Topics

[That's... that's NOT a classical Christmas Ornament!]

Hello, everybody.

Welcome back to the Coloring Ball, the competition where we give you shapes and you fill them in.

The time before Christmas is always stressful (and I'm sure before other season festivals as well) so it's a good thing to get started early. And look at that, your partner offered to buy the new ornaments, so you don't have to. What an amazing partner you have!

And look at them:
      
They look exactly like you had them in mind, at least as long as you look just at the shape: A moon, a heart, a star...

But then you take a closer look and you realize, something is wrong. That's... that's NOT a classical Christmas Ornament!

Well, what did your partner buy?

Show us by filling in one or more of the shapes with your craziest ideas. You may rotate or mirror the shapes, you may color the outline and either the inside or the outside of the shape. The weirder and crazier, the better!

You have time until 14. December.

[Vampires and other Bloodsuckers]

Vampires and other Bloodsuckers

They come in the night and take our blood. They rip our throats and take our life. Some literal, some in a more metaphorical sense, when they wear business suits and work for a bank, for example. Or maybe they are just animals that happen to survive by drinking blood, like leeches?

It doesn't matter what kind of bloodsucking being we're talking about. It doesn't matter if they are the hero or the villain of the tale. They can be romantic or terrifying, afraid of garlic or sparkle in daylight (okay, probably not that one, unless we have Twilight fans here  ), they can be a secret to everybody or out in the open. As long as there are vampires or other (metaphorical) bloodsuckers in your story, this is the right competition for you.

Deadline: 19th October 2021

[From the Mountains to the Sea]

From the Mountains to the Sea

Someone once told me that you can either like the mountains or the sea (as a holiday location) but not both. I'm not sure that's true, but I certainly would say I prefer the mountains.

Which one is it for you? Where would you rather live or spend your vacation? Is it swimming on a tropical beach or skiing in the wide ranges of the Alps? Maybe a bit of tracking and mountain climbing? Or perhaps you'd rather have a surfboard or a jetski? Maybe it's kind of both, with a sand mountain instead of a sandcastle on the beach or maybe a wide lake to swim in among high mountain ranges?

(Somewhere close to the border between Germany and Austria - I forgot to properly index my photos)

Show us your nice little idyllic (or less idyllic, that's not actually a requirement) depiction of a mountain or ocean scene. It can contain elements of human inhabitants, but please focus on the nature.

Deadline: 7 October 2021
New Deadline: 10 October

[9. September 2021]

Every aspiering adventurer needs to learn sooner or later to lug around all kinds of strange objects in their far too small pant's pockets: Ladders, books, boxes,... are all standard adventure game gear - and therefore inventory items.

But sometimes your adventurer is supposed to take more, let's say, abstract things along. Concepts and Ideas can end up in the inventory of a character as well. (I'm sure of it, but as is always the case when I try to think of a specific example, I just can't come up with anything). What concepts and ideas am I talking about? Just about anything, really, that doesn't have a physical presence: The Love of your Life , or time itself, the memory of a dead friend or, somewhat simpler, a magical spell. These are just some ideas off the top of my head, but you can use anything that isn't an actual physical object you can touch.


(A heart, a rather common symbolic representation of love)


(Skull and Crossbones can be a symbol for the concept of death)

These two are just some of the more basic and common ideas.


Here's your task:

- come up with an abstract concept that might show up as an inventory item
- draw this inventory item as a sprite
- post it here before the deadline of 9. September 2021
- let us know what your idea was (but put it in spoiler tags, a bit of guessing adds to the fun)

Go crazy!

[Dragons!]

Dragons!

Who doesn't like dragons?

Well, I love them (as you can see above), so I'd like to see some dragon themed backgrounds.
Is it a dragon's cave filled with treasures? Is it the mansion of an evil dragon lord decorated with statues of dragons everywhere? Is it a nest high in the mountains or the room of a moody teenager(or adult woman)? Or maybe a castle melted in a dragon's fire?
It can be everything that has something to do with dragons: Where they live, where they ravaged, where they are imprisoned. Or where they are used as decorations: as statues, tapestries, paintings, details on furniture, a chess set... (the possibilities are manifold.)


