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[Planning] Pandemic Mafia


Jeod

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I want to show the basic premise of this game early on. It's still in the design phase, so it will be a few days before I open signups. If anyone decides they like the design enough to co-mod or even volunteer to enhance (I don't have much experience with complex RPG games like this), please speak up.

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Pandemic Mafia

Premise

Not to be confused with the board game Pandemic, this iteration of Mafia is more similar to RPGs such as “Game of Thrones” and “Ausgleich ’37”. The premise is a viral spread epidemic like the one we’re witnessing in the real world. 7-10 players take on the role of national powers in order to try to eradicate the virus and determine who, if anyone, is behind it.

Possible Nation Players

  • United States
  • United Kingdom
  • Italy
  • China
  • Iran
  • Russia
  • Germany
  • France
  • North Korea
  • Saudi Arabia

Goals

All nations have a shared goal of eradicating the virus whether by extinction (genocide) or cure. Each nation has differing actions based on its government and moral background. Actions taken by a nation to defend itself while progressing the eradication goal may have effects on other nations. For example, a dictatorship may choose to follow an extreme eradication route and thus alter popular opinion and demand of other nations (Literal example: NK player opts for extinction via genocide which triggers USA to call for actions/war/sanctions towards NK or face insurrection of its own people).

While players attempt to progress the eradication goal, they must at the same time defend themselves from the virus. Nations have population counts that can fall under healthy, infected, dead, and cured (note: for cured, see footnotes). The percentage of each category will influence the night actions each nation has available.

Some nations will have secondary goals. Where there is a global crisis, there is opportunity.

Day Phase

During the day, players deliberate and vote on which nation to send a daily ration of supplies to (from the “UN Supplies Pool”, which is finite) as well as which nation to send investigators to. Investigators can be from any nation, and occur during the night. Investigation results are shown the following day phase.

 

Investigations

When players vote to investigate a nation, they can choose which nations should send their investigators to check on the voted nation. For example, the USA has its own FBI agency to investigate matters, and Russia has the KGB. National investigator agencies are publicly displayed and are a part of each nation’s population count. Unlike agencies, a nation’s total population percentages are not publicly available.

Players don’t need to choose a single nation to investigate another. In some cases, a joint investigation will have better results. For example, a player may vote to send both USA and UK to investigate Russia like so:

##vote investigate Russia (USA 3, UK 2)

Depending on the relationship between all involved nations and the numbers sent, investigation results may be helpful to all, helpful to some, or useless. In rare cases, investigation results may become private to the involved nations and not made public.

It’s important to remember that investigations carry risk. If investigators are sent to a densely infected nation that is failing to defend itself well, they may return infected themselves—as investigators can become a part of the death count, nations can lose their ability to send investigators out.
 

Night Phase

At the end of each day, all players will receive an update on their home population—how the virus affected them while they were “away”. Players will use this information to make decisions to defend themselves from the virus as well as make progress toward eradication. Depending on situation, some players will have additional possibilities. Each nation will have the following action categories to make decisions from:

  • Domestic
  • World
  • Special

Players can select two actions from a pool of several among these categories. In some cases players will be able to select a third action.

Again, this is planning phase, so don't go nuts on me over game balance and mechanics and whatnot *cough* Shade *cough*

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1 hour ago, OrangeP47 said:

I don't think you know what that word means Jeod :p

Also it's not the KGB anymore.

You're right, I meant genocide. But eugenics could still be on the table. Think Brotherhood of Nod. And you don't know what era this is, so KGB is certainly a possibility. :v

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Honestly I think you or Nodlied are best suited to GM this kind of game. I don't mind trying, I just have the opinion that it would flow better with either of you history buffs.

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2 hours ago, Jeod said:

Honestly I think you or Nodlied are best suited to GM this kind of game. I don't mind trying, I just have the opinion that it would flow better with either of you history buffs.

I didn't want to impose, but you're probably right and I had the same thought, but I'm kinda distracted right now, that's why I suggested something more traditional so I could still be a player.  Though I SUPPOSE I've been wanting to do a nation simulation for a long time, so the idea is temping. None of the secret files I have prepared are pandemic themed though, so while I have created a nation style game before (it's not mafia, not by a long stretch), I'd basically have to start from scratch to keep up the theme.

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Well, my only goal was to give us all something to keep our brains busy while we're (most likely) quarantined and social distancing. Psychologically, a person can deteriorate quickly under these circumstances.

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37 minutes ago, Jeod said:

You're right, I meant genocide. But eugenics could still be on the table. Think Brotherhood of Nod. And you don't know what era this is, so KGB is certainly a possibility. :v

Add Bosnia into the country poll then to have the possibility of Brotherhood of Nod then :p

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Just now, Jeod said:

Well, my only goal was to give us all something to keep our brains busy while we're (most likely) quarantined and social distancing. Psychologically, a person can deteriorate quickly under these circumstances.

