Worst role ideas?

[Glork]

dammit, can we please stop the "post restriction" roles which still allow morse? all they do is frustrate. if it's meant to prevent communication, ban code. if it's just meant to frustrate, then you're a bastard.

QFT

[blahgo]

Townie with OCD

Once you post you must keep posting, but you have to make small shanges to each post. If your post line is interupted you die. If the person who interupted you is a Doctor you become Chuck Norris

[Fuldu]

dammit, can we please stop the "post restriction" roles which still allow morse? all they do is frustrate. if it's meant to prevent communication, ban code. if it's just meant to frustrate, then you're a bastard.

Oh, let me fix that for you:

dammit, can we please stop the "post restriction" roles?

That's much better.

Admittedly, they have a place in this thread. The role from my WRE Mafia that I was most interested to watch was the Soft-Spoken Mimic, a player that can only post in bold if the bold is copied directly from a post made by another player during the same game day. Of course, that role died Night One, so I didn't get to see it.

[Yosarian2]

dammit, can we please stop the "post restriction" roles which still allow morse? all they do is frustrate. if it's meant to prevent communication, ban code. if it's just meant to frustrate, then you're a bastard.

It's hard to ban code though. I mean, let's say all a person can do is bark, then someone else is going to say "bark once for yes and twice for no." Then if the person barks once, do you modkill them?

Some kinds of post restiction can work, but generally only if it's easier and/or more fun to more-or-less follow the restiction rather then to try and get around it with a code.

[Glork]

It's hard to ban code though. I mean, let's say all a person can do is bark, then someone else is going to say "bark once for yes and twice for no." Then if the person barks once, do you modkill them?

You may not use numerous Voting actions to communicate via morse code or any other means.

You make it clear up front that you will not tolerate attempts to break or get around the coding ban. If I see somebody making an extended series of Votes/FoSes/IGMEOYs, I'll check it out to see if there's a hidden message in there. If I think there is, I'll apprehend the poster and take appropriate action.


I don't see why this is a problem. It's easy both to spot and to enforce.

[Turbovolver]

I never understood those "huge blocks of votes" codes T_T

[Fuldu]

My feeling is that, with the exception of game-wide post restrictions like Haiku, if you have to make a rule disallowing code, you've probably created a bad post restriction, to the extent that that's not redundant. In general, the more difficult you make it for someone to communicate in the game, the less likely they are to try. And in a game often plagued by lurkers and replacements, it's hard to imagine how the meager benefits of a post-restricted role could outweigh that.

[Adele]

It's hard to ban code though. I mean, let's say all a person can do is bark, then someone else is going to say "bark once for yes and twice for no." Then if the person barks once, do you modkill them?

You may not use numerous Voting actions to communicate via morse code or any other means.

You make it clear up front that you will not tolerate attempts to break or get around the coding ban. If I see somebody making an extended series of Votes/FoSes/IGMEOYs, I'll check it out to see if there's a hidden message in there. If I think there is, I'll apprehend the poster and take appropriate action.

I don't see why this is a problem. It's easy both to spot and to enforce.

Oh yeah. Again, this is something which I consider implied. PR codes just mess the game up, wheras forcing someone to walk people through their reasoning but not actually

say

it might be really fun. I thought once that I'd enjoy that challenge.

The players will help out too, don't forget. If one of them cracked a code, exactly how many seconds before they present their findings to the town?

Same with banning claims. If Glork's banned from claiming doc, then the second Turbo says "ok, Seol claimed vig, Fritz claimed SK, Glork clearly means he's the doc", the lightning bolt shoots down.

[Fiasco]

Yosarian's right, though; there's a grey area between what's a code and what isn't.

I don't see why this is a problem. It's easy both to spot and to enforce.

So what would you do about the "bark once/twice" example?

[GreenLiquid]

Same with banning claims. If Glork's banned from claiming doc, then the second Turbo says "ok, Seol claimed vig, Fritz claimed SK, Glork clearly means he's the doc", the lightning bolt shoots down.

I don't see why there would be a problem in this scenario. As long as Glork denies that he's the doc, it's still pretty much in keeping.

[Glork]

Yosarian's right, though; there's a grey area between what's a code and what isn't.

I don't see why this is a problem. It's easy both to spot and to enforce.

So what would you do about the "bark once/twice" example?

Depends on the situation, I think.

Most importantly, though, I feel that if you intend to cut off a type of communication, you should make it explicit up front. Let them know before that it's not allowed before it becomes an issue, and try to limit that grey area as much as possible. I don't think you can ever eliminate it entirely, but I still think that if you know what you want to permit and you can express that clearly to the players, you'll avoid any unnecessary debate about legality of actions or posts.

[Ether]

dotdash dashdotdash
dotdotdot dashdotdashdot
dotdotdash dashdash

vote: al_kohaulec

(Then I noticed that the restriction only applied to voting, but that's not the point.)