Voting is done in categories here:

Concept: your background should tell us something about the place you have depicted.
Playability: does it have clearly defined walkable areas, things to interact with, etc?
Artistic Execution: does the image convey the wanted atmosphere? What's the feeling of the place?
(shamelessly copied from Creamy)

Entries should be in by the end of 30. March 2021

And now, Fire!!!!

[Pirates!]

Pirates!

They come out of the mist, rob unsuspecting trading vessels, they fight in the rig and on the deck, they are the sexy guys in the bodice ripper or the drinking buddies in adventure games. Well, the romanticised carribean type pirates are, but for this competition I'll accept all kinds of buccaneers and pirates: the guys in ancient Rome who famously took Caesar hostage once, or the swashbuckling carribean ones; modern day pirates off the african coast or even future ones in space. (Digital pirates are also acceptable, at least in your stories.)

Your task is to write a story about pirates or some form of piracy, set in any time period or reality. As always, you have two weeks to get your stories in.

Deadline: 1. February 2021

[Decaying Decorations]

Decaying Decorations

Halloween is soon and when it's over, the poor decorations will all wither and rot. But I want to give them one last chance to shine.

So show us all what these decorations look like:

[imgzoom]https://s1.imagebanana.com/file/201029/lol8psJu.png[/imgzoom]
[imgzoom]https://s1.imagebanana.com/file/201029/f9tnyp44.png[/imgzoom]

You may:
- Colour the outline
- Submit multiple entries
- use as much colour as you wish
- rotate the outlines

You may not:

- Colour outside the outline

Deadline: 12. November

[Game Theory Discussion: Player Knowledge Vs. Character Knowledge]

The following are just some thoughts I had while playing a lot of games lately. I tried to structure them, but ... 
---------------------------------------
---------------------------------------

Game Theory Discussion: Player Knowledge Vs. Character Knowledge

When designing a game, you need to consider various things, including story, puzzles, general looks, and so on.

What people normally don‘ t think about in these terms is the difference between what the character knows and what the player knows. This problem certainly shows up when designing, but I think it might be helpful for some people to look at it a bit more closely.

So, what do I even mean with Player Knowledge and Character Knowledge?

To put it simple:
What does the player know in any given situation during the game?
What does the character know in any given situation during the game?

These questions are similar to a watsonian and a doylistic analysis of literary works.
---------------------------------------


Now, why is this important?

When character and player knowledge do not align, it can easily lead to frustrations. For example, when the player knows how to solve a puzzle but the necessary trigger for the character hasn‘t happened, the player might run around forever trying to find a different solution. Or when the character knows something, and acts accordingly (for example combining inventory items even though the player was just randomly clicking) this might lead to confusion.
-------------------------------------------------


There are generally three possible states:

1. The character knows more than the player:

From a storytelling viewpoint, this might show up when you give your character a specific profession (e.g. Indiana Jones, who is an archaeologist). From the get-go, you should assume that the character knows things the player does not.

This might not seem like much of a problem. You just need to make sure that the internal thoughts of the character (aka speech bubbles for the player to read) convey all these informations.


Another possibility this comes up is when the game takes place somewhere the character is familiar with (e.g. various Maniac Mansion Mania games). In this situation, you have the player explore their surroundings, even though the player certainly would not do this.

I don’t see much of a problem with this in general either. Generally the worst consequence is that there might be a bit of an immersion break.


More knowledge of the character only becomes a problem when it involves the solution to puzzles. I’m sure we’ve all seen situation where we were a bit stuck playing and randomly tried to combine inventory items. Sometimes, this leads to a solution and often to an explanation from the character of the clever trick they are going to play.

The problem here should be obvious: A clear miscommunication between the knowledge of the character and that of the player. The solution would be to give more hints.


2. Character Knowledge and Player Knowledge align:

I would say this is the ideal state, but hardly achievable. You can never know what your players might know.


3. The player knows more than the character:

No player goes into a game as a blank slate. There’s no way to know beforehand what they know, but I think one should consider what can be seen as general knowledge or more specialized knowledge and never use too specialised information to solve a puzzle.


