The Goblins Fan Forum

New game concept, but this time, I have enough of an idea of how to do it that it will happen. I promise.

Updates will be weekly. More often as people would post. As many people who want to play could play. This will be a game of wordplay and wordsmiths.

Meta-Knight

To Play:
Name:
Color:
(Traits dictate how your character will act in certain circumstances)
2 Positive traits
1 Negative trait
(For traits, I would like you to suggest some for yourselves based on your backstory)
Examples of positive traits:
Stealthy - Sneaks about, typically slowly, always being cautious
Brawny - A physical regiment set in place by your parents has done you well, +X HP and +X ATT
etc

Examples of negative traits:
Greedy - Cannot resist looting everything not nailed down.
Gimp - Has a bad leg and thus cannot run, or jump
etc

Fallout games are an acceptable source of traits to use.
Traits will obviously need to pass my approval.

Based on how this game goes, there may be a leveling up process included, but that would only be for survivors.
Using meta knowledge will incur penalties on the players.

Concept/Gameplay:
The players make their way through a game-map (this may be of any genre, fantasy, sci-fi, mid-evil, etc)
The dungeon is laid out, including information that the character should and shouldn't know. (thus the meta part)

Example: A long hallway stretches before you, a trap is cleverly hidden out in the left wall, a stone in the hallway will trigger the trap. At the far end you see a closed ornate chest with nothing inside.

P1: "Taking things slow as always, Paul pauses... a long hallway and a chest at the end? not a single opponent in sight? this is to good too be true he thinks, carefully examining the walls and looking out for trip wires" - Non meta, the player acts within his characters nature, and while he does look for traps, it is formulated so that it could fail, simply because he never directly examines the floor where he knows there to be a trigger

P2: "John is quick, sensing that the chest is just a lure, he throws his grappling hook and catches the chest, then drags it unto the trigger stone, releasing the deadly trap and clearing the way forward - Clearly meta, not only does he trigger the on purpose, he also sacrifices the chest calmly with the knowledge that nothing is lost anyways...

The Meta-Knight
This player can use meta-knowledge to his benefit as well as attack the players.

How to win?
If you are a player you can either 1. Defeat the meta-knight (this takes two players attacking the meta-knight together)
If you are the meta-knight you must defeat all of the players. (You are able to one-shot kill players)

Seems fun.

So do the players know who the meta-knight is?
Are the traits randomly asigned (might be more fun in my eyes).

I'm in, especially if it is only weekly, which is good cause of my limited time. Weekly I can do!

I think the idea is to find out who the meta knight is by observing his actions, seeing if he ever acts out of character. I suppose this enforces strong role-play to prevent oneself from looking like the meta knight.

Sorry, was away for the weekend. Yes, the Meta knight is an unknown force in the group who is trying to win by making the other characters lose.

Example: Player A (M-K) and Player B are moving down a corridor together, when Player A attacks player B, eventually killing him. Although this information is now known because...it happened, it is also not known because no one else was there to witness it.

I thought of this game due to me trying to make BSG (boardgame) into a forum game, and this is what I've come up with. Goblin Serial Killers with a little more input from all players than simply guessing who the killer might be and voting on who to kill.

So what happens if the GM thinks a players made his char make a meta-move? Is the whole move invalid, or does he has to rephrase it and the update only happens if the GM is satisfied with all moves? Do they happen hidden using PM, or how do you plan to do this?

A player who acts on meta information will lose a hit point when the GM updates..

I'm noticing that this isn't completely fleshed out, and if you have concerns or suggestions, I am listening.

The idea behind all of this is to make a game where all information is available, which makes PMing unnecessary. Which, honestly, even if you meta-knew who the meta knight was, you wouldn't be able to act on it until you figured out who he was..using clever wordplay.

If it's a loss of only one hit point, is it not in the favor of the non meta-knights to simply immediately act out of character and lose a health point, thus demonstrating their innocence?

Ah, but the Meta-Knight (given the Meta part) may act on the Meta-knowledge without penalty.

I was also considering (if the map/level) was a maze of sorts, place the Meta-knight on the opposite side of the maze, meaning everyone would know who he/she is but be unable to act against the person because they wouldn't "Know" who he/she was.

Two ideas to solve that mechanism-abuse:

1)the GM could disguise the punishment as a trap or negative event. Or the meta-knight could be allowed to willingly take a one hit point punishment.
2)The second idea, which I like better, cause it could not be abused as easily, would be to sum up the penalties and only apply them on the hit points if the sum either would kill the char or he does take damage anyway. That way you could not use it to put more pressure on the meta-knight to willingly take damage to prove he is a player too. In this case, the player would only get a PM to be informed about the penalty, so the others would not know about it. This would not avoid him mailing it to everbody, but in this case it also could be a trick PM of the meta player, as it would not have the official approvement of the GM.

I might be misunderstanding the game but why would the meta knight need to try to prove they were a regular player? Anyone who knows the identity of the knight can't act on it without using meta knowledge and hurting themselves, therefore the identity could be public OOC knowledge from the start?

It would lead to "clever writing" twisting the characters somewhat so as to act without acting.

What nikohl said is accurate. Everything is open knowledge, and Runsaround is accurate in that it would take Cleverness from both the players in clever writing to discover the knight as well as the knight being clever.

Thinking about this, I think I know how to fix the mechanics slightly.

The meta-Knight can one-shot kill the other players and it takes two players, attacking together to kill the knight.
Although the knowledge of who the knight is, is public knowledge, killing him outright is impossible because you would be using meta knowledge that your player doesn't have.
So, the only way the meta-knight could kill another player is to catch them by themselves or make it look like a trap did the deed.

But yes, this would be a game that involved "clever writing"

Runsaround wrote:It would lead to "clever writing" twisting the characters somewhat so as to act without acting.

Is that a problem, in a game based almost entirely on clever writing and the practice of avoiding metagaming?

Oh... Ninja'd by badge

This change however, forces the issue of (how do the players determine who the knight is?) Will it be based purely on clever wordplay, enabling the players to figure out who he is based on what he does (knights actions)...

or does the player who is the knight forced to reveal certain hints that can be discovered that can lead the players to discover his identity.

I can't think of an example right now...

*As for the penalties to players who use metainfo inappropriately, the penalties may consist (instead of loss of life) in negative effects that enable to knight to kill off the players more easily.