Topic: Horror Mansion Survival Game Questions

[lyonsden5]

I just asked Sebastien this via PM but I thought I would ask here as well.

When does the game end? Do we keep going till all are killed or have escaped?

If we decide to do this again should we change the rules so that when the 1st person escapes he or she has won and the game is over? It would make the game quicker and allow fresh people to play.

As it is now the end will be kind of anti-climactic

If it were up for a vote my vote would be play till someone escapes OR till the killer kills everyone.

Thoughts?

[lyonsden5]

No comments? 

Is this a one time game then?

If so perhaps we can pick it up again in a month or two. 

[Najemikon]

My personal feelings are that it's a fantastic idea, great fun, and very well presented thanks to Sailor and yourself, but I think the current system puts too much pressure on the killer and too unbalanced for the players. Me and you got out pretty quick. I know we've joked around about the lack of kills, but really, the questions are fine. James just proved they can be effective! 

I say, drop the free clues, make the killer more powerful and turn some of the rooms into traps. I like the zombies and books ideas, so make the house and it's inhabitants much tougher, to increase their use.

Is it possible to run a Java applet or something to act like dice? Then when you meet the killer, you have to roll the dice and the number decides your fate between indiscriminate, no chance left evisceration; zombiefication; "roll a three, win a key"; or you have to answer a question. Get it wrong and die, get it right, roll again!

Basically, we need to add cruelty. 

[RossRoy]

Basically, we need to add cruelty. 

Yes, we need more kills, more blood, more spattered brains, more gore basically!

[Touti]

I think what we need is to make the players more active.  All we have to do now is select a room and wait for a trivia question to answer.  It is truely unfair for the killer and frankly way to easy for the players, they gotta have to fight for their life so maybe the roles should reversed every 2nd round and make the player try to save his/her life with a trivia question to the killer.

At the start of a game, each player should have to decide if they're gonna be passive or active for the first round and then it would alternate at every round. When in "passive" mode the player has to answer a question from the killer, in "active" mode he/she gets to ask a question to the killer and would have their live spared if the killer doesn't find the answer.

I would also make the game a bit more active by adding trap devices here and there.  When a player gets caught in a trap, the killer would telepathically dispatch a question so the players would be less likely to find their way out without ever having to defend themselves.  To prevent the game from reaching and end too quickly I would compensate by giving the players 3 lives at the beginning of the game.

[Touti]

Thinking...........

There's something I don't understand since the beginning of the game.  I thought that Sailor wanted the game to be played in PM's to prevent "outsiders" from secretely helping the players with the trivia questions.  The thing is that the questions have been published in the forums BEFORE being sent to the players and the players only have once chance of answering so I'm wondering......why do we put all this extra work on the hands of the host, why does he have to do everything twice ?

We could play it all in the open, there's no reason to make the host send PM's that are only copies of things he already wrote in the forum.

[Achim]

I thought the idea of wending the questions in PM was, that only the person being asked can see them and therefore the other players can't help. My impression was that Sailor only revealed he questions after they had been answered.

[Kathy]

I'm easy - whatever the majority wants is fine by me. As far as the killing goes, I've been lucky to have only been asked one question; if I had to answer any of the others I would have been dead long ago. 

[lyonsden5]

As far as posting the questions in the fourm I was following Sailors lead. He posted the questions in the "update" and PMd them to the player. Not sure what order he used but I have been doing the PMs and the update at the same time (copy/paste  ). I would send the PMs them post the update. Basically all at the same time.

I like seeing the questions the other players have to answer. It gives you something to look forward to even if you're not being attacked that round. I would hope nobody is sending another player the answer if they know it.  On the other hand, even if it were PM only there is nothing to stop the victim from forwarding the PM to someone else (or many others) to get their input.

I like the ideas I have read so far. I like the traps in the rooms. I like the defensive question approach too. I agree there isn't much to do for the player. It would be good if we could change that a bit. It would also be good if we weren't so dependent on the host to keep things moving. If the questions are posted in the thread as well as PMd there really is no need to send everything to the host, only to have him or her forward the information. It would speed things up a bit. Of course yuo would still want the New Round Updates and you would need the host to tell you about the books/traps you find, but the attacks and replies could be done between attacker and victim.