What might come up is that the player knows the solution to a puzzle before they are actually supposed to solve the puzzle (e.g. knowing the code to a safe too early because one played the game once before). There are three ways to react to this: Allowing the player to proceed with their “cheating”, or force them to do all other actions first. Either solution can easily lead to a break in the immersion. I don’t have an opinion here.


The most frustrating situation is what I already mentioned above: A player figures out a puzzle but this one trigger is missing for the character to figure it out. The only way to avoid this frustration is by making sure the triggers are logical.
------------------------------------------

All in all, it seems important to me to align character and player as much as possible.

There are some general steps I think might be helpful:
- make sure your character conveys all knowledge they have to the player (textboxes, detailed descriptions, clear designs, dialogue options)
- avoid the necessity of outside knowledge (a player should never have to look something up to solve a puzzle)
- try to make triggers for events logical
- keep in mind that players might take shortcuts
- a break in the immersion is better than frustrating a player.
---------------------------------------


These are just some thoughts and I’d be interested in yours.

(I avoided specific examples, mainly because this is long enough as is, but I sure wouldn’t mind to read a few.)

I'm stuck and I don't feel like I've done much so far.

I have in my inventory:

Spoiler

Use Manuel, Blue Cup, Keycard, Pillow, Phone Cord

[close]

I obviously tried

Spoiler

the phone cord with the socket - it's loose.

[close]

I think I need to move

Spoiler

the chair (too heavy) or pick up the "toy" (slipery)

[close]

and I think I tried just about all possible interactions with my inventory and these two objects.

Any hints?

Thanks

[Sprite Jam]

Hello, welcome, to a competition we didn't have here for a while: The Sprite Jam!

In the Sprite Jam, it is your mission, should you chose to accept it, to draw a Sprite (Character, Object, Inventory Item, ect...) according to some rules.

Because I feel like celebrating this revival of a long-standing competition in the forums (even though it has been a while since the last one) I think we should have a little dance party. And what do we need for a dance party? Well, dancers of course.

It doesn't matter if it's a classical dancer, ballett, hip-hop, standard, belly dance, futuristic or anything else you can think of. It doesn't even need to be a human dancer.

There are no restrictions as to colours, size or anything else.

If you want, you may animate your sprite, but that is not required.

Deadline: 24. September
Extended: 27. September

[The rules:- Write or finish an entry for any old FWC- Follow the original rules of the topic]

Hello, welcome.

I received a single suggestion for a topic after my request in the last FWC, but because it was just a rehash of a topic we had nearly exactly two years ago, I decided to go with my backup, which is also a topic we already had, but from three years ago (the longer ago, the fresher it feels!)

If you are a regular, you might remember my Second Chance topic from October 2017. This is a very special topic, as it is literally all topics we ever had here. It is not about a character giving or getting a second chance. It's about all you lovely writers getting a second chance to write for a topic we had here before. Be it that you missed a deadline, didn't see a thread, had a computer crash, were not around in the forums yet when the topic was originally set or were the original administrator and therefore not allowed to write for your own topic, this is your chance to remedy this and write for an old topic. It is also specifically a chance to finish unfinished older entries, as long as about at least three quarters of the text is original material written for this new competition here.

The rules:

- Write or finish an entry for any old FWC
- Follow the original rules of the topic (including word limits; otherwise, as applicable)
- Let us know which topic you chose
- Let us know if parts of your entry were finished earlier
- You may enter for a topic you originally administered
- You can continue stories you already submitted including for the same topic (this is different from the last time)
- At least 3/4 should be new material
- You can enter more than once (votes are given for the stories, not the writer)


A list of old topics can be found here in the Competitions Topic Master List - the list is as complete as possible but no guarantees.

Deadline is August 14 2020.
Extended: 17. August

[Writers gonna write ... about writers!]

There's the rule that - to write authentic stories - you should write about things you know. So, what is a writer to do, when he/she knows nothing but writing? Simple:

Writers gonna write ... about writers!

And it seems that is something many authors do.

Examples that come to mind might be Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Doctor Watson writes down the stories of Sherlock Holmes in-story, or Stephen King, who has two famous examples I can think of from the top of my head: the protaganists in both The Shining and Misery.

