~SPECIAL GAME~

[imepro]

Hello, idols and guest stars! The ~special game~ that we'll be running for the 4th Wall Event will be a fusion between Cry Wolf and Mysterium—effectively, it will be a murder mystery game with clues given to players from beyond the grave. It will run from May 15th to May 24th, but the game is liable to end early and is not expected to run the full 11 days.

We're posting the rules in advance because it's a complicated ruleset, and so that we can get them tweaked before game start, so please direct your questions to the comments! Sign-ups for the game are available at the bottom of the post—it will be used primarily for unit coordination though, as people can leave early/join late/leave and return as they like.

The game will run in "day" and "night" cycles. Every "day" cycle is ~21 hours, except for the first "day" which will be 2 hours long. Every "night" cycle is 2 hours long.

The First Day

The first 2 hours of the game will be used as the First Day. Units can do the following:

• Talk to other units
  
• Pick one of each:
  
  • A location (out of a certain #)
    
  • A weapon (out of 5—3 normal weapons, 1 special weapon, 1 "no weapon")
    
  • A motive (freeform answer)

There will be 1 hour intermission for gamerunners to process results once the 2 hours are up. Then the First Night will start.

The First Night

The 2 hours after the intermission will be used as the First Night. This is what will happen:

• Units will be sent to the locations they chose on the First Day.
  
• If two or more units meet in the same room, the following occurs:
  
  • If all units have no weapons, they may spend the night together without incident.
    
  • If at least one unit in the group has a weapon:
    
    • A unit with no weapon will "die".
      
    • A unit with a stronger weapon will "kill" the unit with the weaker weapon (or the unit with no weapon, if there is a third unit).
      
      • Strength is determined by a weapon triangle system: Blades are stronger than Blunts; Blunts are stronger than Firearms; Firearms are stronger than Blades.
    • A unit with a weapon of equal strength will injure but not "kill" each other.
      
    • There are no extraneous witnesses. If 3 units are in the same room, only the "killer" and the "killed" will know they shared a room, and the third will be sent to an empty version of the room.
  • If at least one unit in the group has a special weapon:
    
    • All units in the same room will "die".
      
    • Units with the special weapon will not "die". Instead, they become accomplices and must use the Night Phase to target another room. If they fail to target another room, all units in this room will "die".

There will be an intermission for gamerunners to process any extra results from the Night Phase. The aim is for this phase to be less than 30 minutes long.

The Second Day & Subsequent Days

The Second Day will start after the First Night (~5 hours after game start). Living units will immediately learn:

• Who died
  
• Where they died
  
• How they died
  
• What the killer's motive was

After which, every unit may ask the victim unit one question per living unit to gain more clues. Ghosts may respond only by picking a picture from a hand of pictures given to them by the gamerunners.

Within the 21 hours of the "Day" cycle, units must:

• Vote on who is the "guilty" party using the clues provided.
  
  • The voted unit will be "executed". This will be determined on plurality, not majority.
    
  • If no unit is determined to be guilty, or if the wrong unit is determined to be guilty, the killer will go scot-free for their crime and cannot be re-tried for the night's crime.
    
  • Characters will not know whether the "executed" party was right or not until the end.
• Pick one of each:
  
  • A location
    
  • A weapon
    
  • A motive

There will be a 1 hour intermission for gamerunners to post the "Night" cycle. All Night cycles will be the same as the First Night.

Logistics & Winning

• Powers are off. Items are allowed, but not weapons.
  
• The game will run out of time, entirely on the idolpro account.
  
• Characters do not IC die until the end of the game. It is possible to "die" on Night 1 and avoid death. This is ICly known.
  
• Characters who "die" will be sent to the Graveyard, where they may watch both Days and Nights. In the Graveyard, they may chatter with the other "dead".
  
• There will also be an additional loser's PvP tournament in the Graveyard. This will not be ICly known until the units die and enter the Graveyard. Powers are on in the Graveyard.
  
• The game will end once there are six units or less alive. It will always end on a "Day" cycle so that there can be a trial for the murders that took place.
  
• Winners are determined as follows:
  
  • Killer Win: You manage to get away with at least one murder
    
  • Detective Win: You correctly identify the murderers (highest %)
    
  • Victim Win: Your killer is correctly identified and voted out
    
  • Serial Killer Win: You manage to get away with two or more murders. Serial Killer Winners will be allowed to heal one other unit/prevent their deaths.

OOH BOY THAT WAS A DOOZY. OK! HERE'S A HANDY DANDY GRAPHIC MADE BY CELI:


AND HERE'S WHAT THE SCHEDULE LOOKS LIKE:


SIGNUPS ARE HERE! Again, if you have any questions, or you see a hole in the rules, please drop us a comment here!

