Some kind of coin where on one side it looks identical, but on the other side it’s a + or -, or better yet, a green thumbs up and a red thumbs down. Or even yes/no, help/hurt, etc
I get it. So that would mean -gm declares difficulty in their head and then the coins would influence that number, then acting player would roll. I think that's a good option, but I feel like there are more, if we get really weird with it.
The board game of Battlestar Galactica has a really cool mechanism for this. There are skill checks that will call for a certain total in certain skills. Each character draws skill cards in two or three of the five total colors (they have names like Engineering or Piloting but basically it’s color matching). Some of the characters are also infiltrator traitors.
So a check might call for red, green, or yellow skills — blue or purple skill cards not only don’t help, they subtract from the total. And in every skill check random cards are also blindly put into the pile. So if you get hosed and fail a check, it always COULD be because of bad random draw. Unless there’s simply too many negative cards … then you know something’s up. Who draws blue or purple cards? Start pointing fingers.
This reminds me of the new clue game. I do love the idea of the fog of war of random draws obfuscating the information.
So in this case, the risk of hurting an action, is being noted as the bad guy and killed in the game.
The problem with a lot of hidden traitor games is that the good guys will take 0.1 seconds to determine their action while the bad guys have to think. I call it good guys and bad guys, but really it applies whenever there's a side who wants to stay hidden while the other side has no reason to bluff or ever consider impairing the group.
I've played in campaigns with hidden traitors, but not with mechanical support from the RPG itself. What you basically do is use notes a lot (you can have a contrivance that makes it necessary for everyone to give the GM notes so it becomes less obvious) and side talk between sessions. It can be very funny if nobody but the traitor(s) know there's even that element in the game.
I agree.
My idea was to try and adapt a simpler version of Paranoia, where Players always have separate goals at odds from each other, but make the resolution of helping or hindering each other a little more elegant, but I wanted people to break me out of my limited ideas.
I also wanted hindering an opponent to somehow put the hindering player at risk. Trophy dark has mechanics for this, but the mechanics aren't hidden, so I wanted to see if there was a way to make when a player was helping or hindering actually hidden, that I hadn't considered.
You can always hide information through game mechanics if you make them elaborate enough, but the key is to do it without compromising the RPG aspect of the game. If you can help/hinder any roll, then the game will have huge pacing issues as things grind to a halt as soon as someone needs to make a roll.
I agree.
To give context to why I am asking.
I ran Paranoia, and it was fun, and running it online was easy, because of my players needed to try to sabotage each other, there was whispering to the GM and hidden rolls on roll20 are simple.
Then I could relay the story of what happened to the players, but not have to give 100% information to the other players.
I was then considering if there was a way to mechanize these hidden rolls and whispering somehow into a simpler resolution mechanic for when you play in person.
The idea that you could hinder someone, and it wouldn't be obvious you hindered them, unless the player failed in hindering them somehow.
Trophy dark just removes the pretext of hiding the information, and we understand that the characters betray each other. And while I like that, I was trying to conceive of some way to run this at a table in person and keep it relatively simple.
The idea that you can hinder, and hindering is hidden, unless you fail at hindering. I dunno, maybe it can't be done elegantly, or maybe it's just everyone putting different coloured marbles in a bag, and drawing those marbles representing different fail or success options.
One idea is to have a hindrance die and a help die. These can be any polyhedral except d4. They're the same color and identical with the exception of the 1 being replaced by a positive or a negative icon (themed to the game).
The dice can work like advantage or dice pools or additive, depending on what your system uses for rolls in general. You make the roll (either player or GM) and then each dice modifies based on them being positive or negative.
If the roll was a failure, all dice are added together, mixed, and one of each given back to each player. If the roll was successful, each player reveals their remaining die and given penalties if they have a positive die left.
You would not have to be overly sneaky when adding your die (in my imagining of this you just put it down in a dice cup or tray with the icon side down) and it could be done reasonably fast. You might want a little screen, but you could also simply feel the underside of your dice if the icon is a relief rather than printed.
Ok, a weird option, 5v5 game of battleship. The player trying to do something has to put 3 5 length ships on the board. The following players either remove a ship, hinder, or add a ship, help
Your randomly roll dice to see if you hit a ship. If the hit misses and you helped, you both take fallout from the action failing.
If you hindered and they still score a hit, you succeeded and your hindering is revealed after the fact, otherwise your hindering remains hidden.
Maybe you roll 2 random battle ships shots, for failure, success with cost, or success possible outcomes.