[IH]

If you're going to make it where the player can't communicate at all, what's the point of giving them the restriction? Like m4yhem's pikachu one? What was he going to do? Tell everyone Pikachu until they get fed up, and just lynch him?

If it's a PR that they can convery rational thoughts with, then a code ban on them would be reasonable.

If someone can only bark, and can't use a code, they might as well be lynched day one, because they're not going to help the town at all.

[Fircoal]

If you're going to make it where the player can't communicate at all, what's the point of giving them the restriction? Like m4yhem's pikachu one? What was he going to do? Tell everyone Pikachu until they get fed up, and just lynch him?

What game was this in? I'd like to see it.
And good point.
As for post-restriction roles, I am not in favor of them.

[Ghyrt]

You are

Ernest Vincent Wright

, author of

Gadsby

You are not allowed to use the letter 'e' except when voting. Your posts must be correctly spelled, follow the conventional rules of standard English grammar, and use no abbreviations, numbers, emoticons, pictures, or other non-punctuation symbols. Breaking or circumventing this rule will result in mod kill.

[TheEyeOfMordor]

How does he vote then?

[Thok]

You are

Ernest Vincent Wright

, author of

Gadsby

Georges Perec is much cooler than Ernest Vincent Wright.

[Elephant Hell]

How does he vote then?

I had an idea like this - I even have a role PM written without the letter 'e' (except a small note at the bottom to explain the restriction). If I actually used that role 'e' would be allowed in names, but they would have to find some other way to show that they want to lynch people, such as

Kill:

or

Lynch:

, although the former could easily be misinterpreted.

However, Ghyrt's version allows the letter 'e' in voting.

[IH]

What game was this in? I'd like to see it.
And good point.
As for post-restriction roles, I am not in favor of them.

No, there's games where everyone has a post restriction, or else they can't use their power at night. There's no vanillas, and it's usually pretty interesting.

M4yhem was a pikachu cop in Post Restriction 3.

Also, Green Liquid, are you planning a forth?

[spectrumvoid]

I want in for PR 4!!!

[Seol]

Someone has written an application which converts normal text into "post-restricted" text and back again. That's clearly going against the intention of a post restriction and, whilst it shows a great deal of ingenuity, is frankly ridiculous.

The point of a hard post restriction (of the sort "you may only bark") is that you cannot communicate, with the possible exception of emphasis and timing. I'd say "once for yes and twice for no" is code - it's a really simple code, but it's obvious when it's being used. If it's banned, then... well, yeah, if someone uses code you modkill them. That's what happens when you break the rules.

It's rare for someone to have a hard post restriction role, but sometimes you get roles which can post-restrict other players.

[Fircoal]

What game was this in? I'd like to see it.
And good point.
As for post-restriction roles, I am not in favor of them.

No, there's games where everyone has a post restriction, or else they can't use their power at night. There's no vanillas, and it's usually pretty interesting.

M4yhem was a pikachu cop in Post Restriction 3.

Also, Green Liquid, are you planning a forth?

Post restrictions for everybody if different, they probably are better then just 1 post restriction.

[Ghyrt]

I think permanent post restrictions should be used for 1 of 2 reasons:

1) To balance a powerful role. For example, a super-vig might be muted.
2) To make the game more interesting. I can understand if people disagree with this, but if you don't like it, don't play theme games.

In any case, a post restriction should usually not be the type where code is useful for easier communication. A good example I saw was where a guy had to speak in rhyme with a certain poetic structure. Sure he could use code, but he'd still have to write poetry.

[Ghyrt]

I had an idea for a bastard mod game:

The premise is that the game is perfectly normal game... with one exception: everyone (minus one) has a post restriction because someone has stolen their ability to speak normally. The post restrictions will go away once that person is dead. The catch is that nobody has a post restriction and everyone is told (via PM) that they're the post restrictor in addition to their other role. Everyone is also warned (secretly), that as the post restrictor, being lynched will result in the death of X other people on their team.

[Yosarian2]

In any case, a post restriction should usually not be the type where code is useful for easier communication. A good example I saw was where a guy had to speak in rhyme with a certain poetic structure. Sure he could use code, but he'd still have to write poetry.

You mean, me?

Grrr...

Actually, it wasn't so bad. Early in the game, it was rather fun, but it was still more difficult to participate in a useful manner, and quite hard to defend myself when people decided to attack me. Still, note that a person with a post rescrtiction, even one that allows that much communication, simply will not post as much content or push the game as well as a person without a post restriction. A "fun" restriction like that isn't necessarally a bad thing. but if you've got even one post-restricted person in a game you're modding, you've got to be that much quicker about prodding/replacing lurkers in order to keep up participation.

Another post restriction I has was one where I always had to agree with two people but disagree with two other people (and as it turned out, the people I had to disagree with were town and the people I had to agree with were scum). I did ok with that one, I think, I actually managed to help the town win dispite the restriction, but the vaugeness of it really got to me and made it quite difficult for me to post much at all. It was an interesting challange to overcome, and I had some fun doing it, but it basically forced me to be a semi-lurker for most of that game.