Even if the characters are not outright writers, they might display certain poetic tendencies. Christopher Paolini's Eragon, for example, gets praised by other characters as a great poet (A lot of readers tend to not agree with that one  ).

Here, someone collected a whole list on goodreads, if you are interested in more examples.

Writing about writing is, as you can see, common.

And now it is time to add yourself to the list of writers who write about writers. It does not have to be about the experiences of writing itself, like writers block, or the challanges an artist has in society, like the trope of the starving artist, but the story needs to feature a writer in an important role and the writing should be relevant to the story in some (small) way (a bard collecting stories, a child showing their first writing to their parents, slam poetry gone wrong, etc)

Get your inner writers to write something until 14. May.

[What we do in the dark...]

What we do in the dark...

What do we do in the dark?

Do we slip into the bed of our lover? Burgle a house?

Or is it not quite as literally and we lie and cheat, but not in darkened rooms but in the very centre of society?

This topic is about secrets and subterfuge, about the things we don't want people to see. This can be taken literal and your story focusses on the activities of a thief in a dark alley for example, or figuratively, like someone overthrowing a government. It doesn't really matter. The important aspect is the secrecy of the activity.

Smuggle your entries into this thread before the end of 22. March 2020.

Extended: 25. March
Again: 29. March

Hey,

I'm not sure if this is a Problem on my side or with the weside.

When I try to access adventuregamestudio.co.uk or any of the subsides with Firefox (73.0.1 (64-bit)) I get this message:

Code: ags

Notice: Undefined index: Connection in /var/www/adventuregamestudio.co.uk/public_html/forums/Sources/bad-behavior/bad-behavior/common_tests.inc.php on line 95
Error 400

We're sorry, but we could not fulfill your request for / on this server.

An invalid request was received. If you are using a proxy server, bypass the proxy server or contact your proxy server administrator. This may also be caused by a bug in the Opera web browser.

Your technical support key is: 577b-ce19-582e-c5e4

You can use this key to fix this problem yourself.

If you are unable to fix the problem yourself, please contact noreply at adventuregamestudio.co.uk and be sure to provide the technical support key shown above.

Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /var/www/adventuregamestudio.co.uk/public_html/forums/Sources/Subs-Db-mysql.php on line 1286
You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '`.smf_log_badbehavior` WHERE `date` < DATE_SUB('2020-02-21 18:29:12', INTERVAL 7' at line 1

It works fine with Internet Explorer.

Is this a problem with my Firefox or with the webside?

This thread contains lists of past topics for the active competitions in this forum.

The lists were created half automatically and half manually and are not complete, because they are based on the thread titles of past competitions.

They are sorted newest to oldest.

In this thread you find lists for the following competitions:

- Background Blitz
- Colouring Ball
- Fortnightly Writing Competition
- MAGS
- Music Competition
- Sprite Jam
- Puzzle-Making Practice

I wasn't sure where to post this, as it's only relevant for the Competition Forum and not really a technical issue, nor a suggestion for a new competition.

We have several competitions that have been running for multiple years now (MAGS, Writing, Background...) and I think most people who are to set a new theme for any next round, try to avoid using one that has been used before. It can be a bit tedious to go through old topics to find what themes were already used, so I would suggest to have one thread that collects all past topics for all regular competitions stickied for easy access. It would be a bit of work to collect all past topics now, of course, unless someone has already done so (I know that Baron has a list of past topics for the Fortnightly Writing Competition) but maintaining the list once created would be very little work, I think. I thought a similiar format to the Hall of Fame thread would work, with one competition per post.

[Steampunk]

Steampunk

We are in a new decade, so let's see what we can do with the technology of a few decades ago.

According to Wikipedia, Steampunk is a retrofuturistic subgenre of science fiction or science fantasy that incorporates technology and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery.

And that is exactly what I would like you to write this round. There are no limits on what kind of story you want to tell, but it must be set in a steam-powered technology world. And because this is the topic this time around, I expect some nice descriptions of your world.

As always, you have two weeks to finish your story.

[Happy Halloween]

Come in, come in and look around.

Have a snack, the eyes are fresh and squicky, the spiders ready to serve you...

Come in, come in, and if I eat you - muahahaha!