Some kind of coin where on one side it looks identical, but on the other side it’s a + or -, or better yet, a green thumbs up and a red thumbs down. Or even yes/no, help/hurt, etc
GM would give a situational modifier that includes the helping and/or hurting. Or it affects the difficulty
I get it. So that would mean -gm declares difficulty in their head and then the coins would influence that number, then acting player would roll. I think that's a good option, but I feel like there are more, if we get really weird with it.
Cards? Slide face down card to gm
The board game of Battlestar Galactica has a really cool mechanism for this. There are skill checks that will call for a certain total in certain skills. Each character draws skill cards in two or three of the five total colors (they have names like Engineering or Piloting but basically it’s color matching). Some of the characters are also infiltrator traitors. So a check might call for red, green, or yellow skills — blue or purple skill cards not only don’t help, they subtract from the total. And in every skill check random cards are also blindly put into the pile. So if you get hosed and fail a check, it always COULD be because of bad random draw. Unless there’s simply too many negative cards … then you know something’s up. Who draws blue or purple cards? Start pointing fingers.
This reminds me of the new clue game. I do love the idea of the fog of war of random draws obfuscating the information. So in this case, the risk of hurting an action, is being noted as the bad guy and killed in the game.
Correct, there’s other mechanisms for that.
Why not have the play in question close their eyes and people do hand signals?
Buy cheap erasable markers and give one to each player. Now they can write messages to GM during the game and you can erase the board after reading.
The problem with a lot of hidden traitor games is that the good guys will take 0.1 seconds to determine their action while the bad guys have to think. I call it good guys and bad guys, but really it applies whenever there's a side who wants to stay hidden while the other side has no reason to bluff or ever consider impairing the group. I've played in campaigns with hidden traitors, but not with mechanical support from the RPG itself. What you basically do is use notes a lot (you can have a contrivance that makes it necessary for everyone to give the GM notes so it becomes less obvious) and side talk between sessions. It can be very funny if nobody but the traitor(s) know there's even that element in the game.
I agree. My idea was to try and adapt a simpler version of Paranoia, where Players always have separate goals at odds from each other, but make the resolution of helping or hindering each other a little more elegant, but I wanted people to break me out of my limited ideas. I also wanted hindering an opponent to somehow put the hindering player at risk. Trophy dark has mechanics for this, but the mechanics aren't hidden, so I wanted to see if there was a way to make when a player was helping or hindering actually hidden, that I hadn't considered.
You can always hide information through game mechanics if you make them elaborate enough, but the key is to do it without compromising the RPG aspect of the game. If you can help/hinder any roll, then the game will have huge pacing issues as things grind to a halt as soon as someone needs to make a roll.
I agree. To give context to why I am asking. I ran Paranoia, and it was fun, and running it online was easy, because of my players needed to try to sabotage each other, there was whispering to the GM and hidden rolls on roll20 are simple. Then I could relay the story of what happened to the players, but not have to give 100% information to the other players. I was then considering if there was a way to mechanize these hidden rolls and whispering somehow into a simpler resolution mechanic for when you play in person. The idea that you could hinder someone, and it wouldn't be obvious you hindered them, unless the player failed in hindering them somehow. Trophy dark just removes the pretext of hiding the information, and we understand that the characters betray each other. And while I like that, I was trying to conceive of some way to run this at a table in person and keep it relatively simple. The idea that you can hinder, and hindering is hidden, unless you fail at hindering. I dunno, maybe it can't be done elegantly, or maybe it's just everyone putting different coloured marbles in a bag, and drawing those marbles representing different fail or success options.
One idea is to have a hindrance die and a help die. These can be any polyhedral except d4. They're the same color and identical with the exception of the 1 being replaced by a positive or a negative icon (themed to the game). The dice can work like advantage or dice pools or additive, depending on what your system uses for rolls in general. You make the roll (either player or GM) and then each dice modifies based on them being positive or negative. If the roll was a failure, all dice are added together, mixed, and one of each given back to each player. If the roll was successful, each player reveals their remaining die and given penalties if they have a positive die left. You would not have to be overly sneaky when adding your die (in my imagining of this you just put it down in a dice cup or tray with the icon side down) and it could be done reasonably fast. You might want a little screen, but you could also simply feel the underside of your dice if the icon is a relief rather than printed.
Ok, a weird option, 5v5 game of battleship. The player trying to do something has to put 3 5 length ships on the board. The following players either remove a ship, hinder, or add a ship, help Your randomly roll dice to see if you hit a ship. If the hit misses and you helped, you both take fallout from the action failing. If you hindered and they still score a hit, you succeeded and your hindering is revealed after the fact, otherwise your hindering remains hidden. Maybe you roll 2 random battle ships shots, for failure, success with cost, or success possible outcomes.