My name
is Alisae!
And and this is a MD post
about uPicks!
Because I LOVE uPicks.
So, the reason why I'm writing this is mostly because-- And before you go on, this refers to Anything uPicks where you pick your flavour. But anyways, uPicks are fun for the most part. You get to take your favorite characters or things and give it to a moderator and hopefully get a role back based on it. That's essentially what a uPick is. And when they are done (I think my players had a blast?) really well you have a blast. They're inspiring. You love them. You could tell the moderator's heart and soul was poored into them in just about every way, from research to designing the actual roles.
You want to mod just like them because they inspire you.
Hell, In Memory was the game that made me fall in LOVE with uPicks. And then there are uPicks that are like "Well, I guess that happened." Like, they're alright. They aren't really super amazing, but they aren't really low quality. They have potential to be better. And then you have uPicks that are complete trainwrecks when it comes to the roles. The setups are unbalanced/poorly designed, or there wasn't enough effort put into the research, or the game's execution was poor, or even all of these things. And it can be a really big turn off. SO!
You are a mod
and you want to try out a uPick because you heard they're fun to run and a great experience for everyone.
And the greatest uPicks really hyped up your expectations and inspire you.
Where do you start?
Well right here!
On this MD discussion!
And we're not going to talk about bastard games.
Those are different okay?
I'm sure you understand.
This will be also off the basis that you're not a new mod.
You know your strengths and how to design setups.
You know if you like super complex swingy role madness game or just a plain simple game.
You have your inspirations to draw from.
And you have a backup/reviewer ready to go.
And this isn't really going to be about building custom mechanics, that's something you sorta have to learn for yourself.
If you aren't creative the good luck, because reading an article isn't going to help you suddenly become creative.
--
Part 0: Get a Reviewer.
Do it.
Please.
I shouldn't even need to explain this.
We don't need unbalanced shit that was halfassed.
ty.
please clap.
--
Part 1: What uPick?
Before you just put an uPick into the queue, you got to ask yourself a big question
What is it you want to mod?
Do you want to mod a uPick based on something nobody knows? How heavy do you want to limit your player's choices?
Let's start with this, because this can get your game taken out of queue if not done
properly.
If you do this.
it will be very hard to get your game filled.
Let's say you put into queue a uPick based on 100% Orange Juice (for those who don't know what this is, it's basicly Mario Party but with 100% extra desu).
I don't have that many friends that do know about this game.
Or else I'd be playing it with them.
a uPick based on that isn't going to fill just by itself.
You as a moderator have to help move it forward.
This can be done by supplying a list of characters.
If you have a good modding reputation, then you'll get people to play your game because you're modding it.
But if you don't support it correctly, it will fail, and it will be taken out of queue, and you will be sad.
So, when picking what you want to mod a uPick based on, the broader it is the better.
Anything uPicks will always fill, because everyone loves those.
Pokemon uPicks have lots of room for those who are A. Really great pokemon fans and know all of the how many critters are there again? D. Those that play fangames and want to test your knowledge about them. C. Those who just know the 151 or D. Even those who only know what the fuck a Pikachu or a Charizard is. I swear everyone has heard of atleast those to critters.
This way you won't have to worry about conflicts in picks (when a bunch of people send in the same picks)
The broader the game you want to mod is, the better.
Now, just remember to actually put your uPick in queue and GET A REVIEWER. Or two. Or even three if you really wanted.
I cannot stress how important it is for you to get a reviewer, a halfassed setup that wasn't really thought out for balance can lead to unforseen consquences and you being on the wrong end of a pitchfork.
--
Part 2: Your game just filled and you got all of your picks! Starting the setup.
Well, hopefully you asked to be given 3 picks to attempt to avoid conflicts.
And you rolled alignments before designing roles (you can design roles and then roll alignments but you gotta know what you're doing if you do this)
What do you do?
"LET'S TAKE THE FIRST PICK THIS PERSON SENT ME AND USE IT!"
nononono that's bad.
By doing this you're limiting your setup creating potential and the amount of creative freedom you are giving yourself.
Put all of your cards on the table
and pick the ones you want to play.
That's the best way to go about this.
But, if you do have conflicts, then let's go over that.
Basicly
you need to put everyone's picks out on a spreadsheet.
And then found out which are the duplicate picks
and try to PoE it from there.