Happy Halloween everyone.



It's an interesting coincidence that two of our regulars in this competition have their birthday on halloween. So, let's celebrate this a bit and throw them (okay, one of them is me, so let's throw me) a party. And because it's Halloween, the party should be spooky.

It doesn't have to be specifically a Halloween Party or a Birthday Party, it just needs to be a party that has some spooky element, for example one that happens in a haunted house or the monsters under the bed have a free evening and organize a dance, or a normal party where an axe-wielding mass murderer shows up, or a prank gone wrong, or... There are many more possibiities.

I haven't decided on voting categories yet, but 'spookiness' will be a factor.

Deadline: 10. November 2019

Happy Writing!

[no older than 8 years]

Welcome, kids.
Please gather around the librarian here and listen carefully. We will soon have the newest stories just for you!



Children love them, adults do too when they look at them through a nostalgia filter or when they are really good...


I'm talking about story books for children - (very) young children, like The Very Hungry Caterpillar (which just had its 50th anniversary) or The Cat in the Hat.

They are often a visual medium as much as a textual one (I don't expect you to draw anything, but keep this in mind), might have repetitive elements to it, might use easier words and a simpler sentence structure. The way their subject is presented needs to be appropriate for children (no swear words, for example) but their subject matter doesn't need to be light. There are children's books about dealing with death. Often, they contain some kind of message.

This is your challenge: Write a children's book (I say book because these stories are really not that long) for an age group no older than 8 years.

The stories will be judged in these categories: Plot, Character, Language (age appropriate) and Message.

You have until Monday, 5. August 2019.

[How to play:]

Heyho, fellow AGS members and willing participants in the most murderous game of these forums, the fifth instalment of the AGS Werewolf Game.

If you're not familiar with the game yet, have fun reading a rather long post. If you already played, you may skip to the end of his post where I summarize changes from the last games.

So, what is the AGS Werewolf Game:

Werewolf or Mafia is a psychological game of mistrust and subterfuge where one side (“Good”) tries to figure out who belongs to the other (“Evil” or “Scum”) and murders them one after the other.

How to play:

At the beginning of the game, every player is assigned a role that might or might not have special abilities and their goal is to lead their team to victory, without knowing who actually belongs to their team.

The game can end in two ways:
The Good Side wins when all Evil players are dead.
The Evil Side wins when it is no longer possible to get a majority lynch vote against them.
There are special situations possible for both of these general conditions where there might not be a logical way left for one side or the other to win, despite the conditions not being met yet. In these cases, the game just runs its course until the condition is met. Giving up or trying to stir players in certain directions is always allowed, even if this runs against the supposed goals of a role.

The game is played in two alternating phases:

Day Phase:

During the Day Phase every player is awake and able and allowed to post for discussion and lynching in this thread.
This thread is closed for all non-players and players who are killed are no longer allowed to post here either.
Lynch-votes need to be bolded. None bolded votes will be ignored.
Votes are not final until the Day Phase ends and can be changed until the last second. They can also be completely taken back (in that case, please bold none in your posts to make this absolutely clear.)
It is never, under any circumstances allowed to edit posts, not even for typos or to add something before someone else posts. (Yes, double posts are allowed.)

The Day Phase will be about 48 hours and end in a time frame of three hours.

During these three hours, the host may close the phase at any point but if the host runs late for any reason, players are not allowed to post after the end of the three hour time frame. (Basically, the night phase begins at the end of this time frame (even if the host is running late) or earlier.)

Day Phases may end suddenly at any point during the provided three hour time frame so get those votes in while you can. Remember that they can always be changed later if you are in time!

Once the Day Phase has ended the Lynching takes place if a majority vote on a single player has been reached.

If a majority vote has not been reached then no player is lynched and the Day Phase ends.

Tied votes for the player to be lynched result in a stalemate and no player is lynched and the Day Phase ends.

It is not a requirement that the a player is lynched every Day Phase.
A lynched player's role is revealed after their death (with the exception of the Traitor (see below), who will be revealed as a Murderer (this role is deep undercover.))

