On Handling Dead Replacements

[NicoleAndDime]

There's some... unique problems with running a setup like grand idea or other collaborative decks. Here's one of them that also comes up in theme game design with one of my favorite types of mechanics: dead player interaction.

When dead players are effectively still playing the game, there can be some issues that crop up if they end up abandoning the game (Pretty reasonable especially if the dead player interaction isn't immediately evident or possible to engage with) or, more concerningly, are needed to be replaced due to something like a leak of confidential information.

This leads to an interesting problem, because publicly searching for a replacement confirms that dead player interaction is present within the game. This can lead to players with otherwise unconfirmable roles to be able to confirm themself since they now have a mod confirmed announcement their role exists (assuming no counterclaims of dead interaction), and can potentially stall out games waiting for someone willing to replace into a corpse. This seems unideal.

The way I see it there's a few solutions.

1. Dead players don't get replaced. I don't think forcing activity requirements for dead players makes sense, especially if their continued activity could only serve to help another team. This doesn't really work for OGI influences though.
2. Dead players are help to activity standards, even if there is no dead player interaction. In contrast, if this was present in every setup that "could" have dead player interaction, this makes that no longer confirming to a player. Problem is obviously chaining people to a game they no longer have an impact on in any way.
3. You do a "secret replacement" by PMing individual players looking for a replacement. This also feels unideal and would potentially ruin those players from the ability to replace into living slots later as it gives them the OGI information that the game needed a system like this in the first place. It would potentially work if you also were looking for a living player replacement, though finding that many people may be difficult. It also means A: All dead player interacting roles and only them learn about the replacement which means fakeclaims of these roles that do not know about the replacements can be caught mechanically where they couldn't before. ( And likewise the trueclaims can identify each other mechanically) Or B: They aren't told (so a player could try to, for example, revive player A only to actually unknowingly revive their replacement which doesn't really seem fair since they didn't know that beforehand)
4. You publicly confirm dead player interacting roles DO exist so the replacement being public knowledge now isn't giving anything away. This is probably the best option for custom theme setups where this can be balanced around. Not really applicable for collaborative decks though.
5. You hold dead players to not activity standards, but spoiler standards so if they do find out information about the game they weren't supposed to, you get a "replacement for them even if there's no dead chat interaction. Essentially a fixed version of option 2, dead players aren't held to activity standards but could result in some players replacing in to do a grand total of nothing by coming into a dead slot in a game they can't interact with.


So basically it's a complete mess. Looking for how you'd deal with this kind of a situation and general suggestions for solutions. Other kinda messy situations that can come up with no clear solution could also be brought up for discussion.

[Ythan]

This is really interesting ego

[Upwards]

I mean if the Mod just says in Dead PT that there's potential Dead Player Interaction in the Setup it fixes most of these issues? Dead players will know not to forget the game and it doesn’t spoiler the living players cuz they can’t hear about it until the Dead Player Interaction takes place anyways.

[NicoleAndDime]

I mean if the Mod just says in Dead PT that there's potential Dead Player Interaction in the Setup it fixes most of these issues? Dead players will know not to forget the game and it doesn’t spoiler the living players cuz they can’t hear about it until the Dead Player Interaction takes place anyways.

That obviously helps, but doesn't really address what happens when a dead player does need to be replaced. This only in theory drops the needed replacement rate down to that of how often living players need replacement.

[Enchant]

Best solve is not run game with dead interactions.

Second best is replace anyway. If you need to replace dead player due mod error, slip or something else, just do it publicly.

Do it even if you don't have dead interactions in this game and directly announce it in rule set to avoid any confirmations ideally. You should think about ruleset before you make game.

I don't think it's problem overall. Need to replace dead is rare. Of course, to replace in game just to be dead is not very exciting, but it's EASY. Players may take this decision easier, because they probably won't have to invest as much time/effort as normal, especially if there's no dead interaction at all.

[Gamma Emerald]

very good point by enchant, see my replace-in to SBWF (slot wasn't dead when I joined but I was DOA by what my predecessor had done)

[AdumbroDeus]

My effective solution has been to announce the possibility of slots effecting the dead in large theme games in the ruleset. This was especially needed in new xkcd because we have a publicly available thread that any that anyone can post to (spoil tagged of course) and usually when people die, it's the first place they head to, but this solution means that unfortunately it being more comfirmable needs to be accounted into your ruleset.

One possible solution in this specific case I had was including "dead slots may be replaced" in the ruleset and some verbage that says that allows for it to not count. Then you could just freely fake replacements by using consenting spectators randomly every so often in your games that don't have these effects so a dead player being replaced doesn't set off alarm bells. And you could asterisk all your recruiting for dead slots with "this may be a dummy replacement". This could have some site rules concerns though.

Alternatively, we could have central a thread of players specifically willing to replace on dead slots that doesn't inform when somebody takes a role.

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

one of the inherent risks of necromancy is that the corpse is unresponsive

[Ythan]

Or too responsive.