It's a really cool game for us movie buffs. I would like to see it continue. I still think we play till one person escapes, or until everyone is killed, then the game is over and we start again. New killer, new host, new players.

[Touti]

I think we need to try to automate this.  If we do it right we won't even need a host.  Here's how I see it.

1: We have to define the basic layout of the mansion.  Let say it has a basement, a ground floor, a first floor, two stairs between basement and ground floor and two stairs going to the first floor.  We could also have a backyard, a garden and a garage.

2: We define the attributes of the rooms.  For example, kitchen and dining room can only be on the ground floor, bedrooms can only be on the first floor.  Library, showroom, game room etc could be on any floor.

3: With all of this stored into a database, a simple php program could generate the layout of the mansion at the beginning fo the game.  It would "decide" which floor the rooms are on (for those that can be on any), what position on the floor it occupies. The exit of the mansion would be either the Garage, the Garden or the Backyard and would also be picked by the program so a player may actually have to go back inside the house.

4: We could either have the program place the books and the traps randomly in the rooms or let the Killer do it.

5: All the players would start at the same place but everyone would be able to see a map of the mansion so at each round they would be able to see by themselves where they can go and a host would no longer be needed to tell them where they can move.

6: The whole host job could be handled by the program.   I could even use the API of the forum to automatically post messages to let others know what's happening.

That would take some time to program and the first version would no be graphical in any way but as time goes it could be developped into something very nice.

[RossRoy]

I think we need to try to automate this.  If we do it right we won't even need a host.  Here's how I see it.

 

[SailorRipley]

I really like Eric's suggestions.  Man, if we could be able to automate the hosting process that would be a blast.

About the PM questions, initially I thought the best way to do it was to just send the questions to each player so no one could try and PM the answer to other players, but then I thought it would be cooler to add the question in the game thread so everybody could look forward to what was being asked.

I'm thinking if we could possibly automate the killer as well by building a trivia questions database, but perhaps that would be just way too much. I'm just sorry I haven't been able to be around as much but I'll try to change that soon. 

[Touti]

I really like Eric's suggestions.  Man, if we could be able to automate the hosting process that would be a blast.

About the PM questions, initially I thought the best way to do it was to just send the questions to each player so no one could try and PM the answer to other players, but then I thought it would be cooler to add the question in the game thread so everybody could look forward to what was being asked.

I'm thinking if we could possibly automate the killer as well by building a trivia questions database, but perhaps that would be just way too much. I'm just sorry I haven't been able to be around as much but I'll try to change that soon. 

The role of the Killer could be quite fun if the game allows for it.  It could be automated but personally I prefer knowing that there's a real person behind it.  I think what we need is to give him more mobility and a way of attacking more than on person at a time so the job becomes more fun, basically we give him more control on what he does, who he attacks and where. It could be done with deputies, maybe the players who fail to answer their questions could become zombies instead of simply being kicked out of the game.  They could be dispatched by the Killer to attack a player but they would have to come up with their own questions so they would maintain an active participation in the game.  For the Killer's mobility, we could define a number of secret passages and have the RHMG (Random Horror Mansion Generator  ) place them at the beginning of the game.  To spice things up a little for the Killer he would know where the entries are but not where they lead.

[Touti]

  4th coffee just kicked in, my posting abilities can't keep up with my brain now

I just got the craziest idea, I hope you like it.   The question has been asked as to when the game ends..... How about a game that never ends ?

A computer program ("Mother" ) becomes the Host and there is no designated killer.  When a player enters the game, "Mother" would decide if he/she starts as a "Zombie" or a "Player".  During the course of the game, events, traps, curse books, blessing books, failure or success to answer a question and any other things we can come up with would make the player switch from Zombie to Player.

This would be fun because those who like to play would not risk to be out early in the game and have to wait a long time for a new one to start.  People could also join the game at any time without any disadvantage since there really is no goal, no beginning and no end.

Edit: Another idea, curse/blessing books would stay where the RHMG put them and could be used more than once but every time a player opens it, it could either be a curse or a blessing and it would be randomly selected by Mother.  When a player feels he's in trouble, he could go back to a room where ne knows a book is present and take the risk of opening it.

[Achim]

Eric, I like your idea... If it can be done and the others agree, I am all for it. It would probably help to take the pressure away to reply to a message in a certain given time, which recently could bring the game to a short halt.