Comments

[featherbeaned]

Do you have estimates for what time most things will go down? i.e will the game start at 6pm PST, etc.

[imepro]

knew we forgot something.

For the sake of making the Day cycle hit at peak hours, we're thinking of having the Day cycle start around ~3PM PST/5PM CST/6PM EST/11PM GMT.

That means the Night cycle would start around ~Noon PST/2PM CST/3PM EST/8PM GMT.

To achieve that, the First Day would start at ~9AM PST/11AM CST/Noon EST/5PM GMT.

This is tentative though; people are free to add their opinions on whether this works/doesn't work and alternative times if it doesn't work!

[unbr8kable]

Seems like it would make more sense for the night cycle to hit peak hours, especially since it is only two hours? Or am I misunderstanding what happens during night cycle? Is it just math rocks and results or does RP need to happen?

Basically, if people need to be present and active for that limited time, might make more sense to have it when more people can make time to play on weekday (3PST on?). If players don't need to do anything in night phase then withdraw my objection!

Also putting in a vote to pushing first day until later (or extending it) if we have to start on a weekday, as a 9-5er (or 8-8, as the case may be)

ETA if the first day is instead a Saturday, then 9AM PST start is less of a problem for those of us in the Americas with day jobs without making the subsequent night phase be ass thirty AM for teatimers...not sure how the numbers fall vs. folks who work weekends...

In general however, if day phase is the important one, probably having more time for the first one (the only one all teams are guaranteed to play in) would be helpful as people ICly and OOCly take time to figure out how the game works. Again, I could be completely misunderstanding the game's conceit, so /o/

[imepro]

To be clear, the Night cycle is "when players are distributed the results from the Day cycle", so there aren't any real decisions to make here. For example, if avante and YOU-kai were to choose the same room in the First Day, what they'll see in the First Night is them being in a room together.

If they both have no weapons, great! The Night period will just be some [ mingle around until the Day starts again ] time.

If one has a weapon, or if one has a stronger weapon, this would be a time for any skirmishes that the characters want to do, but murder is not necessary (so it can just be some "[horror] oh god i've killed you" if people want it to be). At the end of the Night cycle, the victims will be whisked away from the location and into the designated Graveyard Location (where they are Not Dead), and the Day cycle will begin anew.

There is only one instance wherein the Night cycle actually has decisions to be made: if two units with the Special Weapon enter the same room, then the Night cycle will be used to determine which room they're going to target (and if they fail to target a room, they'll be blown up). However, this is entirely feasible as an OOC discussion/decision, particularly as they will not know who is in what room when they are targeting.

The First Day is on Friday, but we can do a Discord poll and see if people would rather the First Day be all of Friday as a mingle and then have Saturday be the First Night so that people can get a handle on the rules!

[for7issimo]

So if I understand correctly, the Night Cycle play time would be between 3pm EST to 6pm EST?

Would it still be playable if during the week I can potentially only make the last hour or so of that due to work?

And I guess, I'm going to ask pls don't push the times back because then it's 2pm - 5pm EST which is end of workday hours and probably means I can't play night cycle at all. I know not all timezones can be accommodated but that seems like it wipes out EST entirely :(

[imepro]

The Night cycle is between 3PM EST to 5PM EST. However, the game is primarily in the Day cycle—the Night cycle is effectively a glorified results post.

We actually put the times while trying to favor EST for the Days (again because the Nights are glorified results posts), which is incidentally why Nights are in that timeslot in the first place.

[scattershot]

Pushing back start times is not something I personally can come out in favor of, as a GMT-er. I'm used to things starting late, but having the Day cycle start at midnight or 1am would make it really difficult for UK and European players (who didn't have completely backward sleep schedules) to contribute at all, since pretty much the entire Day cycle would fall during sleep and work hours. 11pm start times are just about feasible; midnight or 1am probably aren't, as players would either have to sit up well into the small hours, be tagging the minute they got up, or doing it in between work commitments to have any kind of input at all.

I'm honestly not sure what the solution is here. Whatever way things fall, people are going to miss out. I am, however, of the opinion that arriving to the 21-hour 'Day' window a few hours after it first goes up would be preferable to players missing out altogether because they can't afford to sit up past midnight to catch the start of it, and can't realistically tag before or during work hours.

[imepro]

Completely understandable! We did try to pick the dates to be as accommodating to CST/EST and GMT from the beginning (5-6PM for CST/EST respectively, 11PM for GMT) => PST can do whatever middle discussion of the Day cycle when they get off work => GMT will slide back in at the end of the Day cycle, which ends at 7PM GMT (and so it'll span until a little after work hours).

