votes for someone different)

Kiyoko wrote:I have to say, I love the prisoner's dilemma-esque setup of putting yourself at risk for the good of the whole.

Haven't had time to fully read and think these rooms through, just kind of read them over quickly, but how do you plan on handling tie situations in votes? (e.g. if everyone doing a ship task votes for someone different)

If its a tie, then the ship action is wasted. You spend the entire time arguing about what to do and nothing happens.

Oh! Or maybe the vote of the person being Incinerated doesn't count in the case of a tie?

I really love the flavor of this game! The mechanics are pretty great, too. I'll put more thought into this tomorrow when I'm more awake, but some preliminary concerns/thoughts/observations:

First, to make sure I understand you:

1) Each room's role and ship task can only be used once? Or can they be used over and over?

2) Does each room only have one item (read: role) that can be found?

In the case of the latter, I'd actually find it interesting if the rooms had multiple items and you were not guaranteed to get a specific role as a result, but the room's theme might contribute to an overall type of role focus. Alternatively, they could vastly vary in terms of ability between the items--or mix it up depending on the rooms in question.

... if you want to get really cheeky, and you go with the multiple items per room idea, you could also play around with the thought of items combining across rooms. For example, instead of just giving a flamethrower right away...

Armory: Blow-torch - The first person to target you during Work Shift will receive a third-degree burn, injuring them. They will be unable to perform actions for two/three Work Shifts. If they visit the Med Bay for one work shift, they will be healed. This item is consumed.

. . . and then if you visit Engineering while you have a blow-torch . . .

Flamethrower: Construct a Flamethrower by holding a blow-torch and wrench in Engineering for one phase, consuming both. If you are targeted for a kill, you will take down the attacker in the process, but both of your remains will be incinerated, leaving no hint of alignment. Alternatively, you may use the flamethrower on an isolated player of your choice. Their alignment will not be shown upon death.

Wrench - Repair or disable one mechanical system on the ship. (So for example, you could go to the Server Room and either restore the Ship Task's charge, if it has limited use, or disable it so it cannot be used)

That sort of thing.

... I don't know how complicated you want to make the game, but it might be fun to have to evaluate traveling to different rooms to build items, on top of responding to events, and even needing to conduct ship repairs.

So for that matter, I think the idea of wounds/injuries is too much, but I think you could work one or two of them into a role like shown above.

I also think the server room or the bridge would have cool flavor if there were a role that involved repairing communications to call for outside help, which would start a process in which in 2-3 phases some outsider ship might arrive and do something to the game. This might be needlessly complex, though?

Lastly, the one thing that stands out to me the most:

Quite a few ship tasks involve votes during the Status Report phase, which is presumably when lynches would also be happening. I think one or two vote tasks makes sense and adds nice flavor, but I worry you'd bog down your phases too much if so many roles have that potential, plus the lynch. You could end up with a phase where there's 3-5 votes going at once.

Oof.

Anyway, the whole multiple items and combinations and so on and so forth might be a little too much?? But I do like the idea of multiple items per room.

I'll offer more thoughts tomorrow.

Don't do this:

Luxaria wrote:
1) Each room's role and ship task can only be used once? Or can they be used over and over?

2) Does each room only have one item (read: role) that can be found?

Explore actions can only be completed once, by one person (item found unique).

Ship Tasks can be completed any number of times.

Luxaria wrote:
In the case of the latter, I'd actually find it interesting if the rooms had multiple items and you were not guaranteed to get a specific role as a result, but the room's theme might contribute to an overall type of role focus. Alternatively, they could vastly vary in terms of ability between the items--or mix it up depending on the rooms in question.

This is how I would prefer to do it, but for the sake of a minigame, I would have one known item in each Room. If the minigame works well I want to make a full game with lots of items, and have players be ignorant of what item might be where.

Luxaria wrote:
... if you want to get really cheeky, and you go with the multiple items per room idea, you could also play around with the thought of items combining across rooms. For example, instead of just giving a flamethrower right away...

Armory: Blow-torch - The first person to target you during Work Shift will receive a third-degree burn, injuring them. They will be unable to perform actions for two/three Work Shifts. If they visit the Med Bay for one work shift, they will be healed. This item is consumed.

. . . and then if you visit Engineering while you have a blow-torch . . .

Flamethrower: Construct a Flamethrower by holding a blow-torch and wrench in Engineering for one phase, consuming both. If you are targeted for a kill, you will take down the attacker in the process, but both of your remains will be incinerated, leaving no hint of alignment. Alternatively, you may use the flamethrower on an isolated player of your choice. Their alignment will not be shown upon death.

Wrench - Repair or disable one mechanical system on the ship. (So for example, you could go to the Server Room and either restore the Ship Task's charge, if it has limited use, or disable it so it cannot be used)

That sort of thing.

I like this idea, but it does push it beyond what I would want to do in a minigame, complexity wise. For a full game, this is an excellent idea.

Luxaria wrote:
... I don't know how complicated you want to make the game, but it might be fun to have to evaluate traveling to different rooms to build items, on top of responding to events, and even needing to conduct ship repairs.

In the minigame I am planning on having two events (Repair Engine Room, at the start of the game, and Emergency EVA, part way through). I would like to have more in a full game, and in a full game the players would not have an advanced warning.

Luxaria wrote:
I also think the server room or the bridge would have cool flavor if there were a role that involved repairing communications to call for outside help, which would start a process in which in 2-3 phases some outsider ship might arrive and do something to the game. This might be needlessly complex, though?

That is getting very complicated, but it might be an interesting way to add new players to the game part way through? And the Infected could get a bonus nk the first Work Shift they are there, in which they all count as Isolated, because they haven't learned to be paranoid yet.

Luxaria wrote:
Quite a few ship tasks involve votes during the Status Report phase, which is presumably when lynches would also be happening. I think one or two vote tasks makes sense and adds nice flavor, but I worry you'd bog down your phases too much if so many roles have that potential, plus the lynch. You could end up with a phase where there's 3-5 votes going at once.

I was thinking that there would be enough people going solo to find roles that no more than one or two ship tasks would be completed in a night. But I am okay with there being 3-5 votes happening at once.

I imagine a room full of people, all standing in a circle with their backs to the wall, shouting at each other about a quarter dozen different things, while one person tries to keep tally on a tablet :P

I think the messiness would add atmosphere, but maybe I am mistaken.

Luxaria wrote:

Don't do this:

These are awesome idea, but this is sounding less like a game of mafia and more like a full RPG :P

I am getting a lot of Dead Space vibes from this which I love, so please do the thing. * A *