The Heart, She Holler

[4-HBabe]

Detective itsacoaster is on the case, annihilating cheaters and general douchebaggery.

[itsacoaster]

I already thought of the possibility that someone might try to cheat at a completely meaningless message board game. Honestly, if someone stoops that low, they need to get a life and get their gratification somewhere else.

So, players, is any tweaking necessary? I think it worked out quite well the way it is. Someone could get lucky and win more quickly, or there could also be more THWARTs to drag the game on a little longer. I think ~100 posts for the game we played is pretty reasonable.

[noobull]

That's what the chicken dinners are for.

[noobull]

Pace was good.

[itsacoaster]

Yes, the pace was good. I wouldn't expect it to always be as fast as this game, because all of us who played this time are pretty much here most of the time. (And here I am telling cheater-type folks to get a life! ) Even if you have to wait a day between "rounds" it's not that big of a deal to me.

[4-HBabe]

I thought it ran pretty smoothly, once I figured out how to roll.

And I really think you can give everyone a 24 hour time limit because people do have to work and have different schedules and stuff, but as the game heats up they will make time to be here more often and it will go faster.

[noobull]

Depending on the circumstances, it might be a good idea to make the "taking turns" part more flexible, that is make it so that it best fits the players.

You know, kinda like with SwimCon trivia. It ran much better with the whole 6-minute rounds.

One alternative idea for turns: Take one turn per 24-hour period. Order doesn't matter. That way, nobody is waiting on anyone else, unless it is part of their game strategy.

[mahala_la_la]

I think it went fairly well.
Great pacing and not overly complicated (despite the huge wall of text on the front page ).

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itsacoaster wrote:
Someone could get lucky and win more quickly, or there could also be more THWARTs to drag the game on a little longer.

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I think it would have been more interesting had we had more thwarts take place.

[itsacoaster]

Yeah, I was thinking about something like that; one downside I can think of is that if you're on an IMMUNE space, it's in your vested interest to go last and preserve that immunity for as long as possible. If everyone took a turn in, say, 6 hours 28 minutes, would the next "round" of 24 hours start when the 4th person takes their turn?

[noobull]

Under that scenario, it would be to wait until the next 24-hour period begins.

[itsacoaster]

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mahala_la_la wrote:
I think it went fairly well.
Great pacing and not overly complicated (despite the huge wall of text on the front page ).

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itsacoaster wrote:
Someone could get lucky and win more quickly, or there could also be more THWARTs to drag the game on a little longer.

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I think it would have been more interesting had we had more thwarts take place.

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We had, what, about a half-dozen thwarts? Yeah, there could use to be more, the only problem would be: where to put another space? I don't want someone on the last row of the board to be able to send backwards someone right behind them. Perhaps I could put one on the first row of the board, say, on 3 or 5, so that folks sent backwards to the first row are more easily able to get back at their opponents.

[itsacoaster]

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noobull wrote:
Under that scenario, it would be to wait until the next 24-hour period begins.

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I would personally prefer the current system to allow for multiple turns per day--that sort of ramps up the excitement I think. If the tradeoff is that a few rounds take longer than 1 day to complete, that's all right by me. Also, I'm not so sure I like the idea that people can wait until the last possible moment to move if they're on an immune space. The idea was meant for immunity to last exactly one round, unless you get lucky and land on another one. I suppose that you could still lose your turn if you fail to get your turn in during the prescribed time, and with people's different schedules, they may be forced to take their turn even when they don't want to. Perhaps there should be a stiffer penalty for missing a turn under this more fluid system.

I hope you get the impression that I'm trying to see both sides of the argument.

[4-HBabe]

Do you think you could play with more than 4 people?

If there were 6 or so there would naturally be more thwarts and moving around.

But I also think adding thwarts to the first row would be good. Maybe they don't get "activated" until everyone initially moves off the first row? So they're only there for people who got sent back?

[itsacoaster]

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4-HBabe wrote:

Do you think you could play with more than 4 people?

If there were 6 or so there would naturally be more thwarts and moving around.

But I also think adding thwarts to the first row would be good. Maybe they don't get "activated" until everyone initially moves off the first row? So they're only there for people who got sent back?

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I think it's certainly possible to play with more people. I sort of put this together with a specific idea in mind: I never wanted there to be a 50:50 chance of landing on THWART from any one space. Right now, the best you can do is a 40% (2 in 5) chance of landing on THWART, and it's usually 20%. The more turns are taken, the more likely it is that folks will land on THWART, inevitably extending the game. At the same time, people are also just as likely to land on immunity. So I really don't have a clue how it would all shake out. Certainly someone would win eventually.

One thing I thought about doing is moving the THWART on 17 to 18, and putting another one on 13. The way it functions right now, Space 11 (PLOT) is effectively another THWART space. So that wouldn't change the number of THWART spaces any--it would just make it so that there's a 40% chance of landing on THWART most of the time, unless you land on THWART the turn before, then there's a 20% chance of landing on THWART again.

If we do it this way, perhaps there should be another THWART space on #6 for those who get sent back to the first row, so they don't have to wait a whole turn to get a chance at revenge.

[itsacoaster]

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itsacoaster wrote:

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noobull wrote:
Under that scenario, it would be to wait until the next 24-hour period begins.

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I would personally prefer the current system to allow for multiple turns per day--that sort of ramps up the excitement I think. If the tradeoff is that a few rounds take longer than 1 day to complete, that's all right by me. Also, I'm not so sure I like the idea that people can wait until the last possible moment to move if they're on an immune space. The idea was meant for immunity to last exactly one round, unless you get lucky and land on another one. I suppose that you could still lose your turn if you fail to get your turn in during the prescribed time, and with people's different schedules, they may be forced to take their turn even when they don't want to. Perhaps there should be a stiffer penalty for missing a turn under this more fluid system.

I hope you get the impression that I'm trying to see both sides of the argument.

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Thinking about this further, here's what I would do if I was deciding when to take my turn.

--If I'm not immune, and most other players are also not immune, I would want to take my turn quickly to possibly become immune or land on THWART.
--If I'm not immune, and most other players are immune, I would still want to take my turn quickly to avoid getting THWARTed.
--If I'm immune, I would want to keep it as long as possible, unless both me and someone else are in striking distance of winning.

Maybe it would be fun to have these kinds of possible strategies. One drawback would be that it might not be possible for some players to take advantage of this kind of strategy due to their schedules, while other folks with more flexible schedules (*cough*grad students*cough*) have the ability to strategize more readily. I wouldn't want someone to be penalized just because their work schedule only allows them to post for an hour a day, like Luuv was saying in the development thread.

Doing the fixed 24-hour turns might be more fun if there are more players, making sure there's a lot of action every day.

[770312]

Hey, make another game, I wanna play betches.

[noobull]

>_> so there is another challenger

Are you a reporter from the big city?

[770312]

I'm a spy from the center of the universe, actually. You can call that the big city if you'd like. >_>

[noobull]

well, the secret of this here holler is right here in that safe.... >_>

[770312]

Well then, be a gentleman and open that safe for me, won't you please?

[noobull]

Here... why don't you just take this key?

[770312]

Oh, I'm just a simple minded woman. Go ahead and show me how to do it. I wouldn't want to break anything now.

[itsacoaster]

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770312 wrote:
Hey, make another game, I wanna play betches.

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Imma take a break, and maybe we could play next week. I could make a new thread and solicit new players in the meantime.

[770312]

EXCELLENT.

[noobull]

>_> want some hooch then? <_<