Is this a good mechanic concept? (Parallel Worlds)

[KittyTacky]

There are two sets of topics: Main 1, Scum PT 1; Main 2, Scum PT 2. The two "worlds" have separate players, actions, etc. They can also end separately. If one ends in a town win and the other a scum win, then it's a draw. Players in one world can't read the other world.

To prevent it from being inconsequential, there is another mechanic: the town, in addition to voting on an elimination, votes on a short message (up to 300 characters) to send to the other world at the end of the day (any player can propose a message and the rest vote on it). Same for the mafia PTs.

Now to make this mechanic useful there would be PRs that interact with this concept: roles informed of something in the other world, roles that can "banish" someone to the other world, roles that investigate or kill players in the other world...

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Should I lower or raise the character limit? What about flavor? Or particularly unique role ideas? Has this been done already?

[Gypyx]

well, this is pretty much TENET

generally, players aren't gonna be really incentivized to try to interact so much with the other thread outside of mech

spectating is gonna be hard

playing the game, stomping only to have the game go "other thread bad, you lose"

speaking of which, having a thread win faster than the other would be hard to handle

[KittyTacky]

Yeah I'm trying to think of some ways for the threads to be able to help each other aside from investigating players there and sending the results to the thread through the voted-on message.

[SirCakez]

You should check out Varsoon's Space Dandy 2 game. It uses a mechanic very similar to this idea.

[zoraster]

I tried something similar long, long ago with mixed success: viewtopic.php?t=13270&start=0 and viewtopic.php?t=13271&start=0

The second post has the details of how it was played.

[zoraster]

It depends on the exact mechanic you're using but the fundamental design problem with parallel universe type of stuff is this question:

How do you design a game to make players feel like the other game(s)

matter

without necessarily requiring that they read all of it?

And your answer to that question, how you integrate or don't integrate the games, will inevitably bring further problems including pacing, win conditions, and (if you decide to have people switch universes) people being forced to essentially "replace" into a game that they were already in. There is a real risk that the game becomes very complicated, and while some complexity can add interest, players should always have a clarity of purpose.