[unbr8kable]

ALSO the rules keep mentioning "unit," can you please confirm that all choices will be made as units (so, the day phase will be about getting consensus as a team how to vote, while the night phase will be everyone(? present?) on that team dying)?

[imepro]

Correct, choices are made as units!

[unbr8kable]

"The game will end once there are six people or less alive."

Would this be teams then? Or even if there are just one or two teams left, the game will continue if there are 7 signups?

Once your unit is dead, your character is dead even if you weren't in the session where your team died, right? So if you can't play for a couple days you probably won't be able to play? (Or you can just in the graveyard?)

What happens if no one signs up for a day? Does your team get a bye for that round? Or can they be voted out in absentia?

[imepro]

(looks back at ruleset)

Oh that does say people and not units. That is a typo, sorry /o\ IT IS "6 UNITS LEFT ALIVE"

Sign-ups are meant to be used for coordination only, not for gamerunners; should there be a Day wherein a unit does not turn in whatsoever, and we see there is zero presence from the unit in the Day cycle, we'll put a note in that the unit was not around for the relevant night.

This does mean that it is possible the unit can be voted out in the round they're absent for—for example, if sea.Di is absent on Day 3, then on Day 4 they'll be noted to have been absent on Day 3/Night 3. However, since sea.Di could have murdered on Night 2 (and Day 3 is when Night 2 murders are judged) they can still be voted out on Day 3.

[crossmyheartandhope]

For signups, how much of which cycles will we have to be present for to sign up for a given day?

[imepro]

Sign-ups are for ooc coordination between your unit, not for gamerunners, and it's primarily for the Day cycle—there are, for the most part, no real decisions to be made in the Night cycle—so if you want to note "hurricane (x time only)" that would be legit!

[crossmyheartandhope]

Thanks o7

[we_meet_again]

How much trauma should we be prepared to anticipate, and when/how will it occur?

It sounds like when two units with different weapons meet, one unit will "die" but functionally they are simply "out" and teleported to the Graveyard (GY), correct? Or will the "killer" unit be expected to enact some kind of violence, themselves?

Is the Graveyard Tournament mandatory or optional? Is violence enforced, optional, or discouraged?

Since people in the Graveyard can prevent their deaths through the game rules, does that mean an actual for-real murder will be delivered by the game at game end, or is this like... a death on top of one(s) that may have already happened?

Asking for spoon-budgeting reasons. Thank you!

[imepro]

The trauma will be deaths from:
- Stabbing/cutting/bleeding out (blades)
- Gunshots/arrows (firearms)
- Blunt force trauma (blunts)
- Explosives/shrapnel (Special Weapon)

The Graveyard Tournament is OOCly optional, and violence in the Graveyard otherwise is optional.

The actual for-real murder will be delivered by the game at the game end, however if people really wanted to like, wild out during the Night cycle that is optional, so people might get roughhoused beforehand. (There is nothing to encourage or discourage violence in the Night cycle, but it is very important to us that people be able to see who they're victimizing. really get to know their victims. or not-victims, as the case may be.)

Notably, if units of the same weapon strength enter the same room, they will get their injuries at the end of that Night cycle, but you shouldn't expect more than like, getting banged up from a fight.

[carrionmywaywardsun]

I would like to sign up, but I see there were a lot of questions and a Discord poll about moving the game start time/day. Is there a confirmed or updated schedule anywhere?

[quickpersuader]

Adding to this, once a schedule is decided could we have some kind of example that blocks out which part of each real life day would be "day" and "night" for this game? My brain is just having a hell of a time grasping it in text format.

[imepro]

How does this look as a visual? (*We're rearranging how sign-ups look also)

[quickpersuader]

oh thank god that makes it so much easier to wrap my head around, thank you

[imepro]

WE HAVE ANNOUNCED IT ON DISCORD NOW, and also the signups reflect this!

[imepro]

1. Characters will be in the Graveyard from that day forward if they die in the first night!

2. He is in round two even if you don't sign up; sign-ups are for coordinating with your unit so that you know who's going to be around for what day.

3. If you need your character to be pulled out entirely or pulled out early, you can assume that the hosts kicked them out or otherwise that the character was never there in the first place - it's left up to the player either way, so choose whichever works best.

[skyshard]

Perfect, thank you so much

[vitainmorte]

theres 500 words in each comment here and im blind anyway so


what's the consensus on playing multiple characters in the same run

[imepro]

Multiple characters may be played in a single run!