A lynched player may no longer post in this thread. Every player is allowed to keep a „journal“ that the other players „find“ when they are killed. Every player is allowed to send a PM to the GM every Phase (Day and Night) with information he or she wants revealed in case of his/her death. The information does not have to be accurate or true. The GM will not censor this in any way or form. I will only look at the last PM from any killed player that has „Journal“ in the title. Please keep such PM‘s short and remember that I need them before the player is killed because the reveal of the journal happens at the same time as the reveal of the death. The only exception to all this is that a Psychic‘s last scan will be added by the GM to the last words should the Psychic be killed in a Night Phase.

Night Phase:

During Night Phase most of the Players are asleep and nobody may post in the game thread.

It is now time for all players with Night Phase abilities to PM their choices to the GM:

The Psychic should PM the name of the player they are scanning this night.

The Doctor should PM the name of the player they are protecting this night, if any.

The Murderers should send their kill votes to the GM, after discussing it with the other members of their team, and cc their the other Murderers.

Night Phase will last about 24 hours.

It is legal to PM the game host with your night action before the Night Phase starts if, for any reason, you cannot maybe be active during the next Night Phase.

Do not send more than one PM with your activities to the host. The first one sent is the action that will take place. (Except for the Journal-PM‘s where the last one sent is the one used.)

At the end of the Night Phase the game host will send out PMs to players who did private night actions such as scanning with the results. These PM‘s go out at about the same time as the wrap-up post for the Phase goes out.

Then the game host will open the next Day Phase, starting with a report on any casualties which may have occurred during the night.

Any players killed during the Night Phase must immediately follow the same rules as lynched players (see above): They may no longer post in this thread and their last words should already be out.

If, at any point, the Evil Side equal or outnumbers the other players they win the game as there is no way for the other players to gain a majority vote against them for lynching choices.



General other important rules:

• Never edit your posts. If you need to change anything, then double post. This is explicitly allowed while the game is active.
• Do not show screenshots of PMs from the GM or something similar. Do not use actual evidence (so to speak) from the GM. All communication with the GM should not be part of the actual gameplay.
• Evil Players should always consult with their team. Situations might arise where it is necessary from a game point of view to throw people of your own side under the bus. Discuss things like this as much as possible beforehand. This is to avoid resentments from building up.
• Communications outside of this thread are not only allowed but encouraged. Especially for the Evil Side they are necessary. But remember that killed players are immediately out of the game and may not talk about the game with active players any longer.
• Lying, tricking and deceiving are part of this game. Remember that it is just a game though and everything said during the game is not to be taken as personal attacks. We are all adults here and it is important to differentiate between the game and real (forum) life.
• First time players: You might not realize how stressful this game can be. Do not underestimate the way it will get to you. It will be nerve-racking.

Possible Roles:

Let me introduce you to some roles players can play in this game. How many of each one there will be and if all are used depends strongly on the number of players.

Good Side:

Normal Population:
Ability: None
Description: The most geniric role in this game with no special abilities and no special job except finding the bad guys. This is the role most people will play.
Goal: Uncover who belongs to the Evil Side. Members of the General Population have the right to vote every day for the person to lynch and hopefully for them to eliminate players of the Evil Side that way. Members of the Population can win the game even if they themselves get killed, so as a member you might consider sacrifices for the greater good (for example, a more important Good Side Role).

Psychic:
Ability: Scan another player‘s role once every Night Phase
Description: The Psychic is the main asset of the Good Side, as he or she is the one to have the best chance to uncover members of the Evil Side. The Psychic can scan players once every Night Phase by sending a PM to the Game Master (GM, that would be me) and receiving the role (and nothing else) as an answer.
Goal: The Psychic‘s goal is to eliminate all players of the Evil Side by scanning them and then convincing the other players to lynch them. The physic is allowed to vote for lynchings him-/herself too, of course. The Physic should seek to keep his/her role secret, as he/she is a likely target for murders by the Evil Side. The rest of the Good Side should also try to protect the Psychic as much as possible. The Psychic wins with the Good Side even if he/she is dead when all Evil players are eliminated.