And if it can go either way, and the players are different alignments
then if you have a clear idea for what one flavour could be but it's more suited for a specific alignment
go with that.
if they are the same alignment and interchangable you can rng it.
For example
Let's say two people submitted the pick Junko Enoshima from Dangaropa and Yang from RWBY
Person A rolled town and Person B rolled scum.
While you are having a good idea coming up for a town aligned role for Yang but a hard time coming up for a scum aligned role for her (even though there IS a clear answer here) and you have an amazing idea for a scum aligned role for Junko but having a hard time coming up with town role for her, just give the Junko one to the guy who roled scum and the Yang one to the person who rolled town.
The less broad the more duplicates you have and thus the bigger the headache.
Anyways, we're deciding which picks to use now.
So let's start with the picks you know about.
Because I am going to say an honest truth here:
If you give a mod flavour that they are familiar with, they are more likely to give you that specific pick because they have a clearer idea of what they want to do with it.
This is something I kinda did a lot in For Us' setup design.
for Lovebirds I went with the Assassination Classroom pick over their League pick, because while they had avis themed based off of Rakan and Xayah, I didn't really know much about league anymore or those two characters specificly. I quit playing it during season 4.
Having read the Manga for Assassination Classroom, I had a clearer idea of how those two characters could work in a mafia context, and I went with my ideas. And because of this, I had a clearier idea of where I wanted to go with flavour. Everything just ends up working better when you play to your strengths.
However my final idea for Irina ended up being a bit too strong so it was nerfed a bit D:
This is something I did with Clumsy's and Shaziro's role, GiF's troll pick, Human Sequencer's and Piegirl's pick, and Cabd's and Ffery's pick (however this one was a bit troubling for me to put into a mafia context even though I knew I wanted to use it).
This part can go by smoothly because you know what you are going to design.
But okay, what do you go from there.
After all, the scary Nacho and Tammy hydra send in picks from
wait for it...
...
...
TV SHOWS
OH THE HORROR
POOR ALISAE DOESN'T WATCH TV SHOWS THAT AREN'T JAPANEESE CARTOONS!
WHAT WILL E EVER DO????????
--
Part 3. Working with stuff you don't know how to work with.
This the part where you do probably the most boring but probably the most important part:
Research.
This is important because first off, if you don't do the research and you know nothing about their picks then how are you going to design the role?
Hell, I even halfass this part because I am a boring motherfucker who just cannot be arsed okay?
I am sure you understand.
And this is where you can seriously dissapoint some people.
I was scared as hell I would dissapoint Nacho and Tammy when I designed their role.
It wasn't something I was comfortable in designing and I felt like I was fucking it up 10 times over.
But the poor amount of research can show.
For example, Me and Socrates submitted a bunch of picks from the series of games, NeiR to RadiantCowbells.
Did we know he had no knowledge of the flavour and was going to have to research it.
Yes, probably.
So he does and we get this
And while okay, the role does kinda fit, the flavour here just felt kinda unstatisfying.
Like NieR:Automata is a dramatic game with dramatic stuff
and the flavour for this just feels dissapointing.
Like design wise it's good
mostly because of the fact that it works for who the androids are.
But it's extremely surface level analysis of the character and RC even kinda makes comments towards us for picking something his research dictated was fanservicy.
So, how can you do research right?
Well, wikis tbh are generally a good place.
I mean
schools teach you it's not.
but it's a good place to start and usually if you're a lazy fuck like me then you'll probably rely on them since 9 times out of 10 they're mostly what you got.
But you also got Youtube.
For example, going back to NieR:Automata,
if you wanted to know what that game was about, there are plenty of videos on youtube describing the story of the game.
And I'm sure there are many other sources that do this as well.
General rule of thumb is the more research you do, the more options you have.
Because putting some roles in a mafia context
can be hard.
--
Part 4: Designing Roles.
Okay so, I'm going to attempt to dig into some approach to design roles!
There may be more then one apparent option.
There in fact, always is more then one way to design a role.
I'm not really going to be plugging these into setups either, because that's a different story.
It's moreso here to help guide you on a process of how to design a role so the flavour works out.
Also
if you want to write flavour
and that is your thing
do everyone a favor:
do it right and make it good and make sure it's researched
otherwise it just makes you look bad, because we can tell if it was poorly researched. Oh we can definitely tell.