The big problem is my nation game was designed for a format that didn't have an end. To use a very poor metaphor, it was kind of a D&D group thing, in that it would just run on and on (the actual game is nothing like D&D). I'd have to figure out a way to distill it down to one event/crisis. It's probably doable, but I'll need to think about it really hard.

While I think about it, I recomend everyone play this flash game for inspiration, which is probably gonna be a goto:  https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/510296 This is back from before Plauge Inc was an actual game, but the format was popular on flash sites. Was notable for letting you play as the government instead of the virus.

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But first I'm gonna play more Stellaris: Federations. I have a galaxy full of democracies so I thought it would be perfect to try out the new Federation features but my neighbors are *xenophobic* democracies.... fun times...

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Seems unlikely that you'd have nations voting how to use a specific nations resources to fight the epidemic.

You should focus on an organization like the U.N. instead or so and have players vote on that's organizations actions using a combined resources pool drawn from it's members entirely for the day vote. Instead of let's send the U.S to investigate the U.S, because we voted for it!

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14 hours ago, Shade939 said:

Seems unlikely that you'd have nations voting how to use a specific nations resources to fight the epidemic.

You should focus on an organization like the U.N. instead or so and have players vote on that's organizations actions using a combined resources pool drawn from it's members entirely for the day vote. Instead of let's send the U.S to investigate the U.S, because we voted for it!

Get out of here, globalist shill!

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TBH I could make the game happen, I just need to figure out a way to balance it without also killing myself under a pile of research. It would be mostly a cooperative style game rather than adversarial, which would be a change of pace from most games we run, but I could probably throw some curve balls to keep things interesting.

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1 hour ago, OrangeP47 said:

TBH I could make the game happen, I just need to figure out a way to balance it without also killing myself under a pile of research. It would be mostly a cooperative style game rather than adversarial, which would be a change of pace from most games we run, but I could probably throw some curve balls to keep things interesting.

Go for it. Work picked up yesterday so I haven't been able to do the tweaking I wanted to.

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32 minutes ago, Jeod said:

Go for it. Work picked up yesterday so I haven't been able to do the tweaking I wanted to.

The crux of the issue is I'll have to make spreadsheets and I really don't wanna.... but I'll get over it...

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1 hour ago, OrangeP47 said:

The crux of the issue is I'll have to make spreadsheets and I really don't wanna.... but I'll get over it...

I like doing spreadsheets and automation but hate writing down actions...

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1 hour ago, VERTi60 said:

I like doing spreadsheets and automation but hate writing down actions...

The thing is I do too, but it's one of those "all my existing files have to be converted to a new format" type deals which is just tedious. All my game design was previously done with the win condition being "reelection" but now the win condition is "eliminate the virus" so everything has to be changed, and it's not just a simple word swap. Things need to actually make sense and be balanced.

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13 hours ago, OrangeP47 said:

The thing is I do too, but it's one of those "all my existing files have to be converted to a new format" type deals which is just tedious. All my game design was previously done with the win condition being "reelection" but now the win condition is "eliminate the virus" so everything has to be changed, and it's not just a simple word swap. Things need to actually make sense and be balanced.

You don't have to do it if it's too much. I can always go with the tried-and-true "Jeod CYOR" format.

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1 hour ago, Jeod said:

You don't have to do it if it's too much. I can always go with the tried-and-true "Jeod CYOR" format.

Honestly I just have to get over it being freeform (that's probably too much of a jump for this community anyway, we've not done any freeform games). If I just rip off that flash game I linked it's not too bad. Now I just need to figure out how to add inter-player tension. Though knowing you all, you probably don't need my help for that :p

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37 minutes ago, OrangeP47 said:

Honestly I just have to get over it being freeform (that's probably too much of a jump for this community anyway, we've not done any freeform games). If I just rip off that flash game I linked it's not too bad. Now I just need to figure out how to add inter-player tension. Though knowing you all, you probably don't need my help for that :p

We'll find something completely irrelevant to argue about!

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BTW just because I'm making progress, this will still be awhile before anything is ready so don't like expect something soon.  Finally got shelter in place here so most of the rest of today is going to be spent taking care of things before the order goes into effect.

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  • 2 weeks later...
38 minutes ago, iLikeToSnipe said:

I've got no preference. If you'd prefer a chance to play rather than run a game, I'd be more than happy to host.

I say let Jeod play. I need the chance for my character to run him into the ground despite being town

On a serious note though, will we still do unthemed, because I've had an idea for awhile and I've managed to not forget it for a change.

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