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Detective Game Prototype

Hello Lovelies I normally wouldn't do this but this is an entirely user created Werewolf spinoff created by me and I'm looking for suggestions and concerns about anything as well as questions. If everything looks cool with the set up I'm going to start building an actual game. all feedback is welcome.

Game Set Up

1. Every player will be given a character within the story.

2. There will be a character played by the host.

3. There will be a list with every character at the start of the game that is being played. Other characters will appear in the story some will be regulars that are relevant to the story but will never be eligible for vote or be any role outside just NPC.

4. Nothing in this game is predetermined everyone has an equal chance of rand

5. The game will include 2 factions: the town and the saboteurs

6. The goal of the town is to correctly use flavor and other information to determine the saboteurs. The goal of the saboteurs is to Sabotage the game and trick town.

7. The Host character is the secret agent. The Host can be voted just like anyone else but the host will not directly influence the game in any way unless they win an election.

8. At any point during any phase day or night you may call a vote to solve the game. You will post your account of who you think the saboteurs are and the host character. Every player in the game will then vote to pass the solution. You have to correctly guess the player and the characters. You don't have to directly match them up for instance Neon is ____ you just have to guess Neon Michi Lau are Characters A/C/Z am incorrect vote will instantly lose the game be 100% sure of yourself

9. During the day phase you will cast your votes and elect a town leader. The town leader will be the player with the most votes at the end of the phase. This is not Werewolf they will not be killed they will be given the power to choose a Lieutenant. During the night phase you will send the host your pick for the most suspicious player and most suspicious character on your list. This info will be posted in thread but your votes will remain anonymous this info is important to flavor and sometimes triggers events positive and negative so please do this if less than 50% of players send in their night votes something dramatically bad will happen

10. The town leader will be given 4 random options that will be randed. They will choose to pass two of those options to their Lieutenant. The Lieutenant will choose one option that will become part of the game state.

11. These options include a number of things but come in 3 categories. Sabotage. Liar. And Policy.

12. A policy card will benefit town a Sabotage card will harm town a liar card will hold a secret not revealed to the leader or Lieutenant. You will not be told what type of policy you've received like everything in this game is up to you to use clues and solve.

13. The cards will take hold in a manner of different ways. One example is a card that makes it so that everyone has to speak in French the following day. Or a card that gives a random player a 1 shot kill.

14. There are no power roles in this game but many cards in the deck will grant temporary or even permanent powers.

15. The host will never directly tell a lie however information will often be hidden and everything is not always as it seems. But if I tell you that you've received a gun with 1 bullet that is true. However the flavor may make something seem true that isn't. Basically anything I send you directly = true anything through flavor is there for a reason and solvable but may not be the direct truth

16. FLAVOR WILL BE MASSIVELY IMPORTANT. Reading or not reading it is entirely your decision but this game is entirely built around the idea of solving and clues and deception.

17. Win conditions
Town has removed both saboteurs and the secret agent from the game or has successfully guessed the correct identities

Saboteurs have caused an incorrect guess or have reached parity

The secret agent does not have a win con at all

18. Random events may trigger during the game. Flavor will be coded in various ways some easy and some not. Messages may sometimes be partially Corrupted. Basically I want you to feel like you're solving a case like a Detective. Read into everything.

19. Unless activated by a card there will never be a lynch in this game. Player deaths will happen but they are extremely rare

20. This is still going to involve reading and psychology like Werewolf I've melded a few games together is kind of Secret Hitler kind of Spyfall and kind of Werewolf with a whole lot of solving and mystery.

21. You will not know or be in communication with any other players no matter your role. There are cards that will give you varying degrees of communication though.

I think this sounds great! Definitely got the mafia and Secret Hitler vibes from it. 

I'm guessing for the secret agent, since that's you (the host), it's just about finding which character you're portraying?  

One thing is I wonder if including a list of the characters being played may make things a bit easier? Since we didn't have that info in your Mafia game, but were able to figure some of it out. Though I guess in that case the flavor only had characters that were in game and not NPCs and whatnot. So including the list could be more fair. Will claiming who you are be allowed? I wouldn't want town to be able to solve it too easily with just having everyone claim their character. But I'm sure you've thought about that already. 


I really like the mechanics though. Having everyone vote at night on their suspects is fun, and helps give everyone something to do during the night. The town leader/lieutenant aspect is nice as well. It helps to give more layers to solving instead of just the flavor.  

I think this sounds great! Definitely got the mafia and Secret Hitler vibes from it.

I'm guessing for the secret agent, since that's you (the host), it's just about finding which character you're portraying? 

One thing is I wonder if including a list of the characters being played may make things a bit easier? Since we didn't have that info in your Mafia game, but were able to figure some of it out. Though I guess in that case the flavor only had characters that were in game and not NPCs and whatnot. So including the list could be more fair. Will claiming who you are be allowed? I wouldn't want town to be able to solve it too easily with just having everyone claim their character. But I'm sure you've thought about that already.


I really like the mechanics though. Having everyone vote at night on their suspects is fun, and helps give everyone something to do during the night. The town leader/lieutenant aspect is nice as well. It helps to give more layers to solving instead of just the flavor. 

So I did go back and forth on the list for a long time. Definitely no direct claiming of your character I think I'm going to allow indirect hints though but they have to be subtle ... though the more I think about the more I'm leaning into not even allowing that

I was going to allow subtle hints at your character because even within flavor it'll never be blatantly obvious like last game the mayor looked sus as hell but was actually not corrupt at all

Also yes the secret agent is all about finding out who I will technically be electable into government but like why would you vote me lol

One alternative to a character list is having three sets of characters in the story for extra solveyness. First would obviously be player characters. Then you're never suspect NPC which you could denote with an NPC tag either whenever they appear or on their first appearance. And then you could do red herring characters who aren't players but aren't denoted and then build clues and hints into the story that they are actually NPC. I dunno if you wanna get that ambitious though. =P