Also
please find some good art or a good picture for the character you're designing.
It's not hard.
High quality art will make the role pm look good and the quality will speak for itself.
We can design a role based on what they do for a living/what they are. For example
let's take the game Sega Bass Fishing
and you get the pick a "Sega Bass Fisherman"
If we're making a role based on their profession, the pick is pratically screaming at us what it wants to be.
And thus
here is it's role pm.
Just a warning
it's not really that heavy on flavour.
I mean, this is kinda one of the picks where you go
"what the fuck did I just get"
it's also
very hard to write fun flavour for this
you could probably do it
but it is hard due to how broad it is.
Anyways, here is the role pm.
Spoiler: Sega Bass Fisherman
Another example of this being done, but with a of a more flashier role is with the Yandere in For Us. GiF submitted some troll picks, so in return I trolled him back by calling his flavour a bitch and designing a fun role and just going ham on flavour
But it is really true to what the role is.
If you understand what a Yandere is, you understand that they are a stalker that will do anything to keep their senpai safe and make them theirs. They will always have their eye on their senpai. So the role fits it to a T.
Okay, next you can give them a role based on their traits.
Alright, let's go to the Yang example for this.
some character traits of Yang are that she gets really angry and mad when someone touches her hair in combat.
She is also very tanky and strong due to her semblance (I'm not explaining what these are)
She is a close combat fighter.
I'm thinking a few things here.
1-shot Bulletproof for one.
Elite Bodyguard for another.
Bulletproof and Bodyguard are roles that work really well together.
And boom, you got a role that compliments the flavour extremely well.
Spoiler: Yang
Let's do another one.
Let's tackle Junko Enoshima.
She is manipulative
and she brainwash people easily to kill people or kill themselves.
She also doesn't really get in the fight herself too much, but has others fight for her.
So let's make her a Disloyal 1-shot-Modified Compulsive-Loyal-Weak-Vigilante Inventor!
Spoiler: Junko Enoshima
This is just one example of what you can do.
And I kinda feel like I'm reaching the surface to be honest.
But this is really simple
if the character procrastinates, you could try giving them a delayed modifier.
if the character is really impulsive, you could try giving them a compulsive modifier.
if the character is a Slaking you give them a Non-Consecutive modifier.
if the character makes everyone happy around them, you could make her power up other people's roles.
if the character is Haruhi Suzumiya, then make them a Dreaming God.
and I'm not even holding your hand for most of these, I'm still giving you room to design for yourselves. Cowbells did something different with the Slaking flavour in In Memory
are you bored yet?
do you get my point?
Good
There is one last example I want to delve into and that's taking a flavour's values and designing a role off of them.
Like for example, Accelerator from A Certain Magical Index values and wants to have a family due to his lack of one, hence why he feels the need to protect Last Order.
I could go design a role about this, however I feel like their traits and abilities would mostly show in the role pm then their values, so I am going to pick a different example.
Kyousuke Natsume from Little Busters.
This is a character that
btw
spoilers ahead if you haven't read the Light Novels or watched the anime
controls and manipulates a world in which he designs it for the sole purpose of helping Riki and his sister Rin mature due to the fact there was a huge accident and those two are now in charge of saving a bunch of people's lifes.
Designing roles on based on time and world manipulation
is hard.
You can do it
I can do it
but it is hard.
So what does he value here? What are his goals?
He wants to help the protagonist and heroine mature.
However he doesn't always know the correct approach and he makes mistakes.
So as such, we are going to use this as a sample to make him a "Roleblocking Upgrader"
Spoiler: Kyousuke Natsume
--
Part 5: Conclusion
now congradulations
you understand how to sucessfuly get your uPick into queue and design it.
Balancing is another issue which is a whole different topic. It's not something that this is really meant to cover.
I honeslty hope this helps out mods who want to learn how to make fun uPicks for everyone in some way.
Because uPicks can be hard and underwhelming if not done well, but if done well they can be really rewarding and fun and amazing.
And at the end of the day
because you designed a fun uPick for everyone to enjoy
people will come running back for your games.
So yeah I hope this helps its 5:40am I am pretty sure I spent a couple of good hours on this goodbye now.
I hope you enjoy this article on
Holding your Hand
designing uPicks!~Alisae, a uPick enthusiast