Doctor:
Ability: Protect one player every Night Phase, including him-/herself, but not the same player twice in a row.
Description: The Doctor sends the GM the name of one player each Night Phase to protect. A protected player cannot be killed by the Evil Side in this Night Phase. If a player is protected, nobody receives any further information than that nobody was killed in the next Day Phase.
Goal: The Doctor seeks to protect his own side, including him-/herself but especially the Psychic as the main player to figure out the alignment of other players. The Doctor is the main line of defence (except for subterfuge) for the Good Side.

Traitor:
Ability: Lives among the Evil Side and knows them. Basically, an undercover cop (which is the name this role has in most games.)
Description: The traitor works undercover with the Evil Side, being allowed to vote on who they want to kill during the Night Phase but secretly seeks to stir the Good Side towards lynching his or her supposed allies of the Evil Side. As this person is deep undercover, a scan by the Psychic would reveal him or her as Evil aligned. (Can you see that I want to confuse you all as much as possible ?)
Goal: The Traitor is ultimately on the Good Side and therefore wins with the same conditions as all other Good aligned characters, but counts towards the Evil Side on all other occasions. (An example: A Night Phase ends with 1 Murderer, 1 Traitor and 2 General Population alive â€" the game would count as lost for the Good Side!)
(Using the Traitor would make it necessary to change the format of the GM's communication with the Murderers as the use of one Alpha would reveal additional information. As I might not say if we have a traitor in this round, there will be no Alpha role all. Kill orders will need to be send to me by every member oft the Murderers as well as to every member of their own team. It means a bit more work, but that shouldn't be a problem.)

Evil Side:

The players of the Evil Side know who the other members of their team are (while the Good Side has no such information about their own team). They will receive this information by PM alongside their own roles once they are chosen. It is recommended, and expected, that the Evil Side players communicate with each other outside this forum thread.

Murderer:
Ability: Participate in one kill during each Night Phase; knows all other players of the Evil Side.
Description: The Murderer decides on one person to kill each Night Phase, along with the other murderers.
Goal: The Murderer‘s goal is it to reduce the Good Side so that no majority lynch vote against the Evil Side is possible any longer, at which point the Evil Side would be able to pick the Good Side of one by one and the Evil Side has won. The Murderer should try to appear non-threatening and as innocent as possible, with the goal that Good Side players get lynched. Should the Traitor role be used, it should be noted that a majority kill vote against a member of the Murderers is possible.


Changes from the last rounds:

• a Psychic's last scan will automatically be added to their last words by the GM in case they get killed during the Night, as was discussed after the last game.
• added the Traitor role (see above for details) which leads to changes in the way the Murderers communicate their orders to the GM:
• there is no longer a Leader/Alpha role
• discussions as to who to kill should still be just among the Murderers
• but the final decision needs to be send to the GM by every Murderer individually. Also, these kill-votes needs to be also send to the other members of their team (cc) so that there is no confusion with that

Several people hinted or outright asked in out-of-character discussions to play a round without knowing what the used roles actually are. So far, I always told you that we had 1 Psychic and 1 Doctor and 2 General Population and so on. I'd love to play a round where you don't know this and you don't even know if I used all roles described above. I need a minimum of 10 players (12 or more would be better) for such a round, due to the fact that otherwise there is not enough variation as to what roles I can assign (there have to be at least 2 Murderers, because otherwise their ability is gone, there should be more people on the Good side than the Evil side and so on).

I'd really like to use the Traitor role, but I don't think it would work with roles “pre-revealed”. I would also like to add even more possible roles for a game with secret roles, just so that it is more difficult to figure out who is who and what roles even play. So, if you feel like it, write up a couple roles that could be used.

Also, like I did for the last round, I did not provide a setting yet and am open to suggestions again.


Final questions:

• Who wants to play? Register now.
• What setting would you like?
• Would you like a full role-playing game, a mixed one (that's what we had all previous rounds) or a purely tactical game (which might make it easier if we really keep it secret which roles are involved)?
• Are there other roles you would like to see?
• Will we play a secret round (I don't tell you which roles are used) or a pre-revealed one (as in the rounds before, you will know how many players are playing each role)? (A secret round requires ten or more players, I'd say.)

I hope I got everything, if not, just ask.

I think I'll keep registration open for a week or so, just so we have something like a schedule for this game and don't wait forever hoping for more people to register.